Sturgeon, Theodore - Slow Sculpture

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VERSION 1.0 DTD 032600

SLOW SCULPTURE

Theodore Sturgeon

He didn't know who he was when she met him--well, not

many people did. He was in the high orchard doing some-

thing under a pear tree. The land smelled of late summer

and wind--bronze, it smelled bronze.

He looked up at a compact girl in her mid-twenties, at

a fearless face and eyes the same color as her hair, which

was extraordinary because her hair was red-gold. She

looked down at a leather-skinned man in his forties, at a

gold-leaf electroscope in 'his hand, and felt she was an

intruder.

She said, "Oh" in what was apparently the right way.

Because he nodded once and said, "Hold this" and

there could then be no thought of intrusion.

She kneeled down beside him and took the instrument,

holding it exactly where he positioned her hand. He

moved away a little and struck a tuning fork against his

kneecap.

"What's it doing?"

He had a good voice, the kind of voice strangers notice

and listen to.

She looked at the delicate leaves of gold in the glass

shield of the electroscope.

"They're moving apart."

He struck the tuning fork again and the leaves pressed

away from one another.

"Much?"

"About forty-five degrees when you hit the fork."

"Good--that's about the most we'll get." From a

pocket of his 'bush jacket be drew a sack of chalk dust

and dropped a small handful on the ground. "I'll move

now. You stay right there and tell me how much the

leaves separate."

He traveled around the pear tree in a zigzag course,

striking his tuning fork while she called out numbers

ten degrees, thirty, five, twenty, nothing. Whenever the

gold foil pressed apart to maximum--forty degrees or

more--he dropped more chalk. When he was finished the

tree was surrounded by a rough oval of white dots. He

took out a notebook and diagramed them and the tree,

put away the book and took 'the electroscope out of her

hands.

. "Were you looking for something?" he asked her.

"No," she said. "Yes."

He could smile. Though it did not 'last long she found

the expression surprising in a face like his.

"That's not what is called, in a court of law, a respon-

sive answer."

She glanced across the hillside, metallic in that late

light. There wasn't much on it--rocks, weeds the summer

was done with, a tree or so, the orchard. Anyone present

had come a long way to get here.

"It wasn't a simple question," she said, tried to smile

and burst into tears.

She was sorry and said so.

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file:///G|/rah/Theodore%20Sturgeon%20-%20Slow%20Sculpture.txt

"Why?" he asked.

This was the first time she was to experience this ask-

the-next-question thing of his. It was unsettling. It always

would 'be--never less, sometimes a great deal more.

"Well--one doesn't have emotional explosions in pub-

lic."

"You do. I don't know this 'one' you're talking about."

"I guess I don't either, now that you mention it."

"Tell the truth then. No sense in going around and

around about it: He'll think that I . . . and the like. I'll

think what I think, whatever you say. Or--go down the

mountain and just don't say any more." She did not turn

to go, so he added: "Try the truth, then. If it's important,

it's simple. And if it's simple it's easy to say."

"I'm going to die!" she cried.

"So am 1."

"I have a lump in my breast."

"Come up to the house and I'll fix it."

Without another word he turned away and started

through the orchard. Startled half out of her wits, indig-

nant and full of insane hope, experiencing, even, a quick

curl of astonished laughter, she stood for a moment

watching him go and 'then found herself (at what point

did I decide?) running after him.

She caught up with him on the uphill margin of the

orchard.

"Are you a doctor?"

He appeared not to notice that she had waited, had

run.

"No," he said and, walking on, appeared not to see her

stand again pulling at her lower lip, then run again to

catch up.

"I must be out of my mind," she said, joining him on

a garden path.

She said it to herself. He must have known because he

did not answer. The garden was alive with defiant chrys-

anthemums and a pond in which she saw the flicker of a

pair of redcap imperials--silver, not gold fish--the largest

she had ever seen. Then--the house.

First it was part of the garden with its colonnaded

Terrace--and then, with its rock walls (too massive to be

called fieldstone) part of the mountain. It was on and in

the hillside. Its roof paralleled the skylines, front and

sides, and part of it was backed against an out-jutting

cliff face. The door, beamed and studded and featuring

two archers' slits, was opened for them (but there was no

one there) and when it closed it was silent, a far more

solid exclusion of things outside than any click or clang

of latch or bolt.

She stood with her back against it watching him cross

what seemed to be the central well of the house, or at

least this part of it. It was a kind of small court in the

center of which was an atrium, glazed on all of its five

sides and open to the sky at the top. In it was a tree,

a cypress or juniper, gnarled and twisted and with the

turnedback, paralleled, sculptured appearance of what the

Japanese call bonsai.

"Aren't you coming?" he called, holding open a door

behind the atrium.

"Bonsai just aren't fifteen feet .tail," she said.

"This one is."

file:///G|/rah/Theodore%20Sturgeon%20-%20Slow%20Sculpture.txt (2 of 16) [2/14/2004 12:56:49 AM]

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