"THE OTHER MR. KAFKA" by Philip Quinn
My
name is Henry Kafka. I am a practicing podiatrist and I tell
my patients that without feet we’d crawl like snakes.
I walk home to a place called Lewellan where the people
are secular and without much hope, outside of the electronic
worlds they inhabit.
At night,
I sit in my backyard and hear the click of fingers on
keyboards as my neighbours tell perfect strangers that they
love them and that they are wet and dreamy.
It’s a
street that’s all, and the people are polite and peculiar.
Many have babies.
When you
exhaustively examine something, it changes into something else
and you must begin a new enquiry. I call it the banana of my
parenthesis and all the surprises are under the
tree.
In the
mirror, I see a fine-looking man with a better head than mine.
He became the enamel carver that his mother wanted him to be
with an office where the aquarium bubbles out an exquisite
music and the zebra fish are still.
I once had
a great grand uncle, the writer of postcards, Francois Kafka—
you may have heard of him. He started his own business, Kafka
& Co. but the novelty firm Juniper Plastics bought him
out.
I tell
each patient to look me straight in the eye while I apply the
freezing. Then I grasp their foot firmly with both my hands
and manipulate it until the plantar wart or festering bunion
lines up in the target sights of the laser. I push a button,
there’s a brief buzz and the damage is done.
None of it
hurts, I swear and the healing begins so quickly.
The floor
was sticky where we placed our feet, the movie unexpectedly
sad and I cried.
I’ve
contacted professional basketball teams for their discarded
footwear; my online password, you had to ask, is terror. I
want to become one of those artists who paint with their feet,
though my hands remain fully functional and engaged with the
tasks of my dreaming.
---
Philip Quinn is a Toronto writer. His novel is called
"The Double," and his book of short stories is titled "Dis
Location."
---
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