IV.     What was intriguing was not what the man took with him;

 

it was the stuff he left behind.  He took the butterflies but left the moths.  He took Krishna but left Shiva.  He left the cumbersome fishing boat and sinkers and musky lures but took the poles and spinner reels.  He left the kid but took the toys.  The man rented a storage locker and filled it with everything he’d brought with him from the old life, but after two months he stopped remembering to pay the rental fee.  Everything was confiscated and put up for auction, the bleach bottle filled with marbles, the Sorry game, the thousand-piece puzzle of the Parthenon, the big statue of the thundercloud-colored god of love.  He left behind, in the corner of the house’s entryway, a long black umbrella with a carved lion’s head handle, but took with him the invaluable praxinoscope, its circle of mirrors and whirling cylinder of hand-painted pictures of a woman walking in the rain.