Cassandra Voices

Tag: Cassandra Voices fiction

  • Fiction: The Cliff

     

    “It’s been two days. We gotta to do something. It’s gonna go rotten.”
    “I know. I’m thinking.”
    “About what we talked about?”
    “What?”
    “Get on the Great Ocean Road. Out past Martyrs Bay.”
    “Yeah. I know the place. Near the twelve apostles.”
    “We were there with Jessie that time, remember?”
    “Yeah, I remember. Alright. Let’s do it then. Get some sleep, we’re leaving here at two.”
    “In the morning?”
    “Course in the fucking morning.”
    “How long will it take to get there?”
    “We’ll get there before sun up.”
    ‘I’ll get the weights.’
    “On ya.”
    Wilko and Daz settled it that night. How to get rid of the body. They had bought half a kilo of speed from Jock Cooper up in Melbourne and things had gone wrong. In the fight, Daz shot Jock dead and now they had him wrapped in carpet and duct tape in the boot of Wilko’s blue Ford Cortina. They had never killed anyone before and both had a dread feeling about their circumstance. They were consumed with dark emotion. At this point they were the only ones that knew about the murder. No-one had heard the gun shot. The next farm house was four miles away. Anyway, the sound of gunshots out there wasn’t uncommon even if someone had. Shooting kangaroos was one of Wilko’s jobs. In short, no one was looking for them, yet. They hadn’t left Wilko’s farm since the killing. They had been living with the body for two days, wondering what to do.
    The adrenaline rush of the kill surprised them by its force. The weight of becoming a killer threatened to overwhelm Daz, but the two days he had spent with the body had given him time to meditate on their situation. The fury that led to the murder was now partly subdued by a lack of remorse. Daz had pulled the trigger, but their history was intertwined closely, and to betray each other would be to betray their childhood selves. A notion beyond their imaginings. They were in it together and they knew it. They both understood that if they didn’t keep cool heads they were done for. And now, after two days, the time had come to act. There had been a heavy rain storm that day and the area around Woodend was drenched through. There was a chill wind in the evening air.
    ‘Fucking cold.’ Said Wilko as he put on an extra sweater and zipped up his coat.
    “Chat.”
    Perhaps that’s why the country exists in the first place, so the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish didn’t have to suffer the winters any longer. Wilko looked out the kitchen window as it was being battered by the rain.
    “We’ve fucking gone and done it now.” He said to Daz.
    “If you haven’t got anything useful to say don’t say it. Alright? Now get ta fucking sleep. We’ve got work to do. If we don’t get it right it’s thirty-five years in the slammer. So, I’m only going to say this once. You be careful hey. Or I’ll fucking kill ya.” Daz turned out the light and soon after began snoring, but Wilko stayed by the window watching the rain. He was too alive to sleep. The game was on. Wilko looked over at Daz sleeping and burned a cigarette, each draw he took carefully and deliberately. Looking carefully, he became fascinated by his sleeping friend. Wilko was scared of Daz at times. Ever since they were kids there had been a hierarchy. Daz was both older and stronger and those two factors clinched it. If it had to be called, Wilko was probably the cleverer of the two but there wasn’t much in it. Neither of them had a handle on science, or God for that matter, they were men who were characterized by action rather than thought. And that, if the truth be known, was how they found themselves in the situation they were now in.

    *

    The alarm clock went off at precisely 2.00 am and Daz was up and dressed in seconds. He splashed a bit of water on his face from the sink and lit a cigarette, trying to prepare his mind and body for the grim task ahead.
    “Oi. Get up ya fucking bludger, we gotta go. Get a move on!” And Daz kicked the edge of Wilko’s cot. As Wilko rose up quickly in the bed something went wrong.
    “Ah fuck!” Wilko let out a low, doleful whine.
    “Come on, what are ya waitin for?”
    “Me fucking neck mate. I’ve pulled a fucking muscle in me neck. Ah ya cunt.” Wilko sat up and almost screamed with pain but managed to suppress it with a chuntering kind of sigh.
    “Oh, this is fucking all I need. Where’s the fucking beer? I need a fucking beer. My neck’s fucking crook mate. Ah fuck.” Daz went over to the fridge and pulled out a six pack of beers. As if his mind refused to believe it, he tried to move his neck in a normal way and there it was again. The intense pain of a pulled neck muscle.
    “Come on get ready. No drinking in the car though. We gotta keep our heads down and out of any copper’s sight.”
    “What about me neck?”
    “Fuck ya neck mate!” Came suddenly, shouting. We gotta get rid of him. You hear me? I’m not fucking joking. Get your shit together, we’re leaving. Now.”
    A forlorn looking Wilko stood up, clasping his neck, and followed Daz out of the farm house and towards the truck. The rain was coming down hard when they opened the farmhouse door. Wilko looked up into the rain as he stepped off the porch to wake himself up and the pulled muscle gave him a shooting pain that rattled his whole body. He grimaced and left his hand firmly by his throat to remind him of the pain he had suddenly and unexpectedly acquired. The rain pounded them as they walked towards the car, and there was an audible ‘fuck me’ from Daz as he put the key in the door and turned it. Wilko could now only move the top half of his body in a robotic way. If he needed to look in a certain direction he had to move his whole torso towards the object, keeping his head and neck as rigid as possible. As Wilko sat down and shut the car door he turned too quickly and again an intense shooting pain bounced from his neck muscle to his brain. He grimaced and found himself unable to muster words. He felt acutely miserable. He put on his seat belt slowly, taking great care not to turn his head. He still had sleep in his eyes. ‘Drive slow and safe, I can’t move me neck.’ Daz turned the key in the ignition but even the engine starting wasn’t enough to drown out the sound of the drumming rain on the car. The headlights came on and they started moving cautiously along the country lane in the wild storm. Before long they turned on to the main road that would take them south towards the twelve apostles, the great rising stones that awaited them in the fortress of the swirling sea. That would be the three of them. Daz, Wilko and the dead, now decomposing body of Jock Cooper in the boot.
    One of the bonuses of trying to dispose of a dead body in Australia is its vast emptiness. It has half the population of Spain spread over a continent almost the size of Europe. The only problem was that driving that late at night might arouse suspicion, in the unlikely event of them passing the police. There had been no sign of the law as they reached the Great Ocean Road. They glimpsed the Southern Ocean, singing in the moonlight. Wilko had one hand on his neck as he lit a smoke and opened the window a few inches, only to feel the rain speckling his face.
    ‘What do we do if we get pulled?’ Asked Wilko.
    “Stay calm. I’ll tell them I just found out me mums had a fall and we’re on our way to the hospital. I’ve done it before. It’s about the performance.”
    ‘Bit of an actor hey? Fair play. So, what’s the name of the hospital?”
    Daz didn’t know.
    “Fuck’s sake.” Wilko said in a disappointed, worried way and looked out the window, suddenly mesmerised by the glimmering ocean light. As Wilko turned naturally to take in the view, pain pulsed through his neck and he leant forward with a sigh. They both fell into a melancholy silence.
    The one thing they knew to be well careful of was the potholes. Ruin the suspension or burst a tyre out in the wilderness in a storm and you were done. It was still pitch black when they reached the Great Ocean Road and the pelting rain turned the Ford Cortina into a kind of bongo. There was almost no one out there. Every ten minutes or so they would be passed by the rolling headlights of a car, with their eyes peeled for the coppers.
    “How much further d’ya’reckon?” Said Wilko.
    “Get the map out, it’s in the glove compartment. We’re coming up to Lorne.”
    “Righty-o.”
    As Wilko studied the map in the passenger seat, a sign flew past in the rainy lights that said ‘THE TWELVE APOSTLES 145 KMS’. They both thought about the body in the boot of car, driving on in silence with the storm making the music about them, Wilko with his head down to the map and Daz with his hands high up on the steering wheel and his eyes fixed on the road ahead, unblinking. They would be there at the cliff in a few hour’s tops.
    “We’ll get there well before sun up.” Daz reiterated. ‘Rain’s slowing us down.’ Forgetting about his neck momentarily, Wilko turned to look at Daz and felt a fierce shooting pain shot through his neck again. Now, the agony rendered him silent, and he slowly closed his eyes, wondering whether it was all worth it. Life. Was it worth the suffering. Daz looked at him and knew he wasn’t faking. Then there was a flash of sheet lightening as Daz turned his eyes back on the road and in the illumination, he suddenly saw a fully grown female kangaroo bouncing across the road in the headlights.
    “Fuck,” Shouted Daz and he hit the brakes. Never swerve a roo was a thing his dad had taught him from his earliest years. As the pain in his neck subsided Wilko opened his eyes to the sound of screeching wheels, and the first thing he saw was the Kangaroo smashing into the windscreen with an almighty bang.
    “Cunt!” Shouted Daz in the death flash. After the great thud there was the sound of shattering glass, then the airbags, and then the halting tyres on the tarmac. Finally, the falling rain from the womb of the car. Inside silence. The vehicle was still on the road as they came to a complete standstill with the dead Kangaroo up on the bonnet, dead in the broken windscreen. Time passed before they began to stir. They came to their senses almost simultaneously.
    “Fuck a duck.” Said Wilko. Daz laughed a mad laugh. Wilko turned his painful neck to look at him and Wilko registered the bright red and scarlet in Daz’s face as he laughed, as the insignia of a maniac. The body of the Kangaroo was half inside the car and Daz could see its dead eyes staring vacantly between the air bags.
    “Fuck.” Came the groaning Wilko, he now had whiplash on top of the pulled muscle. Daz pushed the airbag away the best he could, opened the door and stepped out into the rain. He retched a little and spat out bile but there was no puking. His heart was beating fast, getting wetter by the second in the downpour. The sight of the dead Kangaroo on the bonnet increased the mania in his laughter. He was feeling the overwhelming sense of providence that surviving death can invoke. He did a little dance in celebration with his arms in the air. Then he heard Wilko’s voice screaming out of the darkness.
    “What are doing ya mad cunt?! Remember what we’ve got in the boot? What if someone sees us hey?! Get in the car. Fuck’s sake. Come on. Get in the fucking car! Let’s go.”
    Daz looked up and down the rain soaked, night time highway. There was nothing out there, except the great swaying trees and the night. This was the boundless country. They both became lost in thought as they tried to keep calm. Using all their strength they took hold of each end of the dead kangaroo, lifted it off the bonnet and dropped it on the grass by the side of the road. They both stared down at the dead animal, their silence revealing the quick flow of their thoughts. They got back in the car and drove away.
    The night sky over the sea, illuminated by the hiding moon, glowed in the grey mist. The seaward clouds cloaked the galaxy from sight, returning their minds to the here and now, to life, the thing that matters only. They were alone on the road. The coast was theirs, the marvellous world around them, brimming at oceans edge. The headlights of the car were being studied by the birds in the sky riding down the dark road, swinging down above the electric headlight beams to investigate this unnatural thing stalking the marsh. The two men in the car drove on in silence. They had survived. The storm came rolling over them, the rain beat down on the windscreen, and nature, the sea, the sky, the rain and the wind, went on behaving as though they didn’t exist. They tingled to be alive.
    Rain was seeping through the broken windscreen as the front left wheel hit a pothole and they bumped and lurched violently making Wilko’s neck spasm in agony. He muttered to himself. He took the pain. He knew it was nothing compared to what was to come if they didn’t get rid of the body. Their minds now had a steely focus. Once the body was in the sea their trouble would end. Their worries would be over. Jock Cooper hadn’t even been reported missing. Nothing on the news. The police were nowhere to be seen. If the body was swept away by the ocean and devoured by the bottom feeders, they would be home and dry with only their consciences to trouble them, which wasn’t any real danger at all.
    The rain quietened and the forest gave way to barren scrub. They both looked up out of the windows and saw the parting of the clouds revealing the glowing white disc of the moon. Wilko slowed the car and dimmed the headlights. When he was sure there was nothing in their way he turned them off. In the far distance the faint outline of the twelve apostles signalled their destination approaching. The giant cylindrical rocks worn through eons by the punishing waves seemed strange and lonely. They had been forged by time, and birthed by the undying sea.
    “Fuckin’ bonza.” Said Daz. It was the first time he had smiled in a while. They took a moment to appreciate the spectacular view, surely one of the rarest on the entire continent, and then trundled on down the vacated road, towards the cliff.
    They took the last turning and slowed the car to a crawl. The headlights were off but there was still enough moon light to navigate. They parked the car next to a grass knoll about fifty metres away from the edge. Daz turned the engine and lights off and they sat there for a few moments in the hope the rain would pass.
    “Where did you put the weights?”
    “I already tied ‘em on. Don’t worry we’re strong enough. Come on. Let’s get a move on.”
    They got out of the car and were greeted by a sweeping drizzle, not the heavy battering rain of before. Wilko opened the boot wide and they both looked down at the rolled carpet, with a pair of black shoes visible at the end. Daz took out a Stanley knife and began to saw at the duct tape. Soon the carpet opened and the lifeless corpse of Jock Cooper was revealed, his eyes open, with an eerie, surprised expression on his face. They both were able to ignore it, because of contempt. Daz was tempted to spit on the body but held himself back. “Focus. Focus.” He said to himself, and himself alone.
    “What are we going to do with the carpet?”
    “Cut it up and burn it.”
    “Right-O.”
    “Get his legs.” Wilko reached down, obeying the order. Daz threaded his arms under those of Jock Cooper and they headed out towards the cliff with their heads tilted down. The wind was whipping up strong enough to give them the feeling it was raining from the ground.
    The cliff was giant. Not as high as the Cliffs of Moher, or the cliffs of Dover, but high enough to put the fear of God into them both. Both of them were scared to look over the precipice. As they approached the edge, the wind came up again and rain began to beat down harder than ever. Maybe nature was trying to stop them. Maybe the wind and the rain did know after all. That’s what Wilko thought as he trudged to the edge with the body, slipping on the muddy, rain sodden grass. It was Daz who was terrified of heights though, but he was the one who did the killing and he was the one who had the idea to throw the body off the cliff and into the sea.
    “Nearly there!’ Shouted Daz through the howling wind and rain. Their hair and their clothes were already soaked through after a quick two minutes. There was a slight incline rising up towards the precipice and as they reached it Wilko lost his grip on Jock Cooper’s legs and they fell, splatting into the muddy earth.
    “Fuck’s sake!” Shouted Daz, his voice carrying on the wind. “Careful ya fucking dumb cunt!’
    “Don’t crack the shits, I’m fuckin trying alright!!”
    “Fuck I got blood on me daks.”
    “Burn ‘em later.”
    “Ah me fucking neck! Cunt.” Wilko had dropped the dead legs hard into the mud, the pain in the muscle in his neck was too much to bear.
    “Come on, lift! We’re nearly there!” Shouted Daz. Wilko straightened up his back as the rain beat down on him and the pain subsided enough to grab the dead legs and lift them back up. On they went in the dark and rain.
    The wind was coming at them so hard they had their heads bent down towards it like they were pushing in a rugby scrum. The wrath of the storm had no mercy. When they were about ten metres from the very edge, they both lay down and began to roll the body. The wind felt less fierce on the ground but they could feel the wet cold mud and grass soaking through their shirts. As the dead body rolled over, the dead arms of Jock Cooper kept getting stuck underneath the weight of his body. The eyes were now closed as if he were sleeping drunk, getting rolled into the bed after a long night.
    The wind abated as they got the body to the very edge of the cliff.
    “Alright!” Shouted Daz. “After three, push as hard as you can!! One, Two…. Three!!” And they both simultaneously launched the dead body off the edge of the cliff into the crashing sea below. They both lay there motionless for almost a minute, experiencing an emotion not unlike a mountaineer at a summit. They had no words. It was done.
    “Look over the edge.” Said Daz.
    “Get fucked! You look over.”
    “Fuck that mate.” The wind was blowing so hard it felt like it was pushing them towards the precipice.
    “Let’s get the fuck outta here.” Said Daz, keeping his vertigo hidden. They felt the rain again and crawled backwards on their bellies before they stood up, turned and started running back to the car through the night tempest, shouting and cheering and jumping for joy as they went. Daz had taken his shirt off and was swinging the waterlogged garment around his head, laughing the relief of the prisoner freed. They jumped into the car, turned the engine on and sped away down the back roads and country lanes that led to Melbourne.
    The body of Jock Cooper fell lifeless from the edge of the cliff. Down it dropped. Fifteen metres below was a ledge the size of a living room. And there the body landed with a quiet thud, made silent by the storm. It bounced slightly forward coming to rest at the edge of the promontory, his left-hand peeking slightly over the edge as if it were a man clinging to the side of his bed. And there it stayed on the ledge, twenty metres above the sea.

    *

    Almost two weeks went by. Early in the morning Noel Manning and his son Joshua got in their trawler and headed up the coast towards the Twelve Apostles to see what the fishing was like, as they had a couple of times a week for the past few months, concentrating their work in the waters to the west. It was a calm, beautiful sunny morning and the white horses were resting. They went at a steady pace of eight knots, with the nets strung out behind them. They sailed a couple of kilometres from the coast most of way and then turned starboard to see what they could find in shallower waters. Noel turned the engine off and they bobbed a hundred and fifty metres or so from the land. Joshua’s keen eyes spotted it first by chance as he glanced up at a flock of seagulls swooping to feed on the cliff. He saw what he correctly thought to be a human hand, dangling.
    “Dad. Can ya see that?”
    “What?”
    “Up there on the cliff. Is that a hand?”
    “You’re havin me on.”
    “Look.” Noel went in to the cabin and fetched a pair of binoculars that he used for birdwatching. He stood there on the deck and pressed his face against the eyepieces. It took a few moments to get the binoculars in focus against the edge of the cliff and he tracked the ledge from right to left. He paused as his eyes and brain joined. He put the binoculars down a couple of inches and then back to his eyes in disbelief. A human hand and a denim shirt cuff dangling over the grassy lip.
    “Alright I’m turning the boat around. Get on to the police.’ He told his son.
    That afternoon a police helicopter swooped in and identified a body on the ledge and before nightfall it had been recovered. Daz and Wilko had stripped the body so it took a while to identify the body, but Jock Cooper was a well-known face around Melbourne and had been reported missing less than a week after his disappearance by his girlfriend Tammy. The cadaver had been partly eaten away by scavenging birds and his remains were a disgusting sight to behold. Tammy had to identify the body and was left a traumatised landlady in Alice Springs.
    The forensic team discovered the bullet hole almost immediately and a murder investigation was underway that night. Almost two weeks had passed by but the crick in Wilko’s neck was still giving him jip. He was still holding his neck in his hand as Daz switched the TV on and slumped down on the sofa next to Wilko with a can of VB and a lit cigarette. It was a news story saying the remains of Jock Cooper had been found on the ledge of a cliff near the Twelve Apostles in Victoria. When Wilko and Daz said ‘cunt’ in unison, there was a kind of musicality to the syllable.

