Add these contest deadlines to your calendar and get your stories ready! This article also provides tips on how to submit and increase your chances of winning.
You live to write and have numerous short stories to prove it. Best of all, people other than your mother love and praise them! But because your name doesn’t happen to be Danielle Steel, no publisher is currently knocking down your front door to rip manuscripts from your printer before the pages even cool. So what is an aspiring writer to do? Apply to a writing contest, perhaps?
If you were a singer, you could try out for American Idol; if a dancer, you could apply to So You Think You Can Dance. But let’s face it, a television show where you typed at your keyboard is not must-see TV.
Even so, there are numerous (non-televised) writing contests where you can display your skills and improve your writing. Plus, if you win, you might receive some well-deserved critical acclaim—not to mention a cash award and potential future writing contracts.
In this article, you will learn:
How to enter a writing contest and increase your chances of placing or even winning
Which contests are reputable
Which contests are currently accepting submissions
After reading amazing fiction, I always ask, who writes like this? What drives them? Where do they get their ideas?
Last month, we announced our Writers Mastermind Short Story Contest winners. In this series, I interview each of them to discover the soul behind the story.
Sam is a writer from North-West Leicestershire, in countryside man-made and wild. He is fascinated with the mundane fantastic of the day-to-day, and writes about these in the breathing spaces of his life. He was first published with his story ‘Undertow’ in 13Dark, and after a writing break now has short stories upcoming in Metaphorosis, Pridebook Café, & SpaceCat press’s ‘Aliens and Otherness’ anthology.
He barely goes on social media and has no website, but you can always receive a warm welcome from him by reaching out at samjamesparr at gmail dot com.
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? Where are you now? What has your life been like?
I’m Sam, and I’m from Leicestershire, UK. I grew up in a world cross-hatched between nature and industry; think pockets of rigorously planned forest squeezed between motorways, warehouses, and industrial estates. I spent my childhood exploring these spaces alongside hundreds of fantasy worlds in fiction and haven’t stopped as an adult. I wrote my first story ten years ago and have been writing on and off since then (though never as much as I’d like)!
My life has been great overall. Not without a few challenges like all of us, but they’ve been so worth it for everything I have experienced.
2. What kind of stories do you like to write?
I absolutely adore reading fantasy, and I can’t help writing mostly fantasy too. In the last six years I have written one story without an overt fantastical element. Why? I don’t really know, but I do know I’m interested in fiction that evokes a sense of otherness in time and place, grounded by relatable characters. So, I try to evoke this in my stories.
3. What sets you apart from other writers in your space?
To be honest, I’m still figuring this out. I’m still trying to find my ‘voice.’ That said, my friends feedback that I often build unique, interesting fantasy worlds. My partner also tells me I have a recurring ‘Sam’ character in most of my fiction: a middle-aged man, usually a little overweight, isolated and uncertain. He has a subterranean anger decades in the building, but also feels things deeply, and can be exceptionally kind. Who is this man? Why does he keep popping into my fiction? I don’t know! But maybe he’s one of my unique selling points…
4. What drives your writing? What do you mean to accomplish with your stories?
I’m not sure I have an answer for this! I’m driven to write perhaps to give back something to the rich world of fantasy and fiction I have drank from all my life. And to get the colours out of my head, for at least a while. But honestly (like many of us I suspect), I don’t know. I just know that, if I haven’t written for a couple of months, I start getting the urge to create again.
I’m a careers advisor as a day job, and with that head on, I wonder if part of the reason a lot of us write is because the role becomes embedded in our imaginations from a young age. Writing as an occupation is very visible to us even as toddlers (who isn’t read stories as children?). When you’re seven, you also find it far easier to imagine what a writer’s life is like compared to, say, an accountant’s. It’s also far more appealing, especially as, when we’re children, creativity often comes so easily to us (was it Ursula Le Guin who said the ‘the artist is the child who survived?’).
So, perhaps what drives my writing deep down is that childhood identification with this fascinating occupation.
I don’t have any specific defined goals for what I hope to accomplish in my writing, but I always want to build cool worlds, and ultimately entertain the reader and myself. I also want to create characters that are complex, mysterious, and emotive.
5. Who are your favorite writers and books? What are your other creative influences?
Ah Christa, so many good ones! Recently my top three favourites from the past year’s reading would be Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, and the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel. They all have a majestic sense of time and place, grounded through a unique character. Each work is something you feel could only be the product of a playful, deeply introspective imagination, paired with some major writing skill.
In terms of wider influences, I am fed by everything: TV, video games, art, history. However, I particularly find myself influenced by locations. For example, I have always been a little captivated by the idea of transitory spaces like service stations, or the middle of a road. Something about their nature appeals to me; they are nondescript, unremarkable, powerfully mundane, and uniquely of this modern moment (I find them quite relatable). The feelings they evoked in me is what I channeled while writing The Knowable Failures.
6. Tell us about your writing space. When and where do you write? Do you work in silence? Or music?
I’m a sucker for a nice café. I particularly like big cafes, where I can feel anonymous, a little like ShorelessSea in the story.
Apart from that, my most popular writing spot is likely at my desk in our spare room. It overlooks our garden, and a host of magnificent birds.
I sometimes write with classical music, but anything with words distracts me too much!
7. What is your favorite thing to do when you are not writing?
I love lots of activities, but I think the crown would have to go to a pleasure that is wonderfully simple: reading/watching something cool, while eating good food. It’s a simple pleasure, but we all have access to it every day, and that’s awesome.
8. Who is your current artistic muse?
I don’t really have a ‘muse’ in the general sense. But right now I’m enjoying reading various texts on history and mythology, particularly from religious traditions like Buddhism. The worlds they reveal are so grand, rich with meaning and image, in a way that feels fresh and exciting to me.
9. Why do you think it’s important to write fiction?
To go back to Ursula Le Guin, in her essays she writes about how the purpose of art should fundamentally be to ‘entertain and delight you’. I think there’s a lot more reasons that fiction is important, but this one is enough for me. I am entertained and delighted by writing (though that’s not to say I find it easy) and I hope my readers can be too.
10. Who would be the best writer, alive or dead, to tell the story of your life?
Hmmm. I think I’ll nominate my good friend and writer Joseph Sale. He’s a stunning writer of fantasy, horror, and epic poetry, and I enjoy the idea of him turning my life into an epic tale in 33 cantos.
11. What are you working on right now?
I’m currently editing the only non-fantasy story I have written for six years; a short story about grief and pigeons. Alongside that, I’m also slowly working my way through a high fantasy novella set in a world loosely inspired by feudal Japan, where a warrior’s reputation gives them literal magic powers. Progress is slow as my mental/physical health hasn’t been as tip-top as normal over the past few months, but the world is starting to take weight now. It’s the longest thing I’ve written (if I finish it) and I’m excited to see where it goes.
*****
Thanks to Samuel Parr for letting us into his world. Look forward to interviews with other winners in the coming weeks.
Barbara Weitzner is the grand prize winner of the Writers Mastermind 2021/2022 Short Story Contest with Away from the World and All the Horrific Things That Happen In It. Poignant and heartfelt, it explores the reflections of a remorseful man as he lives out the rest of his days in a nursing home during COVID. Barbara Weitzner has written and published various short stories and novels and placed third in the 2015 Writers’ Digest Short Story Contest. She tells us when and how writing took over her life.
*****
Why We Write
By Barbara Weitzner
The reason I started to write was because I had retired from working. After the first few months of hanging around the house, a funny thing happened on the way to the kitchen for a snack. I changed direction and sat down at my computer and began to write a short story.
At first, my husband was thrilled. I was spending less time at the mall snatching up have-to-have bargains.
Sequestered in the den, smart phone turned off, I began to type my story.
In every story is the soul of the person who wrote it. I let the spell of each character, their words and thoughts take over until my characters seemed as real as family.
Soon, my characters were wearing me down. I did everything to raise them right, and as soon as they hit the page, they did anything they damned please.
