"Well, Dad-dee, I can't!"
"Tightly enough."
"What?"
"You can't turn this old key tightly enough."
"That's what I _say_-yud."
"All right, wench. Sit on this chair."
I got down and shoved one saddle shoe into a skate. It fitted
perfectly. I strapped her ankle and pretended to use the key to tighten
the clamp.
Volplas at last. Three of them. Yet I had always been so sure I could
create them that I had been calling them volplas for ten years. No,
twelve. I glanced across the animal room to where old Nijinsky thrust
his graying head from a cage. I had called them volplas since the day
old Nijinsky's elongated arms and his cousin's lateral skin folds had
given me the idea of a flying mutant.
* * * * *
When Nijinsky saw me looking at him, he started a little tarantella
about his cage. I smiled with nostalgia when the fifth fingers of his
hands, four times as long as the others, uncurled as he spun about the
cage.