A DWARF CAME INTO my dream and asked me to dance.

I knew this was a dream, but I was just as tired in my dream as in real life at the time. So, very politely, I declined. The dwarf was not offended but danced alone instead.

He set a portable record player on the ground and danced to the music. Records were spread all around the player. I picked up a few from different spots in the pile. They comprised a genuine musical miscellany, as if the dwarf had chosen them with his eyes closed, grabbing whatever his hand happened to touch. And none of the records was in the right jacket. The dwarf would take half-played records off the turntable, throw them onto the pile without returning them to their jackets, lose track of which went with which, and afterward put records in jackets at random. There would be a Rolling Stones record in a Glenn Miller jacket, a recording of the Mitch Miller chorus in the jacket for Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé.

But none of this confusion seemed to matter to the dwarf. As long as he could dance to whatever was playing, he was satisfied. At the moment, he was dancing to a Charlie Parker record that had been in a jacket labeled Great Selections for the Classical Guitar. His body whirled like a tornado, sucking up the wild flurry of notes that poured from Charlie Parker’s saxophone. Eating grapes, I watched him dance.

The sweat poured out of him. Each swing of his head sent drops of sweat flying from his face; each wave of an arm shot streams of sweat from his fingertips. But nothing could stop him. When a record ended, I would set my bowl of grapes down and put on a new one. And on he would go.

“You’re a great dancer,” I cried out to him. “You’re music itself.”

“Thank you,” he answered with a hint of affectation.

“Do you always go at it like this?”

“Pretty much,” he said.

Then the dwarf did a beautiful twirl on tiptoe, his soft, wavy hair flowing in the wind. I applauded. I had never seen such accomplished dancing in my life. The dwarf gave a respectful bow as the song ended. He stopped dancing and toweled himself down. The needle was clicking in the inner groove of the record. I lifted the tonearm and turned the player off. I put the record into the first empty jacket that came to hand.

“I guess you haven’t got time to hear my story,” said the dwarf, glancing at me. “It’s a long one.”

Unsure how to answer, I took another grape. Time was no problem for me, but I wasn’t that eager to hear the long life story of a dwarf. And besides, this was a dream. It could evaporate at any moment.

Rather than wait for me to answer, the dwarf snapped his fingers and started to speak. “I’m from the north country,” he said. “Up north, they don’t dance. Nobody knows how. They don’t even realize that it’s something you can do. But I wanted to dance. I wanted to stamp my feet and wave my arms, shake my head and spin around. Like this.”

The dwarf stamped his feet, waved his arms, shook his head, and spun around. Each movement was simple enough in itself, but in combination the four produced an almost incredible beauty of motion, erupting from the dwarf’s body all at once, as when a globe of light bursts open.

“I wanted to dance like this. And so I came south. I danced in the taverns. I became famous, and danced in the presence of the king. That was before the revolution, of course. Once the revolution broke out, the king passed away, as you know, and I was banished from the town to live in the forest.”

The dwarf went to the middle of the clearing and began to dance again. I put a record on. It was an old Frank Sinatra record. The dwarf danced, singing “Night and Day” along with Sinatra. I pictured him dancing before the throne. Glittering chandeliers and beautiful ladies-in-waiting, exotic fruits and the long spears of the royal guard, portly eunuchs, the young king in jewel-bedecked robes, the dwarf drenched in sweat but dancing with unbroken concentration: As I imagined the gorgeous scene, I felt that at any moment the roar of the revolution’s cannon would echo from the distance.

The dwarf went on dancing, and I ate my grapes. The sun set, covering the earth in the shadows of the forest. A huge black butterfly the size of a bird cut across the clearing and vanished into the depths of the forest. I felt the chill of the evening air. It was time for my dream to melt away, I knew.

“I guess I have to go now,” I said to the dwarf.

He stopped dancing and nodded in silence.

“I enjoyed watching you dance,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

“Anytime,” said the dwarf.

“We may never meet again,” I said. “Take care of yourself.”

“Don’t worry,” said the dwarf. “We will meet again.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes. You’ll be coming back here,” he said with a snap of his fingers. “You’ll live in the forest. And every day you’ll dance with me. You’ll become a really good dancer yourself before long.”

“How do you know?” I asked, taken aback.

“It’s been decided,” he answered. “No one has the power to change what has been decided. I know that you and I will meet again soon enough.”

The dwarf looked right up at me as he spoke. The deepening darkness had turned him the deep blue of water at night.

“Well, then,” he said. “Be seeing you.”

He turned his back to me and began dancing again, alone.

I WOKE UP ALONE. Facedown in bed, I was drenched in sweat. There was a bird outside my window. It seemed different from the bird I was used to seeing there.

