I have been given the assignment of dressing the first boy in white. It must all be white from the desperate tiles, confounding even the simplest glance of admirer and disapprover alike, to stretched stone fit like a one year old tooth. The music begins and the dancers are seen. Perfect on the toenails they skate in between the stone columns; bright and pink are their gowns, flowing is the blood red cape.
For months at a time they move in this fashion to prepare for the boy who I am to dress in white. They eat little as to be sure of the lightest glide.
In each corner a single rusted pipes extends from the wall. Beneath it a red-hot stone and the drips make small hissing sounds, the moist air sets easy on the dancers’ arms, just above the wrist. Half a day’s travel away, a lake of pure mineral water is taken for the drops. A young man bids for the right to retrieve the water. This time a square headed child walks quickly, the one who leaves when I bring the boy in white after dressing him, the only time the bidding of the water is undesired, the boy sent for water returns home a relic, his gait is spoken of for decades, his shoulders remembered for years.
Outside in the courtyard tents are erected months in advance and merchants claim plots quickly, some of them never leave. Those who gaze longest on the temple are chosen to soak the polished stone, many men have starved to death holding to a gaze, orchids are laid in an intricate design on their chests, their bodies left on wooden tables on the street. Those that live and are accepted will work tirelessly to keep the stone clean, as one spec of dirt settles a man retrieves it.
On the day of the ceremony, after the skaters glide, a torrent of water rushes through the temple, to the courtyard and over the stone. The boy dressed in white emerges just as the skaters approach, in bare feet he walks up the stone as the skaters lift on to a single toenail and stretch a leg adjacent to the sky. His steps are perfect on the wet surface, he ascends to the temple, the water is still hissing from the flood.
In the center of the room he lies down, in only days his body begins decomposing. The dancers have not moved, those in the courtyard who are alive remain staring. In only moments we all stop breathing.