Before I began to write my story, I was unable to button my jeans. With each hour spent mulling and deleting they began to hang pleasantly loose. While friends mulled over good restaurants and hairdressers, I worried about my protagonist’s unsavory personalities. Would my readers hate them, pity them, identify with them? Wish them well or hell? Would I have any readers?
Family noticed my less than perfect manicure, my rounded shoulders, the slight squint I’d developed in my eyes, a growing tendency for my mind to wander away from conversations.
My husband warned me my lack of returning e-mail and telephone messages was beginning to alienate a lot of folks. “And forget about sex, I’ll settle for a good home-cooked meal. You never have time to cook. Shut down the computer and read the directions on the oven,” he grumbled.
Hubby peered over my shoulder to read a sexy paragraph. He cleared his throat. He squinted. I noticed his eyes watering, was he reading lines too shocking to be kept in focus? He began to show the first signs of his age.
My canasta partners got annoyed when I lay my cards in my lap to jot down an idea. Friends got annoyed when their phone calls went unanswered. Hubby got annoyed when I’d jump out of bed to rewrite a paragraph. I stuck to my guns with the sangfroid of John Grisham, and when I completed my story, I e-mailed my submission to Writer’s Digest Short Story Competition. (November/December 2015) and waited months for an e-mail from the Writer’s Digest Editors my nails chewed down to my cuticles. (This is not an exercise for the faint-hearted). I wanted to be published before I dropped dead of anxiety or old age. I made promises to myself; if I only win a mention I’ll give money to charity, I’ll donate blood, help at our local soup kitchen. I’d give up ice cream. Give up chocolate.
Recently, my husband, my best friend, the love of my life, has passed away. I am still grieving.
My books, THE MOST GLORIOUS THING EVER, THE BOUGAINVILLEA CLUB, and THE PARRADINE ALLURE were published by Solstice Horizons (I do not have those editions I’d given them all to family). My short story, AN AMERICAN CHRISTMAS received honorable mention in the 2006 LA BELLE LETTRES short story contest. My article, IT’S NEVER TOO LATE, appeared in the September 2014 issue of SOUTHERN WRITING. My short story, FIRST LOVE was accepted for the 2014 fall issue of GEMINI MAGAZINE 2015. My short story HARRIETT S FATHER was accepted for TELL US A STORY December 2016 quarterly issue. I received an e-mail on 10/19/15 from The WRITER’S DIGEST Editors. My story won third place! And I am proud to have won first place in WRITERS MASTERMIND, for AWAY FROM THE WORLD AND THE HORRENDOUS THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN IT.
Away From the World and the Horrific Things That Happen In It
by Barb Weitzner
As time and life passes, my fellow neighbors and I, most of us well into our eighties, gather every morning to claim our familiar positions at a table under an umbrella on the veranda, at The Bowers, an upscale assisted-living facility, our lives lived in slow motion, killing time, in similar, desperate ways. Despite my having done everything in my power to avoid being here, I have joined the resident’s here, and have been forced to join a smaller world in the long autumn of dying lives, and as I expected, away from the world and the horrific things that happen in it.
I think growing old is hard work, with long hours and whatever is left of my dignity.
Our children, too caught up with their own obligations and who are not able to bear the responsibility have placed most of us in this retirement home—our lives now bound within these gates where everything is unfamiliar. And though it has been painful for our families, they believe we have accepted the necessary adjustment with this new version of our former selves.
Although there are others who treat their new accommodations as one long vacation, the truth is, I can hardly ever remember being so idle, and except for its relatively unchanging nature since the outbreak of the corona virus, which has caused he cancellation of all group activities, our meals have become the focus which all our lives revolved.
I thank the Lord that there have been no deaths here in The Banyan Bowers although there have been rumors circulating that this information is not true. My world has become small and gated off. I seesaw between resignation and the depression of outliving my son Tim, and my wife, Anna, seeking ways to re-orient myself to living in this cocoon. Now it is only through newspapers and TV that I learn anything about the outside world, and the horrors of the Coronavirus pandemic, which has brought about a frantic outburst of mask wearing and separation and bleaching and scrubbing everything in our facility.
Our members respect the rules and policies of this institution and for the remainder of this life we share together we all try to get along with each other. We pass our afternoons with long-winded monologues in our efforts to prove to ourselves and each other that our brains are more reliable than our disintegrating bodies, we listen with respect to each other’s opinions and often enjoy disagreeing until we run out of things to say. Our bitter mouths and tired eyes unfold stories from our finite store of memories. We recount with wheezy voices what each has made of his life, our stories of windfalls earned and lost, the women we have loved and lost, our children and pets we’ve adored, the places we’ve visited. We tell each other things we would hardly ever tell our families, although I have learned that living amongst other people you learn what not to say. No one mentions business failures, or having been swindled, underpaid, tyrannized or fired.
Truth or fiction and taken with a grain of salt.
On weekends, friends and relatives who were not allowed to visit us, are slowly being allowed onto the premises. Families assure us they are well, taking precautions, avoiding crowds and wearing their face masks when in crowded situations. They carefully steer their conversations in a fund of innocuous information, avoiding anything they think may upset us.”The Ryan’s, Wilson’s send their love. Have you enough books/magazines/toiletries?” they ask, as they say their goodbyes.
Dave Frank maneuvers his wheelchair into a vacant spot at our table. We bob our heads by way of greeting and rearrange our chairs to accommodate him. Dave smells strongly of aftershave. Something lemony that makes me want to sneeze. Dave is the de facto mayor of The Bowers. He knows everyone and everything that is going on—Fred said this, Richie did that.
Dave’s eyes crinkle. “Did you fellows notice the sprightly lady friend that Bob Harris escorted into the dining room at lunch?” Bob Harris is one of the more ambulatory residents undaunted by his age or infirmities with a full head of white hair that many of us envy.
This earns no comment. “A really nice-looking lady,” Dave continues, wiggles his bushy eyebrows. “One of the few who still try to make themselves attractive and wouldn’t be caught dead wearing those awful muumuus we see around the lobby—those awful muumuus,”(repetition being Dave’s habit). He offers an opinion, speaks it aloud, and later has it again. He is incurably critical, his statements, fierce and unbending and which I often disagree with. If something is funny, he laughs louder than most. I do not really like him much and I do not want to hear what he does and doesn’t like. Yet I have never shared that with him. Shakes of the head all around, a few seconds pass while we think this through together. Each of us waits for the other to speak.
Sam McKay, who has the room across the hall from me, an old gent with plastic clips that are attached from his nostrils to a portable oxygen tank, twists his lips and gives a shrug as if he had never given women’s muumuus a thought. Larry Lowson sits quietly squeezing a tennis ball, wisely choosing to keep whatever he thought, to himself. Larry never says much, but Larry never says much about anything. He mostly listens to what others have to say.
I have nothing to say either. Nothing works just fine. No point arguing this one. Discussing the issue will only dignify it. I am not comfortable making fun of the women who are abandoned here. Not that I have stopped noticing pretty women. I can honestly and shamefully admit my devotion to Anna’s memory does not prohibit an occasional flirtation with a perky staff member or one of the nicer looking retirees. When does desire ever stop? When does a man grow out of it? Not that I am looking to get involved, but there is still something about a woman’s curves that makes a tired old man look; (fantasy far outpaces reality). And though I joke with women, I am never inappropriate.
Yet Dave’s pronouncement evokes a tiny constriction in my chest. For none of these women can provide the patience and love my Anna gave me through the best and the worst of times before she had succumbed to cancer, her heart heavy with the knowledge she had been unable to hold her family together. I have listened to more than a few checkered histories about spiteful ex-wives, huge divorce settlements. I have never doubted that I would have been lost without Anna, and now regret my youthful tomcatting, my reckless pursuit of passion to which I was not entitled.
We had met at a wedding; Anna a friend of the bride, me, a frat brother of the groom. No sparks flew between us. Ours was not a love that burgeoned with breathless passion but had grown neat and reassuring out of being fixed to the same backgrounds and the belief that we could make each other happy.
