An offering of flash fiction that contemplates one’s own value and aims to explore the actualization of a sculpture…
by: Armaan Kapur
Note: In sculpture or painting, figura serpentinata denotes a human figure in a twisted or spiral pose. Considered “graceful if sometimes contorted,”1 the style epitomises “physical power, passion, tension, and semantic perfection.”2 It has been popularised by the Michelangelo sculpture Victory (1532-34) 3, and was further adapted for Giambologna’s sculpture series, The Rape of The Sabine (1583) 4.
Trigger Warning: This story contains a reference to sexual assault that may trigger some readers.
We are born in an image, steady on a slab of wood or concrete. The sculptors’ hands are guilty with the dust of our creation. From the very depths of nothing, here we stand — imprisoned and dynamic, coiled but magnificent.
Immediately, we are adorned with meaning. The saving grace, the last resort. The answer to the problem of money; we might sell for a thousand dinners. Perhaps our value will appreciate, once we’re older. But no, the makers have grown fond of their creation, so there will be no sale. “My favorite,” they remark. “We’ll save this one for the private collection.” Deep at night, holding our statuesque hand, their eyes express ardor in private, crying tears of Merlot.
Our imperfections are smoothed away with emery, and we are unveiled at a gallery of public exposition. To the world, we represent clear contours and objective silence, the gracious hollow of innocence. A few spectators clap their hands; others deride the sight of us. Still, to be regarded as “real,” where earlier we’ve been kept secret, suffices for the feeling of tears.
The admirers of the group grow adamant about purchase, but haggle over price. “These stunning curves,” they avow, withholding nothing. During the negotiation, we stand within earshot, but are treated invisible.
Surely, to incite desperation in someone, stranger or otherwise, should be enough attribution to be considered human? – but it isn’t.
The following night, two of the hagglers, young and bold, break into the empty salon. Sneering through gritted teeth, their canine advances pry us from stability, into a monument of fear. “I like how it won’t move,” they laugh, running hot palms over our skin. Our stone perseverance emboldens their inchoate approach. Down the thigh, to the hilt of indecency, we are briefly but manifestly undone.
Splinters of rapaciousness left on our skin remove us from an immaculate position in our makers’ minds, the next morning. Pacing the salon with worried feet, grim considerations are made.
“Desolation, ruin! Who will buy now?”
We are transported to a mansion belonging to an old and widowed collector. His intimacy, unlike that of our makers’, is obvious and obsequious. He fawns over us in the company of friends, and allows them to breach the rope of decency on frequent drunken occasions. In his house, he is King, alone entitled to pleasure or completion. “I own your beauty and your sex,” he reminds constantly. “Without me, you’re worthless.”
In our yellowing years, a charming youth who works in the mansion takes notice of us. “Divine, eloquent,” he commends, drawing closer. Unlike the others, he doesn’t surpass the determinate boundary to express his appreciation. He discerns what has come apparent of us, with age: the chipped-off fingernails, traces of grime on the underside of our joints. Sweat and the scent of alcohol, subtle but evident, a perfume from decades of misuse. Fixedly our eyes draw on this youth, who returns every afternoon to wish us well. He addresses us often, though we never respond.
“You needn’t possess something to admire it,” he contemplates, during one visit. His endurance of decency causes a crack in our foundation, a breach that has been building for years, somewhere around the toes. We could despair and collapse, but the damage is gentle, likely to go unobserved.
Instead, the opposite happens. The collector notices a difference immediately, when he lies on his back to spy his own countenance, between our parted feet. “What’s this?” he pretends, grasping the ankle tightly. At his show of strength, the crack elongates into a visible fracture, that quivers up the bone and strains our impassive veneer.
For one final exhibit, the old widower invites his accomplices to inflict proprietorship on our frame. “Stand there and take it,” he mocks, as hungry hands embrace the evening.
We are flung into a heap the next day, where our pieces come apart. For the first time, we are subjected to ourselves, to sunlight that soars in the shape of seagulls overhead. We spy the world for what it truly represents: an environmental expanse preserving good and evil, that enforces conceptions and morality, that chains bodies to custom and gives an expiration to courtesy. Only the virtuous are ideal, and trade for millions, urging their creators to smile down from thrones of pointless eternity.
Our abstracts are discovered on the beach, and lifted away by one hand or another. Displaced at last from aesthetic categorization, from a venal and vestal birthright, we cease to remain associative of sanctimony, norm, or reticence. With time, the last eye flinches away from us in apathy, the superimposition of value ends, and from our newfound nest of obscurity — true liberation begins.
Armaan Kapur (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist and clothing designer from India. His prose appears in Chestnut Review, Cutleaf Journal, The Reader Berlin, Foglifter, Helter Skelter Magazine, Bulb Culture Collective, and elsewhere. Armaan’s debut novel is represented by A Suitable Agency in the Indian subcontinent, and revisits his time as a queer entrepreneur in the New Delhi fashion circuit. Find his work at armaankapur.com.
References:
1 The National Gallery, L. (n.d.). Glossary. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/figura-serpentinata.
2 Hibbard, H. (1990). Bernini. Penguin Books.
3 Girolami, C. L. de. (1997). Readings in Italian mannerism. Peter Lang.
4 Rape of the Sabine Women (1583) by Giambologna. Retrieved from http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/sculpture/rape-of-the-sabine-women.htm