I washed my face with great care, shaved, put some bread in the toaster, and boiled water for coffee. I fed the cat, changed its litter, put on a necktie, and tied my shoes. Then I took a bus to the elephant factory.

Needless to say, the manufacture of elephants is no easy matter. They’re big, first of all, and very complex. It’s not like making hairpins or colored pencils. The factory covers a huge area, and it consists of several buildings. Each building is big, too, and the sections are color-coded. Assigned to the ear section that month, I worked in the building with the yellow ceiling and posts. My helmet and pants were also yellow. All I did there was make ears. The month before, I had been assigned to the green building, where I wore a green helmet and pants and made heads. We moved from section to section each month, like Gypsies. It was company policy. That way, we could all form a complete picture of what an elephant looked like. No one was permitted to spend his whole life making just ears, say, or just toenails. The executives put together the chart that controlled our movements, and we followed the chart.

Making elephant heads is tremendously rewarding work. It requires enormous attention to detail, and at the end of the day you’re so tired you don’t want to talk to anybody. I’ve lost as much as six pounds working there for a month, but it does give me a great sense of accomplishment. By comparison, making ears is a breeze. You just make these big, flat, thin things, put a few wrinkles in them, and you’re done. We call working in the ear section “taking an ear break.” After a monthlong ear break, I go to the trunk section, where the work is again very demanding. A trunk has to be flexible, and its nostrils must be unobstructed for its entire length. Otherwise, the finished elephant will go on a rampage. Which is why making the trunk is nerve-racking work from beginning to end.

We don’t make elephants from nothing, of course. Properly speaking, we reconstitute them. First we saw a single elephant into six distinct parts: ears, trunk, head, abdomen, legs, and tail. These we then recombine to make five elephants, which means that each new elephant is in fact only one-fifth genuine and four-fifths imitation. This is not obvious to the naked eye, nor is the elephant itself aware of it. We’re that good.

Why must we artificially manufacture—or, should I say, reconstitute—elephants? It is because we are far less patient than they are. Left to their own devices, elephants would give birth to no more than one baby in four or five years. And because we love elephants, of course, it makes us terribly impatient to see this custom—or habitual behavior—of theirs. This is what led us to begin reconstituting them ourselves.

To protect the newly reconstituted elephants against improper use, they are initially purchased by the Elephant Supply Corporation, a publicly owned monopoly, which keeps them for two weeks and subjects them to a battery of highly exacting tests, after which the sole of one foot is stamped with the corporation’s logo before the elephant is released into the jungle. We make fifteen elephants in a normal week. Though in the pre-Christmas season we can increase that to as many as twenty-five by running the machinery at full speed, I think that fifteen is just about right.

As I mentioned earlier, the ear section is the easiest single phase in the elephant-manufacturing process. It demands little physical exertion on the part of workers, it requires no close concentration, and it employs no complex machinery. The number of actual operations involved is limited, as well. Workers can either work at a relaxed pace all day or exert themselves to meet their quota in the morning so as to have the afternoon free.

My partner and I in the ear shop liked the second approach. We’d finish up in the morning and spend the afternoon talking or reading or amusing ourselves separately. The afternoon following my dream of the dancing dwarf, all we had to do was hang ten freshly wrinkled ears on the wall, after which we sat on the floor enjoying the sunshine.

I told my partner about the dwarf. I remembered the dream in vivid detail and described everything about it to him, no matter how trivial. Where description was difficult, I demonstrated by shaking my head or swinging my arms or stamping my feet. He listened with frequent grunts of interest, sipping his tea. He was five years my senior, a strongly built fellow with a dark beard and a penchant for silence. He had this habit of thinking with his arms folded. Judging by the expression on his face, you would guess that he was a serious thinker, looking at things from all angles, but usually he’d just come up straight after a while and say, “That’s a tough one.” Nothing more.

He sat there thinking for a long time after I told him about my dream—so long that I started polishing the control panel of the electric bellows to kill time. Finally, he came up straight, as always, and said, “That’s a tough one. Hmmm. A dancing dwarf. That’s a tough one.”

This came as no great disappointment to me. I hadn’t been expecting him to say any more than he usually did. I had just wanted to tell someone about it. I put the electric bellows back and drank my now-lukewarm tea.

He went on thinking, though, for a much longer time than he normally devoted to such matters.

“What gives?” I asked.

“I’m pretty sure I once heard about that dwarf.”

This caught me off guard.

“I just can’t remember who told me.”

“Please try,” I urged him.

“Sure,” he said, and gave it another go.

