The sweat poured out of him. Each swing of his head sent drops of sweat flying from his face; each wave of an arm shot streams of sweat from his fingertips. But nothing could stop him. When a record ended, I would set my bowl of grapes down and put on a new one. And on he would go.

“You’re a great dancer,” I cried out to him. “You’re music itself.”

“Thank you,” he answered with a hint of affectation.

“Do you always go at it like this?”

“Pretty much,” he said.

Then the dwarf did a beautiful twirl on tiptoe, his soft, wavy hair flowing in the wind. I applauded. I had never seen such accomplished dancing in my life. The dwarf gave a respectful bow as the song ended. He stopped dancing and toweled himself down. The needle was clicking in the inner groove of the record. I lifted the tonearm and turned the player off. I put the record into the first empty jacket that came to hand.

“I guess you haven’t got time to hear my story,” said the dwarf, glancing at me. “It’s a long one.”

Unsure how to answer, I took another grape. Time was no problem for me, but I wasn’t that eager to hear the long life story of a dwarf. And besides, this was a dream. It could evaporate at any moment.

Rather than wait for me to answer, the dwarf snapped his fingers and started to speak. “I’m from the north country,” he said. “Up north, they don’t dance. Nobody knows how. They don’t even realize that it’s something you can do. But I wanted to dance. I wanted to stamp my feet and wave my arms, shake my head and spin around. Like this.”

The dwarf stamped his feet, waved his arms, shook his head, and spun around. Each movement was simple enough in itself, but in combination the four produced an almost incredible beauty of motion, erupting from the dwarf’s body all at once, as when a globe of light bursts open.

“I wanted to dance like this. And so I came south. I danced in the taverns. I became famous, and danced in the presence of the king. That was before the revolution, of course. Once the revolution broke out, the king passed away, as you know, and I was banished from the town to live in the forest.”