Prose
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Not
finding you
Saskia
van der Linden
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Art
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Zfat,
Israel B.
A. Van Sise |
E Mail to Damnaso Lopez Duane Locke
Prose
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Not
finding you
Saskia
van der Linden
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|
Zfat,
Israel B.
A. Van Sise |
E Mail to Damnaso Lopez Duane Locke
Not finding you Saskia van der Linden
Coma Diane Andrews
Thinking About The Night of My Conception Rob Plath
From The Window of My Hotel Iolanda Scripca
Memory and a Restaurant in San José Louisa HowerowTurkish Taksi Quentin Poulsen
The Jazz Musician Anne Cammon
Him with His Heart in His Head T. R. Healy
Officer Dan, The Drug Awareness Man!
Joe Reese
Not finding you
by Saskia van der Linden
ad this been a film, I’d have seen you at once. Extreme close-up: my finger on the green button that opens the door to the park. Long shot: my leaving my bike at the entrance. Slow shot: my walking down the narrow stone path.
Depending on the kind of film, the camera’d now zoom in on my skirt and boots, on the rose in my hand or on the look on my face.
I don’t find you there. This is not a film. This is the lowest kind of reality, in which I have to knock on a wooden door to speak to the porter. In his small office he looks you up in the database. He gets me a number that he writes down on a yellow post-it note: 11691.
I walk back, I walk on, I walk backwards and forwards, but I can’t trace the number back to you.
Once I think I spot you in an especially festive corner, full of colourful decorations. That would have been your kind of place. But it’s full of children instead.
Again I knock on the wooden door. The porter, annoyed now, takes big steps to show me the way. I can hardly keep up on these heels.11800 is the lowest number he can find. He’s no longer annoyed with me, he now mutters, "I’m so sorry..."
I’d read about other people who didn’t make it in time to see another person alive. But I was never prepared to be too late for a grave visit.
With those big steps of his he’s worked out where your stone used to be. "The bones are still down there, but the stones have been removed and destroyed ages ago."
It’s not for you but for these words that tears start streaming down my face. Ten years at the most, and then they dig you up to make place for others; but maybe if I mark this piece of soil with my rose, they’ll leave you alone just a little bit longer.
May 14, 2006 9:30 A.M.
hen Douglas Craig took a breath it sounded like a bagpipe bellows being filled.. The inspiration and expiration was monitored by a 240 volt current, myriad confusing dials and switches. A thin line blipped from left to right on a screen above his head like the machine at the seismic institute—each labored breath a small earthquake.
Beside the bed a figure looking a bit like Gollum in a black dress but with a little more hair pleaded with Douglas Craig’s body to make a sign of life. Her arms played a game of charades—a rosarian attitude, fingers the stones. She nibbled till they bled.
A string of words lengthening into a sentence—a life sentence—bored into Douglas Craig’s head like a shot. His wife raised her eyes but nothing registered. If anything the idea that nestled in her mind, formed from some vague sounds emitting from a doctor's mouth, gave her slight respite. The bed was abeam of the nurse’s station, in earshot of the conversation.
“Nurse Reilly, the plug must be pulled. It is time to end it. There is no hope. We need the bed. After she leaves…we’ll do the deed.”
“Should I get a priest? I know he can’t speak but his rites can be read,” to which the doctor said yes.
Douglas Craig’s wife stood up and turned to leave. Color returned to her face. It was as if she knew life was about to start, for her. She would be put out of her misery just as her husband would be. At that moment Douglas Craig sat up. His eyes opened with the sound of a bat in the night. He looked at his wife. She screamed and cried. The nurse came running, hoping the deed had been perpetrated by itself.
“My god! My darling! You’re awake. I never thought… Six months ago… An accident at work … The scaffold… Oh my god?”
“No! It was a few seconds ago.” The living corpse spoke, “…in Lake Street. I was on my way to my wife—just nipped out from the Tower and across the street.”