    – –

    Feature Image: Richard Mikalsen

     

  • The Ghost in the Garrick

    Richard Midwinter arrived early at the Garrick and on entering the theatre was struck by a large eighteenth century painting in the foyer of a man with his arm around a stone bust of Shakespeare. Quite a striking image, he thought. Midwinter, himself an actor, stood for a moment staring at the playwright, in the embrace of the famous child of Thespis. Shakespeare had inspired, and fed, more than one generation of actors, and the fact there has been no better writer of the inner life of the mind gave the painting an extra gravitas. “His shadow casts no end. Or at least, no foreseeable end” he said to himself, echoing Jonson. He recalled what one of his teacher’s had told him at drama school ‘you don’t read Shakespeare, he reads you’ and smiled to remember it.

    He stared up at the silent painting for a while, somehow caught in its net. The actor in the painting was David Garrick, for whom the theatre is named. He knew that David Garrick had been famed for developing a new, more natural style of acting which relied on authenticity and emotion. He had revolutionised the theatre of his day. Midwinter took in the face in the painting, the large brown eyes and a faint flair of the nostrils around the noble nose, two maverick souls of the theatre joined in perpetuity, and he wondered what it meant to be a theatre man in those half-remembered days.

    The actor turned and walked down the staircase to the stalls where he entered the auditorium by the stage. There was nobody there. He had the strange feeling he was being watched. Maybe by someone hiding, or maybe by the theatre itself, who he always saw as a kind of ghost, and said so often. He was surrounded by invisible remnants again. He looked up and saw the theatres balconies adorned with golden cherubs with their cheeks puffed (possibly to give those on stage enough wind for their sails? He asked himself) and he wondered about the things they must have seen, the changes they had registered and the applause they certainly echoed. He sighed and then climbed back up the stairs to get a drink. The audience was beginning to arrive in earnest downstairs. Gin and tonic in hand, he decided to explore and went up the carpeted staircase to the grand circle, the highest tier of the theatre, where, finding himself alone, he looked down on the quiet, empty stage.

    The safety curtain was still lowered. He thought back to the time he had acted on that very stage many years before. It brought back an avalanche of memories. He knew the Garrick theatre well indeed. As he looked down at the stage, he remembered hearing the theatrical story that the term ‘break a leg’ isn’t referring to the breaking of a human leg. It refers to a mechanism in the old days by the stage which lifted and lowered the curtain called ‘the leg’. If the performance pleased the crowd they would shout for the curtain to be lifted up and down, cheering the actors back to the stage for more applause. Through incessant lifting and lowering to placate the ecstatic crowd ‘the leg’ could break through overuse. Hence, ‘break a leg.’

    Midwinter sat down in one of the comfortable red chairs, resting his empty cup on the floor and slowly closed his eyes. When he opened them moments later, he was full of alertness. And that was when he saw it. An open door and a dimly lit flight of stairs that seemed to be inviting him to approach. He walked over slowly and when he reached the doorway he looked around. Now was his chance to explore the old theatre. He reckoned he could claim ignorance if he was caught by one of the members of staff and say he was lost. As if some strange force had taken over, he found himself walking up the staircase and soon he arrived at the top, in a long Victorian corridor. The wall paper, the carpet, the light fittings, everything spoke of a bygone era. There were ornate silver gas lamps decorating the walls. He felt a dim glow of adrenaline as he looked up and down the corridor and made the decision to turn right where there was a door at the end and a flight of stairs. He walked down confidently and then suddenly, and without any warning, all the lights turned off.

    He stopped still where he was, motionless in the pitch black. He thought he had made a bad mistake coming up here, that maybe he was indeed being watched, and turned to go back down the way he came. In the darkness, he put his hand out to feel the wall as he couldn’t even see his quick moving fingers an inch in front of his face. He carried on walking with his left hand dragging the wall but when he looked back, the staircase he had come up wasn’t there anymore. He began to distrust his senses. He put it down to faulty depth perception and continued on his way. He looked ahead and at the end of the corridor a light came on behind a closed door and a rectangular beam of white light shone out at him. A moment later the lights flickered back on in the corridor and the door at the end swung open.

    Standing there in the doorway was a man dressed in a smart grey three-piece pinstripe suit with a lemon-yellow tie and a top hat in his hand. The man instantly reminded Midwinter of the face he had seen in the painting downstairs. He stared at his face intently and could have sworn it was the face of David Garrick himself. The moment filled with strangeness, so he put it to the back of his mind. The man in the doorway had a large but well-manicured moustache and was leaning on a smart black oak walking cane. His brooding dark eyes fixed on Midwinter’s. ‘Come in’ said the well-dressed man ushering with his hand for him to approach, ‘we’ve been expecting you.’ Midwinter looked around, confused as to how the man knew his name. He looked him up and down and immediately noted the man was wearing spats as he was encouraged into the office. The man sat down behind a fine desk and began to speak in an excitable, frantic way.

    “Wonderful play. Extraordinary. This man Wilde really has captured the imagination of the public. Maybe capture is the wrong word. Stoked perhaps, will do. The new one. Marvellous. Just marvellous.” Then he began to sing in a low, in-tune, baritone ‘come into the garden Maud, I am here at the gate alone, I am here at the gate alone!” And he became sentimental with emotion. Midwinter became bewildered by this man who was finely dressed, but, to him at least, evidently as mad as a carrier bag full of spiders.

    “Are you talking about Oscar Wilde?” Asked Midwinter, bemused.

    “Yes! Of course, who else could it be. Perhaps the other Irishman I suppose, Shaw, we have his new play ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession, showing here at the Garrick you know.”

    “Yes. I know. New play? I don’t….”

    “What do you think of it?”

    “What?”

    “The Wilde play”

    “Which one?”

    “Which one? The Importance of Being Earnest.”

    “I liked it, but then, I only saw the televised version.”

    “Televised? What the devil is that?” Midwinter knew something wasn’t right. The man was obviously playing games. He thought perhaps he had been hoodwinked into an elaborate practical joke. Midwinter played along to see where it would go and said,

    “The actors were good I remember. Anyway, sorry who are you? And why have you brought me here? I was just………….” Said Midwinter before the man behind the desk cut him off.

    “Dalliard Talinsky. Welcome to Infinity and the Abyss, that others call our theatre.” He stressed the word ‘our’ with theatrical zeal. He put out his hand and when Midwinter shook it, he felt that it was icy cold. “I am the manager here at the Garrick. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” He sat back as he produced a cigar from a silver box on the table. “I have brought you here Mr Midwinter to discuss a proposition. You are an actor. And, well, I need a theatre person you see.”

    “Who told you I was an actor? I don’t believe we have met before.” Midwinter became suspicious.

    “Well. I have my sources.” Midwinter looked around the room and back at Talinsky. His intrigue outweighed his confusion and the misapprehension he was feeling began to dissipate.

    “You invited me to talk. Should I have ran?” The question revealed a cunning in Talinsky’s smile but he stayed silent.

    “Why I am here?” Asked Midwinter.

    “You are here because I need you to bring the real world some news.”

    “The real world?”

    “Yes. The real world. The world out there. As I said, this is infinity and the abyss. You are no longer in the realm of the living.” A light flickered in Talinsky’s dark brown, softly devious eyes. The room took on a silence that discomforted Richard Midwinter. He looked Talinsky directly in the eye and held his stare. He wondered what kind of man he was.

    “What do you want me to tell them. The real world I mean.’ Midwinter sensed that Talinsky thought he was trying to catch him out.

    “I need you to right a wrong. I need you to expose an injustice. I need you to……shall we say, liberate redemption. Then, and only then, can I be set free. I have learned many things in my time here. Many things indeed. If you live forever, a century is the blink of an eye.”

    Midwinter responded with silence.

    “You are my way out of here.” He paused and leant back in the chair, naturally at ease. “How long have you been involved in the theatre?” Asked Talinsky.

    “All my adult life.” Midwinter’s response was prompt.

    “Ah. Then you will know P.T Yardly.”

    “I can’t say that I do.”

    “What! You don’t know Yardly?”

    “I believe not.”

    “Well, I’ll be damned. How strange. Yardly is a real theatre man. Yes wonderful. He has a genius for crowds. For the Zeitgeist. He knows what the people want and gives it to them. Hit show after hit after hit. It seemed he could do no wrong. He had been an actor himself, then a director, but it was in the production of plays, that was where his true talent lay. He was my inspiration, in many ways.” Talinsky picked up a large crystal lighter and lit his cigar, producing an oblong smoke ring with his initial lug.

    “I might as well come straight out and say it.” Said Talinsky. “I am unable to leave this theatre. God knows how I have tried. A century has passed me by. Maybe more.” Midwinter let out a short sharp burst of laughter, thinking he was joking.

    “It’s true.” His mood took on a sombre tone. “I have been confined to this theatre for over a hundred, long, dark years. It is my limbo. It is my purgatory. And now I wish to leave.” His face became veiled in a deep sadness.

    “This is nonsense.” Said Midwinter “I am the one that should be leaving. I’m going to go now. Goodbye.”

    “Go ahead, if you must.” The look in Talinsky’s scrupulous eyes changed, as if some dark brooding force, almost malevolent, had been unearthed inside his electrified expression. Midwinter stood up, perturbed by the mad intrusion, but when he turned around he saw that the door he had entered through had completely disappeared, replaced by gold and black wall paper. The two of them were in a doorless, windowless box. He span around and saw that Dalliard Talinsky was still sat behind his desk, but now with a red crow standing upon the upraised forefinger of his right hand.

    “What is this? What’s happening? Who are you?!” Demanded Midwinter.

    “I told you. I am Dalliard Talinsky. I am the theatre manager here. Imprisoned for forgotten years.” Again, the face of David Garrick, who he had just seen in the foyer below came into focus. The large brown eyes that could suddenly switch from doleful to sharp, to elation to melancholy, with a deft control.

    “What do you mean you have been here for a hundred years. Have you lost your mind?! Then let me ask you this. When were you born?”

    “I was born on the fourteenth day in the month of May, in the year of our Lord 1845, in the Oblast of Ukraine.”

    “What is he talking about?” He thought quietly. “You look less than 50!” He said.

    “Well guessed. I just turned 49. My word, is it that year already?” Thinking he was in the clutch of a con trick Midwinter’s mood changed, as if he was about to be robbed. He began to feel the sense of dread a child feels walking up the stairs having turned off the lights below, and the sensation something or someone, is creeping behind, following up the stairs, and through the house, and becoming too scared to turn around. Wondering if Dalliard Talinsky might be trying to do him harm, he became hesitant to move to see indeed if his eyes had deceived him. The pull was too great and he looked again, and again no door and no means of escape. He jumped up and threw himself against the wall frantically feeling for the door edge with his finger tips but found nothing. He was trapped.

    Reason took hold in the panic of the moment. Perhaps Talinsky was the only way out. Midwinter thought if he tried to harm Talinsky he could jeopardise his chances of escape. Been here for a hundred years?! The man was mad. Talinsky hadn’t moved from behind his desk, but now the crow was standing on his shoulder, and had changed colour, to an emerald green flecked with cloth of gold. His eyes, now full of malice and cunning, fixed on Midwinter with an expression of absolute seriousness. Midwinter saw his struggling was no use and stopped dead. Then he turned around, out of breath and shaking. Moments passed by and he calmly sat down with his arms rested on the arms of the chair. Looking again at his face, Midwinter thought Talinsky could be the devil himself, and a great sense of unease went through him.

    “What do you want with me?”

    “I told you. I need you to escape.”

    “You are making no sense at all.”

    “I repeat myself. I am in limbo. WE are in limbo. It is where you are now. The incredibility of my story doesn’t make it less true. What’s wrong? It’s as if you don’t believe me.” The flame of his lighter turned bright red, then green, then back to the yellow of a normal flame. Midwinter closed his eyes hoping this action would be able to tell him whether or not he was hallucinating. Whether he was away with the faeries, in a weird land of dreams. When he opened his eyes. Talinsky had disappeared. Midwinter was alone again. His neck twisted sharply and he saw the door that he had entered the room through had reappeared.

    “Thank God.’ Said Midwinter. He stood up and turned the door handle. He expected to see the corridor that led back down to the theatre, but when he opened it there was only an infinite blackness. He looked down and saw that there was nothing under his feet. The walls of the room had evaporated. In this impenetrable dark there was no floor or ceiling, no up or down or left or right, only darkness. Not even starlight, only black.

    Then suddenly in the near distance, a candle flame appeared. It glowed brightly, but all it illuminated was the tall wax candle that had breathed it into life. Midwinter stood in oblivion. Then, through the black void, in the dim candle light, a human face appeared. At first it was just a shape, a vague image. He rubbed his eyes. Quietly, he watched the scene, by now accepting that reality had abandoned him. Like the calm man at the gallows, he had excepted his fate. Perhaps he had gone mad and this was the asylum. It was Talinsky’s face appearing, and he began to speak.

    “Please” said Talinsky. “Let me introduce two of my old friends. My old friends of the theatre. They have been here even longer than me.”

    Two men appeared from nowhere, magicked out of the darkness. One of the men was fat and rosy cheeked, the other thin and gaunt. The three men stood for a moment in silence watching Richard Midwinter. Overwhelmed by peculiarity, by questions, Midwinter was rendered unable to speak.

    “Let me introduce you.” Said Talinsky. “This is the well-beloved Sir John.” The fat man took off his hat in recognition, out of which protruded a large peacock feather. “And this is………well. We just call him The Prince around here.” Two benches appeared, one from a tavern and one from a church. The fat man sat on his, and the prince lay down on his, with his hands behind his head. Midwinter looked at them both closely. All three men had the same face. The same face as the man he had seen in the old painting, in the foyer of the theatre. The three men were all David Garrick, and David Garrick was all three men. He was playing them all at the same time, as he would characters in a play.

    “Are you David Garrick? The man in the painting?” Asked Midwinter.

    “I have been may people in my time.” The thin, gaunt man replied. Then the fat man said “Let us to the singing.” He looked at Sir John and knew for certain that even though much fatter and fuller of face, belly and arse, they had the same eyes. The eyes of Garrick. The man in the painting.

    “Sweet prince” said the fat man suddenly bursting into life. He turned to Midwinter. “And what manner of man are you? You drink? I hope.”

    “Yes. I drink.” Said Midwinter. More candles came on suddenly, glowing the blackness of the void.

    “Nonsense young man, you’re still breathing, aren’t you? You look as fit as a fiddle to me, and my eyesight is better than most men’s. Yes! We have heard the silence at noon, master Midwinter.” The thin gaunt man said nothing as Midwinter turned his gaze on the prince but it seemed he was thinking deeply about something that had nothing to do with any of them. A conversation with himself, obscured, hidden in the dark recesses of his mind. Talinsky looked Midwinter in the eye and paused.

    “Well, what do you see?” Asked Talinsky.

    “Three men in the darkness.” He replied.

    “I see infinity.” Said Sir John, smiling.

    “And I see the abyss.” Said the Prince.

    Talinsky looked at Midwinter with an expression of great hope that emanated from his whole face through the prism of his eyes.

    “Help us.” Said Garrick in the unison of three men. The characters all spoke as one voice.

    “What can I do? For Christs sake!” Shouted Midwinter.

    “You have done enough. Now I must go.” Said Talinsky. ‘To return to the world. Thank-you, Mr Midwinter. You have set me free. But now you must stay. You must replace me, until you find another. Goodbye Midwinter. And thank you for your sacrifice. You shall be remembered in heaven!”

    “I’ve been tricked! You have tricked me!” Shouted Richard Midwinter overwrought with emotion. And with that Dalliard Talinsky smiled back at him and disappeared from sight, melting out of existence, out of the void.

    “Infinity or the Abyss. Infinity or the Abyss!” Went the two characters, singing together in a loud whisper.

    “I am infinity.” Sang the fat man.

    “And I am the abyss.” Whispered the Prince.

    The Fat Man looked at Midwinter straight in the eye and said,

    “Just as there is a heaven and hell on earth, so there is in all the creations of man, including the hereafter. We are the masters of punishment and reward. We are conscious of our own souls. If there were no humans in the universe there would be no God of humans. Thus, and therefore, you have a choice. Infinity?’

    “Or the Abyss?” Said The Prince.

    “You live with us now.” They said together.

    “No. No!” Shouted Midwinter in fear.

    The fat man began to laugh and dance in the blackness of the void. The prince raised his bony finger and pointed it at Midwinter. “I am the abyss!” Said the sad faced prince. “And I am infinity!” Said the laughing fat man. “And you are an actor! We together make up your soul, so don’t be afraid.” The jolly fat man pulled a fiddle out from nowhere like it was a magic trick. They sang in perfect harmony. “We are your soul” and then they turned and walked away into the distance of the black void singing and dancing as they went, even the sad prince. Midwinter found it impossible to move as if an invisible force was holding him down. He held out his arm with an open hand shouting to the actors who didn’t look back from there departing performance.

    ‘No…No…No!” Said Midwinter until the blackness turned to the longest night and he cried himself into a deep sleep.

    Midwinter woke up and found himself still in the infinite black void. He looked around and saw that he was alone. Totally alone in black, endless nothingness. This is what hell is like he thought, and he remembered something his devoutly Christian mother had told him when he was a child about hell not being fire and brimstone, but simply ‘the absence of God.’ In this place he could feel himself walking, and running even, but there was nowhere to go. Sitting and standing felt the same. Minutes turned to hours, hours to days, days to months and months to years. A thousand years could be lived in a minute and a minute in a thousand years. He thought, what is there new to be imagined, now all I have is imagination? His imagination would fly, pen-less. He felt a sudden, unexpected joy. And then, miraculously, he heard a woman’s voice penetrating the void. It came to his ears like music.

    “He’s waking up!” She said.

    The blackness of the infinite nothingness was obliterated by light, it’s brightness fierce enough to make him squint hard. Richard Midwinter blinked rapidly, the watering of his eyes coming at him like overflowing cups. He was alive and back in the world. He was home. He looked around as his blurry vision cleared and soon realised he was in a hospital ward, lying in bed. He looked around and saw all the other patients lying in their beds, waiting patiently for something to happen. He saw the voice was coming from a nurse standing over his bed.

    “What happened?” He asked through blurry eyes.

    “You have been in a coma. You fell into a coma sitting in the theatre.” Said the nurse.

    “How long have I been here?”

    “All in good time. Doctor Garrick will explain everything, don’t worry, he’s here now.’ Said the nurse.

    “Who?” Said Richard Midwinter bewildered. He looked up with his eyes becoming wilder as he acknowledged Doctor Garrick standing over him, those deep brown eyes full of thinking, full of cunning, smiling down from the bedside.


    Feature Image: The Garrick Theatre by Katie Chan

  • The Dish Washer

    He put on the yellow marigolds with some difficulty, while at the same time remembering something a wise Roman stoic had once written that went ‘dig inside yourself. Inside there is a well of goodness ready to gush at any moment, if you keep digging,’ and wondered if he had learned the line while studying for his PHD. Perhaps it was earlier when he sat long evenings in the library at Senate House attempting to become a master of arts. He couldn’t quite remember. His past was becoming a single entity, where once it had been fractured. He had woken up early that extremely cold winter morning to become a dish washer, or kitchen porter as it was advertised, and he wondered as he battled through the arctic weather, what had become of his long and arduous education. All those hours worrying about exams, all those times revising, researching, reading and editing and now at the age of forty-three he had seventy-three pounds to his name. He poured the washing up liquid into the large metallic sink under the instruction of the young Romanian woman and turned on the hot tap. “The water must be hot” she informed him. He looked into the mountainous bubbles as they slowly rose in the basin and in them, saw a galaxy emerge. Bliss came over him when he thought he could kill boredom with his imagination alone, and the silence of the universe out-manoeuvred by a simple playfulness of mind.