My eyes mist when I recall on our wedding day, Anna smiling at me when her father led her down the aisle of the church, how the pastor struggled to remember our names and interrupted the ceremony with a coughing spell. How I had ticked off our expenses to see if we could afford to buy the split ranch house, the rainy morning we had taken title of our new home and moved in that same afternoon. And about the way we had lived with mostly unfurnished rooms until my insurance business grew. The happy day we brought our twin sons, Tom and Tim home from the hospital, all those memories…
The truth was, after our sons were born our sex life sputtered. Knock-my-socks-off sex became higher on my list of desires than home-made brownies or having my boxers ironed, and while Anna was busy with mothering, I had traded creature comfort for passion—for women who did not roll to their side and fall asleep complaining of being tired to avoid having sex—women who were warm and exciting. Some of them I choose to forget. Most of them I cannot.
Tom was in bed with the flu, and I had taken Tim to see the Yankees Red Sox game. Returning to our car, I had met a neighbor in the parking lot and stopped to chat with him. I had let go of Tim’s hand and Tim had run ahead to where our car was parked when he was killed by a driver backing out of a parking spot.
I can still hear Anna’s pitiful scream, her face infused with outrage and grief as we had listened to the deep, apologetic voice of the emergency room surgeon telling us our son was dead.
You want the best for your children and that does not always happen.
Our son Timmy died. And I am the only one to blame.
I had tried to console Anna, but sometimes you cannot fix some things, and cannot make them better.
Anna retreated into a pervasive gloom and lassitude.
My son Tommy unable to forgive me, kept to his room, sat at the dinner table across from me each night, unwavering in his certainty that his brother’s death was my fault. In his eyes an aggressive and unfamiliar contempt I had to bear. When Timmy died, the carefree innocence in Tommy died too. Tom had learned that life was finite, he became an eight-year- old expert on sorrow, bearing the pain of his brother’s death, scowling and banging his bedroom door in demonstrations of anger. His childhood innocence abandoned and left with a sense of the loss of his twin brother that grew in weight day by day.
I should have persisted. I should have begged his forgiveness, but there was only guilt, a guilt that became a friction in our house.
But what could I say that was honest and true? What apology could erase something that was already done? There were no words adequate to express my sorrow. I had tried every possible suggestion from Anna that might calm Tom and convince him- if not of my love for his brother, but the fact that I too, wished with all my heart that I had held on to Tim’s hand.
Could Tom not recognize my grief, my remorse? How every day of my life was filled with the adrenaline of rage with the resentment and anger at the driver who had backed into Tim, and with myself for placing my son in danger.
That vivid, terrible moment will always be with me. And my struggle to adjust to a world without Tim. I envied the tranquil consistency in the lives of my friends, shrank from their awkward attempts at consolation, their sympathy, unbearable.
Why did Tim die while I am still alive?
A wave of sorrow rises in me and threatens to break. I push it down. What is the use of piling up all the things I should or should not have done? But how can I not feel what I do feel?
Anna never mentioned all my mystical nights out spent at ‘business meetings,’ with the clients of my small insurance business. The fictions I created doubled, tripled. I know that it took no stretch of the imagination for her to get the picture. She wanted me to believe she did not know. But she knew when I came creeping into bed at two AM, she feigned sleep in order to avoid a confrontation. She knew when I awoke puffy-eyed and exhausted from tomcatting around. She knew. She had spent her life loving me, raising our family, trying to make our lives easier and better and I had cheated on her. Her posture changed whenever I entered the room, her silence meant she knew, her cheery smile meant she was hurt—never to release the question that was stuck in her throat, the why question she had never asked me. Guilt became my silent companion. I had not been a husband to her for a long time. We lived together politely.
How had I not attended to Anna’s sense of betrayal, the awful heartache I had caused her after our son’s death, I had thought cheating only involved myself. I wish I had been faithful. I wish I had made better decisions. I wish that the attention and money I had spent doting on those unimportant women had been spent with Anna. I wish I had taken her on the Caribbean cruise she’d day-dreamed about. I cannot remember the last time we had laughed together. I still feel a sting of shame, but I know it is much too late to wish any of these things, and rue the many mistakes that I have made:
And then there followed the nights that passed full of waiting and false hope while Anna lay sick and dying when I had felt the ability to better love my wife, yet unable to give her pleasure, just faith and kindness, her knitting needles and half-finished sweater she had been making for our son Tom waited in a basket by her bedside. Anna had once been a stocky, full-breasted woman and was now skin and bones. I had massaged her legs and back to try and ease the spasms she complained about, slept with my arms around her. Conversation came in fits and starts when she felt up to it, the painkillers making her words slow and heavy. Toward the end she seemed to forget that Tim was dead and called for both her sons.
“Are you in pain?”
“Not too much. The medication helps.”
“I know.” She looked at me as if we were still the same two people; the same newly married couple, as if nothing stood between our present and our past.
When I woke up one morning Anna was gone and, in my struggle to adjust to a world without her, I envied the tranquil consistency in the lives of my friends, shrank from their awkward attempts at consolation, their sympathy, unbearable. I try not to think too much about Anna as it only exacerbates my already broken heart; try to concentrate on the changeable things of today and tomorrow and not the unbearable yesterdays.
I wonder about the family who live in our home now. Have they taken down the basketball hoop in the driveway, fixed the hinge in the cellar door? Do they get along with our cranky next door neighbor Mrs. Smyth?
As late afternoon sun takes over the veranda and touches everything—I inch my chair into the remaining shade, enjoy the occasional gust of cool air that blows under the umbrella. Several old gents whose names I cannot retrieve, stroll past our table. I tick my chin forward in a friendly nod. In my head I skim through the alphabet. Al, Andy, Arthur … Sometimes this helps. But not now. I abandon the effort.
I turn my attention back to the conversation going on around me.
My neighbor, Sam McKay, is telling the group about a TV movie he watched last night. His voice is barely audible. Any little exertion leaves him gasping for breath. I lean in to hear him.
George Shell, a crusty old gentleman who finds fault with everyone and everything, struggles to stand. His knees give out an audible crack. Placing one foot in front of another, he launches himself out of the chair, takes slow, measured steps and leaves our circle to use the john.
Dave Frank, his eyes behind his glasses ringed in dark circles, stretches down to rub the scar on his calf, a memento from his service in Korea. Dave suffers from nightmare’s and it is his own screams that often wake him. Dave rarely talks about his war experiences but when he does there is a tremolo in his voice.
Jessie, our favorite attendant, approaches our group, rolling a cart that clatters and complains as it made its way to us. Our wrinkled faces blossom into smiles. I cannot help but admire Jessie’s ample breasts. (I am still trying to outgrow that kind of thing).
Accustomed to this daily ritual, we examine the bounty on the cookie platter and wait for Jessie to dole out our drinks from a pitcher of fresh lemonade, served to us as if it were a magic elixir to resuscitate us from our failing hearts or fatal illnesses. We pull our masks down. Our knobby fingers grasp the paper cups.
Jessie leaves us and for a while there is quiet except for the slurping and munching.
“Or am I getting the plot mixed up?” Sam has asked continuing his narrative, his breath whistling in his chest. “Lately I get things mixed up.” Sam speaks very slowly. Sometimes I fear the afternoon will pass before he finishes a sentence.
“Nope, you’re absolutely right.” Larry, who has also watched the movie Sam is critiquing, assures him.
I nod, as if to agree with him so he will not resent my inattention. At some point, I nod off, my head drooping against my chest.
The patio door bangs shut and awakens me. I open my eyes and see Joe Burns cross the patio. Joe’s stride is less vigorous than usual. He usually moves quickly for a man of his age. He is usually all smiles and jokes. He brings vitality and good cheer to this place and is never moody or mean-spirited. Joe pulls out George Shell’s vacant chair, lowers himself into the seat and sighs. His sigh is full of despair.
