Observatory Mansions Read Free Page A

hoop at its end. In that pot was a soap mixture. I stood still, holding the pot, with my eyes closed. When I heard a coin drop I would open my eyes, take the plastic stick with the wire hoop at its end from the enamel pot and blow out soap bubbles to the person who had dropped me the coin. The soap bubbles were an annoyance that I had to put up with. If people part with money they demand some compensation. Soap bubbles were the cheapest compensation I could think of. After I had blown out a soap bubble I would close my eyes, resume my pose and remain absolutely still until I heard another coin drop. Then I would open my eyes, move and blow out another soap bubble.
    When I opened my eyes I saw in front of me many people. People who had never before seen a person keep so still.People who were confused, wondering whether I was made of flesh or of plaster. Until I opened my eyes. The white of my body was so precise in its whiteness that the whites of my eyes looked dirty by comparison. Dirty, but alive. When I closed my eyes I resumed my perfect stillness, and the people around me, who only a moment ago had seen my living eyes, began to wonder all over again whether I was of flesh or of plaster. That was how perfect my stillness was. How had I learnt to achieve such inanimacy?

The art of stillness .
    As a child I often played a game with my toys. I would place them all in a circle, leaving a space for myself. We would sit together. I would look at them all, each in turn, for exactly the same amount of time. I would consider what it could be like to be an object. These objects – a teddy bear, a tin soldier, a clockwork robot, a stuffed fox and a plastic frog – had all at times been given voices by me, I had temporarily made them live in the games of my childhood. I considered it only fair that since I had made them feel what it might possibly be like to be living that I should in turn try to discover for myself – but with help from them – what it was like to be an object. I kept still. I felt my heart slow down. I closed my eyes.
    When I grew up I was given employment by the waxwork museum in the city. This was a popular job, the waxworks was a popular place. For my interview I was informed that I had to stand still amongst wax dummies. Five of us interviewed for one job. The job was stillness. The art of keeping still. We were informed that if none of us were still enough no one would be employed and the job would remain vacant for another year. It was a popular part of the museum that housed wax models that pretended to be people to also employ people who pretended to be wax models. When the public perused the objects they liked toguess which ones were wax, which ones were flesh. Often they made mistakes; this was because the army of flesh dummies were such experts, masters of stillness. When a dummy that was presumed to be made of wax moved, the public was astonished. They gasped and then they laughed. This was considered entertainment. In the interview we had to prove that we were capable of holding a pose for a very long time. Five of us were interviewed with five wax dummies. We all wore different costumes from different ages. I was given a white shirt with frilly cuffs, breeches, a gabardine, white stockings, black buckled shoes and a curled white wig with a purple ribbon at its back. I remember this costume extremely well, not only would I wear it for my interview at the waxworks but I would also wear it for my subsequent employment there. In fact, after my employment was terminated, I kept the costume and used the shirt and the wig (with the ribbon removed) whilst standing still on my plinth. Once costumed, we five interviewees were shown our places between the five wax dummies. We selected our poses. The interview began. A fat man walked in wearing a cream three-piece suit, who I later discovered had come all the way from the largest of all the wax museums, in the capital city of our country, to take the