He finally managed to recall what he knew about the dwarf three hours later, as the sun was going down near quitting time.

“That’s it!” he exclaimed. “The old guy in Stage Six! You know, the one who plants hairs. C’mon, you know: long white hair down to his shoulders, hardly any teeth. Been working here since before the revolution.”

“Oh,” I said. “Him.” I had seen him in the tavern any number of times.

“Yeah. He told me about the dwarf way back when. Said it was a good dancer. I didn’t pay much attention to him, figured he was senile. But now I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t crazy after all.”

“So, what did he tell you?”

“Gee, I’m not so sure. It was a long time ago.” He folded his arms and fell to thinking again. But it was hopeless. After a while, he straightened up and said, “Can’t remember. Go ask him yourself.”

AS SOON AS the bell rang at quitting time, I went to the Stage 6 area, but there was no sign of the old man. I found only two young girls sweeping the floor. The thin girl told me he had probably gone to the tavern, “the older one.” Which is exactly where I found him, sitting very erect at the bar, drinking, with his lunch box beside him.

The tavern was an old, old place. It had been there since long before I was born, before the revolution. For generations now, the elephant craftsmen had been coming here to drink, play cards, and sing. The walls were lined with photographs of the old days at the elephant factory. There was a picture of the first president of the company inspecting a tusk, a photo of an old-time movie queen visiting the factory, shots taken at summer dances, that kind of thing. The revolutionary guards had burned all pictures of the king and the royal family and anything else that was deemed to be royalist. There were pictures of the revolution, of course: the revolutionary guards occupying the factory and the revolutionary guards stringing up the plant superintendent.

I found the old fellow drinking Mecatol beneath an old, discolored photo labeled THREE FACTORY BOYS POLISHING TUSKS. When I took the stool next to him, the old man pointed to the photo and said, “This one is me.”

I squinted hard at the photo. The young boy on the right, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, did appear to be this old man in his youth. You would never notice the resemblance on your own, but once it had been pointed out to you, you could see that both had the same sharp nose and flat lips. Apparently, the old guy always sat here, and whenever he noticed an unfamiliar customer come in he’d say, “This one is me.”

“Looks like a real old picture,” I said, hoping to draw him out.

“’Fore the revolution,” he said matter-of-factly. “Even an old guy like me was still a kid back then. We all get old, though. You’ll look like me before too long. Just you wait, sonny boy!”

He let out a great cackle, spraying spit from a wide-open mouth missing half its teeth.

Then he launched into stories about the revolution. Obviously, he hated both the king and the revolutionary guards. I let him talk all he wanted, bought him another glass of Mecatol, and when the time was right asked him if, by any chance, he happened to know about a dancing dwarf.

“Dancing dwarf?” he said. “You wanna hear about the dancing dwarf?”

“I’d like to.”

His eyes glared into mine. “What the hell for?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I lied. “Somebody told me about him. Sounded interesting.”

He continued to look hard at me until his eyes reverted to the special mushy look that drunks have. “Awright,” he said. “Why not? Ya bought me a drink. But just one thing,” he said, holding a finger in my face, “don’t tell anybody. The revolution was a hell of a long time ago, but you’re still not supposed to talk about the dancing dwarf. So, whatever I tell you, keep it to yourself. And don’t mention my name. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now, order me another drink and let’s go to a booth.”

I ordered two Mecatols and brought them to the booth, away from the bartender. The table had a green lamp in the shape of an elephant.

“It was before the revolution,” said the old man. “The dwarf came from the north country. What a great dancer he was! Nah, he wasn’t just great at dancing. He was dancing. Nob’dy could touch ‘im. Wind and light and fragrance and shadow: It was all there bursting inside him. That dwarf could do that, y’know. It was somethin’ to see.”

He clicked his glass against his few remaining teeth.

“Did you actually see him dance?” I asked.

“Did I see him?” The old fellow stared at me, spreading the fingers of both hands out atop the table. “Of course I saw him. Every day. Right here.”

“Here?”

“You heard me. Right here. He used to dance here every day. Before the revolution.”

THE OLD MAN WENT ON to tell me how the dwarf had arrived from the north country without a penny in his pocket. He holed up in this tavern, where the elephant-factory workers gathered, doing odd jobs until the manager realized what a good dancer he was and hired him to dance full-time. At first, the workers grumbled because they wanted to have a dancing girl, but that didn’t last long. With their drinks in their hands, they were practically hypnotized watching him dance. And he danced like nobody else. He could draw feelings out of his audience, feelings they hardly ever used or didn’t even know they had. He’d bare these feelings to the light of day the way you’d pull out a fish’s guts.

