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Night fell without the sculptor's return. His apron had slid off the marble long ago, and now a blue moonlight bathes the half-carved block. The marble considered the earlier conversation and was compelled to test the sculptor's conviction. It tried through the night to push and pull itself apart, and nothing happened. It tried to shiver in the chilled air. Nothing. It hummed, nothing, its voice too soft, powdery. It swallowed a deep breath, held it, and nothing. Perhaps the sculptor was right.
-Maybe, the marble considered, maybe I am the rare perfect block. And maybe he will take that chance, and then we'll see what we see.
The marble thought and drifted through its pale glittering veins toward sleep. Slowly, it began to dream: a dim haze whitened to a bright shadowless light that dissolved into a dim haze. Shining, twisting surfaces appeared; a glittering radiance glanced off rippling curves and faded. Showers of light falling, fading blue to black and exploding, showering, falling, fading.
When the marble awoke the sculptor was well into his work. The sunlight was bright and the marble wondered whether the morning had passed or was about to.
-Hello, it said in a sleepy whisper.
The sculptor glanced past the head of his chisel. He nodded, his face blank.
-Hello, he replied.
The marble imitated a few short breaths and a thin yawn. -You know, it said, pitching its voice slightly, I've been thinking. You know what I think? I think you might be right. I am the ideal block for you and you the sculptor suited to me.
The sculptor glanced again over his thick hand at the chisel point just beyond it. After forty-three years of carving, he knew marble's tricks. From his teachers he learned how marble's surfaces deceive an untrained eye. His teachers taught him how to distinguish impure veins of limestone from true grain and how to work the soft pith between. Experience taught him to trust his instincts.
He paused, glancing past his thick hand. -Yes, he replied, I might be right, and resumed lightly tapping the chisel with the flattened side of his mallet.
-Why, of course you're right, yes, of course, bearing the palm of all the ages, eclipsing the indissoluble chain of your brotherhood, the marble continued, elaborating its faith in the sculptor, in his transcendence of mere craft and in his place in the narrow halls of artistic genius. As the voice of the marble leveled into its lengthy discourse, the sculptor tended other voices crowding his head, the voices of his teachers repeating Never trust the stone. Never! Especially this one that's talking! The sculptor listened to these voices as he concentrated on his work, on the broad range of tools and techniques and the subtle adjustments made to peel from the sawed block a solitary Danaid crouching at the water's edge.
The crease of a hip emerged from the shrinking block. The sculptor shaped it with files and smoothed it with pumice and sand, caressing it with his cracked fingers. He belied nothing as the marble began exclaiming -Oh, my! Beautiful!
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