The Confessions of X Read Free

necklace plaited out of flowers, a bird crudely carved from wood, to carry to a kitchen-girl or one of the lady’s maids. I soon learned that if the girl accepted, I would receive pieces of honeycomb or perhaps an apple for my mule, but if the girl rejected the gift, the boy would be sullen and bad-tempered for the rest of the day and I knew to keep away.
    They were given the heavy work, carrying baskets of fine rubble to be laid as the base of the mosaic, mixing mortar and then shoveling it over the stones as the second layer, the men smoothing it down with long trowels until it was even, checking constantly with a lead plumb line suspended from the apex of a triangular wooden frame laid flat. This was followed by another layer of mortar mixed with terra-cotta. Above this, the final layer of pure mortar was applied only by the craftsmen themselves when it came time to lay the tiles, and only in small areas, for the mortar had to be wet, the tiles laid swiftly and precisely before it dried. Each son would stand near his father, ready to supply him with fresh mortar, and tempers grew short if the mortar dried too fast and the next batch was not yet ready. I would scurry about with my bucket and dipper so that setting mortar could be dampened and made pliable again. My father had no boy to do this for him and did it himself. It made him slower than the rest but he was an artist of figures rather than of geometrical designs used in bordering—a much rarer skill—and the client never complained.
    He called me Little Bird because my eyes were always bright and watchful, he said, my head cocked to one side as I squatted next to him. When he placed the first tile I would hold my breath, for this, to me, was the beginning of the magic.
    â€œWhat is it going to be, Papa?” I would ask.
    â€œWait and see,” he would say.
    He would lay another tile beside the first and then another and another until, suddenly, as if sprung from the very earth itself, there appeared the delicate curve of a stem bending under the weight of its bell-like flower or the jagged points of a tiger’s teeth or the rounded scales of a golden carp barely glimpsed beneath a gauzy, azure pool. I see him still, stooped, intent, laying whorls and lines until an image grew—bird, fish, tracery of frond or vine, worlds flowering piece by piece before my eyes, a miracle of making, the motion of his fingers deft, continuous.
    â€œHow do you do that?” I would ask.
    â€œAh, Little Bird,” he would say. “It is the art of broken things.”
    I thought, then, that he was remembering my mother, and perhaps he was. But now that I have lived more than twice his lifespan, have picked through the shards of a broken life, fitting them to a pattern that, once set in time, I cannot change, I know that he was speaking of himself. Most rarely blessed by the gods with an eye for beauty and the gift of making, he had taken to drink in grief over my mother’s death, and slowly, inexorably, his gift began to fail. Once held to be one of the finest mosaic makers in all of Africa Province, sought after by senators and noblemen to adorn their villas or the churches and temples they endowed, his fame dwindled, and before he died his hands trembled so he could barely lay a tile and the only work he found was in adorning the tombs of farmers and freed slaves. I know now that he kept me by him not only because he loved me but also because he knew he would not live to see me grown.
    As I grew older, I was given more important tasks than fetching water. I would sit cross-legged before heaps of tiles and sort them into piles of similar colors, terra-cotta at first as these were cheaper than stone and it did not matter if I broke a few. Next I was entrusted with stone, slave-quarried from living rock and brought in ships from distant parts of the empire or in mule-trains from the southern mines. Sometimes, using a tiny hammer and chisel, I was