

### The Voyage

Journeys in creative writing

New writing from the Universities of Monash and Warwick

edited by

Chandani Lokuge and David Morley

A Silkworms Ink Anthology

Published by Silkworms Ink

Find more Silkworms Ink titles here

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Chandani Lokuge and David Morley

-

First published 2011

by Silkworms Ink

Highlands, Whatlington, Battle, East Sussex, TN33 0NL

Selection and Editorial Matter Copyright Chandani Lokuge and David Morley

Individual Contributions Copyright the Contributors

The right of Chandani Lokuge and David Morley to be identified as Editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

ISBN: 978-1-908-64400-8 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Silkworms Ink and Smashwords, Inc.

Highlands

Whatlington

Battle

East Sussex

TN33 0NL
Table of Contents

Introduction

Chandani Lokuge & David Morley

Cup

Peter Blegvad

Cinematic Mash-up: The Sublime Genre of the Internet

Lauren Bliss

Crystal

Elleke Boehmer

Ostrowski's Superbus

Halina Boniszewska

Emily's Utopia

Janine Burke

Airport delay

Ed Byrne

Cambridge

Peter Carpenter

Hanging Around

Maryrose Casey

Greed

Philip Caveney

Three Poems

Jane Commane

The Cat Swindle

Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario

Great Big Baby

Will Eaves

Views from Above

Elin-Maria Evangelista

Power of a Poster Girl

Peter Forbes

The Plot

Maureen Freely

Pilgrimage

Elsa Halling

Emily Street

John Hawke

Raqs Sharqi

Angie Hobbs

Recapitulated

Gruffydd Jones

The Little Mermaid

Sue Kossew

Awaiting The Toofaan

Raj Lal

Three Poems

Nick Lawrence

Pea Soup

Anna Lea

Aubonne, Spring Day

Chandani Lokuge

Castaway

Anna MacDonald

Resolute Bay

Elizabeth Manuel

Phantom Europe: A Mosaic

Adrian Martin

To Effigy Mounds, Iowa

Michael McKimm

The Circling Game

David Morley

Looking Home

_Catherine Noske_

A fifteen minute delay at a provincial Italian train station

Leila Rasheed

A Gallipoli Story: Imagining History

Bruce Scates

How Cats Land on Their Feet

Ian Stewart

Driving to Saturday's Rally for Refugees

Jenny Strauss

'My Journey from Kumasi' by Matthew Tipple, Class 4TF, Oatlands Junior School, Harrogate, UK, July 1982

Nicholas Tipple

Hotel Jugoslavija

Dragan Todorovic

Mutilated Images

George Ttoouli

The Lord of the Limbo Line

Ndaeyo Uko

Eka honda wedak, neda?

Robert JC Young

Biographies
Introduction

Welcome to _The Voyage_ , an innovative new anthology of writing by staff and postgraduates from both Monash in Australia and Warwick in England. We believe all writing, at its best, is creative writing. To that end we have drawn our distinguished contributors not only from English and Creative Writing but also from other departments in Humanities, from our Faculties of Science and Social Science, and from our Administration. What's more, we invited writers and scholars who have some practical connection with Warwick and Monash from both within and outside the academy.

We were open to all forms and genres: poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction including scholarship and biography, drama and most other forms of creativity you might imagine. We were happy for our contributors to write on any theme but we think that the core of the book is what it means to journey. These might be imagined or remembered journeys, physical or metaphorical journeys, or journeys into knowledge or across time.

There are over ten thousand miles between the universities of Monash and Warwick. Our writers live and work on the opposite side of the planet to each other. This book has been a voyage in space and time zones. It is part of a larger project between our universities. We are developing creative and practical research and teaching links for the benefit of staff and students. We have carried out workshops in Australia and England and our postgraduates have developed a superb anthology of student writing, _Verge 2011: The Unknowable,_ which will be launched at Melbourne Writers Festival.

We thank all our contributors and colleagues at Warwick and Monash Universities, our innovative publishers Silkworms Ink for their inventiveness and attention, and Melbourne Writers Festival for their support. We also thank the Monash-Warwick Strategic Funding Initiative for Joint Research and Education Programmes for financial support. We apologise for any errors or omissions that have occurred during the editing process: these are entirely our responsibility. The copyright of all the pieces in this book remain with the authors.

Chandani Lokuge, Monash University

David Morley, Warwick University

Cup

Peter Blegvad

_Ullage_ is "the amount a vessel lacks of being full" as my old dictionary defines it. The amount of absence or emptiness in it. Oppressed by the glut of surplus objects, people are beginning to value ullage more than the vessel itself. As a concerned citizen, feeling I should do my bit, I joined a destruction-crew in a field heaped with bottles, cups, mugs, jugs, beakers, demi-johns and other such. A tap or two of the hammer and they burst with a crack, pop or tinkle, their ullage freed to supplement the gasses enveloping the planet.

Our team had been working since dawn with an hour's break for lunch, and now the sun was setting. In the course of the day I'd smashed hundreds of vessels of various kinds with equal indifference, so why was I moved to spare this one? There was just something about it. A little terra-cotta cup. I looked around. The others were focused on their work, their hammers rising and falling, liberating ullage. Though it was against the rules, I put the cup in my pocket. Just as the whistle blew. The workday was over. We weren't searched. I took the cup home undetected, hoping the absence it contained would not be missed.

A happy marriage of form and function, but that wasn't it. It was the cup's modesty, its humility which moved me. Somehow I identified with it, part of me did — that part which wanted to be small again, to be 'bounded in a nutshell', contained.

Erich Neumann, in his study of the feminine archetype, "The Great Mother" (1955), draws a diagram of the Goddess as a vast pot or beaker, vectors connecting her anatomy with a constellation of other objects — beings, substances and things. In a straight line ascending from her right breast we find bowl, cup, and at the top, grail. The grail I pictured was gaudy, bejewelled, ostentatious, vulgar. While the terra-cotta cup seemed to embody Christ's injunction to "become as little children."

Strange how anything, the humblest object, can be the agent of a person's conversion.

In the days that followed, notices appeared. The cup had been missed after all. A reward was offered for its return. It was described as a disposable cup for water, found in India. Where in India? My enquiries had to be discrete, but I managed to discover the specific provenance of the cup: a workshop in rural Gujarat. I resolved to return it to its place of origin.

