I found an arm washed up on the beach, not a real arm but a carved one, a marble block chiselled into the shape of a slender female limb. It emerged from the midnight waves like the final gesture of a drowned swimmer, its pale fingers digging into the sand, a loop of seaweed around its wrist for a bracelet, its elbow jabbing a moonbeam.
I hurried through the surf to rescue the arm, but the moment I picked it up I couldn’t be sure who was the holder, who the held. That is always the way with castaway arms, so I used it as a crutch to help me back to shore, and when I reached my house in the hills I planted it in the bucket where I keep my umbrellas. Then I went to bed.
In the morning I puzzled over my unusual find, but could make neither head nor tail of it, which was appropriate enough,
