Deft

"We left King's Landing that very night. For years and years he would juggle every day by the Fountain of the Drunken God. He was old, so his hands were not as deft as they had been, and sometimes he would drop his balls and chase them across the square, but the Tyroshi would laugh and throw him coins all the same. Then one morning we heard that his body had been found at the Temple of Trios. Only when the parts were sewn back together, his head was gone."

The latter was conscious of something pleasant, comforting, and well-rounded in these deft movements, in the man's well-ordered arrangements in his corner, and even in his very smell, and he looked at the man without taking his eyes from him.

Whatever it is—imp or else-thing—it's deft.

Its windings could be seen from below until it disappeared into the great deft.

When did you move here?" As though they had had a choice. As though they had picked this for their home from a vast array of posh housing estates listed in a glossy pamphlet A man sitting on a red weighing machine unstrapped his artificial leg (knee downwards) with a black boot and nice white sock painted on it. The hollow, knobbled calf was pink, like proper calves should be. (When you re-create the image of man, why repeat God's mistakes?) Inside it he stored his ticket. His towel. His stainless-steel tumbler. His smells. His secrets. His love. His hope. His madness. His infinnate joy. His real foot was bare. He bought some tea for his tumbler. An old lady vomited. A lumpy pool. And went on with her life. The Stationworld. Society's circus. Where, with the rush of commerce, despair came home to roost and hardened slowly into resignation. But this time, for Ammu and her two-egg twins, there was no Plymouth window to watch it through. No net to save them as they vaulted through the circus air. Pack your things and leave, Chacko had said. Stepping over a broken door. A handle in his hand. And Ammu, though her hands were trembling, hadn't looked up from her unnecessary hemming. A tin of ribbons lay open on her lap. But Rahel had. Looked up. And seen that Chacko had disappeared and left a monster in his place. A thicklipped man with rings, cool in white, bought Scissors cigarettes from a platform vendor. Three packs. To smoke in the train corridor. For Men of Action SatisfAction. He was Estha's escort. A Family Friend who happened to be going to Madras. Mr Kurien Maathen. Since there was going to be a grown-up with Estha anyway, Mammachi said there was no need to waste money on another ticket. Baba was buying Madras-Calcutta. Ammu was buying Time. She too had to pack her things and leave. To start a new life, in which she could afford to keep her children. Until then, it had been decided that one twin could stay in Ayejnenem. Not both. Together they were trouble. nataS ni rieht scye . They had to be separated. Maybe they're right, Ammu's whisper said as she packed his trunk and hold-all. Maybe a boy does need a Baba. The thicklipped man was in the coup' next to Estha's. He said he'd try and change seats with someone once the train started. For now he left the little family alone. He knew that a hellish angel hovered over them. Went where they went Stopped where they stopped. Dripping wax from a bent candle. Everybody knew. It had been in the papers. The news of Sophie Mol's death, of the police "Encounter" with a Paravan charged with kidnapping and murder. Of the subsequent Communist Party siege of Paradise Pickles & Preserves, led by Ayemenem's own Crusader for Justice and Spokesman of the Oppressed. Comrade K. N. M. Pillai claimed that the Management had implicated the Paravan in a false police case because he was an active member of the Communist Party. That they wanted to eliminate him for indulging in "Lawful Union Activities." All that had been in the papers. The Official Version. Of course the thicklipped man with rings had no idea about the other version. The one in which a posse of Touchable Policemen crossed the Meenachal River, sluggish and swollen with recent rain, and picked their way through the wet undergrowth, clumping into the Heart of Darkness. Chapter 18. The History House A posse of Touchable Policemen crossed the Meenachal River, sluggish and swollen with recent rain, and picked their way through the wet undergrowth, the clink of handcuff in someone's heavy pocket. Their wide khaki shorts were rigid with starch, and bobbed over the tall grass like a row of stiff skirts, quite independent of the limbs that moved inside them. There were six of them. Servants of the State. Politeness. Obedience. Loyalty. Intelligence. Courtesy. Efficiency. The Kottayam Police. A cartoonplatoon. New-Age princes in funny pointed helmets. Cardboard lined with cotton. Hairoil stained. Their shabby khaki crowns. Dark of Heart. Deadlypurposed. They lifted their thin legs high, clumping through tall grass. Ground creepers snagged in their dewdamp leghair. Burrs and grass flowers enhanced their dull socks. Brown millipedes slept in the soles of their steel-tipped, Touchable boots. Rough grass left their legskin raw, crisscrossed with cuts. Wet mud fatted under their feet as they squelched through the swamp. They trudged past darter birds on the tops of trees, drying their sodden wings spread out like laundry against the sky. Past egrets. Cormorants. Adjutant storks. Sarus cranes looking for space to dance. Purple herons with pitiless eyes. Deafening, their wraark wraark wraark. Motherbirds and their eggs. The early morning heat was full of the promise of worse to come. Beyond the swamp that smelled of still water, they walked past ancient trees cloaked in vines. Gigantic mani plants. Wild pepper. Cascading purple acuminus. Past a deepblue beetle balanced on an unbending blade of grass. Past giant spider webs that had withstood the rain and spread like whispered gossip from tree to tree. A banana flower sheathed in claret bracts hung from a scruffy, torn-leafed tree. A gem held out by a grubby schoolboy. A jewel in the velvet jungle. Crimson dragonflies mated in the air. Doubledeckered. Deft. One admiring policeman watched and wondered briefly about the dynamics of dragonfly sex, and what went into what. one of History's Agents asked. "

The severely practical instruction in seamanship was a joy to his logical mind, and his fingers were deft in their work and powerful when strength was demanded.

With deft fingers she shaped a gauze pad, sheared off some strips of tape, and gave her attention to his torn cheek with all the impersonal interest of a veteran nurse in a charity clinic ...

With a deft kick, he sends it spinning to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in.

Deft-fingered, she put them back to back.

Scarred, as mine were before the Capitol erased all marks from my skin, but strong and deft.

Her fingers were deft, and she pulled at the warp like a harp-player.

They are quick of hearing and sharp-eyed, and though they are inclined to be fat and do not hurry unnecessarily, they are nonetheless nimble and deft in their movements.

She slid the length of the room; her tender shoulders swayed; her feet were deft as a weaver's shuttle; she laughed, and enticed Babbitt to dance with her.

When finally he appeared to hurl away the last shreds of restraint, capering crazily and yet still keeping it all as deft and neat as surgery, and Inigo tossing his lock of hair over the piano was joined by Jimmy with his drums, Mitcham with his banjo, and the others as chorus, the house rose at him.

With quick, deft hands Bill Scanlan tied cords round each of the rubber tubes and so stopped the inrush, while the Doctor released the top of our compressed air which came hissing forth from the tubes.

Then, lifting his voice in a mellow tenor, he sang, obviously improvising, but his touch so deft that Jessica was enthralled before she focused on his lyrics: You say you long for Caladan seas, Where once you ruled, Atreides, Without surcease— But exiles dwell in stranger-lands!

"We left King's Landing that very night. For years and years he would juggle every day by the Fountain of the Drunken God. He was old, so his hands were not as deft as they had been, and sometimes he would drop his balls and chase them across the square, but the Tyroshi would laugh and throw him coins all the same. Then one morning we heard that his body had been found at the Temple of Trios. Only when the parts were sewn back together, his head was gone."

"I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai—" Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.

Milo made a deft grimace of tribulation and turned away.