ng her back against the roundness of a
white pillar. A tall canister of coconut oil gleamed in the flickering light of the brass
lamp. The oil replenished the light. The light lit the tin. It didn’t matter that the story
had begunbecause kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories
is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want
to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t
deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unfore-
seen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin.
You know how they endyet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although
you know that one day you will dieyou live as though you won’t. In the Great Sto-
ries you know who liveswho dieswho finds lovewho doesn’t. And yet you want to
know again. That is their mystery and their magic. To the Kathakali Man these stories
are his children and his childhood. He has grown up within them. They are the house
he was raised inthe meadows he played in. They are his windows and his way of see-
ing. So when he tells a storyhe handles it as he would a childof his own. He teases
it He punishes it. yilai：
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On the Makaloa Mat LondonJack Publishedablktj