for a week before police break down door.” (What would my daughter say? Would she bow her head for a moment and think back on us two, Dad and Alice, and all the times she came running to meet me, arms outstretched? Or would she quickly, quietly, and efficiently organize funeral and wreath, soon to return, tight-lipped, to her quick, quiet, and efficient life as a middle-aged woman with a husband, two grown-up children, and her first grandchild on the way?)
In my former life, I liked to go swimming, liked to feel the water loosening up muscles, skin, joints. In my former life, I liked a lot of things without really appreciating them. I liked to eat good food. These days I can no longer taste the difference between a slice of coarse whole wheat and a slice of soft white bread. I used to like fine wines. These days it makes no difference whether it is a Bordeaux or an American cabernet. Every once in a while, I still treat myself to some good food and fine wine, but the joy is gone.
Amanda
Things I believe in:
I believe in Snip, Snap, and Snout. I believe in their fingers running through my hair, which just gets longer and longer. I believe in thirty fingers running through my hair, six hands stroking my body, three mouths kissing mine.
I believe that I might catch fire at any minute.
But I don’t say things like that to Bee. She’s just a little girl. She doesn’t even have breasts yet.
Axel
Yes, the joy is gone.
I used to take joy in the lazy turn of a Ferris wheel, so beautifully constructed, so brilliantly conceived. I once told Amanda about the engineer George Washington Ferris, the inventor of the Ferris wheel, and my relative. Martha Ferris, the engineer’s mother, was my father’s second cousin. When I was a boy, my father took me for a ride on a Ferris wheel, not a particularly big one but breathtaking all the same. When we reached the top he looked down and said, “You know, you could stand up, stretch out your arms, and jump. That’s what hits me up here. You could actually do it!”
I told Amanda that George Washington Ferris built his fabulous wheel for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, in no small part to impress his charming wife, Margaret Ann. This wheel, which was 250 feet in diameter, cost $400,000 to construct. It was to be the biggest wheel ever, the most magnificent mechanical invention of all time. The axle—the very heart of the wheel, Amanda!—weighed sixty-three tons, the largest iron part ever to be cast in one piece, and around this axle 1,440 passengers could ride at a time, up into the air and down again, up into the air and down, up into the air and down.
On June 17, 1893, Ferris’s charming wife raised her champagne glass to toast her husband. She was sitting, at the time, at the top of the wheel, from which point she could see the whole of Chicago. Her voice was soft.
To the health of my husband and the
success of the Ferris wheel.
“She drank a toast,” I told Amanda, “to her husband and his wonderful invention. Because strictly speaking, you see, that is its correct name: the Ferris wheel, which is what Americans call it, and not the Parisian wheel, as it is known in Europe, or the Big Wheel, as the British call it. He was greater than Gustave Eiffel, Amanda, and yet no one now remembers him at all.”
“But was his wife happy that he had made a wheel for her?”
“I don’t think she ever set foot on a Ferris wheel again,” I said. “She left him three years later. He was all washed up. He owed money right, left, and center. The fabulous wheel had cost too much to build, and people gradually lost interest. George Washington Ferris was told to knock the thing down, but when he tried to sell it for scrap, no one would buy it. Some people say the Germans eventually took it off his hands and later used it to make guns during the First World War.”
“And what happened to the inventor? What happened to Ferris?”
“He died. Of a broken heart,
In my former life, I liked to go swimming, liked to feel the water loosening up muscles, skin, joints. In my former life, I liked a lot of things without really appreciating them. I liked to eat good food. These days I can no longer taste the difference between a slice of coarse whole wheat and a slice of soft white bread. I used to like fine wines. These days it makes no difference whether it is a Bordeaux or an American cabernet. Every once in a while, I still treat myself to some good food and fine wine, but the joy is gone.
Amanda
Things I believe in:
I believe in Snip, Snap, and Snout. I believe in their fingers running through my hair, which just gets longer and longer. I believe in thirty fingers running through my hair, six hands stroking my body, three mouths kissing mine.
I believe that I might catch fire at any minute.
But I don’t say things like that to Bee. She’s just a little girl. She doesn’t even have breasts yet.
Axel
Yes, the joy is gone.
I used to take joy in the lazy turn of a Ferris wheel, so beautifully constructed, so brilliantly conceived. I once told Amanda about the engineer George Washington Ferris, the inventor of the Ferris wheel, and my relative. Martha Ferris, the engineer’s mother, was my father’s second cousin. When I was a boy, my father took me for a ride on a Ferris wheel, not a particularly big one but breathtaking all the same. When we reached the top he looked down and said, “You know, you could stand up, stretch out your arms, and jump. That’s what hits me up here. You could actually do it!”
I told Amanda that George Washington Ferris built his fabulous wheel for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, in no small part to impress his charming wife, Margaret Ann. This wheel, which was 250 feet in diameter, cost $400,000 to construct. It was to be the biggest wheel ever, the most magnificent mechanical invention of all time. The axle—the very heart of the wheel, Amanda!—weighed sixty-three tons, the largest iron part ever to be cast in one piece, and around this axle 1,440 passengers could ride at a time, up into the air and down again, up into the air and down, up into the air and down.
On June 17, 1893, Ferris’s charming wife raised her champagne glass to toast her husband. She was sitting, at the time, at the top of the wheel, from which point she could see the whole of Chicago. Her voice was soft.
To the health of my husband and the
success of the Ferris wheel.
“She drank a toast,” I told Amanda, “to her husband and his wonderful invention. Because strictly speaking, you see, that is its correct name: the Ferris wheel, which is what Americans call it, and not the Parisian wheel, as it is known in Europe, or the Big Wheel, as the British call it. He was greater than Gustave Eiffel, Amanda, and yet no one now remembers him at all.”
“But was his wife happy that he had made a wheel for her?”
“I don’t think she ever set foot on a Ferris wheel again,” I said. “She left him three years later. He was all washed up. He owed money right, left, and center. The fabulous wheel had cost too much to build, and people gradually lost interest. George Washington Ferris was told to knock the thing down, but when he tried to sell it for scrap, no one would buy it. Some people say the Germans eventually took it off his hands and later used it to make guns during the First World War.”
“And what happened to the inventor? What happened to Ferris?”
“He died. Of a broken heart,
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