She was about to protest. The nurse suppressed her words with a hand on her shoulder. He worked at the slipway, on boats, had slipped off a scaffold and nearly died. He hadn’t breathed by himself in six months.
***
May 14th 2006 9.35am
Craig Douglas woke beside his new bride. His hard lips tasted the sweet skin of her cheeks. They moved down her long neck. Tingles brushed on the gentle hills and valleys of her naked form, which made her squeal. He knew he had to get up, a few things to do at the office and then it was off to Greece for their honeymoon. He pressed his wife's stomach, imaging a child might already be nestling in its warm folds.
He ran from the apartment on Abbott St—decided not to take the car. He was, after all only going around the corner to the Tower on Lake.
It took him a few minutes to leave a note for his secretary. It was something he'd stupidly forgotten to do before the wedding. He stepped out of the lift. In front of him he saw only his tall beautiful wife. He sprinted with joy onto the pavement.
Dark blue surrounded him. Something swooped along the street on his left and lunged at him. He leapt away but the monster struck out. An onlooker later told the police it made a sound like a sonic boon she'd once heard at an air show. A man in the next street thought it was the windows in the Tower shattering. Craig Douglas' new bride found out it was her husband's head cracking. She passed a lady in the hallway as she went to see him in the hospital.
She had a big grin on her face, “I've had wonderful news,” she muttered under her breath, then she stopped as she saw the tall girl crying, looking like Gollum, trudging towards the ward she'd just left. “Oh, what is it?”
“A coma... my husband...” the girl whispered as she brushed past, not hearing the words of comfort, that it could be overcome.
Thinking About The Night Of My Conception
by Rob Plath
t would have had to have been in late May, 1969, springtime in Brooklyn. Maybe my father had just dropped off my grandmother (his mother) on Cornelia St. after she babysat the children while my mother and father were at Hong Fat’s in Chinatown. My father devouring several appetizers half drunk on wine, and my mother tipsy after one mixed drink stirring it with her finger, giggling.
Them arriving back home at 11:30, and my two brothers and sister asleep in the old railroad apartment. My grandmother’s cloud of cigarette smoke still hanging in the living room while the television is still playing the news a report on Vietnam. My father pinches my mother while she fills the percolator’s metal basket. They’re a long way from any war.
Maybe Bobby Darin’s Beyond the Sea is on the small radio in the kitchen. My father is smoking a cigarette. He is happy even though he had to walk five blocks after he parked the car on Woodbine. His heart is strong, his lungs powerful
He is thirty two, a father of three, soon to be four . He is husband and the boss of my mother. My mother’s father dead 7 years. Beautiful thirty-two year-old half-orphan who used to dream as a little girl of being a nun, now a wife, mother of three. She looks like a young Elizabeth Taylor with her dark eye liner and little black dress.
My parents, two half-orphans, talk small talk in the little kitchen, maybe about renting a cabin in the Catskills in July, their personal tragedies locked in their young bodies, pushed far down by a springtime lightness, a long life ahead. In three years they’ll buy a house in the suburbs, but for now though, it’s Brooklyn. This is where they were born, where their grandparents grew up, raised children, worked jobs. But now the power base is slowly shifting to them , they are ones who run the holidays, raise the children, bury the old.
They fall down kissing on top of the covers on their queen sized bed, my father smelling of wine and cigarettes, unzipping his chinos with one hand and my mother with her skirt fallen back above her lean thighs. They grew up a block away from each other, met at 15. My father enters my mother. This is the year we put men on the moon. He lasts ten minutes, a few quick spasms and then he exhales only once in a manly way, slightly distant and semi-low. My mother moans and says her husband’s name, his sperm are warring down paths to the egg, the last child set in motion. This will be one of the last times they make love so openly and defenselessly.
From The Window of My Hotel
by Iolanda Scripca
heavy darkness opened my eyes. I didn’t know where I was but for sure I was not at home. My mouth and my soul were dry and the fear of the recent flight gave me waves of chills continuously.