He lifts his glasses to dab at his milky eyes with a sodden tissue, “Hello all. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.” He looks at Sam, Dave, Larry, and me, his voice, a quiet monotone. “Eddie Riggs passed away this morning. Let us hope he’s gone to a kinder place.”
His news seems to suck the energy out of us. Except for the uneasy creak of someone’s chair, the click/hiss of Sam’s oxygen tank, there’s silence. Our hearts tighten with sorrow.
Larry Lowson, his hands trembling, says “Jeez! What a shame! How did it happen?”
Joe Burns slumps deeper in his seat, shakes his head.
“I don’t know,” Joe gives a windy sigh.
Larry Lowson leans forward to take a sip from his cup. A little dribble runs down the front of his polo shirt. The rest of us pretend not to see it. “Ed was a good man,” he murmurs.
Dave Frank nods in rare agreement.
Larry Lowson begins to mumble something what I think is a prayer.
Joe Burn’s words move through me like a sliver of ice. My hands sit in my lap like stones. I pull a tissue from my pocket and wipe a tear away. I do not want to believe this news although I know that here at The Bowers, all attachments are purely temporary— folks coming into our lives and leaving just as suddenly. Yet I am not prepared for Ed Riggs death. I feel anger tighten my chest. I ask myself, why Ed? Ed had been a good pal of mine, one of the younger residents. What was he—seventy-four—five? He had been the kind of man everyone liked, always a vivid presence with a loud, infectious laugh and a great sense of humor and always talking about the beneficial aspects of even the worst situation. He had become a reason for me staying on this earth. We would sit in his room, and he would play the vinyl records he had collected by the performers of our youth, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Frank Sinatra and Anna’s favorite, Johnny Mathis. Ed had saved the albums because he considered them more meaningful than anything recorded today, and for a few hours we would immerse ourselves in the past.
I feel a burst of anger, partially directed to God, partly with myself, my thoughts stumbling over one another. I regret why I had not questioned, not seeing Ed in the dining room at lunch. I should have gone to his room to check on him. This realization comes too late. I wish I had. If only I had. Maybe… My soul hangs heavy with the thought. And now Ed is gone… Just like that.
“You okay? You don’t look so good,” Joe says.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” I say…
Conversation is now exhausted. We fall into a moody silence. We hear the opening notes of “Danse Macabre” coming from Dave Frank’s cell phone. He turns his chair away for privacy. I do not have a cell phone. The few calls I get or need to make are from the landline in my room.
The sun has been going down. It has grown windy on the patio. I drink the rest of my juice and place the cup on the table. I hear the creaking of bones as one by one each of us leaves the patio to change and wash up for dinner. Using my cane (the physical therapy has not helped my lower lumbar pain), I make my way back into the building. I enter the freeze of the air-conditioned lobby, the carpeted hallway which always smells of Lysol and a hint of lemon and pass the lecture room, waiting to be useful again. Getting to my room takes a lot of energy, like everything else I do these days. I pass the potted palms. Stephanie who works the reception desk looks up and waves to me. The staff is taught to be friendly and helpful.
The lobby is filled with members lounging in chairs, some bellowing into cell phones despite an ordinance requesting members keep a six- foot distance. I nod at them without speaking and clop my way along the hall. Step Shuffle Step. I pass a handyman carrying a sanitizer spray and stop to scan the bulletin boards daily exhortations, to walk slowly and use the handrail, keep our TV’s low after eight o’ clock, keep our doors unlocked while in the rooms. There is a notice announcing the movie scheduled for Saturday night, a re-run of Chicago. The usual daily dinner menu is posted. On the bottom is a small index card notifying the residents of the passing of Edward Phillip Riggs.
I reach my room out of breath, my hands shaking so badly I have trouble fitting the key in the lock. I open the door and shamble into the small sparsely furnished room I have been assigned, hear the door snick closed behind me. I wonder what Anna would have thought of this place I am now confined to, surrounded in my too chilly room by the few photos and mementos I have held onto from my past: a photo album, The American Family Reference Dictionary, Anna’s gold wedding ring. I am not against material pleasures but there is no space for them in this room.
I prop my cane against the chair beside the window, sit down on the edge of my narrow mattress lean forward, kick off my Bas Weejuns, strip off my socks and flex the stiffness out of my toes. I get up and go into the bathroom, take off my glasses and wash my hands and face. I am caught up at the sight of my reflection, the deep lines etched on my skin, the white stubble on my cheeks and chin where I have begun to grow a beard. I dry myself with a fresh towel that smells of clothes softener. I hang the wet towel on the rack, stuff my shirt and shorts in a laundry basket and take a clean T-shirt and boxers from the chest of drawers. I stoop to remove from the bottom drawer the navy cardigan Anna had knitted for me, and pull it on, pick up Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. The plot is exciting and takes all my concentration and for a while I manage to forget why I am in this room. I read a few chapters before my eyes begin to blur and place the book back on the top of my night table.
The image of Ed’s genial face lingers in my mind: Rest in peace Eddie. I will find you soon.
I feel so horrifically alone.
The silence does not bother me; the emptiness does…
I feel an overwhelming desire to reach out to my son Tommy. It has been three months since I last heard from him and almost one year three since I have hugged my grandchildren. I dial Tom’s number.
“Oh, hello, Dad, I’m just on my way out. Is anything the matter?”
“Does anything have to be the matter for a father to call his son?”
“Well, you sound … I don’t know, a bit down.”
I took a shaky breath. “I am, just lost my best friend, Eddie Riggs.”
“Ooh. That’s too bad.”
His words fall lightly and don’t provide the warmth I need. He doesn’t ask about the details, clearly, he hasn’t the time. I realize my son really doesn’t care about some old dead crony of his father. He cares only about whatever it is he is rushing to, one less interruption taking up his time.
“How’s Michele?” I ask
“Busy with the girls…”
I hear a soft exhalation that may be impatience, annoyance, or both.
“Well, stay safe and give them my love.”
“Will do…”
Each curt answer carries away a part of my heart. Seconds tick away. “Well, love you, Tommy. Be careful out there.”
“Bye, Dad.”
I hear a dial tone. He’s hung up. I am left with the receiver in my hand and nothing more to say.
From my bedroom window I see that the sky is darker now, bringing with it the movement of sullen clouds. Beyond the gated manicured lawn, the evening traffic is picking up. I watch the twinkling lights of the cars chasing each other on the parkway. I think again about Ed, begin to cry, beginning with a small sob, and ending up with a huge, body-shaking bellow.
A river of fatigue overruns my sorrow. I blow my nose, wipe away my tears and turn on the TV. The rising numbers of Covid-19 deaths world-wide continues to leave me stunned. Thank God several pharmaceutical companies have produced vaccines to fight this deadly virus. All of us here at the Bowers have been fully inoculated.
Living here at The Bowers costs a bundle. I am caught in a world less predictable and less controllable, an uncertain and unwelcoming future looming on my horizon if I outlive my savings. I have been lucky to so far, I have had pretty- good health, but who knows what can happen to me tomorrow. I picture myself sick and confined to a state hospital, my bare behind exposed in a backless gown.
It is what it is and there is not much I can do about it.
I call the front desk and ask for a dinner tray to be delivered to my room. I am in no mood to go to the dining room. I choose the pot roast with mashed potatoes. I ask for vanilla ice cream for dessert. Both are my favorites.
I hold on to this thought as if it is all I have left.
When they threw my kitten into the furnace, I thought: how in God’s name can I survive this? But what else can I do? Sometimes I think of slitting my wrists, but picture Masha’s face when she hears she will never see her mother again. Those words would be knives dragged over her skin for the rest of her life. I will survive but, I tell you, this is hell.
‘Welcome to hell’ was how Natalya had been greeted on her first day at IP-15 Penitentiary in Moravia. It was a freezing hell; Dante’s seventh circle, reserved for violent criminals. This included those who ran and worked in the prison, as well as the inmates.
