A Sudden Guide to Working with People. Naples (№ 417299)

Gianni sculpted fantastically fast. Everything in his yard was pampering. He always had a dozen orders plus everything he sculpted for himself. The ecstasy of St. Catherine, for example. He played with materials - wood, bronze, marble, granite. He made metal look like stone, stone, like wood, turned wood into bronze, but so too - dabbled. He always sculpted in full growth.
St. Catherine was circling with him. The Church always puts its saints static, and his marble of her robes spilled, scattered evening dress - the luxury of fabrics. From under the dress of St. Catherine curls were knocked out and curled on the cheeks, on the lips open, the perfect shape of the lips, wrapped tears - marble, but so real that you believed - they are transparent, salty and hot. Tears wet her lips, her eyes closed, her eyelids light like the wings of a bat. Like the wings of a bat - trembling, you believed - tremble eyelids at St. Catherine in ecstasy. And the whole figure of heavy marble was weightless - about to take off. Dance through the air.
Gianni sculpted Katerina from the Stasi. But I saw the Stasi so magnificent only once - in Italy on a rock. Stasi in a heavy robe after an evening swim with a towel on his hair, Stasi champagne hit the heart, we are sixteen, twilight stuck to us purple cotton candy. The Stasi, kissed, summer, swirled to herbert's songs - in pain, rage, happiness. In the pain of the horror of realizing that maybe she would never pull such openness again, she would never feel so good. Furious that childhood is gone, that Herbert and I competed for a transparent girl, but now she can't keep up with us. And she'll never keep up. In rage, pain, that these are the last rays of the sun, when it is the center for us. In happiness - and how without happiness on the rocks of Italy, when you cause a slight intoxication in the lord and the brightest of his warriors? As without happiness?