I stood up touching the coolness and the warmth: the floor tile and my husband’s chest.
I felt secure and decided to head towards … the window of my hotel.
Seconds seemed an eternity…voices from the past were sending me back to bed to lay down, quietly, with my hands on my chest. Life’s curiosity was pushing me forward, giggling playfully as the corners of my mouth had the tendency of forming upright arches.
“Dusa, what time is it?”
…and I opened the curtains of the window of my hotel: The Caribbean Sea!
The turquoise of the water flooded my lungs, the sky of a pale violet played tricks on my imagination while the white of the sand rinsed my retina.
So that’s what Heaven On Earth looks like!
Infinity messed up my hair while hot kisses overwhelmed me with the evaporated humidity of the sea lips. For sure my Dad and Mom were there, with me, embodied in those superb forms of Nature.
The Caribbean Sea was holding me in its palms, like a spoiled little kid, protected from all the Evil in the world.
“Let’s go snorkeling, Dusa!”
We left together—my husband and I—to become one with the innocence of the sea waves, to say “Hello” to the rainbows of fishes and, for the very first time, to have the illusion of breathing through my own gills. Today, yesterday and tomorrow ceased to exist, eardrums became grandfather clocks of the underwater eternity while the violet clouds were bullfighting with swords of fire above The Heaven on Earth.
“ Please take off your shoes! Excuse me!?! Take off your shoes!”
I took off my shoes and gave them to be checked for hazardous materials in the airport.
“ You know, Madam, we need to do that. It’s a safety issue…after 9/11”
I grabbed my sandals off the conveyor belt of the X-Ray machine but it was too late…I already had fins…
I put the white sand back in the pocket of my soul, I placed the shells of the past echoes safely, among my clothes so they wouldn’t break and, I admit, stole a little turquoise from the Caribbean Sea so I can flood my memory with a little Eternity.
“ Hurry, it’s time to get in!”
I closed my luggage sighing deeply and proceeded through the tunnel back to Reality.
Memory and a Restaurant in San Jose
by Louisa Howerow
his is what I remember:
We were celebrating our last night in San Jose. The restaurant, located down the street from a Japanese car dealership, had an extensive wine list and an imaginative menu. The waiters, dressed in black and white, were efficient and courteous. We chose a fine red Rioja and a first course vegetarian dish, a bread dough basket filled with colourful and varied vegetables. We drank and ate well—not better than we had in the last three weeks, but certainly more expensively.
This is what I do not wish to remember:
Except for the couple who entered after we were seated, we had the restaurant to ourselves. The man was compact, with a small moustache. He moved with assurance, found his own table, greeted the head waiter by name and ordered without looking at the menu. The woman was much younger. She was tall, very thin and black. The waiter brought her a salad which she proceeded to quietly push around the plate with her fork.
All this time the man had not addressed the woman and she had not spoken to him. His cell phone rang and he proceeded to answer it. My Spanish is rudimentary, but even I could guess that the phone call was of an intimate nature and not a business call. He talked for what seemed to be a long time, never hurrying the conversation. When it was over and my second course arrived, he motioned to his companion and she placed her fork on the greens, got up and followed him out the door.
This is what I remember and what my husband has chosen to forget:
I asked my husband what he thought about the two, if anything. He told me the man was lucky. When I presented my position that perhaps this was a case of exploitation, he told me I shouldn't assume. How would you label this relationship, I persisted. I wouldn't, he said. He looks like a lucky man.
He had his own thoughts on the subject and that they were decidedly different from mine.
This is what my friends wish I would remember:
I have tried telling my friends this story. They want to know the name of the restaurant and whether I would recommend it. The address, too, is important. They plan on passing this information to their colleagues at work.
I carry the girl, the man and my husband in my story. My friends are not interested in shouldering any of it. Who's to say what exploitation is or isn't, they say. Our lives are hard enough. Who's to say they are wrong?