If we imagine the line from the Great Mother's breast continuing upward beyond the grail it would eventually reach the ultimate in gaudy vessels: the Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator at CERN outside Geneva, built at a cost of billions. Inside the LHC protons stream at near light-speed around a ring 27 kilometres in circumference before being directed by super-cooled magnets to smash into each other in a spectacular approximation of the conditions which obtained immediately subsequent to the Big Bang.

Inside the cup particles streamed at a more leisurely pace and collided or not, according to chance. After days of travel, the cup and I arrived at a village near Morbi in Rajkot district, Gujarat. In the abandoned workshop the kilns were cold. Nearby the earth had been excavated to a depth of 3 metres. At the bottom it was clay, red with iron oxide. Moist and still warm from the setting sun.

What can we hope to learn from the collision of particles inside the LHC? It may give us direct evidence of the Higgs Boson, a new matter which would push the boundaries of high-energy physics.

What could I learn from the ullage the cup contained? I curled myself around it at the bottom of the pit and waited for night to fall.

Detail from diagram in "The Great Mother" by Erich Neumann

Cinematic Mash-up: The Sublime Genre of the Internet

Lauren Bliss

All Your Base are Belong to Us

What a strange, intoxicating place the Internet has become. Where the early film theorist Jean Epstein spoke of the pleasures of being embroiled in the cinema, I find myself equally immersed in the screen of my computer. I confess, I am a cinema purist; I despise the practice of watching films outside the intensity and veracity of the cinema auditorium – but I am able to become, through the small size of my computer screen, absorbed in the erotic power of the Internet. There is something about the Internet's infinite possibilities that is comparable to the sublime propensity of the cinema.

Jean-François Lyotard wrote in his famous 1973 article "Acinema" that avant-garde films can offer the sublime where there is a dispersal of sterile energy; sterile meaning pleasure for the sake of pleasure, discharge without need of invention or reproduction. The Internet, in its purest sense, is the absolute definition of this sublime experience. But what an unusual phenomenon it is: the usually discrete terms of audience and practitioner are now fluid, shaky, mobile. The Internet rips mainstream cinema open and queers its form – but now with the spectator in charge. With its proliferation of sharing technology, a new genre of video art has formed; one that is both fluid in its dialogue with cinema proper and distinct in its exchange with modern technological conventions.

This conversation between the Internet and cinema is enabled by the free exchange of films and the proliferation of artistic communities that, through websites like YouTube, share their work freely and directly with a global audience. The Internet breeds a language of its own but, rather than in the exclusive cliques and societies of art movements past, it occurs in a youthful culture paradoxically bound by anonymity and disconnection. As with experimental cinema, one must know where to look in order to find liberated and unchallenged movements; but unlike experimental cinema, subjects of the Internet are not so hard to find, as artists filter into largely indiscriminate searching platforms like Google – the only trick being in the words and phrases used to seek out all forms of bizarre, unadulterated pleasure (a talent possessed by a limited few people).

The early French impressionists (like Epstein) cherished the moving image camera's ability to defamiliarise ordinary objects – those hundreds of films concerned only with the movements of cars, aeroplanes and merry-go-rounds – a practice still not lost on contemporary video artists, such as the Philadelphia-based Ryan Trecartin (user name WianTreetin) or Australian Wendy Vainity (who has been described as the Jackson Pollock of the Internet). These artists utilise the effects of unreliable technology to invoke delight out of frustration. Wendy's video, _kitty litter physics animation_ (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4Aw9OdyZ6s>) is a revelation for the senses. Wendy provokes the repetitive, awkward slowness of technology; irritation is transformed into _jouissance_ , what Lyotard would call a _simulacrum_. The video features footage of a poorly animated cat as it shifts clumsily around a fairly abstract looking litter box. The soundtrack is marked by stereotypical sound effects common to editing software, which is placed into a repetitive loop by Wendy; the video offers a gesture toward the shallow thrill for rupturing the limits of technology.

The Internet operates as a Utopian platform for all forms of moving-image art. The popularity of both downloading software and websites for critical discussions of film allows almost anyone with a computer to access almost anything. And then, in an act of sublime nihilism, the user destroys itself. In its purest form, this exists as the virus (a condition relatively unknown to users of Macintosh operating systems, but they will get their fill soon enough). Then we see this destruction through the act of hacking, where the socially inept invert the power of technology to watch the rapid destruction of all forms of structure. Why? For the lulz! But, when the cinema bleeds into the Internet we see this destruction in the form of the _mash-up_. Here, video practitioners mutate cinematic genres and adapt solid genre to the fluidity of the Internet.

Mash-ups have given rise to fabulous, sometimes humorous concoctions that violently deconstruct the productive power of mainstream cinema. One brilliant example of this is from user tomthenomad whose YouTube video, _shawkwsank r4edemptions_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAFq5QKgLRg&feature) mutates the sentimentality of the original feature _The Shawshank Redemption_ in much the same way as Austrian artist Martin Arnold did to a 1940s Hollywood movie in _Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy_. Tomthenomad's clip takes footage intended to be dramatic and affecting (including the moment when the protagonist Andy/Tim Robbins learns that he has been sentenced to prison for the rest of his life, or the warm exchange on the prison roof between 'Red'/Morgan Freeman and Andy) and brutally mutilates it. Pixellated images of a pair of sunglasses dot the faces of both protagonists; clips are shortened to prevent the sequence releasing its dramatic climax; and a MIDI music file is transplanted onto the soundtrack. In 40 seconds, tomthenomad pulverises the excessive sentimentality of _The Shawshank Redemption_ and intuitively illustrates Lyotard's notion of the commodification of cinematic practice.

More complexly, in his Youtube _video I-BE AREA_ ( _Pasta and Wendy M-PEGgy_ ) (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR4sHDR-1XE>), Ryan Trecartin combines computer technology and avant-garde practice to exploit both the sentimentality of the mainstream and the superficiality of computer graphics technology. Trecartin's films are purposefully reduced so that we can only watch his work on our computer screens; cinema-scale projection blurs the image and the sound file is too weak for any enhanced system. _Pasta and Wendy_ performs as if Trecartin has given his camera a strong dose of LSD – the schizophrenia of his videotext violently smashes together the genres of horror, daytime television, teen-film, documentary and home-shopping programs. A strange concoction that challenges audience expectations of what a teenage slumber party should look like. His work is a prescription for sterile pleasure – something I can experience for free, anywhere in the world through my computer.

