The Ballerina and the Mime

Answers to questions sometimes come before the question is even asked.  

Valentine's Day.  Is the question, "What holiday is February the 14th?"

Katina didn't want to think about it when she got up.  Usually the question is, "What is the day after  February the 13th ?"  and the answer is February the 14th.

Get up.   Make some coffee. She knew the routine as mindless as it was. Read the paper over breakfast.
Let the dog out.
She goes to the door and waiting for her on the front porch, next to the morning paper was something quite out of the ordinary.  Staring her squarely in the face.  

A figurine of a  little man on a unicycle wearing a stovepipe hat, looking upward with an expression of delicate anticipation and surprise.  Judging by the lines painted across his eyes, he appeared to be a mime.   The unicycle is tilted slightly.  In his right hand is a ball,  supported by a wire above his left hand is another ball and high above his head, supported from yet a third wire, is a heart.  He is juggling these objects.  The focus of this exquisitely made porcelain man, wearing a black hobo-like tuxedo,  riding an equally impressive wire-frame unicycle, was on this heart.  The figure stood about two feet tall.   At its base lay a card.  Katina opened it.

A Mime

Precariously balanced between

Heaven and Earth

Throws out his Heart

Hoping to catch an Angel.

There is no signature, not a clue as to who is the creator of the figurine or the author of the card.

Her heart leapt as she stood on her porch in the cold morning air when she suddenly became conscious that perhaps the anonymous giver of this gift was viewing her in her robe and pajamas from a hidden vantage point.  She was mystified and intrigued and just a little scared that there was a secret admirer, a silent man in her life.  She picked up her new houseguest and bought him inside, carefully surveying  the  neighborhood and waving back in kind.

"Thank you!" she shouted across the cold morning air as she closed her door.

America is full of surprises.  In Russia she had enjoyed a sheltered life in the Moscow Ballet, everything was arranged and contrived.   There was no serendipity.  The artistic spirit had been carefully trained, molded and made to conform to the expectations of the cultural elite.

 She put the mime on the center of her table.  

"What should I call you?"

The heart and the ball responded only by continuing to sway on their strings from the move to the table.  

"Misha?  I will call you Misha the Mime.  How did you get up the steps to my door? I am pleased to meet you, I am Katina.  I am glad that you can have breakfast with me. "

As she quietly runs her finger along his creamy unfinished porcelain skin, her heart becomes full of longing for a man that she does not know.  "Who are you?," she said as she peered over the top of the barely swaying heart at some point in the distance.

The dog, now barking to come back in, brought the ballerina back to the moment.  When he entered the dining room he gave a few suspicious barks to the little man on the table and would routinely re-visit the kitchen throughout the morning, while Katina was away, to remind the intruder who the boss was.  While the dog was busy making the mime's acquaintance, Katina was busy readying herself for her walk to morning rehearsal.

In Katina's eyes, the day seems livelier, the people brighter, the hustle and bustle almost  musical.  The walk to work becomes a dance to these rhythms.  All through morning rehearsal she thought of nothing else.  

When lunchtime finally arrived, she allowed herself to ponder this mystery even deeper in a park not far from the studio where she usually had her lunch.  If she knew who the silent man was, what would she tell him?  What figurine would she give her love on Valentine's Day?  Who was her love?  She could only think of the man that she left long ago in Moscow.  Misha was a musician.  They would go out after performances and then to his apartment were he played the piano for her and she would dance for him.  She could still hear in the silence of her apartment, echoes of the warmth of his voice, his infectious laughter... When they made love, the nights were always too short and the time they spent together, mere minutes.  These memories were never far from her.  He often told her that she was an angel.

She wrote...

A Ballerina

Leaps into the Air

And is called back to the Earth

By the Voice

Of a Silent Man.

Again she was brought back to the moment.  A dog is barking in the distance and an object lands near her feet.  It is big plastic red frisbee-sized heart!  As she picks it up and looks to her left, she notices a man dressed in a black tuxedo, wearing  a stovepipe hat, peddling her way on a unicycle, juggling several balls.  As he zig-zags his way over to her, he suddenly falls off of  the unicycle and in a single motion, gracefully rolls back to his feet, pulls off his hat, reaches inside and holds  before her a single red rose with a note attached.

She carefully took the rose and noticed his kind, bright eyes.

"Hello.  My name is Misha.  Will you be my Valentine?" it said.   The mime looked at her with exaggerated anticipation, taking a long sweeping bow.

She smiles at him, clasping the heart over her own and asks, "May I keep this?" 

The Very End