The dwarf danced at this tavern for close to half a year. The place overflowed with customers who wanted to see him dance. And as they watched him, they would steep themselves in boundless happiness or be overcome with boundless grief. Soon, the dwarf had the power to manipulate people’s emotions with a mere choice of dance step.

Talk of the dancing dwarf eventually reached the ears of the chief of the council of nobles, a man who had deep ties with the elephant factory and whose fief lay nearby. From this nobleman—who, as it turned out, would be captured by the revolutionary guard and flung, still living, into a boiling pot of glue—word of the dwarf reached the young king. A lover of music, the king was determined to see the dwarf dance. He dispatched the vertical-induction ship with the royal crest to the tavern, and the royal guards carried the dwarf to the palace with the utmost respect. The owner of the tavern was compensated for his loss, almost too generously. The customers grumbled over their loss, but they knew better than to grumble to the king. Resigned, they drank their beer and Mecatol and went back to watching the dances of young girls.

Meanwhile, the dwarf was given a room in the palace, where the ladies-in-waiting washed him and dressed him in silk and taught him the proper etiquette for appearing before the king. The next night, he was taken to the great hall, where the king’s orchestra, upon cue, performed a polka that the king had composed. The dwarf danced to the polka, sedately at first, as if allowing his body to absorb the music, then gradually increasing the speed of his dance until he was whirling with the force of a tornado. People watched him, breathless. No one could speak. Several of the noble ladies fainted to the floor, and from the king’s own hand fell a crystal goblet containing gold-dust wine, but not a single person noticed the sound of it shattering.

AT THIS POINT in his story, the old man set his glass on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then reached out for the elephant-shaped lamp and began to fiddle with it. I waited for him to continue, but he remained silent for several minutes. I called to the bartender and ordered more beer and Mecatol. The tavern was slowly filling up, and onstage a young woman singer was tuning her guitar.

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“Then?” he said. “Then the revolution started. The king was killed, and the dwarf ran away.”

I set my elbows on the table and, cradling my mug, took a long swallow of beer. I looked at the old man and asked, “You mean the revolution occurred just after the dwarf entered the palace?”

“Not long after. ‘Bout a year, I’d say.” The old man let out a huge burp.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Before, you said that you weren’t supposed to talk about the dwarf. Why is that? Is there some connection between the dwarf and the revolution?”

“Ya got me there. One thing’s sure, though. The revolutionary guard wanted to bring that dwarf in somethin’ terrible. Still do. The revolution’s an old story already, but they’re still lookin’ for the dancing dwarf. Even so, I don’t know what the connection is between the dwarf and the revolution. All you hear is rumors.”

“What kind of rumors?”

I could see that he was having trouble deciding whether to tell me any more. “Rumors are just rumors,” he said finally. “You never know what’s true. But some folks say the dwarf used a kind of evil power on the palace, and that’s what caused the revolution. Anyhow, that’s all I know about the dwarf. Nothin’ else.”

The old man let out one long hiss of a sigh, and then he drained his glass in a single gulp. The pink liquid oozed out at the corners of his mouth, dripping down into the sagging collar of his undershirt.

I DIDN’T DREAM about the dwarf again. I went to the elephant factory every day as usual and continued making ears, first softening an ear with steam, then flattening it with a press hammer, cutting out five ear shapes, adding the ingredients to make five full-size ears, drying them, and finally, adding wrinkles. At noon, my partner and I would break to eat our pack lunches and talk about the new girl in Stage 8.

There were lots of girls working at the elephant factory, most of them assigned to splicing nervous systems or machine stitching or cleanup. We’d talk about them whenever we had free time. And whenever they had free time, they’d talk about us.

“Great-looking girl,” my partner said. “All the guys’ve got their eye on her. But nobody’s nailed her yet.”

“Can she really be that good-looking?” I asked. I had my doubts. Any number of times I had made a point of going to see the latest “knockout,” who turned out to be nothing much. This was one kind of rumor you could never trust.

“No lie,” he said. “Check her out yourself. If you don’t think she’s a beauty, go to Stage Six and get a new pair of eyes. Wish I didn’t have a wife. I’d get her. Or die tryin’.”

Lunch break was almost over, but as usual my section had almost no work left for the afternoon so I cooked up an excuse to go to Stage 8. To get there, you had to go through a long underground tunnel. There was a guard at the tunnel entrance, but he knew me from way back, so I had no trouble getting in.

The far end of the tunnel opened on a riverbank, and the Stage 8 building was a little ways downstream. Both the roof and the smokestack were pink. Stage 8 made elephant legs. Having worked there just four months earlier, I knew the layout well. The young guard at the entrance was a newcomer I had never seen before, though.

