She compiled what they called obscure texts into what was then labeled an obscure book. She was vilified. To be obscure, to be knowingly obscure, was, as they saw it, was a veiled threat to innocence and an assault on harmony. In other words, without using the word, they called her a witch. Their words, not words at all, but rather banal and unimaginative feats of actionable pitchforks.
She wasn’t of them. She was other. To be other, and to be obscure on top of being other was egregious and unpardonable. There was no place for her at the table where places had been formally designated. She ate eyeball soup in a glutinous broth using a salad fork. In other words, without using the word disgust … they were disgusted by her.
Pitchforks flashed in their eyes. All witches come to the same end. Obscurity is always destined for mud, failure, burial. These words they understood and they inhabited warmly—mud, failure, burial. These words were denominators in a common mortuary.
One evening the woman and her husband were invited to dinner and were greeted at the table by objectionable eyes. One set of eyes became a voice, asking—What is the meaning behind all this obscurity? Breath left the room, like outgoing tide. Roared back in. The woman’s dark eyes glistened. Her expression betrayed no known feeling. Then she lifted her butter knife, and with the palm of her other hand flat against the table, she spread the fingers of that hand as wide as she could, and what followed was frantic needlepoint, the edge of her butter knife flashing blunt silver in the spaces between her fingers, the knife-game, as some have called it. She did this with methodical rapidity, an unbroken cadence to her action. After about a minute, she stopped, set the butter knife down by her plate, and asked in a low, conspiratorial voice—What is the meaning of that?
The eyes looked at her, astonished, but negatively so. She was, as these types were prone to do, responding to charges of obscurity with more obscurity. One of the men at the table raised his butter knife … set is back down. The woman’s husband said it was best that they get going. They went. Once the door was closed, the host of the party snapped—Where is the copy of that woman’s book—to which his wife responded—there—pointing to an end table on the far side of the room.
The man went over, snatched the book, went to the kitchen, and returned, book in hand, along with a lighter. He laid the book on the dinner table, as if it were a sacrificial offering to lost gods, to recalled gods. He flipped open the cover. Clicking the lighter, a slender flame danced upward, which he then set against the edge of a page. The page darkened, assuming an ebony char, but wouldn’t burn. The lighter fell from the man’s suddenly slack hand. The lighter clacked when it hit the wooden floor. Nobody moved. Fear became the room temperature. The man suggested what they were all thinking, without saying a word. They rose from their chairs, and walked out in the straightest of lines.
John Biscello 