A Man Then Suddenly Stops Moving

The old Russian spits up a plum fruit of the rasping sound he has stored in his throat all these lonely years made in fact lonely by his wife who left him, God knows without knowing how to cook for himself. He examines the plum notes its purplish consistency almost the color and shape of her buttocks whose circulation was bad which is why he himself wears a beret: black, good wool, certainly warm enough the times he remembers. He shoots the plum to the ground like a child whose confidence is a game of marbles whose flick of a thumb is a smile inside his mouth knowing what he knows will happen. But his wife, Marthe does not spill out when the plum breaks open. Instead, it is a younger self alive and waving just the size he remembers himself to have been. The old Russian puts him onto his finger like a parakeet and sits him on the shelf with the pictures. For the rest of his days he nags himself constantly into a half-sleep surprised by this turn of events.