“What’s your business?” he demanded. In his crisp uniform, he looked like a typical new-broom type, determined to enforce the rules.

“We ran out of nerve cable,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’m here to borrow some.”

“That’s weird,” he said, glaring at my uniform. “You’re in the ear section. Cable from the ear and leg sections shouldn’t be interchangeable.”

“Well, let me try to make a long story short. I was originally planning to borrow cable from the trunk section, but they didn’t have any extra. And they were out of leg cable, so they said if I could get them a reel of that, they’d let me have a reel of the fine stuff. When I called here, they said they have extra leg cable, so that’s why I’m here.”

The guard flipped through the pages of his clipboard. “I haven’t heard anything about this,” he said. “These things are supposed to be arranged beforehand.”

“That’s strange. It has been. Somebody goofed. I’ll tell the guys inside to straighten it out.”

The guard just stood there whining. I warned him that he was slowing down production and that I would hold him responsible if somebody from upstairs got on my back. Finally, still grumbling, he let me in.

Stage 8—the leg shop—was housed in a low-set, spacious building, a long, narrow place with a partially sunken sandy floor. Inside, your eyes were at ground level, and narrow glass windows were the only source of illumination. Suspended from the ceiling were movable rails from which hung dozens of elephant legs. If you squinted up at them, it looked as if a huge herd of elephants was winging down from the sky.

The whole shop had no more than thirty workers altogether, both men and women. Everybody had on hats and masks and goggles, so in the gloom it was impossible to tell which one was the new girl. I recognized one guy I used to work with and asked him where I could find her.

“She’s the girl at Bench Fifteen attaching toenails,” he said. “But if you’re planning to put the make on her, forget it. She’s hard as nails. You haven’t got a chance.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I said.

The girl at Bench 15 was a slim little thing. She looked like a boy in a medieval painting.

“Excuse me,” I said. She looked at me, at my uniform, at my shoes, and then up again. Then she took her hat off, and her goggles. She was incredibly beautiful. Her hair was long and curly; her eyes were as deep as the ocean.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if you’d like to go out dancing with me tomorrow night. Saturday. If you’re free.”

“Well, I am free tomorrow night, and I am going to go dancing, but not with you.”

“Have you got a date with someone else?”

“Not at all,” she said. Then she put her goggles and hat back on, picked up an elephant toenail from her bench, and held it against a foot, checking the fit. The nail was just a little too wide, so she filed it down with a few quick strokes.

“C’mon,” I said. “If you haven’t got a date, go with me. It’s more fun than going alone. And I know a good restaurant we could go to.”

“That’s all right. I want to dance by myself. If you want to dance, too, there’s nothing stopping you from coming.”

“I will,” I said.

“It’s up to you,” she said.

Ignoring me, she continued to work. Now she pressed the filed nail into the hollow at the front of the foot. This time, it fit perfectly.

“Pretty good for a beginner,” I said.

She didn’t answer me.

THAT NIGHT, the dwarf came into my dream again, and again I knew it was a dream. He was sitting on a log in the middle of the clearing in the forest, smoking a cigarette. This time he had neither record player nor records. There were signs of weariness in his face that made him look a little more advanced in years than he had when I first saw him—though in no way could he be taken for someone who had been born before the revolution. He looked perhaps two or three years older than me, but it was hard to tell. That’s the way it is with dwarfs.

For lack of anything better to do, I strolled around the dwarf, looked up at the sky, and finally sat down beside him. The sky was gray and overcast, and black clouds were drifting westward. It might have begun to rain at any time. The dwarf had probably put away the records and player to keep them from being rained on.

“Hi,” I said to the dwarf.

“Hi,” he answered.

“Not dancing today?” I asked.

“No, not today,” he said.

When he wasn’t dancing, the dwarf was a feeble, sad-looking creature. You would never guess that he had once been a proud figure of authority in the royal palace.

“You look a little sick,” I said.

“I am,” he replied. “It can be very cold in the forest. When you live alone for a long time, different things start to affect your health.”

“That’s terrible,” I said.

“I need energy. I need a new source of energy flowing in my veins—energy that will enable me to dance and dance, to get wet in the rain without catching cold, to run through the fields and hills. That’s what I need.”

“Gosh,” I said.

We sat on the log for a long time, saying nothing. From far overhead, I heard the wind in the branches. Flitting among the trunks of the trees, a huge butterfly would appear and disappear.

“Anyhow,” he said, “you wanted me to do something for you.”

“I did?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

The dwarf picked up a branch and drew a star on the ground. “The girl,” he said. “You want the girl, don’t you?”