For the Lulz

The Internet ruptures the economics of movement. How else would I be able to indulge in the experimental erotic film _Carmilla_ from French writer and filmmaker Stéphane du Mesnildot, whilst enjoying music videos from the great 1980s Mexican pop group Flans, while witnessing the underground movements of hackers serving DDOS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) to reckless corporations? Perhaps the freshest realisation of the Internet in the cinema can be found in one of the most well-regarded avant-garde filmmakers of all time: Jean-Luc Godard, whose recent work _Film Socialisme_ takes memes and viral videos in order to unpack not only the politics of class, but also the sterility of the Internet – its freedom from productivity and capability for complete indulgence. His use of the well-known video _The Two Talking Cats_ (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3U0udLH974>) best expresses the universality of the Internet, how it can potentially exceed cultural barriers and perform pleasure at its most enchanting and sublime.

There is a dark side to the Internet: its unlimited accessibility. It is, in this sense, the ultimate machine-human cyborg, complete with an unconscious that provokes and unsettles. To think that one can have access to the entire world. This is the reason why so many supposedly democratic governments have mobilised to try to restrict access to content. Just look at the case of Egypt or the Wikileaks phenomenon – where revolutions have spawned from its power! The Internet makes sure that no film will be censored, nothing left inaccessible. The problem is that this makes the Internet's power seem like a infant let loose in a candy store – a technology that can give us whatever we want has made governments react like stern parents trying to control their rebellious children.

Fortunately, the power of the Internet is precisely that it cannot be controlled – there is always a way around censorship and tyranny. The Internet transforms the very notion of genre into something more fluid, less rigid; it opens up new ways of seeing and seizes its power by its mutated vocation for pleasure.

Copyright Lauren Bliss July 2011

Crystal

(Work in Progress from 'The Girl is Also Well')

Elleke Boehmer

The girl runs into the kitchen from the glittering outdoors and finds paper. She is wearing her big white cotton knickers and a cotton vest, her kit for humid summer days. The exercise book she uses for drawing lies open on the red gingham table-cloth on the kitchen table. But there is also scrap paper in a pile on the father's desk, and more drawing paper in her bedroom, if she wants it.

The girl likes all paper, blank or printed. When she was small, smaller than she is now, she liked it so much she ate it, any paper lying about but especially the pages of the telephone directory. The telephone directory had a special sweetish taste, sharpened by the peppery flavour of the ink. When well mixed with spit, the paper went slick and pasty and could be squished through the gaps in her teeth, a feeling she very much liked.

To eat the telephone directory she first softened a page by sucking on a corner, then tore away tiny bits with her front teeth, savouring the taste, till the day she nibbled off a number the father needed and he stored the directory on a high shelf from then on, out of reach.

The girl grabs the exercise book off the table and the pencil lying beside it. She crouches down on the cool green tiles of the kitchen floor, the tiles that will later be covered by the father with the sticky orange linoleum the mother will say attracts every grain of passing dirt. Her head is slightly under the table, protected within its shadow, as if in a cave. Her forearms lie flush against the green tiles to soak in their coolness. Her fat sweaty knees make two fuzzy circles of condensation on the tiles. She spreads her left hand on the opened blank pages of the exercise book to steady it, as she has been taught at her Dutch kindergarten, and holds the pencil neat and tight in the hook of her right. She begins to write down her words.

The words came to her just then as she was skipping outside in the kitchen yard beside the windy-drier that looks like a daisy with its single green-painted stem. Wait for it; how did they go? _Feet feet_. No, that wasn't it _. Silver, silver, ah sold ah sold_.

She has a head full of noises. Just-about-words, almost-words, nonsense sounds, they buzz in her ears all the time. _A-ta-tuh-tuh, a-ta-tuh-tuh_ , as her legs skip the rope. _Drah again drah again drah again_ , walking home from school, a sound that beats through her friend Linda's chatter. _Ffffff-fee_ as she and her Dad and her Mam drive down the long hill into town. _Ffffff-ffeeee_. And overriding the low humming almost-words are the big keynotes, _ah no no no no ah no ah whrrreee_ , high pitched, shrieking, the noise that is everywhere when she lies in bed at night waiting for sleep; _ah whrrreee and whaa-woe, whaa-woe_ , its undertone, that goes in time with her heartbeat.

These tones and pulses, she knows, come from inside her ears, but at the same time they encircle the everyday noises she can hear from her bed, sounds that come from her white-haired father who sits out there on the veranda, smoking and slapping at mosquitoes, now and again saying something to himself, gruff, like a swear word.

Godverdomme, Godverdomme.

But today the words that buzzed as she skipped gathered themselves for the first time into a shape. Step by step the words make a wobbly square, a column of rhymes, a stalagmite. Here, she has it now, she is writing it down.

My feet are made of silver

My hands are made of gold

My arms are made of crystal

And now I'm sold.

Just as it came to her.

She sits back on her heels and softly chants the shape through. Just right, yes, she has it, and each word spelt just so, even _crystal_. The _y in crystal_ makes a sharp point, sharp like the shards of crystal you get when the cut-glass champagne flutes brought over to South Africa from Holland break during washing up, as they seem to do whenever they are used. She thinks of the fleck of glass in the eye of Hans, the boy bewitched by the Snow Queen, whose heart turned cold. His shard was like the _y_ of _crystal_.

She chants the rhyme through again, louder than before but still softly. She doesn't want to attract notice. There are Sunday visitors on the veranda with her parents, the visitors who occasionally come, as grey and wrinkled as her Dad, to relive the good days back in the Far East, wherever that is. It sounds like a place not on earth. Skipping, she can hear their ragged bursts of conversation and makes sure not to slap the rope too hard on the ground. It is not a good idea to attract the guests' attention. If ever her presence is detected, the mother dispatches the guests to say hello. They come upon her crouched with her book and break out in exclamation.

What funny girl! What interesting talents ! _Wat een wonder!_

And their cries rouse the mother once again to drive her outside. Now Go and Play, Ella. Play some Outside Games, Go and Play Outside. What Weather in Africa, Go and Enjoy it, Go and Play.

She tears the page out of the exercise book and stores it in her bedroom under the mat beside her bed. Now she would like to lie flat on her stomach on the cool kitchen tiles and read something but she knows this is asking for trouble. So she goes outside again and finds the skipping rope coiled on the ground. It is in the shape of small letter _a_ : _a_ is a pretty, loosely knotted letter. She begins again to skip, the wooden handles whistling in her hands, the rope whirring, a white blur, zzzzzzzzzzz, and this time she has a whole rhyme to skip to, a wistful, mysterious rhyme, all her own.

