An excerpt from “Egg and Spoon” by Gregory Maguire:
The heels of military boots, striking marble floors, made a sound like thrown stones. The old man knew that agents were hunting for him. He capped the inkwell and shook his pen. In his haste, he splattered the pale French wallpaper around his desk. That will look like spots of dried blood, he thought, my blood.
He wrapped sheets of paper around his forearms, then pulled down the sleeves of his monk’s robe. He threw on his greatcoat against the cold. He put his steel-nibbed pen in his breast pocket. Were he lucky enough to survive, he might leave record of how he had come to this.
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This is where I am inclined to start, with my own abduction. You will think me overly interested in myself. Or worse, melodramatic. I can’t help that. If you’re ever dragged from your chambers at midnight, blindfolded and gagged, without being told whether you’re off to a firing squad or a surprise birthday party, you’ll find that you turn and return to that pivotal moment. If you survive the surprise.
Sooner or later you realize that everything you experience, especially something like being arrested, is never only about you. Your life story is really about how the hands of history caught you up, played with you, and you with them. History plays for keeps; individuals play for time.
EGG & SPOON. Copyright © 2014 by Gregory Maguire. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.