He meant the pretty new girl in Stage 8. I was amazed that he knew so much. Of course, this was a dream, so anything could happen.

“Sure, I want her. But I can’t ask you to help me get her. I’ll have to do it myself.”

“You can’t.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I know,” he said. “Go ahead and get angry, but the fact is you can’t do it yourself.”

He might be right, I thought. I was so ordinary. I had nothing to be proud of—no money, no good looks, no special way with words, even—nothing special at all. True, I wasn’t a bad guy, and I worked hard. The people at the factory liked me. I was strong and healthy. But I wasn’t the type that girls go crazy over at first sight. How could a guy like me ever hope to get his hands on a beauty like that?

“You know,” the dwarf whispered, “if you let me help you, it just might work out.”

“Help me? How?” He had aroused my curiosity.

“By dancing. She likes dancing. Show her you’re a good dancer and she’s yours. Then you just stand beneath the tree and wait for the fruit to fall into your hands.”

“You mean you’ll teach me to dance?”

“I don’t mind,” he said. “But a day or two of practice won’t do you any good. It takes six months at least, and then only if you work at it all day, every day. That’s what it takes to capture someone’s heart by dancing.”

I shook my head. “It’s no use, then,” I said. “If I have to wait six months, some other guy will get her for sure.”

“When do you go dancing?”

“Tomorrow night. Saturday. She’ll be going to the dance hall, and I will, too. I’ll ask her to dance with me.”

The dwarf used the branch to draw a number of vertical lines in the dirt. Then he bridged them with a horizontal line to make a strange diagram. Silent, I followed the movement of his hand. The dwarf spit the butt of his cigarette on the ground and crushed it with his foot.

“There’s a way to do it—if you really want her,” he said. “You want her, don’t you?”

“Sure I do.”

“Want me to tell you how it can be done?”

“Please. I’d like to know.”

“It’s simple, really. I just get inside you. I use your body to dance. You’re healthy and strong: You should be able to manage a little dancing.”

“I am in good shape. Nobody better,” I said. “But can you really do such a thing—get inside me and dance?”

“Absolutely. And then she’s yours. I guarantee it. And not just her. You can have any girl.”

I licked my lips. It sounded too good to be true. If I let the dwarf get inside me, he might never come out. My body could be taken over by this dwarf. As much as I wanted the girl, I was not willing to let that happen.

“You’re scared,” he said, as if reading my mind. “You think I’ll take possession of your body.”

“I’ve heard things about you,” I said.

“Bad things, I suppose.”

“Yes, bad things.”

He gave me a sly smile. “Don’t worry. I may have power, but I can’t just take over a person’s body once and for all. An agreement is required for that. I can’t do it unless both parties agree. You don’t want your body permanently taken over, do you?”

“No, of course not,” I said with a shiver.

“And I don’t want to help you get your girl without any kind of compensation.” The dwarf raised a finger. “But I’ll do it on one condition. It’s not such a difficult condition, but it is a condition nonetheless.”

“What is it?”

“I get into your body. We go to the dance hall. You ask her to join you and you captivate her with your dancing. Then you take her. But you’re not allowed to say a word from beginning to end. You can’t make a sound until you’ve gone all the way with her. That’s the one condition.”

“How am I supposed to seduce her if I can’t say a word to her?” I protested.

“Don’t worry,” said the dwarf, shaking his head. “As long as you have me dancing for you, you can get any woman without opening your mouth. So, from the time you set foot in the dance hall to the moment you make her yours, you are absolutely forbidden to use your voice.”

“And if I do?”

“Then your body is mine,” he said, as if stating the obvious.

“And if I do the whole thing without making a sound?”

“Then the girl is yours, and I leave your body and go back to the forest.”

I released a deep, deep sigh. What was I to do? While I wrestled with the question, the dwarf scratched another strange diagram into the earth. A butterfly came and rested on it, exactly in the center. I confess I was afraid. I could not say for certain that I would be able to keep silent from beginning to end. But I knew it was the only way for me to hold that gorgeous girl in my arms. I pictured her in Stage 8, filing the elephant toenail. I had to have her.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

“That’s it,” said the dwarf. “We’ve got our agreement.”

THE DANCE HALL STOOD by the main factory gate, its floor always packed on a Saturday night with the young men and women who worked at the elephant factory. Virtually all of us unattached workers, both male and female, would come here every week to dance and drink and talk with our friends. Couples would eventually slip out to make love in the woods.

How I’ve missed this! the dwarf sighed within me. This is what dancing is all about—the crowd, the drinks, the lights, the smell of sweat, the girls’ perfume. Oh, it takes me back!