Natalya was in the fourth week of her sentence. It still felt like hell. The accommodation (‘the barracks’, the prisoners called it) was dreadful: thirty women to each room, a toilet that couldn’t be used because there was no central sewage system; in the night, they went to an outside one. The lack of rest-time was inhumane: they got to bed at half-past one, rose at six. The bathrooms were foul: special poles were used to knock on the doors so the rats would scatter. The food was disgusting: often an unfathomable grey mass.
The work was the worst. Natalya made clothing, using a sweat machine. Much of the clothes allegedly went to the family of the prison director, Officer Krushkev, and his business associates. The job involved cutting the fabric into exactly the right size, ninety cuts made by a saw on a chalk line: if one was not on the line, all cuts were ruined. Natalya had no experience in such work, and no training was provided. She was a writer, her fingers used to tapping keys. But when she asked if she could have a job in the prison library instead, the response was laughter.
The women worked in a silence pregnant with nerves and boredom. Every so often there was a scream, as a rodent ran over a foot, and the guards chastised the noise-maker. Natalya hoarded words under her tongue. Every day she disgorged some in a letter to her husband Vladimir. One day, she planned to write a news story about life in the prison. Novaya Gazeta may be interested. A book deal could follow. Natalya was not an investigative journalist, she wrote for the literary magazine Nash Sovremennik, but her dream was to be like Elena Milashina, the prominent journalist and human rights defender who had won accolades for her extraordinary activism. In this place, dreams were necessary.
‘Stop dreaming, go faster,’ one of the guards shouted at her. ‘You want to stand outside all night? That’s what will happen if you don’t make your quota.’
In a non-prison working environment, this way of speaking would be cause for complaint. But there was no worker’s union Natalya could have gone to here. No-one running one would allow a director to get away with workers doing sixteen-and-a-half-hour days with one day off every eight weeks. Half of this was ‘voluntary overtime’. Waivers were signed, stipulating that the prisoner would work after hours, including weekends, ‘of her own volition’. Compulsory voluntary labour. As Natalya had dragged the pen across the page, scraping out her signature, she bit her tongue.
‘Tell me you don’t agree with how we work and live,’ she said to the women on her table at lunch time. ‘There must be something we can do.’
But there were only shrugs and shakes of the head.
Natalya did not want to be the sole dissenter, she wasn’t stupid. But she was willing to lead a complaint. She had visions of the women rising up, rebelling. The Shawshank Redemptionhad taken five years to reach Russia, but it had. She watched the DVD five times, for every year she hadn’t been able to see it.
A prison rebellion in IP-15 was unlikely. A successful one was even more unlikely. Women did protest, but many felt it to be futile; they were rarely listened to in prison. Although it was a woman’s penitentiary, many of the guards were men. Most of them, when performing punishments such as handcuffing women to beds for hours, or beating whole groups of workers with clubs, ankle boots and bars if one person failed to miss a production target, as well as threatening to take away the right to bathe and wash their clothes, of having visitors and letters, did it with no rage or anger on their faces. Brutality was apparently normal and necessary to them. The more frightened the women: the more silent they were. The more silent, the more the light slipped out of them.
Natalya believed in the illuminating and transformative power of speech. In her first days in prison, she asked women for their stories whenever she had a chance. She whispered enquiries in the queues for toilets and showers, at exercise time, during meals. She imagined she was interviewing. Some women refused to tell her anything; some merely told her the years of their sentences, as if that defined them; as if they were the courts’ judgements. Natalya became aware that although they all wore the same dark-green dresses and white headscarves, and followed the same rules, the connection ended there.
‘You need to do what you are told in here, girl,’ Yulia, who slept on the bunk above Natalya, and had her coveted job in the prison library, said. She took another mouthful of grey mush and continued: ‘You want to get out of here, see your daughter? Do anything to stress out the fucks here, you can forget about parole. And worse. Just keep quiet.’
Natalya thought of the poem, ‘The Balloon of the Mind’ by Yeats, which she had studied on her Russian and Comparative Literature degree: ‘… do what you’re bid / Bring the balloon of the mind / That bellies and drags in the wind / Into its narrow shed.’ She couldn’t drag her balloon-mind into the barracks; it slipped from her hands and rose into the sky.
‘Okay, so when we get out of here, then we say something,’ Natalya said. ‘Then, they can be taken down.’
‘Oh, they can be taken down? How many gangster films have you seen?’ mocked ‘Knitting Irina’, so-called because she knitted items for the prisoners for small amounts of cash. The consensus was that Irina was scarred, physically and mentally, by twenty years in prison. When she walked, her body swayed and nodded. When she slept, in the bunk next to Natalya and Yulia, she screamed.
‘Even Tolokonnikova didn’t manage to change anything,’ Yulia stated.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, from Pussy Riot, had been incarcerated in Moravia six years before. She had written an open letter condemning the penal system and prison life. People read it; journalists wrote about it, Pussy Riot’s international fame and Tolokonnikova’s good looks selling and spreading the story. A widespread investigation into injustices in the system had been launched. But had anything changed? It hadn’t, but Natalya believed it had knocked a few bricks off the wall of oppression; had weakened it.
‘I have to believe things will change,’ she said. ‘They won’t if we accept the status quo.’
Yulia dragged her pale hands through her tangled hair. ‘You want to be listened to? So tell us your story. You’ve asked all of us: your turn.’
Natalya took a breath and began. She had been walking Masha home from after-school club. It was a woundingly cold winter day, dark early, few people around. The only sound was the crunching of their feet through thick snow and Masha’s excited chatter, which Natalya had tuned out of in a consideration of what to make for dinner. Later she regretted that, the not-listening to her daughter, when it was their last moment of normality. Suddenly, a man sprang from behind a car, wielding a knife. ‘Give me your bag,’ he shouted. Masha screamed. Without thinking, Natalya grabbed the knife. There was a tussle, the knife was in her hands, and then it was not. Her hands, her whole body, were shaking. The man was on the floor, a shocking amount of blood around him, the knife jammed in his chest. There was more blood on Natalya’s skin and clothes. Masha had stopped screaming. She was staring at her mother, the rainbows of her eyebrows raised. ‘Mama?’ she asked, again and again, like a stuck piece of music. Natalya’s mouth was a torn-apart nest. She stared at the knife, the man, the blood. People spilled out of houses and shops, wailing angels arrived, the blue of the sirens bright on the snow. Masha was taken to her father’s office; Natalya to the police station. She had to tell her story, over and over, the words soaked with sorrow.
The justice system flowed like a contagion, like the blood that had spilled out of the man’s body. He was nineteen, a known thief with a record of petty crime. His name was Aleksandr Ivashov. Natalya couldn’t stop thinking of Alexandr being named; of what an important task it was to bestow a name, something carried through life and engraved on stone with death. Alexandr was the name of the poet, Pushkin, whose ‘Drowned Man’ described the ‘awful chaos / All night through stirred in his brain’ when a father ignored the drowned man on the beach shown to him by his children. Awful chaos had stirred in Natalya’s mind from the second the knife was in her hands, and had not left her. She could barely speak to family and friends from the day of Alexandr’s death to the day of her sentencing. Vladimir found her a lawyer, a man. The lawyer spoke passionately of Natalya acting in self-defence; he spoke of her previous good character; he spoke of her young child who needed her. When Natalya talked, words were unstable in her mouth, she stammered when she answered questions. The mostly male jury found her guilty of murder that exceeded reasonable levels of self-defence; she was sentenced to two years in prison. There was a write-up in the local paper; it was not a big enough story for the nationals.
Yulia and Irina nodded as Natalya clawed out the tale. So unique to her, so all-consuming, the story was no more or less interesting to them than anyone else’s. It was clouds moving across the sky; to Natalya, it was the sky.