    As he began to scrub the dirty dishes, he wondered what his thirty years of education had all been for. It couldn’t have been for the money. Like the pieces of paper tucked away in a draw in the old homestead, his past successes were quietly hidden now, to mention them a suggestion of either boastfulness or failure. The first pan he washed had burnt black crusts of pastry stuck along the sides and he began to scrub it with a wire brush. It was stubborn and he applied more washing up liquid, and gave some extra elbow grease to remove it, but the dark stain wouldn’t budge. Minutes rolled by to the sound of scrubbing. The steam from the hot water was like sweat on his face. The harder he worked the more intense his feelings of failure became. The failure of his life’s work up until that moment. Was he ‘better’ than this? Was he better than washing dishes for a living? Scrubbing dishes to make ends meet. He must be ‘better’ than this he thought, as he finally removed the last piece of caked in pastry, but he couldn’t exactly work out why.

    Minh, the old Vietnamese lady that had worked in the kitchen for many years, smiled at him as she passed to go about the morning chore of cutting the bread for that afternoon’s school lunch. Her smile brightened his spirits. Three more dirty trays arrived and he submerged them in the suds. As if stuck on a treadmill like a hamster in a wheel his thoughts returned to his predicament. Only a job and a place, that would certainly change in time, as all the times and places of his life had changed up until then. He remembered another thing the Roman stoic had said, about change being a constant of all life, and was contented.

    Maybe now, at his age, he should be making more money than he was. He never really cared about money if the truth be known. If he had enough, he had enough, and enough was enough. It was one of the reasonings in his life to which he stayed true. The main thing that he got out of his philosophical studies was the idea of becoming good. Then, being good, was the natural state. We shouldn’t be kind to others for our own sake but rather because being kind brings the universe, the whole, into alignment. He looked around at the clock on the wall and it was exactly noon. Then he did an hour’s worth of thinking and when he looked back up, it said four minutes past. ‘Most work is trading your life, or time, for money. Maybe the whole of nature is just hope, manifest’ he thought as he gazed down at the collapsing suds. His imagination had awakened in the uneventfulness of the morning. He felt the warlike silence.

    He emptied the sink and then spent a while picking the soggy pasta and vegetables from the plug hole and decanted them into a bin bag. Then back to the sink to refill it with soapy hot water. He looked up and out of the window, and saw a crisp blue winter sky. On the thin branches of a leafless tree, glistening crystal droplets of rain shone below the grey sky of the recent Atlantic storm and his work came to a discreet standstill. Two robin red breasts danced on a twig. Behind the January tree was a road and a queue of people, some with umbrella’s waiting in the flour mist, waiting for the bus that would take them away from this same old place. None of them had noticed the rain-dropped leaves in the downpour, each one a kind of planet, a world within worlds, making up the whole.

    There was an old cockney woman that worked in the kitchen that liked nothing more than power, driven on every morning, through every day, by the smallness of her sad world, butchering the language with her soulless rants and dull observations. She walked into the kitchen and ruined the moment for him by talking for twenty-two seconds about the steam that was coming from the oven. The words that came from her mouth had no value or interest to the dishwasher but it was important for her to hear her own voice to remind others that she was in charge. In charge of this small kitchen, and in charge of her small world. He didn’t attempt to say anything to her, but he thought it wouldn’t be a bad thing if she was kinder. More dirty plates were dropped with a clang into the soapy water which meant more work, which meant more money for him, even though he was being paid minimum wage, his presence alone was earning. ‘This is the way society says self-worth is achieved of course. That in some way or other life must me earned, it’s not good enough just being born. Born poor I mean.’ He thought.

    Then he thought back on his education and experienced a sublime uplift when he reasoned that learning in and of itself can never be a waste of time, but then his gladness abated as he considered the other side of the coin. What if, like those that had been brought up in religious cults, an entire life of thoughts could be wasted. If the truth lay south and you walked north for 84 years where would that leave you on your death bed? Lost, presumably, but perhaps happy and content. Perhaps not. He considered different belief systems in the world. The only wisdom he could glean was to avoid dogmatism at all costs, and to cast doubt on certainty. And then he thought that must be easier said than done when he thought about the importance of conviction, and the humiliations it is heir to. To work, to seek meaning for a lifetime, in a lifetime, and then have it robbed at the finish line may be too much to bear. Maybe Epicurus was right, in the end. Also, maybe hedonism has a value. To dance, to sing and play was good, and better than the opposite. He saw a side-burned face in the suds, ‘lose your sense of humour and you’re fucked’ came the Burslem voice from the sink water. His memory played games again. And then from nowhere the voice of Jeffrey Bernard on Desert Island Discs. Dying, and with the cigarette smoke almost travelling with the radio waves saying to the interviewer ‘to me Mozart is divinity’ and then pressed by her on the regrets he had now he faced death he replied matter-of-factly ‘I wish I had been a better person. It’s as simple as that.’ The dishwasher thought there was a beauty in this acknowledgment, in the recognition of the fact.

    The dishwasher began to dream of the mountains of Scotland where he had once lived, and where he had felt, once upon a time, a thousand years pass in the afternoon rays. Memory, and dreams of a future past, vied together as if they were one entity. Why do we have to earn what we never chose? Born and demanded to work. He thought. It was a melancholy meditation. He thought ‘If life is a competition, then maybe we are just cunts, to use the proper Saxon vernacular’. For the rich to stay rich the poor must be poor, this was the application of pure logic to him, a revelation in its simplicity. It’s matter-of-factness. What if everybody was rich? What if there was no-one to wash the dishes? What then? The old cockney lady continued talking because it was something to do, but at the end of her soul destroying jabbering’s she said something that interested him very much, when she described how when she was growing up in the east end of London it was ordained in her community not to get above yourself and say or act as though you are better than anyone else, ‘because you are not.’ He witnessed a different, more humane side to her. He mulled over her wisdom, intrigued by her comment, until only a few minutes later when she described her joy as she waved her flag on the Mall up at the balcony where Prince Andrew and ‘their highnesses’ stood and waved back. His democratic socialism and her monarchism were spiritually incompatible. He began to load up the plastic tray with cups and turned on the machine once more. To the dishwasher, her way of thinking was more toilsome even than the constant repetition of washing dishes. As the machine came on, the noise allowed him to think for a moment. It didn’t matter how many material things he had. How much money. What mattered was what was felt, what was thought, what could be imagined, what could be created, out of thin air. He looked up and saw that Minh was smiling to herself as she thought a happy thought, not knowing anybody was watching.

    The following morning, he arrived to work early and felt content working for a while alone, preparing for the day. That was a good time of the morning, full of potential. The dishwasher tingled with dreaming. Or was he a philosopher? With his mind and hands at work simultaneously he could be both. The plump old Cockney woman barged into the kitchen fifteen minutes late for work just as he was thinking about definitions of love, and to placate her anger at being late, began to talk at him in a loud condescending voice about the floor not being mopped. He said he would do it calmly with his body language saying ‘if you would politely leave me be.’ He remembered the word ‘Ataraxia’ which can mean ‘freedom from disturbance’. She continued talking loudly and when she said ‘we was’ for the third time he drifted off into an internal debate and wondered how many people in England who disliked foreigners and foreign languages as she did, and said so, understood that their handle on the English language was ungood. He felt certain if he brought the subject to light he would be hated for it. He would be damned as a language snob or worse, a snob. He said nothing. He thought the language of accents reflect souls in their own ways. The accent reflects belonging. ‘People who change their accents no longer wish to belong. The new tribe outweighs the old.’ He thought. He wondered about the imagination and whether it is built from the world we see, the world we experience, or is it born from something separate, like the unconscious mind being born from ancestral dreams. He had looked into Buddhism and concluded he didn’t want to free his mind of thought. Also, he didn’t want to reach Nirvana because he felt from there, there was nowhere else to go. The trick of life was to keep on learning, imagining, until all faculties are lost. A huge pile of plates came in after lunchtime and this was the signal to keep his head down working, until he clocked off at 4.30pm. He had a take away that night as he had become sick of the sight of unclean plates, and the endless necessity of washing them.

    He went home to his bedsit with his fish and chips in a bag and sat down in front of the TV with a six pack of beers and a packet of cigarettes. ‘No point working if you can’t enjoy it’ was the persistent thought he had on leaving his places of work. For relaxation he played computer scrabble as a form of meditation but he found writing, the thing he dreamed of doing, difficult, and rewarding only very occasionally. He would sometimes strum away at the acoustic guitar in the corner of the room which he had had since university. It brought back good memories, just being there. All the dreams he had when he was a young man were now living memory, the whistle blown on stardom, but then he concluded his youth was hard enough without the added complication of fame. He had been friends with a man at university that had been desperate for musical stardom, and years later he had heard through the grapevine that the man had taken his own life by throwing himself into the Thames. He wondered whether the suicide and the reality of unfilled dreams were interconnected and concluded that they probably were. The sad thought was silenced by the cracking open of a can of cold lager. Television, which was once the drug of the nation, had been replaced by the internet, almost overnight, or at least while no-one was looking, but he was hanging on by his remote. He went to bed half tipsy, taking care what he wished for.

    Early the next morning he was on his way to work when he saw the crowd at the bus stop gathering around someone on the floor, there was an obvious commotion. He went over to see if he could be of any help and when he leaned over the shoulders to see what was going on he saw Minh, the old Vietnamese lady he worked with, lying on the floor clutching her heart. The sight of her suffering made him panic and worry deeply. He told everyone he was her colleague and then asked if someone had called an ambulance to which they replied they had and it would be there any minute now. He leant down as she opened her eyes and she registered his presence with a smile. He smiled back. Then she closed her eyes and the hand on her heart relaxed as if she was falling asleep. He called out to her but she made no reply. In this moment the paramedics arrived with the whirring of sirens and took over. Very shortly afterwards she was on a stretcher being carried into the ambulance. He explained he was her colleague and asked if he could accompany them to hospital. They said yes. As they left, he turned around and the assembled crowd reminded him of a herd of wildebeest that look on as one of their own is devoured by a lion. He wondered what the Roman stoic would have thought and concluded it would probably be, ‘this is the way of thing’s’ or words to that effect.

    At the hospital he was told the sad news that Minh, the kind Vietnamese lady that he worked with had died. He travelled back to the school kitchen where they worked by foot. Everything on the walk took on a new state of life. The glittering frost now had the soul of symphonies, the barren trees proof of nature’s fight, the foggy veil of the sun emanating a magical winter light away above the horizon. He walked through the kitchen door with the sorrow in his face reflecting the sad news he had to tell and was greeted by the plump old cockney lady who in a loud voice said to him before he had a chance to speak ‘what time do you call this you caaant!’ He looked her in the eye. ‘Minh is dead, and so are you, to me.’ He tossed his apron back on the pile. She looked shocked but instantly refused to apologise. The dishwasher looked at her and said ‘I was wondering if I was better than this job. No, I don’t think so. But I am better than being bullied by you. Dig?”

    “Go on then. Do one, get aaaat!” She said loudly and waved him towards the door. He turned to leave and saw the large pile of washing she would have to do if the agency didn’t have anyone. They probably did though. There are always people who have to work for poor wages. That provides the surplus, but I suppose that’s a story for another time. He hadn’t lasted long in the job as dishwasher. ‘I can’t be having that’, he thought as he closed the door behind him and walked out into the freezing day. He carried on down the icy sludge path to freedom and recalled the Roman stoic, ‘Pain is neither unendurable or unending, as long as you remember its limits and do not exaggerate it in your imagination’. Jobless for the foreseeable, again, he was hit by the thought that his life could be ten or a hundred times more fulfilled, joyful and meaningful as someone who earned ten or a hundred, or a million times more than himself, if he had the right frame of mind.  It was the destiny of the dishwasher to live in his imagination, and his imagination didn’t pay by the hour.

    Feature Image: Gillian Gamboa

  • Psychopomp

    The magic place lay under a blanket of snow. On the ridge of the park he walked, a silhouette shifting, hunched and thoughtful under night. The lone trudging figure, wearing a long black wool coat and a brown fedora, moved carefully through the virgin white crunch towards the warren of streets by the Thames. He paused and felt the cold wind on his face as the panorama light of London grew before him. The city had grown to block out the starlight. Everything was quiet. The park was locked but he had jumped the fence and wandered in the snow past the general’s statue that stands watch over the sleeping city. He had something particular in mind. This would be the night of his death. Above the bridge, watching the river, the angel quietly waited.

    His thoughts were closing in on him, condensing the entire galaxy into his field of vision. Every sinew, every hair on his legs and arms, his liver and his feet, his knees, his fingertips, and his nose, were simply a mortal vehicle for his thoughts. A carriage for his soul, for his fleeting being, anchored in evermore. The falling snow was now resting on him, but he was happy to let it settle, comforted by the nature’s way. He had spent most of that day walking the city streets, seeking aloneness among the architecture. He could ignore himself in the crowd. He thought to himself “The London crowd will only end when mankind ends. Maybe that’s why it can be so pitiless.” The blizzard had arrived hand in hand with sundown and the snowfall continued into the night. It sought the soul that cannot flee, that will not hide. It sought the lone figure, who’s spirit was in rebellion. He had decided to murder the endless voice in his head. It was however indecision itself that had brought him to this sad moment.

    London was keeping him alive like a patient on a drip. The breathing history of the buildings, the ancient lineaments that welcome each generation, giving the children clues as what to do next, held him in its familiar embrace. The ghosts that had built it had walked him home many times. Now they had fallen as silent as the snow. He looked out at the skyline and registered how it had changed so dramatically within his short lifetime. The glass towers becoming a money made monolith before his eyes, but somehow lacking Manhattans punch. The lack of stone in the shining spectacle reminded the man of the impermanence of glass and metal. Not like good old St Paul’s cathedral, smiling in the vista. He looked ahead down the pavement and saw that the white drift was untouched.

    He looked at his phone. One twenty-three in the morning. Maybe no-one had been here. He looked back and saw the single line of footprints he had made being slowly erased by the blizzard. He looked around. There was no-one. He suddenly felt the familiar loneliness, that old dog, the pang of memory. It was the city itself. Empty as the soul of sorrow. Every single generation now gone, every one up until these last living three, vanished, returned to oblivion. He looked up at the snowfall in the lamplight and it eased his troubled mind. He had wanted to die. Not now though, not in that moment, registering the long-forgotten struggles, the long-forgotten victories of the unremembered ones that had brought him here, to this moment. Mesmerized, he stood still for a while. London lay before him like an eternal thing. That night the falling snow was beautiful, and he stayed long enough to understand.

    There was one place open. A private party in someone’s house going late into the night. The house stood on the edge of the river with a Christmas tree of white twinkling lights in the window. There were cheerful voices inside, warm in the snowy night. It was a birthday. The stranger wearing the brown fedora and the long coat opened the door and the patrons registered his presence with a dart of the eyes in the candle light. Dancing between the chattering voices was music. The beautiful sound of violins. He sat down in a black leather chair and closed his eyes. He started wondering about music. Music the liberator, the soul of dreams, emancipator of captives, of slaves, uplifter of the downhearted. He wondered whether music was evidence of something unique in us. Music, sorrow and saviour. Creator of dark and light. The meaning of barren planets. The fertile spirit of the wasteland. Crying tears of sorrow and tears of joy. It is both winning and losing. It is hope. It is delight. It is anger tamed. It is dancing. It is the life in the smile, somehow surviving the death of the world.

    Above the bridge the statue of the angel with its wings set to heaven watched the Thames flowing, waiting in silence under the falling snow. ‘It has the power to make you brave enough to die.’ He thought ‘Who masters who? The music or the musician?” The lone figure walked out onto the street and lighting a cigarette looked up at the sky as if it was watching him. When the cigarette was done and the cold of the snow had been felt, he re-entered in search of one more drink. He sat back in the chair with another glass of Jameson. The people at the party knew him but he didn’t know them, because he had garnered some fame. He regretted not being inconspicuous in the world. ‘It would have helped my art if I was unknown’ he thought to the point of melancholy. He had been drinking whiskey heavily the night before and it had burnt his brain-peace. When he slowly opened his eyes that morning, registering the havoc lonely rocking and rolling can have, and not just on the liver, he realised his mind-zone was also faltering. Between his brain and his mind he now found himself floating. It had taken him the whole day to recover from the hangover. He had laid in the single bed long enough for it to become uncomfortable. He got up, washed his face only, lit a cigarette and looked out of the window into the pale winter glow of the street and remembered he was young enough. Life took on new meaning, a subtle charge of being, without foreboding or fear. Someone offered him a line of cocaine on a recently microwaved plate. The crisp twenty-pound note bit gently into his nostril as he breathed the powder up his nose feeling slightly invigorated against his drunkenness. He smiled as he handed the plate and note back, but stayed seated as if the party was a film and he was in the theatre just to watch.

    Next came the green faerie. He looked into the glass of absinthe as if it was a beautiful painting and as he lifted the glass to his mouth he thought of her. How could he not? As it hit his throat and he swallowed, all he heard was music in his head, above the chattering of the kitchen party. The white lights of the Christmas tree made his eyes glow. He suddenly felt at home in his wanderings for the first time that day. He drank another whiskey back and sighed a great sigh of relief. It took him a minute to adjust to its potency. He realised he was drunk and experiencing a curdling head rush, so he stood up out of the leather chair and walked slowly and deliberately, giving accidently the false impression he was sober. A sudden rush of energy came over him, like the surge of a cold shower. He thanked the strangers who implored him to stay so they could indulge in his celebrity, bade them farewell and exited the place in favour of the snowy streets. The sweet noise of the party evaporated on the lane. It was the middle of the night and he was alone again. Still darkness. The angel watched the river from high up on her perch.

    He trudged on through the thick snow. The labyrinth of London was not unfriendly. He made his way forward, trudging through the whirling white, back towards the heart of the city. Now the thing that tormented him didn’t need to be killed. It had gone into hiding. The strong drinks he had consumed were coursing through his veins, but the falling snow had begun to retreat, its diminished ferocity had tempered his awe. His mind returned to its once contented state. It wrapped itself around his body again until he could feel no cold, and see only the hollow of the night.

    The lone figure had walked nearly a mile when he looked up and saw a police car with its main lights off, driving slowly alongside him. Annoyance, followed by a dim throng of adrenaline. Could be fun to run. He avoided eye contact with the passing car. He noticed a taxi cab on the other side of the road. The man waved him in and the snow fell from him as he sat down in the car and closed the door. He smiled to see the police lights disappear down the road and gently kneaded the bag of powder in his coat pocket. He said ‘Shaftesbury Avenue’ and the car began to move. He rested his head back and watched as the snowy city passed him by, knowing for sure, for certain if he lived, that some years from now he would only be able to remember glimpses of this undiluted beauty. How can someone remember their exact sequence of thoughts when so much time has passed? Memory is an image in which sometimes lives a feeling. He conceived again his plan. Perhaps the end of pain approached, the end of suffering for good. He began to tremble.

