Blusko Arkuum Performs The Seven Magnificent Dwarfs
In Gnomopolis, there are good actors, very good actors, actors who are convinced they are very good—and then there is Blusko Arkuum, who belongs to that extremely rare category of performers capable of reading the Northern District telephone directory and making people cry even if they do not know a single person listed in it.
Sixty-two years old, at least according to his official biography—fifty-three according to his agent, and “an age of absolutely no relevance to Art” according to Arkuum himself—he is considered one of the greatest dramatic actors in Gnomopolis.
He has played dying kings, repentant murderers, sentient chairs, three different versions of the same ghost, and even a Kafart tree that did not utter a single word during a four-hour performance.
For that last role, he won the prestigious Golden Gnome for Immobile Stage Presence, an award he has kept on his nightstand ever since because, as he explains, “it reminds me how difficult it is to remain silent when you have something important to say.”
Here we see him during a recording session at the Imperial Radio of the Three Kingdoms, standing on top of a chair because the microphone of the Record-O-Rama had been installed by a technician four feet nine inches tall, and no one—due to a union regulation that would require at least three more paragraphs to explain—was authorized to lower it.
In front of him stands a Record-O-Rama Series IV, an electroacoustic device manufactured in Gnomopolis to record voices, music, and, according to the instruction manual, “any other vibration possessing a reasonable degree of artistic intent.”
It is a tangle of brass, vacuum tubes, membranes, wood, dials, and components whose purpose was not entirely clear even to the people who built it.
That day, Blusko Arkuum was not recording Shakespeare, a Gnomish tragedy, or the funeral speech of some High Constable.
He was recording the beginning of a story.
He adjusted his bow tie, demanded that two lamps in the studio be switched off because “light alters the emotional temperature of consonants,” ordered the sound-level test repeated eleven times, and finally lowered his voice in front of the Record-O-Rama’s enormous brass horn.
“Carbohydrates. The chemical compound preferred by losers, dreamers, and liars.”
Silence.
The technician stopped breathing.
The assistant forgot to turn a dial.
Even a vacuum tube—perhaps out of respect, or perhaps because it was about to burn out—stopped vibrating for several seconds.
Blusko continued.
There, in front of that bizarre machine from Gnomopolis, the Prologue of The Seven Magnificent Dwarfs was being given a voice.
A story told by a sugar figurine standing on top of a wedding cake, facing a fate considerably worse than that of most narrators, who decides to tell the entire story before being sliced apart along with the meringue beneath his feet.
Arkuum finished the first page, remained perfectly still for several seconds, and looked at the technician.
“How was it?”
The technician swallowed.
“Perfect, Maestro.”
Blusko slowly shook his head.
“No. I lost myself on the word ‘castle.’”
And the recording started again from the beginning.
Below, you can listen to Blusko Arkuum performing the opening of The Seven Magnificent Dwarfs, recorded, naturally, through an authentic Gnomopolis Record-O-Rama.
The world of The Seven Magnificent Dwarfs begins here:
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