That evening Natalya wrote, as usual, to Vladimir. Since meeting at university, aged eighteen, they had rarely stopped talking and listening to each other. In their year apart, when Natalya worked for a paper in Spain, they wrote and spoke on the phone every day. Since Masha was born, much of their talk had been about her. Now Vlad was at home with their daughter, and Natalya was here. Sometimes she wondered if he was horrified by her crime. He had not condemned her as some of her friends had; as his parents had. Although he was obviously shocked by what she had done, he had been supportive, his face desperately sad when she was sentenced. She knew he suffered too, suddenly being a single parent, facing the local gossip about his murderess wife. Whatever his pain, he would still write to her, she was sure. The letters were one of the few things that made prison bearable. His to her; hers to him. She imagined that knowing what it was like here might motivate Vlad to speak up for her; he might write a letter about the way women were treated in the State prisons. Perhaps he could, to paraphrase Marina Tsvetaeva, take the droplets from the fountain, and the sparks from the rocket of her words, and elicit change from them. When she made the most of the lurid details of her life it was to tacitly, passively, inspire this.
Lev, my lion, I miss you so much, Natalya wrote. I am exhausted. I thought that would be the case in prison, but imagined becoming used to it. After six weeks, nothing has changed except that it is colder, the radiators having stopped working. The noise, even in the depths of night, is unimaginable: snores, grunts, cries, screams, masturbations. Time is silent, though, as my watch was stolen. When the bell stabs the air in the morning, I often feel I have just slipped into sleep. I’m so tired the concrete wobbles as I walk across the yard, under a sky groaning with clouds, from the barracks. The memory of our soft double bed keeps me going. Your warm body beside mine, Masha climbing in beside us, snuggling against me, all three of us dreaming together. Peace. Quiet.
I have sent you a watch. I wish I could send you some peace at night, Koshechka, my kitten. It is not quiet here, but quieter than where you are I guess. Masha does climb in beside me every night, and she is not silent. She screams and cries, wets the bed. Masha and I are seeing a psychiatrist together. She is fearful, he says, that she will not have you back. Traumatised, too, because of what she witnessed. I’m sorry. I do not know if I should tell you this, I don’t like to upset you when everything is so difficult. But I know you don’t like things to be withheld from you. You like things to be spoken about.
My poor Masha, Natalya wrote feverishly. My varobushek. I can’t bear to think of her suffering. Does the psychiatrist think she will ever get over it? Give her a thousand hugs from me, hold her whenever you can, promise me. Help her face to light open like a sunflower, as it used to. Tell her no-one will hurt her. Tell her I love her, over and over again, and then again. The mightiest word is love.
Natalya was distraught that she had not considered how scarred Masha would be. Had she become so obsessed with her own situation, her own feelings, that she had neglected her only child’s? Children were resilient, her mother always said, and Natalya had tried to believe this. But how many five-year-olds had seen someone die in front of them; their mother taken away by the police? How could Masha talk about that in school? Was she worried that a man would jump out from behind a car every time she crunched through the snow? Was she worried about her mother’s safety, in a place she had never been, far from her home? Did she dream of screams, of red blood and blue light on white snow? Natalya had those dreams, in her rare moments of sleep. Then she lay awake and thought about whether she could have behaved differently. Aleksandr had behaved as he had because he was desperate, she had found out in court: the product of neglect, of a prostitute mother barely at home. Natalya had behaved thoughtlessly, instinctively. Her lawyer said she had been protecting her little girl, but if she had handed over the bag would Alexandr not have gone on his way? Would Natalya have stabbed him even if she had been alone? Would Masha forgive her? So many fears, and she could not speak of any of them in prison.
They were ruled by fear in IP-15, a place meant to keep them safe and to keep the world safe from them. Certainly, Natalya was not safe: none of the prisoners was. She had not been beaten by the guards herself but heard stories of those who had been. They lopped branches off the silver birches that grew around the prison and used them to hit the prisoners. Women were sometimes made to walk through the corridors bent over like commas, to show their disgrace. Guards also regularly asked for sexual favours, in exchange for contraband such as vodka. An annual beauty pageant was organised, the winner rewarded with blini. Any woman refusing to take part was beaten on the legs and soles of their feet. Or, sometimes, the violence was mental: women set against women, fights ensuing. Natalya recorded details of the brutality in her letters. When she was free, she would use them for her news article. She knew this was dangerous, but refused to silence herself.
Yesterday in the sweat room, a woman made a mistake. The saw ran over her finger and it was cut off. She went to hospital and was back on her machine today. Of course, she couldn’t go as fast as before. The guard said, ‘That means everyone else must work for an hour longer to make up for your laziness.’ After we left, the woman was spat at by a co-worker. Thank God, I have my day off from work today, but what can I do once this letter is finished? There is little to do here but wait, and try to stay sane. Perhaps one day you will be able to visit, when it is Masha’s school holiday. How could have they sent me two thousand miles from my family?
After writing to Vlad, Natalya penned a short and light-hearted note to Masha. She tried very hard to say the right things, the most loving things, struggling to find the words that would build a shield around Masha’s pain. After the letter was finished, she lay exhausted on her bed. As she was drifting off to sleep, she heard a sound. A ginger cat had slunk in and was meowing. The cat’s tummy was swollen and distended. Her meows were startlingly loud, and she was staring at Natalya in an angrily beseeching manner. Natalya had never had a cat, was not a cat person, but she put out a hand to it. The animal sniffed it then jumped onto the bed beside her. Its fur was mangy and threadworn, but stroking it felt wonderful. They slept together, and Natalya did not have a bad dream.
The next day, at exercise-time in the yard, the cat was on the wall. Watching. Slowly, Natalya moved closer and put out a tentative hand. The cat lurched to her feet, unsteady because of her enormous belly. With her rough tongue, she licked Natalya’s wrist. Pleasure climbed inside her as if she were a window.
As I was stroking the cat, I felt a bang on my head. The guard had hit me. He said I was breaking a rule and would be punished. I thought being hit was my punishment, but I was deprived of dinner. I’m sorry if I sound self-absorbed. I know you have your pain, and Masha has hers. Mine is no worse.
A week later, the cat was on Natalya’s bed when she came in at night-time. She had given birth. Ten kittens were snuffling and mewling, blind faces screwed up. The cat cleaned one after another and the babies snuggled into her body. The prisoners crowded around and cooed. Voices usually sharp as knives became soft as fur, spiky words became smooth.
I stayed awake all night, making sure the cat – I call her Petra – and the kittens were alright. In the morning, Yulia got a cardboard box from the library and we hid them under the bed. I did not expect them to be there when we came back that night, but they were, all sleeping. The kittens are ginger and white, except for one black and white one. I call the black and white one Manya, after Mother. I whisper her name to her like a love song. She lets me hold her for as long as I like. Manya is the best thing to have happened since I was sentenced; now I just have to protect her, and her brothers and sisters. Somehow.
While giving birth, Petra had bled on Natalya’s bed. This was bad, for every week when the women took the sheets to the prison launderette they were inspected for soiling. Those who stained them were punished. Natalya blamed the blood on her period, but it did no good.
I was made to stand in the ‘spot’ after work. It was minus-twenty degrees. I would have cried but the tears would have turned to ice. I stared up at the trees, fellow living things, scratching at the sky as if they too want to get out of here. Ah ah, cried the crows as they circled. I wasn’t sure if they were mocking or sympathising. A murder of crows for a murderer. We think we are the free ones, but what freedom to be a bird. When I bent my head back and stared up, the barbed wire above the fence was like scars on the sky. I wonder if I am going mad, whether there would be some relief in that. What are you thinking as you read this, Lev? Are you reading this? I have only had one short letter in the past week. I need you, please write. It doesn’t matter what you say; I just need lines on a page.
While Natalya was standing on the spot, Manya the kitten was mewing in the barracks, missing her. Her mother Petra and the other prisoners tried to comfort her, but she wouldn’t stop. After hours of this, one woman – Natalya didn’t find out who it was – fetched a guard. The kittens were bundled into boxes and taken away. Petra scratched the guard, and was taken away too. The cat and kittens were to be burned in the furnace.
