augnaráð

The idea is to make the face compelling, and the key is the eyes. The mouth allows for great flexibility, and the nose is largely optional, but the eyes, the eyes have it. By the end of the evening, there should be a whole row of staring eyes, flickering from within, arresting the viewer with the deceptively simple geometry that the brain understands as a face and therefore worthy of wary attention.

To carry out this plan intermediate steps must be taken. We bring candles out for light to work by and set knives out on the table. We saw open the gourds and slop out handfulls of sweet-smelling orange pulp. It is spongy, stringy, full of seeds. Most of it ends up in a ready bowl. Some of it lands on the ground. We become absorbed in tracing and cutting.

Through a gap in the fence pokes a little black nose, then reaches a black hand on the end of a gray-furred arm. Our refuse is someone else's happy find, though it takes us a while to notice this. But ultimately we do. We stand, peering into the darkness beyond the candlelight, just where the leaves cast shadows, transfixed by two shiny black eyes in a black mask peering back.