I cut through the crowd, searching for her. Friends who noticed me would clap me on the shoulder and call out to me. I responded to each with a big, friendly smile but said nothing. Before long, the band started playing, but still there was no sign of her.

Take it slow, said the dwarf. The night is young. You’ve got plenty to look forward to.

The dance floor was a large, motorized circle that rotated very slowly. Chairs and tables were set in rows around its outer edge. Over it, a large chandelier hung from the high ceiling, the immaculately polished wood of the floor reflecting its brilliance like a sheet of ice. Beyond the circle rose the bandstand, like bleachers in an arena. On it were arranged two full orchestras that would alternate playing every thirty minutes, providing lush dance music all evening without a break. The one on the right featured two complete drum sets, and all the musicians wore the same red elephant logo on their blazers. The main attraction of the left-hand orchestra was a ten-member trombone section, and this troupe wore green elephant masks.

I found a seat and ordered a beer, loosening my tie and lighting a cigarette. The dance-hall girls, who danced for a fee, would approach my table now and then and invite me to dance, but I ignored them. Chin in hand, and taking an occasional sip of beer, I waited for the girl to come.

An hour went by, and still she failed to show. A parade of songs crossed the dance floor—waltzes, fox-trots, a battle of the drummers, high trumpet solos—all wasted. I began to feel that she might have been toying with me, that she had never intended to come here to dance.

Don’t worry, whispered the dwarf. She’ll be here. Just relax.

The hands of the clock had moved past nine before she showed herself in the dance-hall door. She wore a tight, shimmering one-piece dress and black high heels. The entire dance hall seemed ready to vanish in a white blur, she was so sparkling and sexy. First one man, then another and another, spotted her and approached to offer himself as an escort, but a single wave of the hand sent each of them back into the crowd.

I followed her movements as I sipped my beer. She sat at a table directly across the dance floor from me, ordered a red-colored cocktail, and lit a long cigarette. She hardly touched the drink, and when she finished the cigarette she crushed it out without lighting another. Then she stood and proceeded toward the dance floor, slowly, with the readiness of a diver approaching the high platform.

She danced alone. The orchestra played a tango. She moved to the music with mesmerizing grace. Whenever she bent low, her long, black, curly hair swept past the floor like the wind, and her slender fingers stroked the strings of an invisible harp that floated in the air. Utterly unrestrained, she danced by herself, for herself. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. It felt like the continuation of my dream. I grew confused. If I was using one dream to create another, where was the real me in all this?

She’s a great dancer, said the dwarf. It’s worth doing it with somebody like her. Let’s go.

Hardly conscious of my movements, I stood and left my table for the dance floor. Shoving my way past a number of men, I came up beside her and clicked my heels to signal to the others that I intended to dance. She cast a glance at me as she whirled, and I flashed her a smile to which she did not respond. Instead, she went on dancing alone.

I started dancing, slowly at first, but gradually faster and faster until I was dancing like a whirlwind. My body no longer belonged to me. My arms, my legs, my head, all moved wildly over the dance floor unconnected to my thoughts. I gave myself to the dance, and all the while I could hear distinctly the transit of the stars, the shifting of the tides, the racing of the wind. This was truly what it meant to dance. I stamped my feet, swung my arms, tossed my head, and whirled. A globe of white light burst open inside my head as I spun round and round.

Again she glanced at me, and then she was whirling and stamping with me. The light was exploding inside her, too, I knew. I was happy. I had never been so happy.

This is a lot more fun than working in some elephant factory, isn’t it? said the dwarf.

I said nothing in return. My mouth was so dry, I couldn’t have spoken if I had tried to.

We went on dancing, hour after hour. I led, she followed. Time seemed to have given way to eternity. Eventually, she stopped dancing, looking utterly drained. She took my arm, and I—or, should I say, the dwarf—stopped dancing, too. Standing in the very center of the dance floor, we gazed into each other’s eyes. She bent over to remove her high heels, and with them dangling from her hand, she looked at me again.

WE LEFT THE DANCE HALL and walked along the river. I had no car, so we just kept walking and walking. Soon the road began its gradual climb into the hills. The air became filled with the perfume of white night-blooming flowers. I turned to see the dark shapes of the factory spread out below. From the dance hall, yellow light spilled out onto its immediate surroundings like so much pollen, and one of the orchestras was playing a jump tune. The wind was soft, and the moonlight seemed to drench her hair.

Neither of us spoke. After such dancing, there was no need to say anything. She clung to my arm like a blind person being led along the road.