Turkish Taksi
by
Quentin Poulsen
"Merhaba," I greeted the driver. "Taksim, lutfen. Karmashik Sokak."
The driver nodded in assent. He seemed a respectable sort, middle-aged with streaks of silver in his hair and crows-feet forming at his eyes. He was attired in a chequered sports jacket and dark green polo-neck. I relaxed a little in my seat. You never knew what you were going to get with these taxis. I had been fortunate with the vehicle too, a late-model Renault with smooth suspension and a barely audible engine. Hot air swirled around my damp legs as we waited at the traffic lights.
"So, my friend," the driver smiled at me, "Where are you from?"
"Denmark," I told him. "But it's okay. I can speak English."
The driver was visibly put out, having no doubt anticipated 'America' or 'Britain' as the response, and having some oft-used follow-up at the ready.
I stared out the window at the blurred forms of the office blocks. Suit-clad figures hurried back and forth. A cream Mercedes with tinted windows moved up beside us, tires swishing over the wet tar-seal.
"Earopean Onion, yes?" he enquired gruffly, finding his feet again. "And what do you think about Turkey entering to EU?"
"Why not?" I replied diplomatically.
He leaned toward me, smiling with his wizened eyes. "Turkish people very friendly, yes?"
Before I had chance to answer, the lights changed and, amid an orchestra of blaring horns, the Renault surged forth, dodging through the lanes, cutting off rivals and sending tardy pedestrians scrambling for cover. Eventually we emerged from the pack and raced along at breakneck speed. I glanced anxiously at the driver and tightened my seat-belt.
"Very friendly, yes?" he picked up where he had left off a few minutes before. "It is our culture. Hospitality—very important."
He lit a cigarette as we swerved around a bend. Even at this velocity we were overtaken by a dolmush, the big yellow taxi-van rounding the curve like a Ferrari. Another intersection and the lights changed from amber to red as we sped through it. The driver flashed his headlights at the encroaching cross-traffic, and they duly made way for him. That was something, I thought. Most places I knew they would have blasted their horns in anger. Here at least they all seemed to work together.
"You like cigarette?"
I declined the pack he thrust beneath my nose. The cab was already full enough of smoke, and I would have preferred him to concentrate on the driving. Even as he tucked the cigarettes back inside his chequered jacket he was forced to brake for an old woman in a shawl and headscarf. She was halfway across the road, a veritable mound of cloth with a cane, and showed no sign of hurrying to get out of his way.
Approaching Taksim the traffic got heavier and the rain fell harder. The driver worked his horn like it were a part of the machinery that made his vehicle run.
"Baaah! Taksim!" he exclaimed, throwing his arms up in the air. "Every time problem!"
I gazed ahead in silence as his ranting grew more vehement. A bus had got caught in the intersection and was impeding our progress, though the lights were green. The driver switched back to Turkish, possibly to avoid offending me, though more likely because he lacked a sufficient repertoire of English swear words for the purpose. Either way, his entire manner had become decidedly intimidating.
He threw himself about in his seat, peering out each of the windows in turn, a trapped animal in search of an escape route. Then abruptly he began to back the Renault up, and before I had time to protest we were hurtling down some narrow, bumpy side-street, forcing startled pedestrians to leap onto the sidewalk.
"No, no, no..." I muttered under my breath.
A Turkish taxi driver's detour invariably takes twice as long as the orthodox route, even allowing for the traffic. But it keeps the meter ticking over at a rate more to his liking, and my fare was about to be doubled.
On this occasion, however, we were in for further difficulty. The alternative road the driver had sought was cordoned off for reconstruction. A little beyond the orange cones was the bizarre spectacle of a beefy police officer screaming at the top of his lungs into the open window of another taxi which had evidently progressed too far, knocking one of the cones over. So fearsome was the cop's demeanour I half-expected the taxi driver to get out and rumble with him, knowing how ill-tempered some of these drivers were themselves. But the cop had a gun in his holster and the law on his side, and the driver did not emerge from his cab as the tongue-lashing continued.
