II.
On a windless summer day in an uncertain year, more than a century after the founding of Cornell, a man who told lies for a living climbed to the top of The Hill to fly one last kite. He was a young man, a surprisingly wealthy one even for a professional liar, and the woman who accompanied him up the Slope was as perfect a companion as he had ever had any right to hope for.
They sat on the Arts Quad and assembled the kite together, the man and the woman; it was a white diamond crossed with red, and at its center was a representation of a Tarot card. The card depicted a man standing at the edge of a precipice; his eyes were turned skyward, and at his feet barked a black-and-white dog very much like the one that even now ran happy circles around the two kite-flyers. Across the bottom of the card was written the legend: THE FOOL. It made a beautiful design. altogether.
When the kite was ready to go the man took it and stood up. The little dog yapped expectantly, and in another corner of the Quad a lounging St. Bernard turned to watch with a bit more restraint.
The man stared up into the sky, as if searching for a familiar face there. He began to turn in place, holding the kite in one hand and a spool of heavy twine in the other, facing first west, then north, then east, then south. Three times around he turned, smiling all the while, as if casting a spell that was as amusing as it was powerful.
He stopped turning and gazed deep into the face of the sky once more. “Come on,” he coaxed softly, the woman mouthing the same words, and the wind began to blow. It came out of the cast where it had been waiting all along and lifted up the kite with unseen hands.
The little dog was barking furiously now, and even the St. Bernard could not resist a bit of noisemaking. Smiling, the man offered the kite string to the woman, and they shared it back and forth between them while the Fool rose higher and higher above The Hill, borne aloft in a diamond cage.
The wind blew strong all summer.
Matt Ruff
Ithaca /New York City
May 1985–April 1987
Matt Ruff, Fool on the Hill
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