    Thoughts of Soho re-emerged in his mind’s eye. That’s where the lonely people go. That was his tribe. He thanked the driver and got out and saw he wasn’t the only one lost. He walked past prostitutes who beckoned him to join. It was a potent mix, desire and loneliness. Perhaps the most potent. Disregarding humiliation, the cause of almost all violence, his temptation was reflected in his change of pace. He carried on with the melting appearance of a fake smile. One of the prostitutes dressed in a skirt of red leather asked for a cigarette. He spontaneously turned around and handed her one. The lack of mercy and compassion in her eyes chilled his spirit more than any winter night. He sensed something wicked deep inside her, but then thought it was only himself, reflected. He concluded as he turned and walked away toward the river that she had killed more innocence than most. ‘Good old London. It is beautiful in the snowfall.’ He thought. Sometimes people have been able to achieve this rarity, to build an environment that reflects their imagination. As the white haciendas of Andalusia are built for the sun, so London is built for the people now forgotten, the barely remembered past of the world, and its unintelligible, mysterious future. The lone figure had bitten and hit himself countless times and cried bitter tears deep into the night. Now he understood why. Now his life was nearly over, in ruins, he finally understood what his tears had meant. They were what he was destined to become. And how he had been ordained to die, by his own soul. He turned and walked down elegant sideroads to the river.

    He looked down an empty street and saw no one. Then, from behind the corner at the end of the block he saw the head of a stag, with large antlers, slowly emerge around the street corner. The large, strange eyes stared straight at him. He blinked to awaken himself, to catch his senses. It was obviously a prop, being worn by a man. But the man was obscured by the wall. Then the arm and hand appeared, a long black arm with hoofs for hands rested on the wall, but still the weird head, motionless, stared out at him.

    “What?” He thought. Only questions, only surprise. It offered no immediate threat, but its rareness induced fear. The strange looking animal head stared at the lone figure, immovable and unflinching. They stood there staring at each other for long drawn-out seconds. Then slowly, the stag’s head with its large black eyes retreated back behind the wall leaving the lone figure totally alone. In the unexplainable moment it began to snow again. He quickly span around to see if anyone was there, if anyone had seen what he had just seen, but there was no one. Only the snow, falling from the night.

    He took a half-drunk miniature bottle of whiskey from the deep pocket of his coat and drank it back, skilfully opening his gullet to allow the fiery liquid to pass. The aftershock nauseated him so he washed it down with a quick cigarette and walked away from the other worldly scene with a quick pace, rolling his ankle on the snowy cobbles as he went. He stood still in the falling snow, unable to detect any psychodelia within or without his senses. He made his way quickly to the river.

    Soon he reached the dark brooding swirls of the Thames and it seemed to him that the river itself was dancing. He looked over the iron railing. The Thames devoured the snowfall as if it had dominion over the sky. In the near distance was the bridge, devoid of all movement. With clumsy drunken movements he climbed up on the wall and as he stood up, he realised his feet had fissured the untouched, untainted snow. He stood there alone and looked out at the old magnificent buildings on the other side of the river. There was no-one there, no-one to tell him to get down. But a part of his soul wanted to die. A great part. He was unexpectedly reminded of the beauty that humankind holds in its hand, but the boundlessness of its potential was somehow being blocked out like starlight behind the blackness of clouds. London was singing. The falling snow was obscured by the black river night. He looked at the distant bridge and saw the angel. There it was, made of stone, waiting still.

    And then, from on top of the bridge, the stags head slowly ascended above the grey brick wall. The lone figure rubbed his eyes. The weird stag was up on the bridge staring down at him. How he had got there so quickly the lone figure didn’t understand. His breath was swallowed up by the adrenaline rush of fear. His footing felt unsteady on the snow-covered wall and he had the sudden sensation he was about to fall, fall, fall down into the dark river. The wind and snow took up and blew the lone figure’s hat clean off his head. He wobbled as he quickly stretched for it but it had gone into the babbling darkness below. He caught sight of it in the light of a street lamp, right way up, riding the white washing waves of the river. It sank beneath the gloom. He sighed sadly to see it drown, like departing an old trusted friend forever. He looked up and the stag was still there on the bridge staring down at him, with those strange, dark eyes. The wind stormed in and blew his hair up into his face, but now he only had the will to let it do its work. Staring through the swirl he saw the stag looking directly at him, motionless in the blizzard. Then the arms of the stag man raised and his hands rested on the antlers but still those black eyes were fixed, penetrating the stormy night. The lone figure, terrified, looked down at the river and heard the sound of the rushing waves calling.

    And then, he heard music rising. The melody exploded through the curtain. His soul began to shine. Hiding in the visible, the music burst in colours, lighting the lone figure’s eyes like underwater lamplight reaching the surface of a lake. The music. The beautiful music. The lone figure wept. He remembered kindness. Through his tears he saw his hat re-emerge on the surface. The dream world came back to him. The world of imagination. He looked up and there was the stag man, now standing up on the wall of the bridge. He suddenly felt frightened to see the pagan thing. The stag man stood still, looking straight at him. A feeling came over the lone figure to jump down off the wall. But he stayed. It was as if he was beckoning the strange apparition to make the first move. The cold wind whipped up. The adrenaline surging through the lone figure’s body kept him warm enough. Then the man on the bridge took off the stag’s head and stared down at him. ‘It can’t be’ said the lone figure out loud as he looked at the man. ‘No! It can’t be!!’ He screamed at the night. It was his own face up on the bridge, staring down at himself. Tears burnt through the freezing air. The stag man smiled and dived off the high bridge with a look of joy on his face, down into the Thames and under he went. The lone figure could feel his heart beating fast as he looked at the place where the stag man had landed. It was time. His pain would soon end, and his joy. Heaven and hell waited in the waves. He leapt from the wall into the mist, with his arms stretched out in front of him, his hands hitting the ice-cold water first. Unwatched by any living soul, the lamplit murk of the river consumed them both. They were seen no more. High above, the stone angel watched the scene, her tears made of rain, her open wings gathering the falling snow.

    Feature Image: Marina Azzaro 

  • Indiana Jones on a Kharkiv Bus

    Marina and I wait for a bus, and when it comes, we squeeze our way into it, blending in with a crowd that pushes and carries us like a wave into the sea. I say “squeeze”. This is literally what it feels like – something very familiar to me and, at the same time, almost forgotten, because this happened every morning in my childhood when I rode trolleybus number…Oh my, I wish I could remember the number of that trolley bus I used to ride every morning to my kindergarten, with my father holding my hand while the crowd carried us along. I both remember it and don’t remember it because, although it happened every morning back then, it never happened once my childhood was over. I told Marina what it used to be like, who is so squeezed from all sides. There’s no need for her feet to touch the floor – the crowd holds her so well. And while I am squeezed between a plump young man in uniform, Marina is squeezed between me, on one side, and, on the other, the crowd of people that keeps growing every second. Still more people enter the bus, until finally, the door closes—a miracle—and the closing door pushes everyone even further in.

    An old woman behind the plump young man in uniform, to whom I will refer as “soldier” for short, says, in a chastising tone that older women in Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries often use: “Muzhchina, you swerve me. Stop swerving me!”

    It sounds funny to me because I never heard the Russian verb she uses, “kolyshete,” used this way means “push” and, as far as I know, it is not a transitive verb, that is, it is not usually followed by an object, which, in this case, is “menia” (me).  The old lady’s complaint is just her way of saying a simple thing: “Sir, you are pushing me”. It sounds funny but I tell myself I should be careful saying “funny” about anyone’s speech here, after all, what do I know about funny, I, who had left the Soviet Union so long ago and whose ancestors lived in Ukraine when none of the people alive here had even been born. Whether funny or not, I tell myself to remember the old woman’s use of “kolyshete”– not so much because I want to use it myself but because I like colorful expressions, and hearing it from the old lady on this crowded bus seems like a find I should treasure.

    Muzhchina, i.e., the soldier she addresses, says, “Lady, it is not I swerving you! People, she says I’m swerving her! But it is not I who is swerving her! It is my bulletproof jacket! I would never swerve anyone alive!”

    He pauses, unzips a mini sack with a little carry-on pharmacy he carries on top of his bulletproof jacket, takes out a small set of medical wound dressings, and pushes it into my closed hand: “A gift for you, Indiana Jones!”

    I say, “Indiana Jones… Is that because of my hat?”

    “The lady is from America,” Marina says. I am getting used to this explanation of my presence in Ukraine, because even though I don’t feel like a foreigner here, it helps making my Russian-only speech, which might have been perceived as unpatriotic otherwise, (or for that matter the strangeness of my Indiana Jones hat) seem fine.

    “True, the lady is from America,” I say about myself, “but the hat is actually from Australia, where no one thought of it as an Indiana Jones hat.”

    I take off my hat to show its underside to the soldier. “See, what it says here? I point at a tag: Designed in Australia.”

    He doesn’t react to my mention of Australia but nods when I say “America,” and at the end confirms: “Indiana Jones, yes.”

    Again, he unzips his portable pharmacy and takes out a little present for me. This time it’s a small rolled-up package of gauze. “No, no,” I say with more conviction than before, “You need it much more than I do! Please keep it!”

    “Indiana Jones,” says the soldier in all seriousness. “This is for you. Do not reject it. I imbibed a little more than necessary last night, but it doesn’t change the fact that this humble medical gift is all I can offer you. In honor of Indiana Jones movies, which I loved so much in the days of yore.”

    He pushes the small package of gauze into my hand, and I must accept it, if only out of politeness.

    “Well, thank you,” I say. “Not that I ever thought of myself as a replica of Indiana Jones…”

    The old woman who complained about the soldier swerving her is now immersed in light – her toothless smile lights up her face, and every wrinkle on her face seems to exude light. I say ‘quite a sight’ to myself, considering that we are squeezed in the back of the bus like chopped-up herring in a tin can.

    I say, “Really, I don’t want it.”

    I give the small rolled-up package back to the soldier: “Not because I dare to refuse the honor of the gift, but because you need it much more than I do. In fact,” I say, “One day, your life may depend on having it. Which is why it would be wrong of me to accept it.”

    “No, Indiana Jones, it is my gift for you. I would have given you a gun, but this is all I can give you right now.”

    Marina says it’s time for us to get off, and I’m getting ready to make my uneasy way towards the door. Luckily, most people standing between us and the door get off at the same stop, and right before Marina and I leave, I try to push the gauze and the wound dressing into the soldier’s hand again. Still, he’s adamant: he closes his hand into a fist so no gifts can be returned, and that is that. The door shuts behind us, and the bus is gone, and along with it, the plump soldier with the little pharmacy sack on his chest and the old woman with wrinkles that exude light.

    I say, “Wasn’t it funny, being called Indiana Jones because of my hat?”

    Marina says that the soldier was sincere. She uses the word “iskrenniy”: he earnestly wanted to give me these things, and he meant well, so I shouldn’t hold this Indiana Jones thing against him.

    “I know he meant well,” I say. “I just thought these medical supplies should have stayed in his little pharmacy bag. He needs them more than I do.”

    “Well,” she walks ahead, showing me the way to go. “He did say that he had imbibed more than usual the night before. Although I still think it was very touching…the way he was so happy to see his Indiana Jones on this crowded bus.”

    We walk some more toward Drobitsky Yar, the Holocaust Memorial just outside of Kharkiv, the goal of our trip, when Marina says, “Here’s a checkpoint. I hope you have your passport with you.”

    I reassure her, “Don’t worry. I have two, which is more than enough for one checkpoint.”

    ____________________

    FOOTNOTES

    1Muzhchina – a male.  “[…] you swerve me!” is a literal translation of “Мужчина, вы меня колышeте!” (romanized: Muzhchina, vy menya kolyshete”).

     

  • Small Horses

    The big man tugged the brim of his hat and spoke gently to the camera as though a guest had newly arrived at his door.

    “Evenin’ folks. I’m here to tell you about my new picture, The Train Robbers, with a little lady you might have heard of by the name of Ann Margaret.” He inclined his head in a manner familiar to audiences who might, in that gesture, recall the earnest frontier wisdom for which his characters were renowned. “I think you’ll like it. It’s an old-fashioned Western with lots of action and—”

    “Cut!” the director yelled.

    The big man’s eyes narrowed and his throaty voice rose to a tattered yelp.

    “Well, what’s the matter now?”

    “Sorry, sir,” the director hesitated. “They’d prefer we didn’t use the term ‘old-fashioned’ anymore. They think it’ll drive away the younger audience.”

    “Who thinks?”

    A pinkish glow glazed the young director’s cheeks.

    “The marketing department.” His fingers played nervously by an earlobe. “The studio’s marketing department.”

    “Marketing department?” The big man exclaimed, his voice cracking under the incredulity. “Hell, anyone driven away by that nonsense can stay away, far as I’m concerned. I guess they’d rather we dump our regular audience and bring in a bunch of hippies instead. That it?”

    “I don’t know, sir, but that’s the direction I was given. I’m just doing my job. How about we take five while Howard works up the changes for you?”

    The big man’s eyebrows dwelled over a long cautious stare, then he suddenly released a brittle chuckle and slapped his own thigh.

    “Well, hell, you work that in there, Howard,” he cried. “You work it all the way in there while I go parlay with our noble representative of the honorable fourth estate.”

    He scurried sideways through a cloud of fussing assistants and technicians and crossed the dusty yard to a pair of canvas chairs which sat in the oblong shadow of a large parasol. The reporter, a young man with a vaguely tormented expression, lounged inattentively over the side of one of the chairs. When he saw the big man approaching, he yanked his legs aboard, drew his fingers from his beatnik beard and lurched upright, composing a large notebook on his lap as his pen made a nervous vigil over a fresh page.

    The big man sat heavily into his chair with a long, wayward grunt. He snatched a drink from the small table beside him and the ice cubes tinkled against the glass as he raised it to his lips. He took a long sideways look at the young reporter.

    “Where were we?” he said, when he’d taken a messy sup.

    “We were talking about your acting method.”

    A stern look waved the lines above the man’s brows and an unamused fissure cleaved his mouth into a half-smile.

    “You were talking about that,” he said, “not me. There’s no method. I’m myself, on purpose. It’s not much of a trick but it’s all the trick I got.”

    “Do you think that’s enough these days with people like Voight, Hoffman—”

    “It’s plenty enough,” the man snapped. “I suppose you think all this method-acting hooey is for the benefit of the audience. It’s not, you know. It’s just vanity. These modern actors feel like they gotta show the audience that they’re suffering for their art and I guess the only way they know how to do that is to sob right into the camera. The thing they miss is that heroes were never meant to be like normal folks. The whole point of heroes is to be better than normal folks and, in my book, better means better. Not darker. Or sadder. Or dirtier, either. Not shooting people in the back like you see in all these Spaghetti Westerns. Not doing drugs or whatever else you see these days. We ought to be setting an example for people. Showing them what real courage is. That’s why people come to my pictures. That’s why they been coming to my pictures for thirty years and that’s why they’ll still be coming to my pictures in a hundred years when all these fancy dan tricks is gone the way of the dodo.”

    “You seem very confident of your enduring legacy.”

    The big man gave a crippled, sorrowful laugh, “Well, I guess I am. Faith don’t cost much this side of life but, even so, it’s in surprisingly short supply.”

    The reporter bobbed excitedly and attacked the page with his pen.

    “That’s good.”

    “People need heroes they can rely on. These anti-heroes, as you guys call them, that’s just a fad the public will get tired of eventually. And, when they do, they’ll come looking for real heroes again.”

    “So, I take it you didn’t like The Wild Bunch?”

    “No sir, I didn’t. Bad guys pretending to be good guys.”

    “But can’t a person be both? Can’t a person be more than just good or evil?”

    “No sir, they can’t. They gotta pick a side and stick with it. It’s thinking like yours got the world in the upside-down mess it’s in. Men dressed like women and women dressed like men. Fellas that are supposed to be heroes blubbing about the place like sissies. People with no right to it demanding an audience’s respect. I’m no expert on scripture but I remember somewhere in there a warning against those who would try to put darkness for light and light for darkness.”

    “If you want to talk about scripture, what about Saint Paul on the road to Damascus? Wasn’t that a case of darkness turning into light.”

    The big man gave a creaking chuckle.

    “Well son, you be sure to let me know when we get another case like that one.”

    A few shouts came from the set and they both looked up and spent a few moments watching the buildup of activity there.

    “You got one more question, kid.”

    “You going to the Oscars tonight, sir? Who do you think will win for Best Actor?”

    The big man made a distasteful face.

    “Well, Olivier is a fine actor. I suppose I wouldn’t be too upset if he won.”

    “What about Brando? His performance in The Godfather is surely deserving of an Oscar, wouldn’t you say?”

    “No, son, I wouldn’t say. Too showy. Stuffing all that junk in his cheeks. All vanity and, I guess you know now, I can’t abide vanity,” he made a point of looking at the young man’s beard, “in anyone.”

    “Can’t you even admit that the movie itself is a modern masterpiece?”

    “No, sir, I can’t. If you ask me, that picture is nothing but modern un-American garbage.”

    “But surely,” the reporter started but the big man stood up and raised a meaty palm.

    “Maybe you should interview Brando. He’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear.”

    The young man frowned and the big man leaned over him, tilting his hat up his forehead.

    “I guess you’d prefer it I came off my horse like old Saul,” he said with a short chuckle and staggered back to the set, leaving the young reporter chewing his pen silently.

    The young man stood up, put away his notes and wandered over to a young lady who was smoking a cigarette in the shade of a long silver trailer.

    “Can you spare a cigarette, honey?”

    She looked at him and her lips formed a brief pout of distaste but, after a few seconds, she yanked a corner of her lip into a dazed smile and held out a long cigarette.

    “Here you go, Daddy-o.”

    When he’d lit his cigarette, he leaned against the trailer and nodded his head in the direction of the renewed activity.

    “So, what’s he like to work with?”

    “The living legend?”

    “Yes.”

    She looked him up and down.

    “Off the record?”

    “Sure,” he said, clutching the cigarette between his teeth as he dived into his bag for his notepad and pen.

    She pursed her lips carefully and blew a long thin plume of smoke toward the subject of their discourse.

    “He’s a royal pain in the ass.”

     

    *          *          *          *          *

     

    “No, dammit!” the big man said with a hoarse growl, flinging a despairing arm at the apprentice wrangler. “It’s still too tall. We’re shooting a promo here, son. You’re gonna want to get his head in the frame, otherwise people will think someone sawed a foot off me or I’m standing in a trench.”

    The apprentice wrangler, a kid no more than nineteen, opened his mouth to say something but the man wasn’t waiting for an answer.

    “Take it back and bring me another,” he said and wafted the air between them with the back of his hand.

    This was the third horse he’d returned, each with the same fatigued gesture, like an imperfectly cooked steak being waved back to the kitchen.

    The young wrangler grimaced and nervously tightened his grip around the reins. Mr. Mitchell, the head wrangler, had told him to keep it simple and to bring him one of the Quarter horses. He stepped apart from the horse, looking up at it and across its felted light brown flanks as though re-evaluating its suitability for himself.