My driver, meanwhile, backed up again and resumed ranting. "Taksim! Taksim! Her kes Taksim'e gidiyor!"
I understood enough to know he was angry with me for wanting to go to Taksim. Ludicrous as that was, I kept quiet. Arguing the point would have antagonised him more.
We drove around the side-streets for a while, the driver pausing from his tirade only to light another cigarette. He reached a crescendo when we turned a corner and found ourselves behind a hand-drawn junk-cart. It was several minutes before he was able to negotiate his way past it.
When finally we emerged back onto the main road we had been on earlier, we were a mere two blocks on, but with an extra three-and-a-half lira on the meter. A crowded bus which had been behind us was now waiting at an intersection a hundred metres or so ahead. Once through that, I observed, it would be into free-flowing traffic. I shook my head in disbelief.
But worse was to come. The driver now decided this predicament was not to his liking either and began to back up again.
"No! Hayir!" I shouted. "Just stay on this road."
"Allahallah!" he growled, and continued reversing. "Taksim! Taksim! Her zaman chok trafik!"
"Hayir! Stay on this road or let me out now." I gripped the door handle to ensure he understood my intentions.
At this he slammed on the brakes and thrust out his hand. "Eight lira!" he demanded, though the meter showed 7:10.
"I'm not paying. You haven't taken me where I want to go."
His dark eyes bulged menacingly. "Polis!"
It was almost comical. Having broken at least half a dozen traffic rules on the journey thus far, he was now threatening ME with the law.
"Oh, Polis?" I scoffed.
He glowered back at me with the self-righteous indignation of a head-mistress. "Polis!" he thundered, as though expecting the word to reduce me to a quivering mound of jelly.
"Yes! Police!" I nodded animatedly. "Chok iyi. Take me to polis."
Seeing that he had no intention of doing so, I opened the door to get out. In the process I was dealt a heavy blow to the back, right between the shoulder blades. I spun around and swore at him in Danish. Though even in my anger I felt a twinge of apprehension as his own door clicked open. He was a burly fellow and evidently volatile. I had no intention of backing down, when I was in the right, but neither did I fancy the prospect of it coming to blows. It was to my relief, therefore, that he appeared to think better of it, slammed his door closed again, and roared off down the side-street.
I stood there on the crowded sidewalk shaking, and not just from the cold. The rain poured down with increased intensity. The noise of the traffic was a river swishing slowly by. The rancid exhaust fumes formed visible clouds in the frigid air. There was not a vacant taxi in sight.
Then it seemed I was in luck. An occupied taxi had stopped up ahead to unload its passengers. I hurried over and waited beside it while they paid the driver and got out.
"Taksim," I said, clambering into the back seat. "Karmashik Sokak, lutfen."
The driver's eyes fixed me in the rear vision mirror. "Hayir, Taksim'e deyil," he said, shaking his head gravely. "Chok trafik. Prob-lem."
My heart sank as I observed the finality in his tone. Was I going to get to Taksim at all? I climbed back out and blinked disconsolately around in the rain. What to do? Take a bus? That would only get me to Taksim Square, half the remaining distance. But it would get me through the worst of the traffic, and I ought then to be able to complete the journey by taxi.
The first bus that came along was so packed I thought I'd have no chance of getting on. But I was able to gain the boarding steps, and there I remained when the door hissed closed behind me. Twenty minutes later I stepped gingerly out at Taksim Square. Even in this weather the place was a hive of activity; crowds swarming in and out of the metro in their raincoats and shapkas, a veritable sea of umbrellas progressing up and down Istiklal, blue-uniformed policemen milling about their armoured trucks and patrol cars, shoe-shiners huddling beneath the overhanging roofs of the flower stalls. And amid the teeming traffic it was not difficult to locate a vacant taxi, albeit an old Toyota with various dings and scrapes on its panels.