Arms made of crystal, Arms made of crystal,

Sold, sold, now I'm sold.

Silver, gold, now, now, sold.

The rhyme sticks in her head all day, like songs do, _Lo-co-mo-tion_ on the radio, _Al-le-menschen_ on Mam's Philips radiogram. The rhyme bounces in amongst the other things she hears, snatches of the visitors' talk, the father beating his knee, telling his stories, till she's sick of it, till she nearly ruins everything and hums it out loud, which is as good as saying, Look what I did! and quenching it for good.

In bed that night the rhyme's still there, thumping lightly, _arms, gold, now sold, now sold_. She's happy she kept it to herself because saying it over begins to sound like a secret lullaby. The words as they come pull her thoughts out thin and straight like hair through a comb. They drown out the sounds filtering in from outside, the whining of the veranda light, Dad's talk, shouts, also the patter of the heavy roses against her window, tossed by the breeze, the low drumming that drifts most weekends from the township when the wind is in the right direction, the sound that arches over all the others, the thin _ah whrrreee whaa-woe_ that must be the sound of the universe, the light of the stars boring through the darkness.

The words and numbers she swallowed when eating the telephone directory, she thinks, must have seeped into her blood and from there into her brain, so heavy is her head with sounds and letters, like a sponge with water.

So she turns on to her stomach, her face pressed into the pillow, away from the window where the yellow veranda light leaks in, the heads of the roses dance like the savage Indians in Mam's Winnatoo stories, and she says her rhyme:

My feet are made of silver

My hands are made of gold

My arms, my arms, my arms are made of crystal

And now ... and now ... and now

Godverdomme.

Drumming, whining. _Godverdomme. Ah whrrreee_. The darkness shrieking.

Ostrowski's Superbus

Halina Boniszewska

'Look, Mum!' -- Oskar squealed. -- 'Look at the tiny houses!'

'Whaaa..?'

Anna strained to see through the grease and dirt of the _Superbus_ window; but the light was harsh, so she closed her eyes to a swirling of stars.

If possible, make a U-turn! If possible, make a U-turn!

She half-remembered a heart-rending story – some poor country bumpkin on his first trip to England, the lunatic ravings of his brand-new 'sat nav', his dutiful reaction and the tragic consequence. She drove away the memory and changed position.

The air hung heavy and smelled of petrol. She licked her lips and wriggled about in a bid to escape the static charge of the _Superbus_ seat. Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead, dripped off her brow and mixed with mascara. She dabbed at her eyes and dislodged a contact lens.

'Mummy – look!'

Oskar dug his fingers into her weary shoulder, his breath stale, warm on her cheek. 'Look at the English houses! They're all squashed together, all pushed together...' – He moved his bony hands to a ghostly accordion. -- '...such tiny, little houses, and...Mummeeee...euh...' – His voice broke in despair. – 'They don't have any gardens...'

Anna tried to sit up, but a sharp ray of sunlight stabbed at her eyeballs.

'The houses, Mummy...will ours be like that..?' – His face puckered up – '...with no garden... Mummy..?' He was digging in harder.

'N...,' she croaked. She wanted to tell him that their house would be lovely – neat and tidy, with a pretty, little garden, like Uncle Adam's and Auntie Julia's, like the one in the photos that his cousin, Radek, had e-mailed from England; but the sunlight confused her.

'Look!' Oskar shrieked. 'Mummy, look at the black man!'

'Shush! Oskar, you can't say that in England!'

'There's another one, look!' – Oskar's mouth was an 'O'. – 'Mum, look at that lady...'

He jabbed his finger at the dirt-smeared window. She followed his gaze to a grey-haired woman in a purple sari, embroidered with crystals that were flashing out tiny rainbows of light.

'Ugh... Mum, look how fat that man is!'

Anna roused herself and began to explain that in this country there were all sorts of people – all colours and races, all religions, all shapes and sizes.

'But why are people in England so fat? Mum, if Daddy came to England, would Daddy get fat?'

Anna made herself focus.

'Darling,' she sighed. She touched his arm, but he pulled away. 'Daddy...' she said, and she winced at the word. 'Daddy's thin because of his illness, but he _will_ get better, now that Grandma's looking after him.'

But she doubted her husband would ever get better. He had suffered from his affliction for as long as she could remember.

She tried to explain: 'Mummy's going to get a job, and then we'll _all_ have some money. We'll get rich and fat...' – She steered his hand. – '...like that man over there!'

Oskar giggled and wriggled, then turned to face her.

'Are Uncle Adam and Auntie Julia fat now?'

Anna spluttered at the thought.

'Who knows..?' She laughed.

'Will Radek be fat?'

'Radek won't be fat. He likes his parkour.'

'Can _I_ do parkour, now that we're in England – can I? _Can_ I?'

'When you're older, Oskar, when you're older...'

'No...' he wailed. 'I want to do it _now_..; Mum, can I do it _now_..?'

'Soon, Darling, soon...'

His parkour obsession showed no sign of waning. In his grandmother's garden, back in Poland, he'd practised his own version of the various moves, his silhouette grown stick-like through repeated training and a hard-core diet. He no longer ate meat, not since the day he had witnessed his grandmother wringing the neck of her favourite chicken. (How could she; how _could_ she?) He had vomited on the spot, and now poked at his food, cross-questioning his mother on the exact ingredients of every meal.

Irritated as she was by his 'inconvenient' vegetarianism, Anna was fiercely proud of her son. At least _he_ had a mind of his own, which was more than she could say for herself. She had married the wrong brother: that much was clear. It should have been Adam...

Anna sighed.

Yet here was Adam, right beside her – 'Uncle' Adam in her son's curiosity, 'Uncle' Adam in his questioning streak, 'Uncle' Adam in the independent mind, with the quirkiness too of her nephew, Radek:

School's a doddle. Teachers are soft. There are LOADS of jobs. Mum and Dad earn THREE times as much as they did in Poland! It's warehouse work, but it's just a start, while they brush up on their English. The warehouses here are full of Poles – mostly professionals: teachers, doctors...

No sooner had she read Radek's e-mail, then she knew just exactly what she had to do. Within the hour she had driven her husband round to his mother's.

'There!' she said, as she pushed his comatose form out the car. 'You can feed her chickens!'