    Between horses, the big man had dragged his canvas chair out from beneath the large white parasol and into the light. Now, as he watched the kid conduct his silent inspection, he lay back into the seat and stretched his long limbs into the warming midday sun. The man measured the moment with a throaty chuckle before taking himself slowly out of the chair. He removed his hat and slapped it once against his right thigh before refitting it and taking his famous lopsided stride over to where the kid stood, awaiting his approach with visible concern.

    The AD stepped beside the kid, pulled his white baseball cap over his eyes and tugged at his greying beard, offering a physical demonstration of his concern.

    “We can work around this,” he said. “A wide shot from further back. Then you’ll have everybody in the frame.”

    The big man shook his head and his eyes crinkled in a stern smile.

    “Hell, Bob, we’ll look like ants. You want folks to have to guess who the hell is in the picture?” He pointed at the kid. “You telling me we ain’t got one regular sized horse in that whole remuda back there?”

    He started walking in the direction the kid had come from.

    The director joined the AD and the kid beside the horse.

    “Where are you going?” the director called.

    “I’m going to pick myself out a normal-sized horse. You stay here and take five or six or whatever you guys call it these days.”

    The big man followed the track around past a set of worn outhouses to a series of fresh-boarded corrals. The kid followed at a short distance and watched the man let himself into a large pen with about a dozen horses in two groups, stepping nervously in opposite corners.

    The man noticed the kid and gestured to a cream and brown colt in the nearest corner.

    “What about that little Paint Horse?”

    “Oh, not Bobbin, sir. He’s mighty ornery. We only got him around for a special show that needs a bad-tempered ride. I wouldn’t recommend using him for this type of show, sir”

    “Well,” the man said, “I reckon I can handle him.”

    He strolled slowly over to the horse and carefully patted its flanks and head, whispering and clucking to the animal as he stepped closer.

    The horse turned one side of his head to look at the man. The large eye, wet and brown, studied him.

    “You know me, don’t you?” the man said, easing his hand across the thick mane and patting the horse’s neck softly.

    He was about to chide the kid for his foolishness, when the horse suddenly bucked hard, slamming him against the fence and he lost consciousness.

     

    *          *          *          *          *

     

    “What the hell you let him in there for?”

    “I’m sorry sir. He said the other horses was too big.”

    “Too big? They’re always too big. Is he riding them or are they riding him?”

    The boy gestured to the big man.

    “He just moved.”

    The big man opened his eyes. He was lying on a bed in the silver trailer. The kid was pressing a damp cloth to his head. A dull ache sat just above his eyes.

    A grey-haired man with a long black moustache in a dark suit stood over him, looking concerned.

    “You okay?”

    The big man sat up. He took the damp cloth from the kid and pressed it to the ache above his eyes.

    “I’ll live, I guess.”

    “You remember anything?”

    “I remember a little horse kicking the shit outta me.”

    “That’s Bobbin. He’s the devil himself if he don’t know you. Raúl had no business letting you go in there.”

    “I’ll live,” the man said and made to stand up.

    The grey-haired man put a hand on his chest to keep him gently on the bed.

    “You best take it easy sir. You had a sizeable bump. Doctor needs to check you out. Anyways, they told everyone to go home.”

    “Go home? You sure?”

    “Well, pretty certain. They’re all clearing out for the day.”

    He stared at the big man.

    “You recognize me?”

    “Sure I do. You’re Mitchell, the head wrangler, but,” he gestured at his own outfit—jeans, boots, spurs and all—then at the grey-haired man’s smart suit and tie, “there’s something wrong with this picture, cowboy.”

    “I had to attend a funeral,” the grey-haired man said, inspecting himself self-consciously.

    “Well,” the big man said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

    “Thanks.”

    The big man rose to his feet.

    “I gotta get myself into one of them suits too, so I can attend the 45th Academy Awards. I got a thing I gotta do there.”

    “You sure you’re up for all that, sir?”

    The big man loosened a soft chuckle that scraped through the relative quiet of the trailer.

    “I guess I’m pretty certain,” he said.

     

    *          *          *          *          *

     

    The little hippy girl in the Red Indian getup walked slowly to the stage. She looked Apache. Chiricahua or maybe Western Apache. Jet black hair swung at her waist. A tan beaded dress. He’d killed lots of Apaches in his movies. No women, of course, though he’d probably widowed plenty.

    For a second, he wondered if he was seeing things.

    He was in the wings, getting ready for his bit when he saw the little Indian girl come up—almost float up—to receive the award and it was as though an invisible thread drew him to her. He moved closer to the stage, between a group of heavy-set security men. He was sweating heavy and breathing hard as she commenced her speech about Native Americans and respect, love and generosity, but then she said something about declining the award and booing broke out on the main floor.

    She looked so small and scared flanked by those two giant props of the Oscar statuette and she glanced nervously toward the wings, where he stood, and hesitated in her speech. The large sheet containing her speech quivered in her grasp and her sad little mouth saddened further.

    He moved toward her and one of the security guards, a dark-haired, squat fellow, placed a thick hand on his shoulder and pinched the flesh there urgently.

    The big man was listening to the speech. He absently shrugged the man’s hand away but another security man tugged at his elbow from behind and a taller, blonde haired security man stood beside him and tried for his other elbow.

    “Sir, you’d better stay here.”

    “And you’d better leave off,” the big man croaked as he yanked his elbows away. He tried to take another step but a fourth, a fifth then a sixth security man barred his path.

    “Sorry sir but we can’t let you do that?”

    “Do what?” the big man said with a grimace. “I’m just trying to talk to her.”

    “I’m sorry sir. We can’t allow that right now.”

    “It’s not your business,” the big man said but when he looked back at the stage the little Indian girl had vanished like a heat mirage in the desert.

    The band struck up and the audience applauded and, soon after, he found himself being introduced and he made his own speech and the filming wrapped up, but he kept thinking about the little Indian girl mirage he’d seen.

    When the ceremony was over, the stars mingled in small careful groups along political and historical and status lines. He kept an eye out for a reoccurrence of the Indian girl mirage. He didn’t see her again but, talking to other guests, he learned she wasn’t a mirage. She’d really been on stage. She’d really spoken those words. She’d really stood there, hands quivering lightly, while the audience heckled and booed her.

    He excused himself and waved for his personal driver, a quick, bright-eyed, sharp-faced man in his late twenties with slicked-back hair and a reluctant smile.

    “Get me into Brando’s party,” the big man said. “I don’t care how you do it.”

    His driver returned twenty minutes later.

    “You’re in,” he said.

    They drove to Mulholland Drive. He gave a lift to a couple of young up-and-coming actresses whose names he didn’t know and he couldn’t remember when they told him but who giggled and chatted carelessly the whole way to the Santa Monica Mountains. They all entered the large Spanish-style house together and the actresses’ laughter and general gaiety covered his entrance better than any gunpowder keg had in his pictures.

    The party was in full swing. People were drinking and shouting and laughing; little dabs of mirthful giggles and loud uncontrolled splashes of laughter as though emptied from a fire bucket. A haze of marijuana smoke clutched his nostrils as he wandered through the different rooms.

    A five-piece jazz band occupied a corner of the large open-plan living room and the lead singer, a tall, dark, graceful lady swirled effortlessly around a microphone stand, launching a series of winsome pleas into the warm night. On the other side of the house, by the pool, a keyboardist, guitarist and another singer performed a selection of modern hits. This singer—a pale, willowy fellow—decanted his soul into each song, almost collapsing into the outro before seemingly renewing his vigor for the next number.

    As the big man moved through the house the sound of one or other band would dominate and, each time, the conquered song would idle sedately into the background only to re-emerge moments later when he crossed some invisible threshold. As he made his way up the wide circular stairs, the two sounds grappled in the air around him, locked in close combat.

    A large dimly lit room of cushions and candelabras opened onto a long veranda. He picked a path through cushions and half-seen bodies which writhed with the apocalyptic fervor of drunken ardor.

    A set of thin white curtains floated across the wide doorway and the night air parted them just enough for him to see her standing on the balcony, looking out at the city lights in the distance.

    He approached cautiously. She was alone.

    “I heard your speech,” he said softly and she weaved back in surprise.

    He raised his hands.

    “I’m sorry, miss. I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wanted to speak to you, if that’s okay.”

    She looked at him for a long moment and eventually nodded slowly.

    He pointed to a metal table and chairs nearby.

    “Do you mind if we sit, miss?”

    She glanced about uncertainly then shook her head quickly. He pulled a chair out and gestured her into it before taking the seat opposite her.

    “You mind if I smoke,” he said, smiling. “I smoke when I’m nervous.”

    “No, it’s fine.”

    He smiled as he took out a pack of cigarettes then, smiling again, he offered her one, which she took, and he lit both their cigarettes with a light snap of his lighter.

    Out on the veranda, the modern music dominated again. The band were playing a song he’d never heard before called Peaceful Easy Feeling and the people around the pool below and the singer all swayed as if caught in the same mellow current.

    “This is nice,” he said.

    “Yes,” she replied, smiling timidly. Her dark eyes glittered in the light from half-a-dozen ornate lamps which stood at intervals along the balcony.

    He pulled his chair closer.

    “I heard your speech earlier,” he said.

    “Yes,” she said, her eyes staring unabashedly into his, “but did you see it?”

    “See it?”

    Her voice took on a dreamlike quality.

    “Did you see the oppression of the weak? The bloody war against nature? The long veil of hypocrisy that hangs over this nation? The thousands of bones lying unburied on the prairies?”

    He moved excitedly toward her, their faces inches apart.

    “I saw,” he said. “I saw all of it and I felt all of it, as though you were speaking just to me, directly into my brain.”

    “In a way, I was. I’ve seen all your pictures. I know you better than any man.”

    He frowned sadly.

    “You saw only a shadow of me in those movies. The shameful shadow of delusion. I decided today, I’ll never make another of those pictures. I’m done with that life. Do you believe me?”

    She smiled tenderly.

    “I believe we can be whoever and whatever we want to be, if we want it hard enough.”

    “I do want it. Truly, I do. It’s not something I thought about before today but so much has changed in this day. This morning I was an adolescent, knit in kin and afraid of the universe, and tonight I am become a man. The old me skulked in the shadows of that curtain, hiding in the wings, but then, bathed in your radiant candor I was baptized into the world and here I am.”

    Her eyes were aflame now. The music rose below them but neither of them heard it anymore.

    “I was drawn to you,” he said. “Like I’ve never been drawn to another. Like a celestial body stranded millennia in the cold immensity of space, suddenly feeling an urgent tug from somewhere in the vast emptiness. When those people started booing, I wanted to rush to your side. To be there with you.”

    “You did?”

    He stubbed out his cigarette and took her hand.

    “Yes, I did.”

    “And they stopped you?”

    “They tried to, but they can’t stop me now. Here I am. I want to be with you now, if I can. I can’t explain but something happened to me when I heard your speech. The scales fell from my eyes, and I suddenly saw the world, cold and hard, through your eyes. All the needless slaughter and butchery. All the lies and deceit. All the self-deceit. A world bereft of love or generosity waiting to be stocked. By us.”

    She urgently extinguished her own cigarette and placed her hand on his and their fingers intertwined.

    “I want that too,” she said and they stared long and hard into each other’s eyes, cataloguing the thousand mysteries there, counting each glimmer of light like beautiful little fireworks being tracked across the sky.

    An apprehensive cough came from behind them. They turned and his driver was there.

    “Your wife’s here,” the driver said.

    “Oh yeah,” the big man said. “Shit.”

  • Rain in the Face

    Dawn sun, distant mountains, red cliffs near, white clouds scattered, still world, until a breeze caresses the desert floor, and a scorpion awakes, resting on a piece of earth where no human ever stood. In this wilderness stands a horse, and sitting on the horse a rider. Tail swishing, standing still, a motionless man watching, intently, an eagle high above, hunting, alive, living to fly. The warrior wears the painted face and the feathered headwear of his long fathers. He looks up at its broad wings, he smiles, the way eagles can’t.

    The dream maker is hiding. Morning departs, lifest part of the day, sleep distant, last night’s dreams evaporate. The man and his horse make the wilderness less lonely. Every day he starts at dawn. The man is thinking, no words, words know, within their boundaries. He wonders whether his friend, the horse, thinks thoughts. It is his destiny to be chieftain. Kick the stirrup, the horse moves on slowly, distant mountain west, snowy summits beckon, through sand, clip clop, the scorpion lifts her tail, otherwise still, the horse and man wander away, red cliffs of hues, scorpion watching, like she always does.

    Horse walking in the desert, solitary in the wilderness, desert sands have no mind, just beauty, the thirsty horse knows. The thirsty man sees the distant river. The world was made for him. He thinks. He doubts. The dream maker dances in the flames of the fire the man has made, to keep him warm in the night and to ward off evil spirits. He is safe near the fire, under the stars. His tribe is at home, sleeping in the teepee, but he must search, with his horse, for his spirit guide. Then he will discover his name, and finally reach manhood. Now they are far away, beyond horizons, past the setting sun. Four months he has been gone, alone, searching, travelling where the stars are strange, waiting for the spirit guide to reveal itself, now just wilderness, loneliness, risk becoming destiny. Look to the clouds, a formless shape, no sitting bull, no crazy horse, who found their spirits in the shapes of clouds. His spirit is hiding, somewhere in the world. Like the dream maker does.

    The horse drinks from the river, the man stoops beside it, water in a cup of hands, he drinks, life itself returning, fear turns to laughter, there was never a first time, there was never a last. The sun sets, night falls, the universe emerges from the sky, the horse sleeps, the man is awake, seeing other worlds, not understanding, only understanding here, this world that created him, from nothing. He watches the stars at night, he is life, as much as the horse, as much as the river and the forest, the bear, the antelope, the eagle riding high in the morning, and the stars become memory, in his learning mind. At night, by the fire, he searches for his spirit guide in the galaxy rain.

    He raises his head, they see mountains, the horse knows and they walk, through the day, upwards, high near the summit, stone cliff juts, they stand on the precipice together, horse and man, looking out, over the great valley below, and above, the grey wanderers, summoning thunder, electric flashes in the distance, their hair blows, they are unwavering, a galloping storm approaches, they alone are conscious, they remain still in the oncoming storm, the man looks up, the skies open, the spirit guide arrives, he looks to the universe hiding, down comes the water, beating like drums, front hooves rise high, and the man speaks for the first time in months, “Rain in the Face’. It is done.

    Feature Image: Frank Cone

  • Fiction: The Text

    Saturday morning and Lil’Johnny was on his way to work on the Market. He walked along the long curve of street that ran along the bottom of the hill bordering the old marshes where now stood council estates. The tall towers stood like giants against the clear cold blue sky where the first rays of orange-golden sunlight lit up the morning sky. The road was shiny and quiet, anticipating the monotonous roar of traffic that was sure to follow. A pair of skittish wood pigeons leapt from the ground at Lil’Johnny’s approach, the heavy beat of their wings breaking the silence. 

    Lil’Johnny walked the long road until the bend where he turned into the park. The park too stood at the bottom of the hill, a great field ringed by trees. Up on the hill the close-knit silhouettes of Victorian facades looked down into the park and out over the marsh. In the park the sky opened out as if one looked up at an ocean above, a great blue expanse. He crossed the park, entering the walkway beneath the railway line and from there along a long sliver of park-lined path. Then abruptly right heading cross-country to the gate on the far side of a grassy green playing field.

    As Lil’Johnny turned right the Singing Bush tweeted and chirruped making him smile. The Singing Bush is a large undistinguished shrub that emits the sound of chirruping finches although not one of the little birds can be seen, completely invisible in the thicket of branches and leaves. Looking at the Bush one sees and hears a spirited shrub singing.

    Through the gate onto a little path along a row of houses, across the road, down a backstreet and then up the grafitti-ed cobbled alleyway onto the Market. The metallic clink of poles of stallholders erecting their metal-frame structures, greets Lil’Johnny. Boxes litter the road, vans parked across, the movement of bodies, soul music from a radio, a cluster of chain-smoking locals sitting outside the cafe. Lil’Johnny walks briskly down the street, looking neither left nor right, dodging the assorted obstacles living and inanimate.

    Lil’Johnny arrives at the Shop, just one of the hodge-podge of shopfronts lining either side of this mile-long medieval street that acts as Market on some days and High Street on others. “Robert Walkers” is written in large golden letters over the Shop. Below the sign is a large plate-glass window and to the right a single doorway leading inside. The Shop consists of a long wide corridor bordered on either side by high shelves overflowing with cut-price groceries and products – an Aladdin’s cave.  At the far end of the Shop is a wooden table with cash register. Out the back is a vast storeroom.

    Outside, Raja patiently sets up the stall, his slow thoughtful movements speak of his three decades performing this ritual. He turns his old lanky frame and smiles at Lil’Johnny’s approach, revealing a set of brilliant white teeth set against his dark Tamil skin, a sharp hooked nose and streaky black hair combed over his shiny pate. As usual he is smartly turned out in shiny dress shoes, sharp suite trousers, button-down shirt and overcoat. Lil’Johnny salutes him as he passes though the door into the Shop.

    As Lil’Johnny is about to head into the back he brushes against the corner of a shelf inadvertently and CRASH! An avalanche of junk falls off. ‘Fucking, fuck, fuck – Big Johnny you bastard – clean your shit up!’ he curses to the empty shop. He hastily clears up the fallen boxes, dirty plates, cups of mouldy rotting tea-bags and assorted out-of-date packets of god-knows-what. He heads out the back into the storeroom, down the rickety wooden stairs and dumps the smeared crockery in the small sink. “You can clean up this bloody mess yourself,” Lil’Johnny says to the Boss who is not there.

    Thus his workday begins. Lil’Johnny leverages the weighty front door off its hinge and drags it into the  back; he hoovers the floor with the trusty but mutilated Henry patched up with masking-tape; he fills baskets with nuts and, bending over the stall outside, flips the bags expertly into rows. In the middle of his routine Lil’Johnny spies Big Johnny, the Boss, sauntering towards the Shop. The Boss’ belly sticks out before his tall wide ageing frame, his white button-down shirt falling out of his baggy trousers and comfortable shoes adorn his feet. “Here comes Johnny!” calls Lil’Johnny to the approaching figure. “Mornin’” the Boss says by way of return.

    Big Johnny is vexed as usual. “Come on, come on, we’ve got to get this stall out,” he says impatiently, pulling out a box here, dumping something out of another there, rearranging one corner then another in a seemingly pointless haste. Raja gesticulates wildly at the Boss and shouts something about buying too much junk which the Boss ignores. Lil’Johnny smokes an insolent cigarette, watching the passing scene of early shoppers and day-trippers. Lil’Johnny hears the beep-beep of his phone. He pulls out the little brick of plastic and looks into the archaic screen which reads:

    “How was the DJ gig last Saturday? (heart)”

    Yes, there was a gig last Saturday, and yes Lil’Johnny had DJ-ed. But who was the text from? Lil’Johnny hates it when people did not sign off their texts with their name. It made for the situation that had just arisen. The number, ending 611, had not been saved to his phone. He had no idea who had sent it. “Come on, come on,” orders Big Johnny, “Get me a barrel out the back.” Lil’Johnny snaps to attention and rushes out the back leaving the Text till later.