I got in beside the driver, a bent old man with white whiskers and a crescent of white hair around his bald pate. He looked too frail to be working these chaotic streets, and should have been enjoying his retirement somewhere on the Mediterranean coast, I thought. Only the tips of his nicotine-stained fingers protruded from the sleeves of the tattered coat he wore. Drowsy Turkish folk music crackled out of the radio.
"Iyi gunlar. Karmashik Sokak, lutfen."
He squinted at me with watery brown eyes in that expression of acquiescence peculiar to the Turks. Then, with startling alacrity, he swerved out into the traffic and put his foot to the floor. It was at this point I discovered my seat-belt did not work.
"No prob-lem. No prob-lem," he assured me with a toothless smile.
I stared back at him in horror. "Yes problem! Istanbul traffic crazy. Seat-belt very important."
He waved his hand dismissively. "Amerikalimisiniz?"
"Hayir. Danimarkaliyim."
"Danimarkali?" He raised his eyebrows in interest, then proceeded to ask me in Turkish the same questions his predecessor had asked me in English. Did I think Turkey would join the EU? Did I agree that Turkish people were very friendly?
The motor droned, the chassis shook and vibrated ceaselessly. Every bump seemed like a speed bar, every pothole a crater. The old driver refused to put the wipers on automatic, preferring instead to flick the switch himself every now and then, so that we spent more time peering through a rain-blurred windscreen than we did through a clear one.
Before I realised it we had passed my turn-off. I explained this to the driver with some irritation, and demanded he turn around at the next opportunity. But that did not occur for another half-a-kilometre or so.
Rather than driving back along the main road, however, the driver took us directly into the myriad of side-streets. He seemed to know what he was doing, so I left him to it as we bumped and rattled along the little alleyways. Then the driver stopped the car and stared wildly at me.
"Nerede?"
"You're asking ME where? You're the taxi driver! Don't you have a map?"
He gave an exaggerated shrug to show he did not understand me, and my best efforts to communicate with him in Turkish were greeted by the same gesture.
Another car swung into the alley and the old man was forced to back up to let it pass. Before it did so, he wound down his window and engaged its driver in discussion.
"Karmashik, Karmashik," he repeated several times while they spoke.
The middle-aged, mustachioed occupant of the other vehicle scratched his chin thoughtfully and babbled in a tone which was not entirely reassuring. The upshot was that we continued down the alley we were on, then turned left into a street literally swarming with cats. One of the ground-floor apartments was evidently the back of a fish market, for two middle-aged men were gutting fish in the doorway and tossing the scraps to the mangy felines.
Another block on and the driver turned right, at which point we found ourselves on the edge of a busy market place, and no amount of animated horn-blasting on the part of the driver would open a path through the throng. But two things served to cheer me; firstly, the rain had eased considerably, and secondly, one of the minarets of the Green Mosque was visible beyond the buildings up ahead. I had my bearings and could walk it from here in ten minutes. When I told the driver my intentions he demanded the fare.
"I'm not paying. You haven't taken me where I wanted to go."
"Four lira and eighty-five," he repeated, this time in English. The frightened rabbit look in his watery eyes had given way to dogged resolution. Next thing he was shouting at me and thumping his dashboard. But I figured I was safe this time and would not be assaulted as I made my escape from the taxi.
No sooner had I got out than I was confronted by a broad-shouldered youth in a heavy black overcoat. "Hey, Yabanci," he said, stepping into my path. "Why don't you pay my friend here?"
It irked to be addressed as a foreigner by this stranger and I told him to mind his own business.
He calmly reached inside his overcoat and, with a vague smile, produced a 'Polis' badge. "Pay!" he barked into my face, and pointed to the driver.
It tested the limits of my self-control to refrain from arguing with this fresh-faced cop, perhaps half my age. But, of course, I did as he ordered.
"Here," I snapped at the driver, handing him a twenty lira bill.
He