Yulia and Irina told Natalya the story at dinner, their words running over each other. Natalya could bear the pain only as long as they were talking.
‘They deserve to be thrown in the fire themselves,’ Natalya ranted when they had finished, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘I’m going to Officer Krushkev. It can’t be legal, what they did. Is there no protection for the innocent in this country?’
‘Many of us in here are innocent,’ Yulia says, ‘fitted up by the State. You know what happened to me, right? You remember I said I am here on terrorism charges? They were waiting when I came out of my office, a twenty-year-old working for an insurance agency. Two policemen leaning on a car. They took me to the police station, put explosive devices in my handbag and never let me out. I was accused of taking part in the Chechen Wars; it was crazy, almost laughable, sometimes I still think I am dreaming it. In the first war, I was nine; in the second, I was twelve. I protested my innocence, but you think anyone spoke up for me? Even my fiancée was too scared. I did nothing wrong apart from being Chechnya.’
Irina took over. ‘You know how it works, Natalya. Don’t say anything. You don’t want to be in Solitary. You think it’s bad now? It’s even worse there; believe me.’
Most people had left the dining room. Into the quiet came the crows’ deranged song.
‘Listen to me then,’ Irina said, ‘listen to me. I am speaking, and I am telling you to stay quiet. I was in Solitary once. You know why we call it shiza?’
Shiza: schizophrenia. Natalya could guess why they called it that, but said nothing. This wasn’t her story.
‘I was in there forty days,’ Irina said, ‘forty days and forty nights. They handcuffed me to a bed and they didn’t let me go. They treated me like an animal: or worse, because at least the cats’ pain would only have lasted minutes. I could have nothing: not even hot water. There was no toilet; I could go once a day when they opened the cell; often, I soiled myself. I dreamed of having TB, so I could be in hospital. When they let me out, I spoke. I went to Officer Krushkev. I said: this is inhumane. I told him he was allowing his staff to torture people. You know what his reply was; spoken through a mouthful of the chocolate he was eating in his warm office? “Jesus survived in the desert for forty days and forty nights, do you think he had luxuries and home comforts? You think you are better than Jesus, lady? I know you have a mental illness, but I didn’t realise it was that severe.” This is the first time I have spoken about that.’
Natalya opened her mouth, choked. Irina patted her on the back.
‘I wish I were as strong as you, Irina. You have survived in here for so long,’ Natalya said.
Yulia spoke. ‘You are strong, you just need other ways to survive, and that means thinking differently. Do you like to visit cemeteries?’
‘What? On the anniversaries of my grandparents’ deaths; no other time,’ Natalya said.
‘You don’t think they are as lovely as Gorky Park? As your own garden with the roses you have nurtured with your fingers? But by the end of the summer, your garden will be full of dead things. I think a cemetery is as lovely as any place I have ever visited, because it is the garden of everyone in it, everyone who has been loved. Most people do not think this, because most people try to think the same way as everyone else. They think it keeps them safe.’
They stared at each other, the three women, and then laughter bubbled up like a spring. Natalya thanked Yulia for the metaphor, and asked Irina if she could pay her to knit a hat for Masha for her birthday. Irina said she would, and make one for Natalya too.
Still no letter, Vlad. Perhaps mine are not getting through, censored due to my complaints. Or perhaps yours are not, as my punishment. Or maybe you don’t want to write. I will carry on, because what else can I do? I have to believe you are still waiting, still loving. I read all the letters you have written since I have come here, again and again. I clench the words like pebbles held in a fist. Although I am writing, I have no real news, but I need to do it.
Today is Sunday, so in the morning we went to mass as usual. I know I rarely went at home, but when I am released I think I will. The chapel here is a special place, colourful silk flowers hanging from the corners of the ceiling; rich-hued pictures of a sorrowful but calm Jesus on the walls. Today, I stood and prayed for the souls of the cat and her kittens; and for all of us in here and all of you out there, especially you and Masha. The priest read from the book of Isaiah: ‘Zion says, “The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.” Can a woman forget her baby, or disown the child of her womb? Though she might forget, I never could forget you.’ Please tell Masha that she is always with me. Tell her, please, that I sang her name before she was born; I’m singing it in my head right now, like a hymn. Tell her I see her every time I look in the mirror, her name written in the lines of my face. Tell her. Speak of me. Don’t let her grow up in silence.
There were three who came to the outpost to hunt. The first was a young woman of eighteen. She was timid and bird-like, with a pale skin and eyes that betrayed a lack of sleep. The second was a man of twenty-eight. He was thin and had a rather morose countenance, but his large liquid eyes had some melancholy beauty about them. The third was a forthright woman of forty-two, and I was relieved that she, at least, had some steel and conversation about her.
I had been at the outstation for almost twelve years, and it was not unusual for groups to come hunting Anxieties. The jungle surrounding my bungalow was crawling with the creatures, or so I was told.
‘You’re lucky not to have seen one,’ the older woman, whose name was Lori Braddock, explained.
She was short and stout, her expression perennially suspicious, and when she looked at you square on you became aware of a tired, haunted aspect behind her eyes.
‘I’m in no doubt that you’re right,’ I replied.
We were sitting on rocking chairs on my veranda, smoking cheroots and drinking gin pahits as we looked towards the river. A chorus of cicadas sang nearby, quietly at first, before reaching a glorious crescendo that seemed to awaken the entire jungle.
‘You’re a writer, aren’t you?’ I asked, already knowing the answer. Braddock had met with mild success a decade earlier with a collection of essays about the post-war experience. I had read and enjoyed her essays, though I had heard mixed reviews about her subsequent works.
‘A miserable writer, if the critics are to be believed,’ she answered. ‘You have no idea how it cripples one to read disparaging remarks about the written incarnation of your soul.’
‘What have the critics ever written?’ I said consolingly. ‘I am sure flamingos lose no sleep when the pigeons write their critiques of pink.’
Braddock said nothing to this, but I saw the beginnings of a smile as her lips closed around the cheroot. A tendril of smoke spiraled from the tip.
‘And you,’ she said. ‘I gather you’ve been here a long time.’
I took a draw on the cheroot, enjoying the thick aromas of cedar and spices. ‘The surroundings soothe me.’
‘It seems to me a rather dark place, a realm of shadows and the unknown. But I suppose to a naturalist it must be quite fitting.’
‘And not entirely unknown,’ I replied with a grin. ‘I find that if people do not run from darkness their eyes soon adjust to it. Now that the colonists have gone-’
‘With their tails rightly between their legs,’ Braddock interjected. ‘I hear one of the plantation managers stayed on here for a time afterwards. You were close, weren’t you?’
I sipped my drink before answering. ‘Langley, yes, he was a capable man. I first made his acquaintance on my travels here. He was quite helpful in assisting me with my research, and for a time we maintained a close friendship. In the end, I believe, he missed the comforts of home.’
‘And are you not lonely? You were once quite a fixture of London society, from what I gather.’
‘Oh, I have guests often enough, and there are some small towns upriver. I find that I get on quite well with the native population, and I’m afraid the idea of London society does not thrill me as it once did. It doesn’t do for a man my age to concern himself with such things.’
I felt Braddock’s eyes on mine as I puffed on my cheroot, though she did not push the topic further, for which I was grateful. A chik chak gecko sang somewhere nearby, and in the glow of the lanterns we watched a meandering trail of flying insects pass before us.
‘Does the idea of the hunt tomorrow excite you?’ I asked at length.
Braddock then pierced me with a look of such contempt I immediately regretted the question. We sat in silence for some time after, and when the gin pahits and cheroots were finished, Braddock excused herself and bade me goodnight. I was left alone, looking into the darkness, hearing the gentle flow of the river without seeing it.
#
The following morning, at the break of dawn, the hunters breakfasted with me. We ate eggs followed by plantains and papaya, and we drank fresh coffee. I did not venture much conversation for I could see the trepidation in the faces of my guests, and it was clear from their behaviours that they were best left to their own thoughts.