Topping the hill, the road led into an open field surrounded by pine woods. The broad expanse looked like a calm lake. Evenly covered in waist-high grass, the field seemed to dance in the night wind. Here and there a shining flower poked its head into the moonlight, calling out to insects.

Putting my arm around her shoulders, I led her to the middle of the grassy field, where, without a word, I lowered her to the ground. “You’re not much of a talker,” she said with a smile. She tossed her shoes away and wrapped her arms around my neck. I kissed her on the lips and drew back from her, looking at her face once again. She was beautiful, as beautiful as a dream. I still could not believe I had her in my arms like this. She closed her eyes, waiting for me to kiss her again.

That was when her face began to change. A fleshy white thing crept out of one nostril. It was a maggot, an enormous maggot, larger than any I had ever seen before. Then came another and another, emerging from both her nostrils, and suddenly the stench of death was all around us. Maggots were falling from her mouth to her throat, crawling across her eyes and burrowing into her hair. The skin of her nose slipped away, the flesh beneath melting until only two dark holes were left. From these, still more maggots struggled to emerge, their pale white bodies smeared with the rotting flesh that surrounded them.

Pus began to pour from her eyes, the sheer force of it causing her eyeballs to twitch, then fall and dangle to either side of her face. In the gaping cavern behind the sockets, a clot of maggots like a ball of white string swarmed in her rotting brain. Her tongue dangled from her mouth like a huge slug, then festered and fell away. Her gums dissolved, the white teeth dropping out one by one, and soon the mouth itself was gone. Blood spurted from the roots of her hair, and then each hair fell out. From beneath the slimy scalp, more maggots ate their way through to the surface. Arms locked around me, the girl never loosened her grip. I struggled vainly to free myself, to avert my face, to close my eyes. A hardened lump in my stomach rose to my throat, but I could not disgorge it. I felt as if the skin of my body had turned inside out. By my ear resounded the laughter of the dwarf.

The girl’s face continued to melt until suddenly the jaw popped open, as if from a sudden twisting of the muscles, and clots of liquefied flesh and pus and maggots sprang in all directions.

I sucked my breath in to let out a scream. I wanted someone—anyone—to drag me away from this unbearable hell. In the end, however, I did not scream. This can’t be happening, I said to myself. This can’t be real, I knew almost intuitively. The dwarf is doing this. He’s trying to trick me. He’s trying to make me use my voice. One sound, and my body will be his forever. That is exactly what he wants.

Now I knew what I had to do. I closed my eyes—this time without the least resistance—and I could hear the wind moving across the grassy field. The girl’s fingers were digging into my back. Now I wrapped my arms around her and drew her to me with all my strength, planting a kiss upon the suppurating flesh where it seemed to me her mouth had once been. Against my face I could feel the slippery flesh and the maggoty lumps; my nostrils filled with a putrid smell. But this lasted only a moment. When I opened my eyes, I found myself kissing the beautiful girl I had come here with. Her pink cheeks glowed in the soft moonlight. And I knew that I had defeated the dwarf. I had done it all without making a sound.

You win, said the dwarf in a voice drained of energy. She’s yours. I’m leaving your body now. And he did.

“But you haven’t seen the last of me,” he went on. “You can win as often as you like. But you can only lose once. Then it’s the end for you. And you will lose. The day is bound to come. I’ll be waiting, no matter how long it takes.”

“Why does it have to be me?” I shouted back. “Why can’t it be someone else?”

But the dwarf said nothing. He only laughed. The sound of his laughter floated in the air until the wind swept it away.

IN THE END, the dwarf was right. Every policeman in the country is out looking for me now. Someone who saw me dancing—maybe the old man—reported to the authorities that the dwarf had danced in my body. The police started watching me, and everyone who knew me was called in for questioning. My partner testified that I had once told him about the dancing dwarf. A warrant went out for my arrest. The police surrounded the factory. The beautiful girl from Stage 8 came secretly to warn me. I ran from the shop and dove into the pool where the finished elephants are stockpiled. Clinging to the back of one, I fled into the forest, crushing several policemen on the way.

For almost a month now, I’ve been running from forest to forest, mountain to mountain, eating berries and bugs, drinking water from the river to keep myself alive. But there are too many policemen. They’re bound to catch me sooner or later. And when they do, they’ll strap me to the winch and tear me to pieces. Or so I’m told.

The dwarf comes into my dreams every night and orders me to let him inside me.

“At least that way, you won’t be arrested and dismembered by the police,” he says.

“No, but then I’ll have to dance in the forest forever.”

“True,” says the dwarf, “but you’re the one who has to make that choice.”

He chuckles when he says this, but I can’t make the choice.

I hear the dogs howling now. They’re almost here.

—translated by Jay Rubin