From The Man Who Lost His Skeleton

Chapter Four: The Skeleton on Vacation

     The skeleton was as overjoyed as a lunatic having his strait jacket removed.  It was a true release 
for him to be able to stroll about without the burden of flesh.  The mosquitoes no longer bit him.  He no longer
had to have his hair cut.  He was no longer hungry, thirsty, cold, or hot.  He was far from the lizard of love 
and its bourgeois, far from the milk of concubines, far from the lunar mucus.  The tenor-mushrooms that grew on 
the meridians no longer preoccupied his mind.  A German chemistry professor, who planned to convert him into 
delicious ersatz, dynamite, strawberry jam, sauerkraut with sausages... etc., lay in wait for him for 
a certain length of time.  The skeleton easily managed to put him off the scent by dropping the bone of a young 
zeppelin, and the professor flung himself upon it, reciting chemical anthems and covering the bone with hot kisses 
that were ever so slightly incestuous.
     The skeleton's home had an ancient head and modern feet.  The ceiling was the sky, the floor the earth.  
It was painted entirely in white and decorated with snowballs in which hearts were throbbing.  It looked like 
a transparent monument that dreams of an electric teat, and with a gentle and invisible smile it gazed eyelessly 
into the inexhaustible supply of silence that surrounds our star.  The skeleton didn't care for disaster, but in 
order to suggest that life also has certan perilous moments, he had placed a giant die in the center of his lovely 
apartment and from time to time he would sit on it like a true philosopher.  Occasionally he vaguely performed 
some entrechats-six to the tune of Saint-Saën's La Danse Macabre.  But he executed them with such grace, and such candor 
in the style of midnight dances in romantic and obsolete graveyards, that no one seeing him would have thought
of anything unpleasant.  He gazed in satisfaction at the Milky Way, that immense host of skeletons enveloping 
our planet.  Twinkling, sparkling, shining with all those myriads of little skeletons who dance, leap, somersault,
and do their duty.  They welcome the dead of a thousand fields of honor, honor of hyenas, vipers, crocodiles, 
bats, lice, toads, spiders, tape worms, and scorpions.  They give them their first advice and guide their first 
steps, for at their birth the dead are as wretched in their neglect as newborn babies.  Our repugnant and emiment 
colleagues, colmiles, colyards, and colmeters, smelling like wild boars and with the encrusted noses of mummified 
oysters, turn, when they die, into skeletons of a terrifying beauty.  Have you heard the dreadful sighing of the 
dead in the hecatombs?  It's the terrible disenchantment of the newborn dead who had certainly hoped for and 
deserved eternal sleep, and who now see themselves cheated and caught in everlasting gears of pain and sorrow.  
The skeleton people were at a loss as to what to make of and do with our skeleton.  Was he a professional 
skeleton or an amateur?
     The skeleton wasn't the least bit concerned about that errant flesh, Mister Maple.  Every morning he would 
get up pure as a Gillette blade.  He embellished his bones with seasoning herbs, brushed his teeth with ancestor 
marrow, and did his nails with Fatma nail polish.  Every afternoon at cocktail time he made his way to the corner 
bistro, where he regularly perused The Necromancer's Daily, the favorite tabloid of the beautiful corpse 
people.  He would frequently enjoy a game of ivory towers and dandy.  Once he pretended to be thirsty and ordered 
something to write with; he emptied the inkwell into his jaws down on the inside of his carcass: the ink spattered 
and splotched his lovely white bones.  Another time he went into a toyshop and bought a supply of those droll 
Parisian items, imitation turds; the same evening he put some into a chamber pot, and when the butler awoke he 
couldn't get over it: to think that a skeleton, who never eats or drinks, would relieve nature just like everyone else.
     Now one day the skeleton drew a few tiny hazelnuts which walked on darling little footsies across mountains 
that spat frogs through the mouth, the eyes, the ears, the nose, and other openings and holes.  The skeleton was 
as frightened as a skeleton meeting a skeleton in broad daylight.  He quickly grew a detective pumpkin on his head, 
and the pumpkin had the day side of a loaf of patchouli and the night side of the egg of Columbus; then he went off, 
halfway reassured, to see a fortuneteller.

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