Cognomen
Michael Ives

For a time the spoon man knew his hare lip only as "Gervaise." Now his body lay in a culvert. To nearly all who knew him, he was the spoon man, or if the desire were to show an easy intimacy, simply spoons. Often he would pretend that one or the other of his hands was a fish, a transparent fish, and when he moved the hand slowly in front of his face, moving it as a fish would move, he would assure whomever happened to be looking on that they could still see that part of his face obscured by his hand. To his hare lip he would say, "Gervaise, only through the lens of this merciful fish will he find you who can explain your terrible beauty to me, but is it not strange that to talk to you requires that you talk to yourself? Where is the meaning in this?" Yet a man whose head was shaved all but for six dots at the base of his skull began to repeat to his wife, "I told you, it's the spoon man, the spoon man's body is lying over there in the culvert, and no one will claim it. This will become one of our great mysteries. Yes, years from now, boys will build fires and roast their meat to the tale of having seen the spoon man's body in the culvert." In the midst of such obsessions is it surprising he should find solace in chewing upon his lip until it were divided, and his wife in horror cry, "You, you are the spoon man! Oh, the butchery of it!"

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