Then she sold the _Skoda_ and bought the tickets.

And here they were, a week later – one suitcase, one rucksack and one bag of hope – driving through England to a whole new life.

But she was haunted by phrases, dogged by images; she could not get Radek's e-mails out of her mind:

The Poles are the ones cycling round in packs – men with shaved heads, no helmets, no lights. Sometimes – no kidding – at closing time, you can see them cycling back from the pubs – on the right-hand-side of the road – PLONKERS! They think they're going down these little, country lanes; they go round a corner and...bam!

Anna shuddered. She tried to shake it off, but the image clung to her. Radek was 15, his bravado distasteful:

_You'll find us in_ Primark, Home Bargains, The Pound Shop _... Oh yes! Let it be said: we Poles know how to shop. We know how to work. We know how to pray. Of a Sunday you'll see us all flocking to mass. Bravo for the Poles! We have resurrected the Catholic Church..._

Pah! Anna had long given up on that sort of nonsense \-- another reason, she suspected, for Julia's coldness towards her – perfect Julia who never missed mass, led the singing in church, helped at Polish school and had energy to spare for saving Anna's soul – a pointless task; Anna's soul was beyond redemption. All the same, twice a year, at Christmas and Easter, she still went to mass. She needed her fix of smoky incense, a soaring organ and flickering candles, of the sunlight dancing through stained-glass windows, the Easter basket offered up for its blessing: painted eggs, emerald green, fuchsia pink and golden brown, with their sheen of olive oil, nestling in a napkin, all crisp and white, with the white sugar lamb and its baby-blue bow. She could smell the smoked sausage, could taste the salt and pepper...

'Mummy – what's wrong?'

Oskar was on her lap, smearing her cheek with his dirty fingers.

'It's nothing, Darling – I just need the toilet...'

But the _Superbus_ toilet was out of order, so she forced herself to think of Christmas – of midnight mass, the snow-laden fields, the star-filled heavens, the church bells ringing throughout the valleys...

Oskar tightened his grip. 'And _I_ need the toilet! And I _need_ to do parkour.'

His bottom jaw – so like Adam's – was jutting out with resolve and defiance. There was no getting away from this parkour fixation; within the week, he'd be running with Radek – role model, outlier, parkour-obsessive –while she toiled in the warehouse with Adam and Julia. She winced at the thought of working with Julia, whose animosity only increased as the years went by. (Did she know? Had she worked it out?)

'Mummy – what's the third world?'

Anna blinked at Oskar.

'The third world, Oskar? Why do you ask?'

She screwed up her eyes. How to explain...

'Mummy – Radek said England's a third-world country.'

'Oh, no!' she laughed. 'That was a _joke_ , Darling – the mixer taps joke! It's just funny to think that we've waited all these years to join the European Union, and here we are, in a place with no mixer taps, with paper-thin walls, toy-town houses and...' – She pulled a face. – '...zero dress sense... Ugh, Oskar \-- just _look_ at that!'

But Oskar had no interest in sartorial design.

'Mummy -- can we live in Toy Town? Do Radek and Auntie Julia and Uncle Adam live in Toy Town?'

'Don't be silly!' she snapped, shifting position. The wriggling in her intestines had given way to a persistent throbbing.

'Awh,' he sighed and clung to her neck.

'But you'll like it here, Darling. The people are friendly, and they know how to queue, and when you walk down the street – Uncle Adam says – _everyone_ smiles at you...'

'What else does Uncle Adam say?'

'Well, he says that people are polite when they serve you in shops; they don't just throw the change at you like they do in Poland...'

'What does Auntie Julia think?'

'What? Well... What do you mean, Oskar?'

But Oskar lost interest. He sank back in his seat and closed his eyes.

'Mummy..?' he said – he was starting to slur – 'If we don't like it in England, can we go back to Poland? I want...' – He gave a big yawn. – 'I want to see Daddy...'

Anna thought for a while; then she thought some more, and then she replied:

'Darling...Oskar...we're _going_ to see Daddy.'

But Oskar had already fallen asleep.

Emily's Utopia

Janine Burke

Utopia is about 250 kilometres northeast of Alice Springs. It's the traditional country of Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Her huge, lush, abstract paintings have been compared to Monet and Jackson Pollock, yet Emily knew nothing of Western art, had not attended art school and was illiterate in the English language. As enigmatic as either Monet or Pollock, she rarely discussed her painting, except to say that she painted 'whole lot, that's whole lot, _Awelye_ (my Dreaming).' But, unlike them, she was the land's sacred caretaker and myth-keeper. In a sense, Emily created herself as an artist, though her perception, most likely, was that the land created her.

Emily, as she signed her paintings, was born around 1910. The date is inexact because Aboriginal births were not recorded until the 1960s. Much of her life is a mystery, though it is inextricably tied to the occupation of Aboriginal land by European colonisers. In 1976, Aboriginal land rights were made law in the Northern Territory. Three years later, Emily's people gained the freehold title of Utopia and once more the land was truly theirs. At the same time, Emily began making bold, brilliantly coloured batik prints. In 1988, when she started painting, she won immediate critical acclaim and, over the next eight years, produced over 3000 artworks, a feat worthy of Picasso.

I travelled to Utopia with Tim Jennings, a big, energetic, talkative fellow, a former policeman who became fascinated with Aboriginal art and opened a gallery in Alice Springs. I was accompanying Tim on a regular trip where he purchases art directly from Aboriginal people.

Emily's country is not a tourist destination. There's only one way in and that is by road, even if you catch a plane part of the way. There are no towns, one shop and no service stations. Sometimes there are no roads either. I visited several remote communities, places where Emily spent much of her life and where her relatives continue to live including Mulga Bore (Akaya), Rocket Range Camp (Arnkawenyerr) and Arlparra. Utopia was formerly a vast cattle station belonging to Sonny and Trott Kunoth, young Germans who settled there in 1927. So delighted with the abundance of rabbits they could catch by hand, the Kunoths named it after Thomas More's imaginary island paradise. _Utopia_ , the byword for an ideal community, means, in Greek, no [ _ou_ ] place [ _topos_ ]. Emily lived, travelled and painted throughout Utopia and regarded all of it as her land.