It was unusual for me to accompany the guests on a hunt – in fact this would be my first time to do so – and the sight of the guns was unnerving. I did not bring my own, of course, for I was coming merely as a spectator, and I believed there was no reason to fear what I could not see. We set out shortly after breakfast, taking the path into the jungle that led from my back door.
Braddock led the way, with the younger woman behind her and the man in third. I took up the rear, being conscious to keep quiet in case it interfered with their objective in any way. For a long while not a word passed between us.
The day was warm, and I confess that I was soon sweating through my shirt. Sunlight beat down upon us through the emerald filter of the canopy, and warmth seemed to rise from the earth like an intoxicating perfume. It was not an unpleasant morning, however, for that part of the jungle was well known to me, and as we walked I was reminded of the bygone days. I remembered my first visit as a young man, when I spent weeks documenting the birds and beetles and snakes with the help of a group of local boys; then later after the colonists left, going for daily walks, Langley and I, alone.
I noticed that now and then there passed between the hunters certain looks that spoke of a shared experience – a sixth sense, perhaps – that I was not privy to, and it soon became obvious that something was afoot. Then, all of a sudden, Braddock took off at a run between the trees. The others simultaneously shot off in opposite directions, and I was at a loss as to whom, if any, I should follow.
Before I could decide, I heard the ominous report of a gun, and I took off after Braddock. I ran as best I could through the undergrowth, and some minutes later I came upon the writer crouched behind a fallen log. Though she did not turn to see my approach, she must have heard my heavy lumbering through the jungle for she raised a hand to command silence. I fell in beside her, catching my breath as I dropped to my knees.
‘There,’ Braddock breathed. ‘Twenty metres ahead, in the shadow of the tree.’
For several seconds I saw nothing, but then a slight movement caught my attention. There it was, the Anxiety, crouching next to the bole of a tree. It was a small thing, perhaps four feet tall, a wiry creature with long limbs. It was entirely black, lacking any discernible features, and its movements were jerky and undefined, like the characters in a cine film. Though it had no distinguishable face, I had the distinct impression that it was watching us.
It’s difficult to describe the sensation that overcame me in that moment, for it was entirely unfamiliar to me. All at once my whole being seemed to shrink, as though something had reached inside my chest and grabbed my very soul, and with bony fingers was attempting to wrestle it out of existence. My breaths became shallow, my head light, and I could focus on nothing around me. The world no longer belonged to the realms I knew – those of the past and the present – but to a stark and terrifying future that appeared as a mountainous black hole before me.
I was only vaguely aware of Braddock’s movements beside me, for I was unable to tear my gaze away from the horrid creature. I felt the jungle around me dissolve into nothing – all achievements, memories, and pleasures shrank into insignificance, and at the end there was nothing left but an all-encompassing emptiness.
It is with shame that I admit that in that moment, had Braddock turned the gun on me I would have considered it a welcome relief.
Suddenly the creature advanced towards us, crawling through the undergrowth on all fours, and only then did I have the sense to glance at Braddock. Her face was sickly pale and glazed with sweat, her whole body shook, and I thought for a moment that she might faint. It came as a surprise, then, when she took aim at the oncoming terror and pulled the trigger.
I shuddered at the sound, cowering at Braddock’s side. The creature fell backwards and lay still for a moment, but then to my dismay it returned to its feet and looked in our direction once more. Terror consumed me. I do not recall what happened next, for everything turned to darkness.
Presently I found that I was lying on a bed of ferns and Braddock’s hand was on my shoulder. It was as though I were waking from a dream. Braddock looked shaken but relieved, wearing the expression of one who has just completed a long-dreaded assignment. Dragging myself into a sitting position, I glanced instinctively to the spot where the creature had been.
‘It’s gone,’ Braddock said.
Indeed there appeared no trace of it. The jungle was still, silent but for the throaty squawk of a distant hornbill.
‘That’s not to say it won’t come back,’ Braddock said, eyeing me with concern. ‘Are you quite all right?’
‘That thing,’ I spluttered. My tongue seemed like a foreign body in my mouth. ‘What- what was it?’
Braddock shouldered her gun and extended a pudgy hand.
‘It is a soul shadow,’ she replied, pulling me to my feet. ‘The Anxieties prey upon a person’s spirit. I see that this one has taken a nibble of yours, too. A nibble can actually do one good; the trick is to not let it engulf you.’
I watched her now not with curiosity but with admiration.
‘And it didn’t engulf you?’ I asked.
‘It has come close a number of times. But I have not let it defeat me.’ She gestured to the empty jungle. ‘As you can see. Come, I’m quite ready for a cheroot and perhaps a gin and bitters.’
#
My two other guests had evidently enjoyed similar successes. They arrived back at the bungalow shortly after we did, and both were in high spirits. The girl, who had barely spoken a word from the moment I met her, seemed like a different person entirely, while the young man, who I had previously thought sullen and dull, was suddenly animated and cheerful.
After taking lunch I induced my guests to bathe in the river, and I fancy that they were quite taken with the novelty. The afternoon heat was just short of oppressive, and the cool water with its mossy aroma was just the ticket. A troop of macaques paid us a brief visit as we sat drying on the rocks, and the smiles on the faces of my guests were quite contagious.
We spent the evening trading tales. It was pleasant for me to hear stories of London society, for I had not been home in some years, and I believe my guests were entertained by my account of how I came to live in that secluded place. It transpired that the young man was a student of natural history, and I was flattered to discover that he counted my published works among his great inspirations.
‘But do you not miss civilization?’ he asked me, puffing contentedly on his cheroot.
‘Occasionally,’ I admitted, ‘though I am quite at home here.’
‘And you don’t mind what people say?’ asked the young woman.
‘And what do they say, dear?’ I replied.
The young woman glanced at Braddock, and then all three guests averted their eyes in unison.
‘Please be frank,’ I said. ‘I am not troubled easily by the opinions of others; you will find that I have rather a thick skin.’
‘Many have suggested that you are hiding,’ the young woman said, a trifle bashfully.
‘Hiding?’ I replied. ‘Nonsense. What would I be hiding from?’
There followed a silence that was quite uncomfortable. I came to the conclusion, of course, that certain details about my private life had become common knowledge in London society. I had no need to ask what those details were.
Though Braddock made attempts to salvage the conversation, it was plain that the jovial air of earlier could not be recovered. Presently the two younger guests retired to their beds and mosquito nets, and Braddock and I sat quietly on the veranda with our drinks.
Night had by now veiled the jungle, and we were serenaded by the usual evening orchestra of birds, insects, and mammals, underscored by the rhythmic flow of the river.
As I looked through the darkness I wondered if I had indeed been living in ignorance all those years. Maybe they were right; perhaps I was hiding. Perhaps this place was simply my refuge from the stark judgement of others, from the future, and just as the jungle represented the heart of darkness for my guests, perhaps London represented the very same for me.
Presently I saw a movement in the trees ahead, and I was disconcerted to find that my blood ran cold and beads of sweat gathered on my brow.
‘You see one, don’t you?’ Braddock said, seeing me frozen in my seat.
I did not blink or dare to tear my gaze from the shadowy movements close to the river. ‘Will I ever be at peace again?’ I breathed.
Braddock disappeared inside and returned moments later with her gun.
‘Peace is an illusion and a folly,’ she said, handing it to me. ‘Don’t dwell on what people say. Remember, the flamingo doesn’t lose sleep over the pigeon’s critique of pink.’
She winked, and had I not been so flustered I might have been amused by our reversal of roles.
‘Breathe,’ she said. ‘No one should be ashamed of pink feathers.’
I nodded and shouldered the gun as I set off towards the river. As I moved through the trees, deeper and deeper into the jungle, it occurred to me that I was journeying simultaneously into my past and into my unknown. The creatures had been there all along, living alongside me, just out of sight.
It was time to look them in the eye and show them my true colour.
