Statuesque Matt Bell
Because the father spoke to the younger only of her beauty, never her
lessons, she read no books, only brushed her hair each morning with a
thousand strokes of the brush; because he spoke of her as if she were a
painting or a carving, every afternoon she abandoned her riding and dancing
to practice sitting very still, thinking little, saying less, until she
often appeared not even to blink or breathe. If later in life many remarked
upon the mystery that she did not marry, it was perhaps in truth no mystery
at all: the kingdom's many roving suitors simply could not find her inside
the royal museum her father had built around her boudoir, its galleries
stocked with marble figures almost as lovely as she but seemingly only half
as still; and when the fading city of her father was finally sacked and she
was carried off by lecherous raiders, know that it was not for her hand in
marriage or for the possibility of ransom or even for terrors of the flesh.
The raider chieftains had mistaken her for a life-sized bit of porcelain, a
treasure white and alien-smooth but certainly not living, a blank prize more
valuable than any captive they could have dreamed of, so regal, so barely a
girl at all. When later they realized who she was, they did not regret their
decision: how good she would look in their own halls, they thought,
installed upon a dais, or better yet behind thick glass, where her beauty
might safely be seen but never heard, in case she ever again decided to ruin
herself with gesture and with speech.
Matt Bell's most recent book is A TREE OR A PERSON OR A WALL. He teaches in the Creative Writing
Program at Arizona State University.
Read Hannah Kauffman's 2 ½ Questions interview with
Matt.
Detail of art on main page courtesy
of Warm Fuzz.
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