    The stall consists of a long low table out in the street, piled with goods – herbal teas, 2litre olive oil, boxes of latex gloves, bags of sweets, 3kg brown sugar, packets of broken biscuits, nuts and dried fruit, bars of chocolate, spaghetti and lasagna sheets, dried chickpeas and tins of powdered milk. The stall’s flank is protected by a wall of blue barrels. On a stack of yellow crates sits a round battered Quality Street tin which acts as the cash register. Looking behind, Lil’Johnny can see through the door and into the back of the Shop where Raja and Big Johnny stand serving customers; there’s an animated conversation going on Lil’Johnny can’t hear. “Ah – that Text…” he remembers.

    “Sat woz good fun. Sorry u couldn’t make it. What u up to 2nit? Lil’Johnny” he punches into the keypad – Send – thinking, thinking – Sent.

    This gets Lil’Johnny wondering who it could be. Marta –lovely long legs, wide strong back, cute bob? Sally – older, tresses of long golden hair, a subtle bust he hasn’t quite figured out yet? Or one of those random meetings in the pub which had lead to a conversation and exchange of numbers? It puzzled Lil’Johnny. “Stop slacking and serve that customer,” barks Big Johnny pointing to a woman at the end of the stall holding out a box of tea. Yikes! Lil’Johnny pulls out a blue plastic bag and slopes across the stall with a servile “Madam…”.

    Thereafter the trade begins. “Yes sir, that’s £1….4 for £1 on those Madam….Would you like bag?……The price of the oils? £7 for the Extra Virgin, £6 otherwise…..Oi kid stopping hitting that packet…..What’s it like? I am afraid I can’t eat it for you sir, you need to decide for yourself……That’s £3.50, you’ve given me £10, £6.50 change coming….No Madam we don’t take cards, only cash…..A bank transfer? Sorry we only take hard currency ……Price for that? Let me check” – Lil’Johnny holds the item high in the air and shouts into the back of the Shop; Big Johnny signals with his fingers ‘4’ which Lil’Johnny repeats verbally to the customer. “It’s cheaper in the supermarket,” gripes the customer and walks off. “Yeah well buy it from there then” Lil’Johnny imagines himself saying.  Things quieten down and Lil’Johnny pulls out his phone. There is a message waiting. It reads:

    “Hey – that’s great. At the Bolton Arms tonight. There is a good band lined up. Hope to see you down there?! xx”

    “Bah! Sign your name!” thinks Lil’Johnny aloud. He wasn’t really planning on heading so far from his usual stomping grounds. The Bolton was an old Victorian pub someway along the path that runs beside the Great River. Would it be worth it? It all depended who it was on the other side of that number – 611. The number started to fascinate him. “Who are you Madam 611? I’ve got to find out. I’ve got to know,” he concluded with a determined air.

    The day proceeded in its timeless routine. Come 4pm Lil’Johnny starts packing up the stall, moving its constituting parts into the back of the Shop. By 5pm he is supping on a can of beer. By 6pm Raja has surreptitiously handed Lil’Johnny a little bundle of cash that constitutes Lil’Johnny’s wages. Lil’Johnny carefully deposits the cash in his secret pocket. Then there passes much banter and familial conversation between the three as they wait for the last of the custom to evaporate. At last they vacate the darkened Shop and lock up. Raja’s nimble fingers weave the weighty metal chain through gaps in the shutter and with the ‘snap’ of the lock, Lil’Johnny feels released.

    ————————————

    The Oxford Arms sits on a forgotten corner between a busy road, a raised railway line and the Creek. It’s a spit-and-sawdust, no frills live music pub. Lil’Johnny decides to go there first. At the end of a road coming off the Market sits the handsome, lonely building acting as a beacon for pirates and other ne’r-do-wells.

    Lil’Johnny enters, orders a lager and slips back outside. He sups the clear pishy liquid quenching a thirst more mental than physical. He takes a deep pull on a spliff and breathes a deep sigh of relief.

    Inside the pub there is a band playing some of sort of naff pseudo-punk. One of their songs is called “Wisdom of the Blues”. Lil’Johnny goes in. The lead singer struts his stuff on the dance floor while an older crowd bop to the music. It’s boring music – a mish mash of everything and nothing at all – a noisy mess, played overloud. Two sexy older ladies dance, mobile phones in hand. Members of the band strut off the stage whacking people in the face with their instruments. “Thank you, good night”. “One more” the crowd shout. This last song has a terrible guitar solo.

    Phil Sick – critic, DJ, music nerd – arrives. He is short with a great bush of ratty white hair; he wears glasses, long shorts, canvas Converse trainers and a black-and-white polka dot shirt. “Oi oi, Sick” calls Lil’Johhny. Phil starts waxing lyrical about the “orgasmic” female noise artist he has just seen at a bar at the end of the road; he describes the dry-ice and strobe in the dark basement. “It was loud,” he says looking up at Lil’Johnny with a glow of euphoric bliss. Sick then goes to stand in front of the speakers waiting for the next band looking like an untidy teenage girl.

    The pub is busy. DJ Toffee is playing between sets, a munchkin of a man peeping out from behind the decks. There the crackle from his overworn records. He plays an eclectic mix of: “The Israelites”, “I want to hold your hand”, “Disco inferno”, “Leader of the pack”, “How long has this been going on…” and “Black Betty” in succession. The Soundman moves about the pub like a malevolent force, vexed because he can’t play HIS playlist of neurotic trance. Will – patron saint of the Oxford Arms – is at his usual seat at the bar wearing a camouflage baseball cap, pint in hand, looking on blankly.

    Lil’Johnny looks up at the clock on the wall – it reads 8:00pm. “Time to move on me’thinks. Don’t want to be too late, just fashionably” he says to himself. The Coyote Men, a four-man Newcastle rock band, its members dressed in tutu’s and Mexican wrestling masks, come on stage. They start playing a surfy caveman rock with a funky rolling bassline; Americana rock-and-roll with a Mexican twist. As Lil’Johnny leaves through the side door, he catches a line from one of their songs: “Loopy Loopy Lopez \\ Break my heart, I break your legs..”. “Geez! Just when the bands were getting good. Oh well, it can’t be helped.”

    *************

    Along the Creek and over it, through the busy town centre and onto the path that runs alongside the Great River. The almost-full moon hangs high and bright in the inky-black sky; Lil’Johnny salutes it. The Great River is at high-tide and tonight it has a flat, reflective surface like a field of mud – smooth and defined. One can just hear the rushing river like the rustling of paper over the mournful drone of the air traffic above.

    Beams of light shine across the River, shimmering pillars. On the other side skyscrapers are lit up like constellations organized by bureaucrats, geometric glittering anthills. Its dark by the river and people cut figures against the glowing skyline. Cylindrical metal buoys pockmarked with raised ridges make black patches against the luminescent river as if mines waiting for contact. A river bus pulls out of the quay and rides gracefully up the river trailing waves in its wake. A few seconds later the Great River speaks: the lapping of water, gurgle – slap – wash – the elemental crashing of waves.

    Lil’Johnny stops along the path, leans against the balustrade and looks out over the Great River, that still molten pond of glass. It exudes its primal silence. Lil’Johnny gets to thinking: “What the hell am I doing? Does it really matter? I wouldn’t be out this evening if I didn’t have this mission to fulfill, this mystery to solve.” “My little manor,” he thinks panning from the hills behind to the Great River before him. “I hardly ever leave this place. My little corner of the Earth. Some people want to travel but I just want is to follow my little circuit, see me old muckers, listen to music and dance the night away. In short – to party. Am I looking for love tonight? I don’t know. I’m looking for something….I’m just not sure what it is yet. An answer, a sign, an auspice, destiny?!”

    The stupid clump of a jogger and their loud rasping guttural breathing disturbs Lil’Johnny’s train of thought. Then the gabble of voices in the dark, moving forms. Lil’Johnny pulls himself together and continues along the river path, gazing dreamily up at the evening star stuck up in the sky like a brilliant satellite.

    Off the river path, halfway down a side street, a corner pub sits – a dumpy Victorian relic – painted black. It’s the Bolton Arms and Lil’Johnny quickens his pace because he knows he’s late. In through the door and straight to the bar; he’s gasping for a drink. The pub is packed.

    Lil’Johnny looks around making a visual inspection of the punters. While he is never good at remembering names or numbers, Lil’Johnny has an uncanny memory for faces – he knows that if Madam 611 is there, he’ll know. She is not there in that mass. While Lil’Johnny waits to be served he surveys his surroundings. The pub is painted in a dark coat; there in one corner a raised stage stands with a cut-glass mirror behind and neon-red lights spell out “Bolton” above – the red light reflects off the black ceiling and splashes across tables. A discoball, small and lonely, hangs high above the stage. There is a band setting up. Fairylights strung from the ceiling reflect in the large handsome windows creating a starry infinity. A big stuffed fish sits in a glass case above the bar.

    “What you having?” asks the young barmaid. “Pint of the pale ale please”. Pour – clunk – “Cash or card?” – beeeep! Lil’Johnny takes a long sip and returns to surveying the pub. People wearing leather jackets and denim shirts, young men with long hair, quiff’s black and grey, blonde bobs, pates, leopard print, glasses of white wine, teeth, smiling faces. There a mobile phone so sparkly that a magpie would be off with it. At the bar long blonde hair frames an angelic face with long eyelashes. A wealthier set than Lil’Johnny is used to. They talk and eat and generally look bored.

    Its the “Magic City Trio” playing tonight. Lil’Johnny knows them. A husband and wife outfit who sing and play guitar. The band includes a double bass, brass and drums. There are lots of pairs of glasses in the band. The husband wears a floral-print Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, tall with big lips and long greying hair; she is short and wears a glittery silver dress. They start off with “Spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you…”. Their sound is a vibrant country honky-tonk with drawling vocals and twangy guitars. A mother with a snub nose sitting near the stage covers her young daughter’s ears with her hands; the child has a big unhappy look on her face. The young child looks askance at an older lady dancing wildly in front.

    Lil’Johnny decides to go out into the garden – a strip of gravel on which sit rows of wooden picnic benches. He lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag and watches the curling of smoke rising and dissipating into the sky. Looking up he sees the sweep of new build flats. From the flats emanates a dull green-grey light punctuated by chaotic, disjointed, angular shapes of the stuff inside;  there the flitting light of a large TV screen. “Sorry, the girls are coming with me” says a lady to some leery lads chatting up her friends perched on the benches nearby. Lil’Johnny surveys the garden and no Madam 611.

    The reader may ask why Lil’Johnny doesn’t just text Madam 611? Why not just ask who she is and where she is? That would be unthinkable to Lil’Johnny. He believes in fate, in chance – what adventure would there be if we just got all our answers from pressing some buttons on a phone? Its a matter of principle. If Lady Luck should favour him tonight he will meet up with Madam 611. She will appear from around a corner, they will recognize each other, embrace and sit down to talk; they will move closer to one another and nuzzle. Lil’Johnny must continue on his mission until the battle is won or lost.

    The beer has loosened Lil’Johnny’s hips and inhibitions. He joins the throng of dancers inside. “Burning ring of fire…” plays from the stage. Being the hill-billy he is, Lil’Johnny slaps his thighs and keeps time to the music with his stomping feet. He sees the back of bobbing heads and heads and heads behind which the band can just be seen. Closing his eyes the rhythm runs through him and into his moving body. Things become fuzzy, ephemeral and euphoric, the spirit of Dionysus unleashed. Around him bodies pop, shuffle, jiggle and jive. Shaking hips, dancing bums, tossed hair and furtive glances. Lil’Johnny is carried away, lost in the scene.

    Time passes and the band has come to an end. The Strokes plays softly off a playlist. Lil’Johnny falls into a large leather armchair and once more surveys the pub. The crowd has thinned and empty glasses fill the tables. Lil’Johnny strikes up conversation with a pretty lady sitting nearby. They get to talking about how they each came to be here this night. “Well, I got this text from a number ending 611 and I had to see who she was…”. The lady looks at Lil’Johnny biting on her curled finger, laughing. “I was just being honest…” protests Lil’Johnny feebly. She leaves shortly thereafter and he is alone once again. An old couple trundle out of the pub, fingers intertwined in a caring embrace.

    Lil’Johnny gets his things and pats his secret pocket to see that his wages are still safe – all is well. He does one more circuit of the pub. Just as he thought – Madam 611 is not there. He knows the routine – she won’t text him again, he won’t text her, a stalemate of obstinate wills – such is the way in this cosmopolitan dump. He will now never know who Madam 611 is, she will be just another unsolved and soon forgotten mystery of his life. Despite his inebriated state, Lil’Johnny He takes his leave of the Bolton and joins the darkness of the river path. The moon has shifted round and the tide on the Great River has dropped. Lil’Johnny is drunk, happy and alone. He walks along the dead quiet river path homeward bound with an uneven swinging step, singing that classic reggae song out loud: “I got money in my pocket // But I just can’t get no love….”

    —

    Feature Image: Katerina Holmes

  • Dog Years

    Then the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.” – Genesis 18:20-21

    They were an ancient and patient race. Sympathetic. Considered. Sarcastic.

    The first they knew of us were radio waves which pierced their silence like dilating klaxons. At first, they couldn’t fathom the meaning of those faded, tinny excretions. Their initial thought: a cosmic butt-dial of some distant world’s collective mental breakdown. After prolonged examination, the significance of the messages became clear and, even clearer, what they needed to do about them.

    It took time to get psychologically and technologically prepared. There were details to be drawn out. Matters to be pondered.

    Through a freak of physics I cannot explain, they reached Earth long before the messages which dispatched them to us. They were a little disappointed when they learned they would have to wait a while for Eurovision and the last season of Succession and for Dr. Pimple Popper but, as mentioned, they were a patient race and took some comfort in having arrived just in time to witness firsthand the legendary fall of Troy.

    It was to be their first encounter with humanity’s propensity for exaggeration.

    “This shithole?” one of them exclaimed on first sighting the mythical city of horses and discovering it to be a place of meagre towers and ramshackle fortifications, behind whose crumbling walls lay a sprawl of hovels.

    “Neither epic nor poetic,” someone remarked.

    “A packed lunch might be in order,” another cautioned, indicating the worrying proximity of food preparation to sanitation.

    They thought it best not to bust right in. They didn’t quite have the saying “First impressions…” but it was close enough. They brainstormed the best approach and decided to remain in stationary orbit over a different country for fifty years each, and to quietly observe (occasionally shop). They took our word that countries or political states were the best way to chunk the task up. Boy, did they come to regret that.

    They held position above us and watched carefully over years which became centuries and centuries which became millennia, waiting for the right moment.

    They picked up and discarded accents, nurtured short-lived loyalties in the manner of ardent telenovela devotees (which they would also eventually become) and squandered hope on numerous lost causes (including, eventually, many of the aforementioned telenovelas).

    Again and again, they were bemused by our ability to disremember, or to downright forget. They saw whole civilisations lost to memory: Atlantis, Arcadia, dusty old Troy. Again and again, they witnessed reality turned inside-out and history stitched from the torn lining.

    “Do these people write anything down?” they frequently wondered.

    They never failed to be impressed by our ability to bend the truth, to sweep inconvenience beneath the most conveniently located carpet and to normalise the most extraordinary fuck ups.

    Many of our greatest achievements, they viewed with distrust or scorn. Despite having had a ringside seat for the construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal, they could only view these projects the way we might a child’s meandering sandcastles: estates driven by ego rather than necessity.

    “Hanging, my arse,” one concluded acidly.

    “Oooh,” another cooed, “you can see it from all the way up here.”

    “Not at all a massive waste of bricks,” someone deadpanned.

    They were stationed over Britain during the industrial revolution and watched with contained alarm as six million tonnes of coal was ripped from the ground each day to feed mankind’s growing appetite for boiling water.

    “You can see why they might think this is a good idea,” one noted.

    “What could go wrong?” another sighed.

    They saw Hitler coming from miles away. Literally.

    “The facial hair doesn’t exactly scream stability,” one observed.

    They were not overly fond of wars or revolutions. Not that they were squeamish; it just meant a lot of re-work. All that coming apart, then coming back together, resulted in devilish admin. Political pacts and alliances meant more red tape. The Foedus Cassianum, Treaty of Versailles, the EU; each gave them pause but, in the end, they stuck to their guns and to fifty years per country.

    In this way, they’d covered sixty-four countries and had been over the sixty-fifth, Ireland, for about forty-five years when word came through.

    It was time.

    Mary and Dessie were given the assignment and they took a small craft down to the surface, coming in low over the Irish capital.

    “Should I engage the cloaking device?” Dessie asked.

    “Have you seen their air force?” Mary said.

    They landed on the grounds of the official residence of the President of Ireland but not before they’d made a spectacular pass over North Dublin.  A group of young men in loose-fitting leisurewear (embellished with the branding of a mid-table American basketball team none of them had ever seen play) briefly suspended their assault on two German tourists to allow their jaws tip wordlessly open as the silver craft banked overhead with a loud, satisfying whine.

    By the time they disembarked, a hurried cordon had been thrown around the craft, which Dessie had parked somewhat inelegantly between a waterless fountain and a stone bench on the large front lawn of the estate. A steady stream of curious citizens trespassed onto the parklands along the northern boundary, edging closer with each minute, as news of the visitors spread.

    A local news crew had been diverted from interviewing dog walkers about the amount of dog shit on surrounding pavements in the nearby Phoenix Park and now perched at the opening of the cordon, hand-combing windblown hair and assembling game-faces while allowing themselves full-contact daydreams about Sky News discovering them and the opportunity this might afford to invite Mister Feeney, their dictatorial news director, to stick his maggoty job sideways up his hole.

    The president, a short, ancient, scholarly man with a friendly face but accusatory eyes which lurked beneath scurrying eyebrows, tarried on the edge of the lawn, torn between a sudden clench of self-preservation (spawned by vivid recollections of sensationalist Cold War films in which proxy commies in rubber alien outfits rampaged through cities with ray guns) and a bone-deep drive to fulfill his solemn duty as welcomer-in-chief. With a stoicism born of a hundred rugby international red-carpet greetings he came down on the side of duty.

    The president was flanked by his wife, the first lady, and his aide-de-camp, a military woman with a serious, square face, thick angry eyebrows and a ceremonial sword which she stroked mercilessly.

    The president’s wife, a sturdy, astute Cork woman, piloted her husband with the merest contact to his elbow, weaving a delicate path through growing numbers of police, soldiers and officials as a long liquidy gangplank telescoped out from the silver craft and the two occupants made their way slowly and carefully down the ramp towards them.

    The visitors appeared to be a regular man and a woman in their late twenties, dressed in what the president would have called “casual attire” if he hadn’t thought it might earn a tired eye-roll from his wife. The president’s wife recognized the female visitor’s blouse as one she’d considered for her own daughter’s birthday during a shopping trip on Grafton Street a few weeks earlier.

    “Céad míle fáilte,” the president said, bowing somewhat pompously as the two lithe, youthful-looking figures reached them.

    “Go raibh míle maith agat,” Mary answered in stumbling Leaving Cert Irish.

    Dessie smiled and whispered something to Mary but she cut him off with a silent elbow to the ribs.

    “You speak our native language?” the president asked, somewhat confused but permitting his face to emit only professional delight.

    “Just at an Irish level,” Mary answered with an impertinent wink.

