The path leading to the newly built apartment high-rise was being dug up. Twenty mighty trees had been felled on each side and their branches, chopped, were stacked up, ready for auction. A road would replace the path.
A contractor was ordering labourers about. Sidewalks were being built along the path. The contractor was showing the labourers where he wanted the palm trees planted. People like green, he said. A row of palms, some Mexican grass and the green dream is sold. The labourer nodded, uninterested.
***
Tayyib took walks during his lunch breaks and would look with interest as the path slowly developed into a tarred road.
This afternoon, feeling mildly nauseous as he chewed on a slice of toast made earlier that morning, now soggy with the weight of butter and marmalade, thought, again, that he must sign-up to that lunch catering service next month.
***
It was another day at work, exactly the same as the one before and almost time to return to his cubicle. Back to analysing data, that was, in the larger scale of things, meaningless, he thought to himself.
/We come from sunlight and shadow/, said a voice near him.
Startled, he turned towards the voice and saw a short, waif-like man standing quite close, staring at him.
‘Excuse me?’, said Tayyib, startled.
/We come from sunlight and shadow/, said the man, emphasising each word as his hands moved in a slow rhythm, as if practising a part in a play.
‘Can I help you?’, asked Tayyib, ‘Do you need anything?’.
/Sunlight and shadow, we need…/.
The voice was high pitched and Tayyib winced.
Clearly uncomfortable and in a hurry to get back, Tayyib began to walk away from the man.
‘Uh-ok, have a good day’, he said, forcing a smile as he hurried back.
The city holds some real crazies, he thought.
****
The following week the newly tarred, palm lined road was inaugurated by a government official, suited and booted and chuffed with importance.
The builder was giving a speech. This road, he claimed, would not be just for the benefit of owners of the apartments, but as an act of goodwill to the public, some of the budget for making this road will go into re-doing a service road nearby. This would mean, he said, a smoother journey for the everyday office goer who, thanks to this, would be reaching home earlier. He sounded very pleased with himself.
Tayyib was annoyed.
The inauguration was loud, and as expected, performative. Cracker waste littered the road.
There was little point in staying inside and working, with all this disturbance. He may as well take his break now, he thought.
He walked out and, having nothing in particular to do, watched the functions that followed the inauguration.
/We come from sunlight and shadow/.
“That voice again”, Tayyib thought.
He felt unsettled. This frail, small man, with his rhythmic movements and stilted speech, what did he want? Why was he here again?
Tayyib frowned as he looked at the man, his clothes, his expression.Theatrical. That was about the only way to describe it. Like he was playing a character.
Blue trousers, too long, too loose.
A tie and a bow, green. Both slightly tattered, both ever so lopsided.
An orange checked shirt, with buttons just a bit out of alignment.
A pink coat.
Black socks and black shoes, laces of which are tightly drawn.
A hat, frayed. Nondescript.
“Where’s your pocket watch, waif-man, where’s your monocle?” thought Tayyib, trying not to smile.
Instead he said, ‘What do you mean by coming from sunlight and shadow?’
The man took his hand and started walking. Taken by surprise, Tayyib stumbled at first and then, as if his will had been taken away, he began to walk alongside.
In moments he found himself out of breath. How was it possible that this tiny man walked so lightly and so fast, while holding him so firmly?
***
Around him everything begins to blur. He can no longer feel his feet. The wind hits and burns his cheeks. He is spinning. He is going to faint, he thinks.
City sounds fade.
There's a rustling. A whooshing. Birdsong. Another sound. A low hum accompanied by a visceral sensation, almost like electricity, moving from outwards to deep within his body.
He can hear his blood rush through a thousand veins.
His heartbeat, primordial, beats deafeningly. Or could it be a drum beating somewhere, maybe at the inauguration?
His thoughts are a whirl. “Drums mimic heartbeats”, the thought floats up from the jetsam of memory.
Then everything turns black. There's no sound. Everything is still.
“This is what death feels like, I am dead”, he thinks.
****
He feels himself returning to something. Some awareness. Something is clearing.
He opens his eyes.
Around him, everything is unfamiliar-familiar.
Something, someone that must also be the waif-man stands in front of him. The thing is both, he thinks. Both waif-man and something undefinable.
But he cannot see where this thing, this creature begins, or where the waif-man ends.
They are just bursts of colour.
Everchanging.
Everything that is the creature-man, moves, never staying at one place: the mouth, eyes, nose, hands, feet, hair.
“It is a dance”, he thinks.
“This is a dance. This creature-man is dancing”
As the creature-man dances, Tayyib sees worlds being created. A macrocosm.
He sees each detail of everything that populates these created worlds. A microcosm.
He sees his world. Earth. She’s so blue. She’s so beautiful. He sees feather-tips of each bird, the pollen on each flower. The roar of tigers, the yawn of a mouse.
He sees canopies of trees covering an ancient planet. He sees civilisations from the moment of their birth to the moment of their destruction. And everything after.
He sees the -after- of beauty.
The dancing becomes frenzied, the creature-man and Earth become one.
“She’s dying”, the thought makes him panic
“and this creature-man cannot save her”
/I am a creature of sunlight and shadow, the balance…./
It is a statement of finality.
He sees Earth, so blue, so beautiful, turn colourless, ashen, and with her this being of dance and light, fades.
He opens his eyes. The waif-man is holding his hand. Back to being a caricature.
/Sunlight and shadow…the balance…/, he says as his voice fades away.
And then Tayyib knows.
The Balance is broken.
That was the last Dance.
***
He looks at the grand apartment, at the perfect road, and at the tall glass buildings around, their glare obscuring the sky.
The palm trees with their wilting fonds.
The trees that were: gone now.
The city that was: Dead now.
And he lets out a scream, loud, impotent.
He picks up a bit of concrete from a pile that is still to be cleared. He runs towards the newly built apartments and with all his might, hurls it at its Italian glass entrance door.
He laughs as the glass shatters.
The world spins.
Then stops.