Because it is illegal to visit the communities without a permit, Tim obtained one for me from the local land council. It's worth noting permits are rarely denied, and most are issued without charge. Alcohol is forbidden in the communities, an ordinance decreed by the people themselves, and the restrictions are designed to stop the flow of grog. After seeing Aboriginal people weaving drunkenly through the streets of Alice Springs or boozing from morning till night in the dry bed of the Todd River, it seems a wise plan.

Ours was a one-day trip: we set off from Alice Springs in the pre-dawn darkness in Tim's blissfully air-conditioned, four-wheel drive, and returned fifteen hours later. I left knowing one Australia and returned, in a state of utter bewilderment, having encountered another. Utopia provided me with a series of schismatic visions, of a tribal people who choose to live in the harshest circumstances and who produce subtle and sophisticated art for a non-Aboriginal audience, who appear to have scant regard for the environment yet who have trenchantly fought 'whitefella' law for decades to reclaim their land, who often look unhealthy and listless yet are the land's proud, spiritual custodians, and whose aesthetic sense, from their crude, makeshift lifestyle, seems opposed to beauty, order and harmony, yet whose artworks offer compelling examples of exactly that.

Heading up the unsealed Sandover Highway provides a leisurely introduction to the Central Desert. The earth is a deep, burning, sensual red like the flesh of a great, soft, warm body that stretches out in magnificent display towards the infinity of the horizon. I want to plunge my hands into it. The sky is electric blue, massive and cloudless like New Mexico: it's the same pristine atmosphere, the same feeling that, on such an ancient earth, the sky's relentless clarity offers perpetual and magical renewal. The eye is constantly drawn upward, away from the ground and into the air. The boundary between earth and sky, between red and blue, is dramatic on the land's flat plane, and visual contrasts are piercingly immediate. There's no perspective, no object on which to fix the gaze and assign three-dimensionality; there's only distance that shimmers and quivers and vanishes. The land is like a reckless and flamboyant gesture. Lavish, potent and open, it dares you to paint it, and survive it.

Expecting 'desert', I'm surprised at the amount of vegetation: the country is scattered with spinifex and low, scrubby trees but, during winter at least, the colours are muted: the grasses are dull green and the trees, eking out a meagre existence from the soil, are subdued in tone. Water governs the country which flourishes only because of an underground water supply. The communities gather around the soakages, turned into artesian bores during the era of the cattle stations to prevent animals contaminating them.

A few hours later, we drive off the highway towards Mulga Bore. I'm expectant, excited. Like many white, urban Australians, I've had little contact with indigenous people. The Aboriginal people I know are of Aboriginal-European descent; members of the art world, they're either curators or artists. My overwhelming sense of guilt usually disables frank discussion, leaving me either speechless or behaving in a manner that seems, to me at least, both patronising and obsequious. Quite literally, I don't know what to say.

Driving into Mulga Bore is like arriving in a documentary about 'Aboriginal poverty' and 'Third World squalor', the awful, popular narrative, the negative imagery with which the media mostly represents Aboriginal Australia. Before visiting Emily's country, I'd considered such reports extravagant, embellished or prejudiced. Now I see they're sometimes accurate. One of the chief consolations of Aboriginal art's massive, international success is to provide a good news story in the mire of bad.

Mulga Bore is a settlement of about half a dozen houses, some tin, some concrete, some surrounded by wire fencing, and all at a distance from one another. How do people bear the heat in a tin house? The walls of the concrete houses are stained a dusty ochre. Rubbish is scattered everywhere, cans, plastic shopping bags, empty milk and soft-drink bottles. Wrecked car bodies form rusting metal sculptures. There are also piles of discarded clothes, a bizarre sight in the desert, as if the people wearing them simply took them off and walked away. In the distance, I can see a basket-ball court where children are playing. Next to it is the school house that caters for around 45 pupils.

As I slide out of the car, a brindled dog with the smart, friendly eyes of a dingo cruises up, sniffing the stranger's scent. Instinctively, I hold out my hand to stroke it. _'Don't touch the dogs_ ', Tim commands. I peer at the dog, and the others clustering around the car. They're underfed and filthy, their skins are pocked with sores, and they scratch constantly. The bitches have long, withered, swinging teats. I have my camera in my hand but I don't know what to photograph. I stare at the ground and take a picture.

We're parked outside the house of Lindsay Bird Mpetyane. From inside comes wailing, a high, shrill keening that spirals into the still air and hovers like smoke. Lindsay, impressive and self-contained, is the community's elder, a former stockman and a well-known artist. He's related to Emily, and Tim has told me I can interview him. At around sixty, Lindsay cuts a dapper, youthful figure wearing a cowboy-style hat, white striped shirt and black jeans. In a soft, rhythmic voice, he explains that 'sorry business', or communal ritual mourning, is taking place. Yesterday, a man from the community went into Alice Springs where he was shot and killed. Later, we hear from other people that the man wasn't shot: he fell asleep in the middle of the road, dead drunk, and was run over. Apparently, an all too frequent event.

Lindsay was the only man from Utopia making silk batik prints in the 1980s, around the same time Emily did. When Tim encourages me to interview him, I don't which of us is more shy. I am the white lady with the notebook and the camera, the clumsy intruder from the First World. As I reach for my biro, I notice how pale my skin looks, freckled and fragile, under the desert sun. Though Emily married twice, she had no children of her own, so she was appointed Lindsay's chief carer, his 'mother'. Lindsay tells me, '[She] grown me up. Look after [her] son. Not when big, when little. Good person.' Emily was 'always painting...everywhere she paints.' I've heard Emily was a real character, with a wicked sense of humour and a penchant for whacky hats. _What was she like?_ Long pause. 'Shout me', he says reflectively. Then Lindsay steers the talk to the 'good prices' that he and Emily have earned for their paintings. When Lindsay makes the point he didn't ask Emily for money, he's referring to the obligation that Aboriginal people are under to distribute whatever they have among family and community. As Emily's fame escalated, together with her prices, she was under pressure to produce, not only from a hungry art market but from her needy relatives and her community - which meant she was supporting around 80 people. It was such a burden that she wanted to give up painting: it made her 'sick with worry'.

As Lindsay and I talk, other members of the community slowly arrive, carrying paintings they've produced since Tim's last visit. The women wear loose t-shirts and long skirts, some of the older men are in overcoats and beanies. It's chilly and most people wear shoes. The children arrive from the school, curious to find out what's happening. Graceful and quick, they skim the ground like swallows. With huge, dark eyes, honey-coloured skin and tawny hair, their beauty and joie de vivre is dazzling to behold. As Tim introduces me, everyone smiles courteously, distantly. I'm the art historian who's writing about Emily. I wonder how that strikes them. After all, Emily is the most renowned Aboriginal artist, and she's from their neck of the woods. But their reticence and self-possession make probing impossible. There's also the language barrier. Most people speak only a smattering of English. Conversations with newcomers, as I learn from interviewing Lindsay, can be excruciating.