    “Excuse me?” the president said.

    “That was a joke,” Mary said. “I meant badly. Like everyone else here.”

    “Ah, right,” the president said with a nervous laugh. He was a proud Gaeilgeoir but wasn’t sure his beloved cultural heritage warranted a full-blown inter-galactic diplomatic incident so he pumped a curious, jolly smile into his face and said, “Very good. I’m glad to see you share our…” he hesitated, “Earthling sense of humour.”

    The visitors exchanged a brief smirk and the president’s wife observed a florid diffusion in her husband’s cheeks.

    “Well,” Mary said, “You might say we are distant kin of yours.”

    “Might you,” the aide-de-camp said, directing an incredulous look towards the president who was too busy casting his hands in small, delighted circles to notice. His wife tightened her smile patiently. She loved her husband but this was his second seven-year term and sometimes she wondered if she hadn’t married into an intricately stitched straight jacket.

    Timid introductions were made. The president’s wife noted the visitors’ accents: the female’s an inner-city crumble, less frequently heard in recent years; the male’s a ringing specimen of the west Dublin twang; machiney and discordant.

    “I must say,” the president remarked excitedly, “I was expecting you to have more…exotic names.”

    “Those names are very exotic where we come from,” Mary said.

    “Ah, of course,” the president said, trying to recall some alien names from what little science fiction he’d seen or read but only coming up with “R2-D2”.

    “We like to adapt ourselves to local customs wherever we go,” Dessie explained. “We’re very…” he cast about for the right word, “adaptable.”

    Mary rolled her eyes and shrugged apologetically.

    “Those names were all the rage when we came to Ireland first, in the early 80s,” she said. “These days,” she offered a small shrug, “not so much.”

    “The 1980s?” the president’s wife exclaimed. “You’ve been observing humankind since then?”

    “Since long before then,” Mary said. “That was only when we came to this country to observe your people more closely.”

    The aide-de-camp fixed Mary with a baleful look.

    “I suppose,” she grumbled, “you’re the ones going around the place abducting innocent folks and subjecting the poor craters to cavity searches and mind probes and who-knows-what indignities.”

    “I can assure you,” Mary said, “we’ve no interest in abducting you and even less interest in your cavities.”

    “Must be someone else,” Dessie assured them.

    The first lady wafted the aide-de-camp’s remarks away with the back of a hand and gave Mary — what she hoped might be — a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

    “J’know, I can’t believe you’ve been here since the 80s,” she said. “Sure, you don’t look a day over twenty-five, dear.”

    Mary’s lips lingered in a smile.

    “Well, you should see the daily beauty regimen I have to go through to look like this.”

    When the introductions had been completed and small-talk indulged, the president suppressed thoughts of ray gun-toting aliens blowing his beautiful furniture to smithereens and gestured towards the Greek-style portico, saying, “Won’t you come inside?”

    The small group made their way past official seals, lithographs and stately pictures, acquiring more unsmiling security and glum secretarial staff as they moved further into the building. The aide-de-camp stroked the brass hilt of her sword urgently now as she entertained visions of alien necks careering against its blade and springing into the air like popped champagne corks. She tipped the silver scabbard forward and back in time to her metronomic step, like the implacable arm of a grandfather clock.

    When they were seated around the large conference table, food and drink was offered but Mary waved it away.

    “Thank you for your hospitality,” she said, “but we have something very important to speak to you about.”

    “We’re all ears, as the Americans say” the president said with a modest guffaw, his palms upturned inoffensively.

    “No doubt, the Americans will be along very soon,” Mary said with a bitter smile. “As will others. This matter affects everyone.” She unclasped her hands and spread them on the table and looked around the room. “Very well. To get right to the point, we are here to let you know that your time is come.”

    There was a collective gasp among the presidential party, security staff, dignitaries, secretaries and service staff.

    An unpretentious tea lady from the Northside of Dublin was in the process of filling the president’s cup. She looked up suddenly and said, “Ya bleedin’ wha’?”

    The misdirected teapot scalded the president’s hand and he released a shrill yelp.

    “Watch what you’re doing, Molly,” the president’s wife scolded as the president hurried the meat of his hand into his gob and the maid withdrew the pot, staring fixedly at Mary with her mouth tipped open.

    “What do you mean, our time is come?” the aide-de-camp prodded.

    “I’m sorry for putting it so crudely,” Mary said with a shrug. “Our leaders felt, given your history, the message might carry more weight if we used stark, biblical language. What I mean is: the human race is to be destroyed. In precisely seven days.”

    A new collective gasp surpassed the first in volume and participation.

    “Destroyed?” the president said removing his burnt hand and emitting a nervous purl of laughter. “This must be an elaborate joke. Why would you want to destroy the human race?”

    “To prevent a fate worse than death,” Mary said.

    “What fate could be worse than the death of billions of humans?” the president asked prodding his burnt hand delicately.

    “The fate which will happen if humans remain on their current path,” Mary said.

    “And what fate is that?” the president’s wife asked, wetting a napkin in a glass of water and dabbing blindly at the burn on her husband’s hand.

    “Untold suffering for humans and the total destruction of all life on this planet,” Mary said as Dessie provided an accompaniment of tight-lipped nodding.

    “That’s a bit vague,” the aide-de-camp said.

    “I doubt you’d enjoy us being more specific,” Dessie said with a wink.

    “How can you be so certain that this is our fate?” the president’s wife asked.

    “Because,” Mary said, “where we come from, this has already happened.”

    “Happened?” the president said, almost in a daze. “To whom has this happened?”

    Mary pointed at him and then allowed her finger to roam about the room,

    “To everyone here. To all of you. It was—will be —a global event.”

    “But that can’t be.” the president spluttered. “That’s simply incredible.”

    The aide-de-camp’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

    “How do we know you’re telling the truth?” she said.

    “You don’t,” Mary answered, “but whether you believe it or not will have little impact on whether it happens. What we are proposing is the only humane option available. Your destruction is happening one-way-or-another. I think you know this.” She looked around the table. “Deep down, you all know we speak the truth.”

    A few people among the wider staff allowed their faces to sink into devastation. Some stood rigid with anger. Most slumped in naked awe, unable to process what they had just heard.

    “Wait,” the president’s wife said. “Does that mean you’ve travelled back in time? Doesn’t that also mean you can go back in time again and change the course of history to avoid this disaster?”

    “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that,” Mary said.

    Dessie nodded glumly.

    “Time is a tricky one,” he said, “and time travel a very tricky one. It’s not like your movies. Unpredictable as hell. For example, we’ve been here much longer than we’d intended to be.”

    “How long, exactly?” the aide-de-camp asked.

    Mary and Dessie exchanged a look and Mary nodded her consent.

    “Thirteen or fourteen thousand years,” Dessie said. “Give or take a few hundred years.”

    “Fourteen thousand years!” the aide-de-camp gasped. “For fuck’s sake. Why haven’t you warned us about this before now?”

    “We have tried in many ways,” Mary said, “but you appear to need to be on the brink of destruction before you pay a blind bit of attention to the reality sitting right under your noses.”

    A burst of static came from a red-faced man with a blonde crew cut and a white earpiece and he leaned into the president and whispered something which lifted him out of his seat.

    “POTUS?” the president said breathlessly and the red-faced man turned a shade redder as he nodded carefully.

    The president sped excitedly to the windows, as though the leader of the free world might suddenly spring from behind the emerald green curtains. He performed a rushed, unpersuasive chortle and pointed out the lights of various news helicopters as they dipped and clattered over the nearby parkland.

    “You’ve certainly got our attention now,” he said, turning to them, his face a mask of grim determination. “The world will listen. Humankind will change. I’m absolutely certain of it, given this second chance.”

    “I’m afraid not,” Mary said with a curt shake of her head. “Your destruction is inevitable. This is just us giving you a chance to make peace with your end.”

    The group stared back at her in silence and disbelief and with the helpless anger of those who feel certain they have been cheated by fate.

    Mary looked at Dessie and they exchanged a silent nod.

    “Our leaders thought you might struggle to accept our message,” Mary said. “They felt a parable from your bible might be apt and may help to explain the severity of the situation you face: the story of Sodom and Gomorrah; two ancient cities which brought destruction upon themselves through their own actions and inactions. I believe most of you will be familiar with that story?”

    “Of course,” the president said, “the Cities of the Plain in which God—”

    “Oh, shut up Maurice,” his wife scolded, “and let them speak.”

    “Thanks,” Mary said, “but, to be honest, I didn’t have much to add. We just wanted to establish the reference in your minds. We’re not big on unnecessary elaboration.”

    The president fidgeted nervously with his good hand. Like most Irish people of his generation, he was more than a little familiar with those passages of the bible. It was a tale which had scalded many a young mind, including his own.

    “But that story talked about terrible evil,” he said in an imploring tone. “Irredeemable evil. Surely that doesn’t apply in our case. Humanity has made some mistakes, I’ll grant you, but we have so much potential for good.”

    “Unfortunately,” Mary said firmly, “it is your potential for destruction which you seem to have fulfilled.”

    “That’s rather harsh,” the president said belligerently. “Humans have done incredible things. Music. Poetry. Literature—”

    Mary cut him off with a raised hand.

    “Yes, yes, incredible things, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re…” she hesitated, searching for the right words.

    Dessie nipped in.

    “A bag of fucking spanners.”

    “I was going to say terrifying procrastinators,” Mary said, “but that works too.” She turned to the president. “I’m afraid we are not philosophers or debaters. Our people are relatively plain-spoken and among them we are considered direct. We were chosen because it was felt we understood your culture best and might have a better chance of being listened to.”

    “What will happen in seven days?” the president’s wife asked, the simplicity of her question and the terror in her voice provoking a sudden silence in the room.

    “Don’t worry,” Mary said, “it’ll be very peaceful. You’ll barely know it’s happening. It will be as though you’re being swept away in a storm of sweet ecstasy.”

    “Jesus but don’t you make global euthanasia sound fierce comforting altogether?” the aide-de-camp muttered bitterly.

    The president’s wife had been raised on the same terrifying Old Testament stories as her husband and struggled to contain images of fire and sulphur raining down on them but, in that moment, the biblical reference suddenly offered a chink of light. She held a single index finger aloft to register her thought.

    “In the case of Sodom and Gomorrah,” she said with something approaching a litigious tone, “didn’t God give the citizens a chance of redemption if his angels could find just fifty good people?”

    Dessie nudged Mary but she shook her head as she swished an outstretched index finger decisively before the first lady’s nose.

    “Oh no, no,” she admonished, “you’re not pulling that ‘fifty good men’ shite.”

    She indicated Dessie with a flick of her forehead, “Sure, this eejit would spare the lot of ye just to save Lionel Bloody Messi. No, no, no. We’re not going down that road.”

    Dessie shared a sympathetic frown.

    “It’s not like we’re happy about the situation,” he explained with a shrug. “We’ve become very attached to you and your ways. I mean, I’m only three seasons into Breaking Bad and my team just got a new manager. We might finally get somewhere.”

    “For Christ’s sake,” the aide-de-camp muttered bitterly, “mankind’s fate is in the hands of fucking Man U fans and we all know they’d rather the world end than see them relegated.” She glared at Dessie, “Which they fucking will.”

    “Caroline!” the president scolded his aide-de-camp. “These people are still our guests.”

    “Sorry, sir,” the aide-de-camp said as she comforted herself with the molded end of her sword.

    “It’s okay,” Dessie said with a shrug. “She’s probably right about United facing the drop.”

    Mary waved her hands for calm.

    “I am sorry,” she said, “but this is the only way to avoid the terrible conditions which will occur if we don’t intervene. You have seven days. I’m afraid there isn’t much more to say. Of course, we’re happy to reiterate the same message to your television cameras.”

    “Do you think you could hold on a few hours?” the president said, looking nervously at his watch. “The American president is on his way.”

    “I’m afraid not,” Mary said.

    The president’s wife looked around the room at the growing despair and confusion.

    She rose and held her hands out for silence, then faced Mary.

    “I believe you,” she said, with tears rolling down her cheeks. “I believe every word you’ve said. You’re right about us. We can’t seem to stop ourselves acting stupidly. To anyone sane, we must seem hell-bent on our own destruction.”

    Mary nodded quietly to Dessie who nodded back as the president’s wife continued.

    “But we deserve more than seven days to make peace with our end. If you are as straightforward and honest as you say, you’ll have to admit that’s fair.”

    Mary seemed to consider for a moment.

    “How long do you suggest we give you to make a good end?” she asked.

    Without hesitation, the president’s wife said, “A year.”

    The rest of the group exchanged questioning looks and the president’s wife cast an interrogating look back but no one seemed able or willing to provide a correction to her timeline.

    “A year?” Mary repeated and she looked at Dessie who bobbed his head in consideration.

    The president’s wife completed her scan of the room and nodded somberly but certainly.

    “Give us a year to make a good end,” she said.

    Mary rose.

    “We are not negotiators, nor are we empowered to make this decision, but I will take your request to those who are and we will provide an answer within twenty-four hours.”

    “How will we know if you’ve agreed?” the president’s wife asked.

    Mary gave an ironic smile.

    “We will give you a sign,” she said with a light chuckle. “If we agree to your proposal then you will see a red sky at sunset tomorrow evening.”

    “A red sky at night is a common occurrence this time of year,” the president said. “How could we be sure it was your signal?”

    Mary smiled again.

    “I doubt you will have seen a red sky like this one,” she said, “and I doubt a red sky everywhere is a common occurrence. There shouldn’t be any doubt.”

    They held their press conference. By this time, reporters from television stations across the world had gathered and the words of the visitors went out live around the globe.

    The American ambassador was keen to revisit the timelines. His team suggested detaining the visitors — by force, if necessary — until the matter could be thoroughly unpicked but this was politely rebuked by the Irish presidential staff and, with the cameras of the world’s press filming them, the small group made their way back through the crowd towards the visitors’ craft. As if by magic, the silver ramp extended from the ship and touched the grass in front of the party.

    The president’s wife hugged the visitors. Tears jeweled her eyes but she retained a determined look. She pressed Mary’s hands lightly in her own.

    “If we can change in this year, can disaster still be averted?”

    Mary looked at her with pity.

    “You have the means,” she said, “but it is unlikely that you will change. It’s better you make your peace with it. Whatever happens, you will not see us again so I’ll say goodbye now.”

    “All the best,” Dessie said and he pumped the president’s limp arm.

    The visitors waved once and walked up the gangplank through a salvo of camera flashes as the beams from overhead helicopters sliced the thickening gloom as though portioning the very air above them.

    The silver ramp disappeared into the craft and a low drone built as the ship slowly rose into the air above them and spun in a light smooth manner that could not be confused with any human vehicle. The disk bobbled in the air with a fluttering ethereality before surging suddenly into the sky and vanishing in the dark thunderheads which had formed above.

    Every word that had been spoken was reported and analysed in minute detail in the hours and days that followed.

    The American president, along with other world leaders, arrived in Ireland soon afterwards and an emergency summit of countries was hastily convened. The general consensus was that the Irish officials had handled the situation terribly. The Americans, in particular, castigated their hosts for the meek surrender of a one-year extension.

    “Fucking amateurs!” their officials lamented. “The opening pitch should have been ten years minimum. And how the hell did nobody mention money?”

    “It wasn’t that type of discussion,” one Irish official protested.

    “It’s always that type of discussion,” her American counterpart replied.

    But, for all the debate and self-important statements, all watched nervously as the sun set the following evening and crimson streaks filled the sky across the world, as though the sun were a gigantic blob of paint wiped across the firmament by a huge inestimable hand.

    Theologians and scholars scrutinised the visitors’ reference to Sodom and Gomorrah. Much focus was given to the use of that story rather than — what many felt would have been — the more fitting tale of the great flood and Noah’s Ark. It was cogently argued by some parties that the visitors had chosen very carefully in order to send a clear message for humanity to get away as fast as possible. Noah, they argued, had taken his time, constructing a vessel enormous enough to contain samples of every animal as well as humanity so that the world could be rebuilt. In the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, only Lott and his immediate family were evacuated and this was done with great haste and at the last possible second.

    Despite this, several Ark-like projects were initiated by tech billionaires with the goal of saving mankind, or more specifically, themselves, along with those tiny portions of mankind which might prove useful to a tech billionaire fleeing a doomed planet. Each contemplated the long hibernation necessary to reach distant, uninhabitable rocks with minimal potential for life and all considered the security of their person and their holdings during such a hibernation. Very little consideration was given to more practical concerns or to the fate of those who had no recourse to a tech billionaire. Nor did any of them attempt to save any other species. The visitors had been ambiguous about the prospects for other creatures and this had established a moral vacuum on the matter into which mankind poured their apathy.

    The concept of dog years took hold with many people. This was the idea that one could minimize sleep and use each second of each day more productively to eke out more value from the limited time we had. As with all human undertakings, it was carried out obsessively and profitably. Dog years became a huge industry with plans, training courses, gurus, TV shows and all manner of proselytising. To all intents and purposes, it became a new religion.

    Religions themselves — that is, the more established ones — felt strongly vindicated by these events. Priests and proponents relished the opportunity to say “I told you so” on a global scale but it was something of a pyrrhic victory. Imminent apocalypse had always been more useful when it was less imminent.

    Some efforts were made to change mankind’s path but these remained fragmented and unpopular. Again, the visitors were blamed for being too vague about what needed to change and many governments argued that the lack of specificity was proof that climate change, rampant consumerism or other obvious ills had never been the issue. More coordinated effort was put into the construction of sophisticated weaponry to enable humans to turn the tables on the visitors when they — so to speak — attempted to call time on us. Air forces and militaries spent huge quantities of time, money and effort scanning the skies above and launching physical and electronic attacks at sections of the atmosphere suspected of harboring enemy spacecraft. They were supported in this by a small residue of tech billionaires; those not busy planning their escape from the planet or who hadn’t already decamped to New Zealand in the misbegotten notion that changing their zip code and getting a new passport might spare them. These various maneuvers must have recalled for the visitors that legendary event — which they had witnessed first-hand — of Emperor Caligula’s troops futilely beating back the waves of the English Channel with their swords.

    Governments sent communications heavenward demanding more time or threatening legal action or sharing fudged statistics demonstrating mankind’s steady progress towards net zero, reforestation, world peace or any other targets they felt might sway the visitors. No reply was forthcoming and, as the year progressed, these upward communications became more desperate and self-aggrandising.

    For the majority of people in the world, however, surprisingly little changed. A year was an impossible horizon for those who did not know where their next sip of water would come from or when they might have their next mouthful of food. Also, for those who wondered when they might feel the next sudden kick through a thin, wet sleeping bag, the next rape, the next beating, the next honour killing. For these people, life continued as it was before. For these people, the end of the world was just another unaffordable luxury.

    Of course, the president’s wife was widely vilified for her role in events. Numerous conspiracy theories circulated online and in the pages of sensational publications, accusing her of having been in league with the visitors from the beginning. She was globally decried as a double-agent who had sold out humanity to save herself and her family.

    The president’s wife cared little for these lies. With her husband, she retired from public life. Their daughter made the bold decision to have a baby with her partner and it was as if the daughter’s body understood the great need for haste, because she became pregnant at the first attempt and, although her son was born two weeks premature, he was pink and healthy and went home the very next day.

