Joanna Ruocco - Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith - A Diptych

The nursery is filled with books. There are books on the carpet. There are books on the chairs. The crib is filled with books. The covers of the books are black. Each page is a cat, the skin of a cat. The children flip the cats. They rub the cats. They scrape the cats with their nails. The children are vastly changed. They are quiet. They are piles of black fabrics and cats. They are cats. They are little skinned cats. I open a book. I try to look through the book, the holes in the book. I open the holes with the knife. I see my foot. I look through the hole in my foot. A carpet is made of strings, black strings. The strings come up through the hole in my foot. Tamworth has a hole, says Spot. Tamworth has a hole in her foot. I laugh. Spot is quiet. He is a book. The children are books. They are quiet. I don't hear you, I say. It is quiet. I hear drips. Above, I hear bangs. I hear jerks. I hear scrapes. Don't move, I say. Don't move. You are a book. A book is filled with skin. Little skins. You need to clean the hairs from the skins. You need to scrape the hairs from the skins. Spot is changed. He sits on the chair. No, he tips over the chair. He lies on the carpet. He takes down his trousers. He puts his hands on the hairs. He scrapes with his nails. He scrapes. He scrapes. Hairs fall on the carpet. Tamworth squirms. She has her hands in her thighs. She scrapes. She scrapes hard. She kicks the runners of the rocking horse. She kicks the belly. She kicks the neck. She pushes her body backwards. Her dress bunches. Her white thighs are very big. Her head touches the iron leg of the crib. Her white thighs are marked with fluids. They are shapes, red shapes. It is a map, a wet map. It is the field. It is the town. Where is the nursery? I say. I crawl close to the map. It smells. Little white hairs root in the shapes. At the roots, red. At the tips, white. The skin shakes. I put my mouth on the shapes. I smear the shapes with my mouth. They taste hot. They taste thick. Tamworth hits my nose with her wrist. She moves her wrist. Between her thighs, she scrapes. She scrapes. She makes a hole. A worm crawls out. I put the worm in the crib, in the rags in the crib. I look down at the crib. I look down at the children. I smile. I make the shape of the nursery with my mouth.

After the lesson, we will go to the forest. We will take the globe to the forest. We will take the books to the forest. We will ride the rocking horse all through the forest. We will push the horse with our legs. How many legs? I say. Six legs, says Spot. Six legs, says Tamworth. We have six legs. A fly, I say. We are a fly. A white fly. We live in a blister of meat. What is a house? I say. A blister of meat. There is no meat, I say. There is no house. We live in the forest. We live in the field. We pick stones from the field. We lie down in the furrows. We lie down. A fat girl passes. She is the cook. She has a tray of cakes. She has a pitcher of milk. She rests the tray on a clod, the pitcher on a clod. She sits on a clod. She scrapes her sores with a knife. She wipes her knife on the cakes. The gardener passes. He puts lilies in the milk. The stalks fill with milk. The throats fill with milk. They drip milk. The petals turn white. They drop on the clods. They are cream, great clots of cream. Ladies drink cream. They turn white. Their skin is clean and white. The farmer rides through the fields on a horse. He has two legs. They flap on the sides of the horse. He slides from the horse. He sits on a clod. He puts his thing in the milk. He drains his thing in the milk. He holds me close. What is that smell? says the farmer. A lady won't know. She won't know. She isn't taught smells. I don't know. What is a smell? I don't know. It is milk, I say. It is the lilies in milk. I laugh. Flies tickle my foot. They crawl from the hole in my foot. Each fly has six legs. Each leg has six hairs, little white hairs. I pull a hair from my foot. A long white hair. With a needle and a hair, I could stitch the hole. I could fasten the button to the hole. I could close the hole. I could cover the hole. Something fell from her mouth. Her foot slipped again and again. She dropped. She screamed. She jerked. Something fell from her mouth. It fell on the grass. It was small. What is small? I say. A child. An apple. A child is small. An apple is small. A key is small. A button is small. It was small like a button. I sat in the field. I found a button attached to a hair. I followed the hair to the house. The hair wound through the house. It wound through the hooks. It wound through the rails. It wound around the knob of her door. I touched the knob. I pushed the door open. Her neck was tied to the bed, to the tester of the bed. She dangled. Something small had fallen from her mouth. I climbed onto the bed. I put my hand in the dark between her breasts, in the hole between her breasts. I crawled into the hole.

I look at the crib. I look at the window. I look along the top of the wall. I look at the faces, gray faces, gray masks of women's faces. Every mouth is open. The Master watches. He watches through the mouths in the masonry. I throw the tray at the wall. I throw the pitcher at the wall. I hit the wall with the chair. I breathe hard. I put the chair on the carpet. I sit on the chair. I look down. I look at my foot. I hear a puff of air. It comes from my foot, from the hole in my foot. There are no more fluids in my foot. There is air. I am very slim. I am very light and slim. I am very dry. I am filled with air. I hear the puff. It does not come from my foot. It comes from above. It comes through the mouth of the mask. The Master is speaking softly. He whispers. He doesn't want her to hear. He doesn't want them to hear. He is breathing a word. I don't know the word. I can't hear the word. I stand. I can't hear the word. The Master breathes the word through the wall, through the mask in the wall. I open a book. I flip through the book. I put my fingers in the book. My mouth comes close to the book. Is this the word? I say. Is this the word? There is no one in the nursery. I breathe hard. I breathe louder than the Master. I can't hear him breathe. I can't hear him speak. I touch a page of the book. I put my eye on the page, the wet of my eye on the page. The eyelid twitches. It twitches on the page. My eye burns. It leaks fluid. Fluid runs on my face. It runs on the page. I put my mouth on the page. I flatten my mouth on the page. I flatten my nose on the page. I breathe hard. I suck the page. I pull the page between my lips. It pulls against my teeth, against my tongue. I wet the page. I smell the fluids on the page. I smell the page. It has a taste. It has a smell. The Master breathes a word. Is this the word? I can't hear him. The page comes apart in my mouth. I gag. Is this the word? Is this the word? Is this the word? Yes, it is the word. My mouth knows the word. It is the word that the Master intends for me. It is mine.

My brother the blacksmith must hire a striker. My brother is a young man. Some day he may have a son. It is best for a blacksmith to have a son for a striker. When the blacksmith retires, the striker takes over the forge. The striker carries on the good name of the forge. His name is the same as his father's, and so his name is the same as the name of the forge.

My brother the blacksmith was our father's striker. Our father tapped with his hammer and my brother struck the iron. Our father was very happy with my brother. My brother never made mistakes. He always struck exactly where our father wanted. Our father said that he had been right to give my brother his name. He said that my brother would surpass him as blacksmith. Our father had plans to expand and modernize the forge. My brother would be the blacksmith in a large, modern forge. He could not help but surpass our father. Our father had surpassed his father and his father had not made a single improvement to the forge. Our father had done better work than his father with the same tools. My brother would do better work than our father with better tools. Our father did not make any improvements to the forge.