Then it's down to business and I have my job, too. Because of the numerous fakes on the market, agents and dealers photograph the artists with their work as proof for the buyer. Lindsay has produced an impressive pile of small, elegant, paintings. As he holds up each one, I'm meant to photograph him and the painting. As I find out later from Tim, I've completely botched it: the photographs are either of Lindsay's face, or the painting, but not both. Tim will have to do them all over again. It comes as no surprise; I feel like I can't see straight.

Along the road, Tim pulls up and hails a family, artists whom he'd hoped to meet at another community, a couple who are heading for Arlparra with their three children. While Tim chats to the adults, I try communicating with the kids. We stumble with English words but end up exchanging smiles. Suddenly, the children whirl off like the wind into the grasses, and return with their palms outstretched. They're offering me a handful of small, orange-brown berries. I pop some into my mouth: they're juicy and, curiously, taste like curry. Tim's jaw drops. 'Do you realise some of those varieties are poisonous?' he asks. I feel rather foolish. Tim is responsible for me out here. 'I'll be fine', I say flippantly. But as we get into the car, I wonder how long it takes for poison to hit the system. What comes first? Pain? Nausea? _Bush Tucker Kills Writer, Coroner Reports_. I implicitly trusted the children: they know which foods are safe, and acted from courtesy and friendliness. It was a gift. The traveller's motto - _trust your instincts_ \- pays off and, by the time we get to Arlparra, all I need is a cold drink.

Arlparra is the hub of the district, the neighbourhood drop-in centre. It's where the Urapuntja Council, Utopia's governing body, and the community-controlled health service are based. A recent report shows that Utopia is one of the healthiest areas in the Northern Territory for Aboriginal people. We're heading for the store, the only one in the district, and it's busy. A mural graces the front wall, a colourful, realistically rendered, dot-painted landscape. Inside, it looks like any well-stocked, mixed business with take-away food, shelves of groceries, a fridge filled with milk, juice and soft drinks, and some trays of fruit and vegetables. The truck bringing fresh produce comes only once a fortnight. I buy a bucket of chips and a mineral water. At the check-out, the most popular items are soft drinks and vacuum-sealed, ready to cook, kangaroo legs, complete with fur and claws. Tim sees another artist, and introduces me. I crank up a smile. The heat, the drive, the confrontation with this new Australia, have overwhelmed me and I'm starting to tire.

Rocket Range Camp is named for the shape of the local water-tower. Dozens of junked, rusting car bodies surround the camp. The ground is strewn with broken glass, empty cans, cardboard boxes, plastic bottles and stained mattresses. We pull up beneath a tree, where several elderly women are sitting. With them is a naked child whose mucous-stained face crawls with flies. Near where we park, a make-shift home has been constructed around the remains of a brick chimney: its walls are tree boughs and corrugated iron sheets, draped with clothes and blankets. The government-built houses are empty, stripped. Tim gets on with business, unloading wads of rolled up canvases and bags crammed with acrylic paints. A young woman approaches, smiling shyly. She's barefoot and skinny, her stiff, unwashed hair radiates from her head like an aureole. In her hands, as tenderly as a baby, she carries a small, beautifully rendered, abstract painting.

I guess I'm slow but it suddenly hits me it was in a place like this Emily produced great art, where she sat cross-legged on the earth, brush in hand, painting with absorption and determination, surrounded by her family, her friends and her dogs. Any one of these old ladies could be Emily. I try to wipe the shock from my face. The little boy catches my eye. He grabs a puppy by the legs, and slams it on the ground as hard as he can. The dog screams in pain. _Whack_. He does it again, and laughs. The women sitting next to him - his mother? His aunties? - continue to talk among themselves and pay him no attention. He can see I'm furious. He shrieks with laughter. _Whack_. 'If he does that again, I'll kill him', I mutter to Tim. I turn away and face a tall, white wooden cross, supported by beams, opposite the camp. There must have been a church here once, built by the Lutheran missionaries. Of course, I despise the missionaries who tried to convince Aboriginal people to conform to their rules. Now I'm not so sure of my opinions, an ideology built in my safe suburban world, surrounded by people who agree with me. I want to snatch the puppy from the boy and explain it's wrong to hurt animals. I want to clean his face and wash his hands. Give him rules, my rules. Standing alone, the cross resembles the ruin of a previous civilisation.

The shimmering web of the Dreaming that Emily illustrates shows no rupture, no crude or ugly passages, no marks of sadness or mourning, no _lack_. In her abstract paintings, the Dreaming is represented as a perfect, luminous entirety, shining with health and optimism, stretching out forever. A key reason for the appeal of Emily's work is the frank and lucid spirituality it conveys, a rarity in the cool world of contemporary art. Her paintings beat like a heart with conviction. But, equally, they offer no place for a clash of cultures, for our seemingly insoluble, intertwined problems. Emily's political statement is her Dreaming: transcendence, unity, eternity, an ideal community. Utopia.

Tim veers off the road, then veers off _that_ road, and we're heading down a bumpy track.

When we pull up, I encounter the most extraordinary sight in an extraordinary day. Surrounded by native grasses and graceful ghost gums is a black marble grave with an imposing headstone. There's nothing else in sight; no houses, no people, no fences. The headstone reads: Emily. _Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Died September 2 1996. A Great Australian Artist_. It's a well-meaning though incongruous tribute representing the differing expectations, the contradictory results, the unpredictable and often startling intersections of our black/white, non/indigenous relations.

Under the night sky, we head back to Alice Springs, and I'm dumb with fatigue. Although I've been looking at Aboriginal art for years, I didn't understand the context, the conditions under which it was made. The documentation of Aboriginal art largely ignores the issue, either unconsciously, or from respect, or political correctness. It _is_ difficult to write about the communities without feeling you're offending someone, or you're 'making things worse'.

In some modern cultures, art can exist separately from its environment. In traditional Aboriginal art, there is no 'separate'; there is only 'environment'. Emily asks us to consider it.