    They named the baby Cervantes after the author of his mother’s favourite book, and the president’s wife, along with her husband, moved in with her daughter.

    Apart from his initial punctuality, baby Cervantes did not conform to the script demanded by the limited timescales. By day he was sweet and cherubic but, as the sunlight waned, he transformed into a despot and a sadist. All household members were called into action to walk, rock and coo the tiny screaming dictator into an unattainable sleep. They no longer spoke of dates or calendars anymore and, in their own exhausted way, found the dog years others craved.

    Sometimes, when the president’s wife saw her daughter with Cervantes, she wondered if they would all have been better off if she’d not asked for the extension, if it might have been easier to accept a single week to make their peace with everything, but she quickly dismissed these thoughts and joined her daughter and together they smiled and cooed at the child and spoke of a future that would never be. As all people must.

    Feature Image: Mark Bryan, Prime Directives.

  • A Grand Lady Must be a Hundred Years Old

    I owe my life to a bullet that pierced my father’s skull. The time was July 1942, the place, Staraya Russa.

    But Staraya Russa is not the way to begin this story; it belongs in the second part of the middle, closer to the end.

    The beginning was in Moscow, a few years before the October Revolution, yet I won’t begin this story in Moscow either. I’ll begin it in Riga, Latvia, with my grandfather Stephan taking my seven-year-old father to Old Town Riga. My young father was happy because he knew they would go to a stamp store after his father’s grown-up business appointments. My seven-year-old father loved nothing more than looking at stamps and nudging his father, “Look at this one!” or “This one, from England, is the most beautiful one ever!” There were also stamps from Russia, from the time before the Bolsheviks, and they were not at all old, as you might think, reading these lines in the 21st century, which is the only century in which you can read them. Stephan Kossman, my father’s father, didn’t like the Russian stamps, even though he had lived in the center of Russia’s capital for years, which was quite unusual for a Jew since in Czarist Russia, Jews were not allowed to live in the capital. My grandfather Stephan was a merchant of the First Guild, which was why he and his family could live in Moscow, in the very center of it, on Pervaya Meshchanskaya Street, in a ten-room apartment, which my young father remembered very well, no matter that he was only two and a half years old when, in February 1918, they had fled in a hurry, leaving everything behind, and made their way to Riga in a cattle train, commonly known as teplushka, which was not at all the way his parents used to travel, as his mother was an aristocratic lady who read Heine every night before bedtime; who dressed like a German countess, in beautiful floor-length dresses and elaborate hats, and treated her servants with that special gentleness, a sign of a very well-brought-up lady. They had three live-in servants in their Moscow apartment: his mother’s maid, a governess, and a cook. Sometimes his mother mentioned a fourth one – a maître d—but my father did not remember him, and he told us only of the ones he could remember himself. In London, where Stephan, my grandfather, lived before his marriage, with his father Leontii, his mother Rebeka, and his seven brothers and sisters, the number of servants must have been greater, but, as I said, my father told us only things he had remembered and seen with his own eyes.

    “Papa!” my seven-year-old father would say, pointing at Russian stamps from “that time,” as he called the time before the revolution when his family had still lived in Moscow, “Please Papa!” But when Papa said no, he seemed to become hard of hearing and, at the same time, very kind, as though by refusing, he was becoming aware of a debt he owed his son, and then he would buy all the new stamps in the store, the ones that came the week before, since their last visit. But he wouldn’t buy the Russian stamps for his son. “Why not the Russian stamps?” my seven-year-old father whined on their way out of the stamp store.  “Because … you know, Lyonia, if Mama sees them, she might become upset. She has memories of …” His voice trailed off.

    My seven-year-old father knew why his mother might become upset looking at the Russian stamps.

    ***

    My father’s sister Nora, who was just five years older than him, liked to pretend that he was just a little boy and that she was a grand lady.

    “Some grand lady! A grand lady must be a hundred years old,” my father (who was this little boy) would say to her, “Not seven!”

    She laughed and told him that he didn’t know a thing. She said almost no one lived to be a hundred. “You can be a grand lady at twenty, fifteen, or seven; all it takes is having enough of the grand-lady material inside yourself.” And she had it, she said, and he didn’t because he was just a little boy. “You’ll never be a grand lady,” she said.

    The little boy who someday would be my father countered, “Who wants to be a lady anyway?” He would be a grand lord instead of a lady because lords were in charge of things, and ladies weren’t.

    She said again that he was just a silly two-and-a-half-year-old little boy and didn’t even have a governess. “Our governess is just for me,” she said. She went on and on like this, teasing him and saying things she knew he didn’t want to hear like French was only for girls, and that’s why Mademoiselle gave French lessons only to her, not to him.

    He wanted to say: Mademoiselle teaches you French not because you’re a girl but because you’re older! But as soon as he opened his mouth to say this, he stopped his tongue and said to himself: don’t say this to your sister, or she will win, and you don’t want her to win, do you? You don’t want her to say that you admit you’re just a little boy, that you’re only two-and-a-half.

    So, he bit his tongue and didn’t say anything. Sure, he could say all sorts of things to her, for example, that he may be only two and a half, but someday he would be a journalist! But then she’d say, “No one becomes a journalist at two and a half!” And then he would say, “And what do you know, you’re just a little girl yourself! Uncle Nikolay promised to take me to the scary places he wrote about! And Uncle Nikolay is a real journalist! He says he might go to jail for that! He says in our country, they put only real journalists in jail, not just anyone! Only if you write the truth! He says that going to jail for journalism is like a batch of honor in our country! That’s what Uncle Nikolay says, and he can’t be wrong!”

    His sister would laugh at him. “A badge of honor, not a ‘batch,’” she’d say, and that’s why the little boy who someday would be my father didn’t say anything about Uncle Nikolay this time.

    ***

    My father (who was still a child, remember?) admired Uncle Nikolay because he was a journalist and a traveler. Yet, he was not the only one in the family who admired Uncle Nikolay for being a journalist.  Uncle Zhenia also admires Uncle Nikolay for being a journalist.  Although both Uncle Zhenia and my father looked up to Nikolay for being a journalist, there was a big difference between the two, my father and Uncle Zhenia, simply because Uncle Zhenia was Uncle Nikolay’s brother. Besides, Zhenia was an adult, and my father was a child – a little child, as all members of his loving family loved to repeat. And every time he said, “Don’t call me little! I’m not a child,” they just smiled and touched his head in that caring gesture they called “гладить,” which means “to stroke” in Russian, my father’s third native language. His second native language was Latvian, while his first language was German. He knew German better than Russian or Latvian because he spoke it with his mom. She was from Riga, where the educated class spoke German as their first language, and she wanted her children to know it; therefore, she spoke only German at home, and everyone understood her, even if they replied in Russian. Mademoiselle was the only exception: she was the only one who responded to his mom in French. The little boy (who someday would be my father) didn’t like French.  If you asked him why, he’d say only Nora, his older sister, got to learn French at home, that’s why. It’s not that he wanted to learn French, he just didn’t like being left out. He heard so often that he was just a little child and that, as such, he couldn’t understand grown-up things that sometimes he began to believe it, and to stop believing it, he made up stories in his mind about the future, about knowing what will happen someday. And the strange thing is that some of these stories came true, not because he had foreseen them but because they had already been written into the fabric of reality when they had occurred to him! For example, he knew that his Uncle Nikolay would emigrate to Austria and that he would write for a newspaper called Neue Freie Presse. He also knew that Uncle Nikolay’s first book would be titled “Uncle Joe,” the first book ever to tell the naïve Westerners that a monster ruled Russia. He knew this book would become famous in Austria and Germany in the period between the wars. Years later, as an adolescent living in independent Latvia, my father learned that poor Uncle Zhenia called his brother Nikolay from a Moscow phone booth and paid with his life for a few plain words he said to his brother. Like many phones in Moscow in those years, the phone had been bugged. Uncle Nikolay would continue writing for Neue Freie Presse, while poor Uncle Zhenia, who loved him so much, would be shot v zatylok – in the back of his head – at Lubianka prison, where tens of thousands were shot v zatylok in those years. As an adolescent in Riga, my father would think of his Uncle Zhenia, who was not a journalist, a writer, a politician, or an artist––just a regular guy, a bit of a drifter, a bit of a dreamer, and my adolescent father would ask myself why Uncle Zhenia was killed for a simple phone call to his brother Nikolay. Many more years would pass, and, as an adult living, once again, in Moscow, he would be given only silence to answer his old questions. The silence was useless to his intellect and to that deeper part of him which the nineteenth-century Russian poets called “soul,” which had fallen into а strange disuse by the middle of the twentieth century.

    ***

    As I said, my grandparents’ apartment in the center of Moscow had ten rooms, no matter that more than half a century later, my father remembered only three of them: his nursery, the dining room, and the kitchen, which could have accommodated some twenty people and was ruled by the family cook Dasha’s iron hand. That dining room had stained glass windows or, as everyone called them, vitrazhi––a French word with a plural Russian ending. My father (who was still a child, remember?) spent hours looking at them, not only during family meals but whenever he had nothing else to do, and as a very little boy, he had days with nothing to do. Vitrazhi were made of many colorful pieces of glass that formed a picture in which images shifted depending on where in the room he was sitting or standing when looking at them.  In the center of the main vitrazh, was a horse which changed into a wolf, but the wolf appeared only when my father was in a bad mood after hearing his parents talk about scary monsters they called “Bolsheviks” who would kill them if they stayed in Moscow. Most of the time, though, it was just a horse with muscular legs that were a different brown shade of than the rest of its body. On top of it sat a man. A horseman. Mother said he was St. George – Georgii Pobedonosets—and Mademoiselle Duzhar said, “Ce n’est pas Georges Pobedonoset. It’s a headless horseman who appears in times of trouble”. Mother said, “S’il vous plaît, Mademoiselle, don’t scare the children! How can he be headless? There, I see his head. It’s where it’s supposed to be. On his shoulders.” Sometimes my father (who, as we pointed out earlier, was a child at the time) could see the horseman’s head, just like his mother did, where it was supposed to be, sometimes he couldn’t, like Mademoiselle Duzhar, who was so scared of the “Bolsheviks” that she acted like a kid herself, or like little Lyonia, my father, who saw scary things instead of beautiful horses and horsemen in the dining room vitrazhi. Poor Mademoiselle was so terrified of my grandparents’ plans to leave Russia that whenever she thought she was alone where no one could hear her, she talked to herself, which was how my father and his sister Nora learned that she would have nowhere to live and nothing to live on if they were to abandon her. She whispered furiously, “Who needs a French governess in this terrifying city now? Who will take me in? I can’t flee anywhere, where can I go? Où, où mon Dieu?” Many years later when my father came back to Moscow after the war, no one knew what happened to Mademoiselle Duzhar. She disappeared like so many others in that time and place.

    ***

    In this part of my story, my father is no longer a small child in his parents’ Moscow apartment on the eve of their escape from Russia in February 1918.  He is a young man in Riga, trying to talk his mother into escaping back to Russia before the Germans enter Riga. She said no, she would not leave Riga.  He knew she would say no, and she did, but he wanted to try one more time to talk her into escaping. She remembered too well fleeing from Moscow on that teplushka train and had ample reason to believe that the Bolsheviks would be after her, not only for being a “burzhuika” (a lady bourgeois) but, most importantly, for leaving Russia twenty-three years ago. That is why, in the summer of 1941, she opted to stay in Latvia. Like many others who chose to stay, she believed the Germans were a civilized nation, especially compared to the Bolsheviks, and she feared them less than the Soviets. My father thought he was the only one in real danger because his work as a reviewer of Riga’s Jewish Theater productions for Cīņa, a Communist Latvian newspaper, made him a prime target. He thought he had missed the right moment to leave because boarding a train to Russia was getting harder each day. The place was empty when he walked into the editorial offices of Cīņa with an article about a recent production at the Jewish Theater. He thought everyone had already escaped; why else would it be so empty?  Yet when he left the building, he saw a car parked in a side street, and there was the whole staff of Cīņa, about to depart. This was his last chance to leave Riga before the German army entered it, but he couldn’t leave without trying, one last time, to talk his mother into leaving. He went back into the building and made one last phone call. As before, he was expecting her to say no and wasn’t surprised when she did. If she could have seen the future, her no would have turned into a yes in a split second. But the terrible future would not reveal itself to her, and even if it did, she would not have believed it. He went back outside. Cīņa editors made room for him in the back seat, and as soon as he got in, they drove off, past buildings set on fire in anticipation of the Nazi takeover. They spent three days in that car, driving past Latvia’s forests and villages, crossing borders – first the Estonian border, then the Russian one. On July 1, 1941, the day the German army occupied Riga, they made it into Russia, abandoned the car, and boarded a train going east.

    There was not much to do on the train, and the editor-in-chief of Cīņa entertained his friends with antisemitic jokes. He had spent many years in jail for political activities where the daily fare of antisemitic jokes was simple entertainment. He should have known better, but he didn’t, and neither did his colleagues. My father didn’t miss an opportunity to part from them, and when the train stopped in Nizhny Novgorod, and everyone got a chance to stand on the platform for some ten minutes, he left the station and walked to the city. His Russian wasn’t so good yet, but he hoped it would suffice for simple communication. In Nizhny Novgorod, he developed a terrible headache, and since he didn’t know anyone there and had nowhere to go, he went to a police station. He just walked in and asked for help. A militsioner* promptly took him to a nearby hospital where he spent the next few days. He was discharged with two young men from Riga who, like him, had nowhere to go and nothing to eat. They didn’t have a lot of options, and after weighing what little they had, they decided they had more chances of finding a place to stay in a small town rather than in a big city like Nizhny Novgorod. They each went to a small town of his choosing, and my father went to Chkalovsk, a small town not far from Nizhny. Its small size was helpful: wherever he went, he was still in the center, so he had no trouble finding Ispolnitelnyi Komitet*. He was promptly given coupons for dinner at a local dining place and an address to get a bed for the night. Several families lived there, and an elderly couple took him in. My father ate from a common pot with his hosts. There were no plates; everyone put their spoons in the common pot. That common pot was my father’s first encounter with Russia. He stayed with the couple for two weeks until one fine day when he walked to the pier and boarded a ship to Astrakhan, an old Russian city on the Volga. He was young and wanted to see the world, even if the world was in the middle of the biggest war ever. Onboard the ship, he met a kind lady. They talked, and although he didn’t mention it, the lady understood that he had nowhere to go and nothing to eat. She spoke with a cook, and my father was given free meals in the ship’s dining hall. Another woman on the ship gave my father her address in Astrakhan. When he got off the ship in Astrakhan, he went to her place, hoping to get a place to sleep, but soon enough, he realized that the woman expected him to become her lover. He thanked her for offering him a place to sleep and returned to the pier to wait for a ship back to Nizhny Novgorod.

    In Nizhny Novgorod, he met the dean of the law department of the University of Riga, where he had studied before the war. Of course, the dean was no longer the dean but a refugee, like my father. They spoke German with each other, and the former dean showed my father where he lived and invited him to visit. That night my father slept in the park. At about 10 am, he decided to visit the dean. Just as he rang the dean’s bell, he was approached by a militsioner, told he was under arrest, and given a German newspaper. “Read it aloud!” said the militsioner. My father had no time to think this over and decide what to do.  If he read the German text aloud, the militsioner would think he was a German spy. Therefore, he said, “I can’t read this because I don’t know the language it is written in.” A couple of minutes later, he was free again.

    He spent the rest of the day searching for a place to stay, but he didn’t know the city and found nothing.  Finally, he asked two female passersby where he could find a room. They said, “Take streetcar 12 and get off at the last stop.” So he took streetcar #12 and got off at the last stop. It was a good neighborhood, with many new apartment buildings and trees. Nearby he saw a group of boys playing soccer. My father was wearing a Belgian jacket, and it was this Belgian jacket that got him in trouble. A Soviet citizen would not wear a Belgian jacket. A Soviet citizen would not even have a Belgian jacket! A Soviet citizen would denounce a capitalist jacket! Soon, he was surrounded by a crowd of some fifty people shouting, “Take the German spy to the police station!”  The crowd made way for a militsioner who told my father to follow them. When they arrived at the police headquarters, the militsioner said,
    “You must understand that telling us what brought you here is in your own interest.”
    My father said he had nothing to tell except that he was a Latvian refugee looking for a room and had been told to take streetcar #12.  But the militsioner didn’t believe him and demanded to see his documents. The only document my father had on him was a letter from the Latvian newspaper he had worked for. It was written in Latvian and had a hammer and sickle on top. To verify my father’s identity, the militsioner called the Evacuation Committee, where all refugees had to be registered on arrival, and gave my father’s name. It took them half an hour to find my father’s registration card. “Next time, be more careful,” the militsioner said. When my father left the police precinct, it was late evening, and he still had nowhere to stay for the night.

    Finally, he realized there was nothing for him in the Volga region and that the army was the only place where he would have a place to sleep. It was evening when he arrived at the Latvian division headquarters. He was given a uniform and sent to his unit. Soldiers slept in tents. My father found a tent where he would spend his first night.

    ***

    I owe my life to a bullet that pierced my father’s skull. The time was July 1942; the place, Staraya Russa. My father was taken to a field hospital where a young surgeon from Moscow drilled a hole in his skull, without anesthesia, to extract a bullet that, if it had gone just one-tenth of a millimeter deeper, would have been fatal. After the bullet had been extracted, he was put on a train for wounded soldiers and taken to the Far East.

    My father’s only words were, “Am I going to die now, tovarish lieutenant?” “You’ll live, Kossman!” was the response of the lieutenant, who would be killed in battle two days later, together with most men of the Latvian division. (Only six survived).

    My father’s inadvertent savior was Gottlieb, a fellow soldier whose tobacco my father had borrowed for a minute. Several things happened simultaneously: Gottlieb was cleaning his gun; my father was returning Gottlieb’s tobacco; Gottlieb leaned on his gun to take back the tobacco from my father; Gottlieb’s gun fired; my father fell, bleeding from the head. That same day, Gottlieb was sent on a reconnaissance mission as punishment for endangering his comrade’s life through negligence. Sending a man on such a mission in Staraya Russa, a town in the Novgorod area, where hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers fell between 1941 and 1943, and where even today, more than eighty years later, kids stumble upon skulls and rusting helmets in local forests, was an equivalent of a death sentence. It goes without saying that Gottlieb never returned from his mission. His name is absent from the Book of Memory, which lists the names of Latvian Jewish soldiers who perished in the war. (I was asked to translate these lists a few years ago here in New York). Perhaps Gottlieb’s body had never been found and is awaiting one of those nostalgic youngsters who join an annual search for soldiers’ remains. If found, the remains are reburied with Soviet-era pomp, usually without a name, because only the lucky few are discovered with their papers, still legible, on them.

    Wherever you are now, Private Gottlieb, greetings from the daughter of the man you saved with that stray bullet.

    NOTES

    *Militsioner – a Soviet policeman
    *Ispolnitelnyi Komitet – an executive committee, usually known as “ispolkom.” Every Soviet city and town had one.

    Feature Image: Soldiers of the Soviet Red Army in front of the Freedom Monument in Riga in 1944