Airport delay

Ed Byrne

In seeming control

of a small world

that often seems

quite large

and even important

in a day to day way

balance can be

elusive fragile

bound to tarmac

engineer alchemist

looking for explanations

for a red light

that holds the plane

fast to the earth

through regulation

connection missed

in a foreign city

itinerary in shreds

an unexpected chance

for perspective

and a reminder

that in all that really matters

control is an illusion

sustained only

by the foolish

and morally deplete

Cambridge

Peter Carpenter

' _radiant with bovine life'_ (E.M. Forster)

' _It's raining but I don't believe it's raining'_ (G.E. Moore)

i

Docks, nettles, self-sown

sycamores, willows

thunderstruck by their own

brilliance, sap-boiled,

boughs gone scissor-handed.

_The cow is there, now_.

Do not move suddenly

or she'll scare.

Scrutinise the lining

of flies. First thistles

then she tongues down a slip

of overhanging willow.

She is there.

~

A woman sleeps rough

by the chained punts, money-spiders

criss-crossing her back.

~

Attempting steps down

from Fellows' Court,

the poet, grand old man,

white-haired with stick.

~

The living image of my mother

whispers to her companion:

'I like walking full stop.'

High summer's over.

The great elms motionless,

yellow blotches on their leaves.

I'm there – in the meadow –

I have proved it to myself.

ii

I'm not down some

grey-muzzled road

off the old Kite

nor chalked up

with REFRESHMENTS

and ICES beneath

a pyramid

of canned peas

there since rationing

nor standing any week-day

dusk by a temporary

bus stop on Pound Hill

nor head-down

over the drop handlebars

of some five-gear

Gentleman's Racer

sporting tweeds

and cycle-clips

nor behind a crack-pot

hollyhock by spiked black

railings past the U.L.

but simply blistering off

in globules

that have collected

according to the laws

of surface tension

on the bonnet

of a permit-holder's Polo

under paving-stone-

cracking sycamores

down Grange Road

contemplating that turn

up to the Maltings

iii

_What rough beast_ ...

Jon Tipple in 'The Granta'

all randy laughter, _Eraserhead_ hair,

fingering shrapnel from the till,

collaring a chilled draught Guinness.

_Love's bitter mystery_ ...

The trace of down

on an arm can do it. T-bone, fillet, rump.

'Green leaf or mixed, dressing for the salad, sir ?'

Grant me an old man's frenzy.

What else have I to spur me into song ?

Ah, there, across

the mill pond towards the new Pizzeria,

those punters with the pole playing silly buggers

right next to that swan.

iv

Ground Floor between Fiction and _Poetry_.

The second time in as many days. It comes at me.

The smell from where she sits between _Travel_

and _Crime_ is enough make browsers wrinkle

features in 'what is _that_ ?'disgust. She stinks.

Because clothes for sleeping rough, layer upon

layer, are being walked in, underneath the visible

leather-sheen great-coat and cap. Auschwitz ?

That liberation shot at the wire ? No, here, beneath

the _3 For 2 CD_ offers in the Borders Summer Sale.

The truth is, she impregnates every last page of verse:

the entire Carcanet list, the brand new Armitage,

the Collected Muldoon, the Selected O'Hara, the new

Billy Childish, _101 Poems That Will Change Your Life_ \--

you name it. We all track on by, join a queue

to pay by plastic. She exits into Market Square, freeing

up from under the cap her long streak-grey hair,

making her way beyond us. I keep finding her

days later, unremitting, unbearable still, in page

after page of Paul Celan or Miklós Radnóti.

v

I'd made it-- broken the back

of 'Anna Karenina' on a three day week

of eight hour shifts, barely conscious

of the world out there: the lines at Grunwick,

the National Front, the exiled Shah. All done

in top floor digs on the Lensfield Road, a room

with a view over a carpark and a criminal

Edwardian fire escape. Oliver's army was here

to stay. Talk over the chicken chow mein

was of 'narodnost', commitment to the cause.

Then to the place of labour: working flat out

on bed or floor, a production line of borstal specials

and Maxwell House brews from the communal tin.

Snow drifted through

the second night;

an easterly wind jittering the string

of the primitive extractor fan. History

was one vast steppe. By dawn, water

at Hobson's Choice was laminated in ice.

My classic set in Linotype Pilgrim fell apart

at the death– individual leaves came away

in my hands from the creased black spine.

The only thing to stick was an image of Kitty

and Levin under the Milky Way before the run

of blank sheets you get at the very end.

vi

a place to graze the eye

note the levels

here a shimmer

of springtime buds

downstream

the glaze of mist

you point out to me

carved in stone

a bird stilled

for centuries

its crest

on a college wall

but quiet now

from a lilac bush

badly in need

of cutting back

a robin

ups and leaves

for Coe Fen

Lammas

on to the place

where rivers join

Paradise

is it

vii

A stone wyvern –

weighed a ton.

Midnight prank there come dawn.

Snow dusted the college lawn.

We knelt, shaking.

Then it was done.

**Note** :

The first epigraph comes from E.M. Forster's 'The Longest Journey' and an undergraduate discussion (based on the ideas on G.E. Moore, whose 'paradox' is the second epigraph) about the existence of objects, in this case, cows. Moore's 'paradox' is the second epigraph. These inform the sequence, especially the first section. It is a series of epiphanies (what Virginia Woolf called 'exceptional moments') and its centre is Cambridge with all its illusions, mirages and time-warps. It is narrated by a series of revenants (dossers, has-beens, tourists, bright young things); the narratives trace internalised quest myths, often dead ends, but with their own (often compelling) logic. There are speculative excursions into edgelands (Coe Fen, in vi), text itself (Tolstoy, Yeats, for example), and the journey ends with a ritualised rite of passage, a wedding. Many of these are generated by what Lowell termed the 'mania to return'.
Hanging Around

Maryrose Casey

The setting is the exterior of a three storey block of flats. A young woman is hanging upside down out of a window on the top floor, suspended by a rope tied around her ankles.

BELLA: Now I've stopped panicking, it's not too bad. Just hanging around really. Ankles and feet feel a bit funny. The ropes will get tight in a minute, I guess. Will I feel it through the boots? Ah well, I wanted to do this.

Blood is rushing in a leisurely fashion to my head. I feel sort of heavy headed rather than light headed.

Don't think about heads. Not today. Not again. This is to change my perspective, not to brood.

So I'm here. What does the world look like when you are hanging upside down from a window?

( _looking down_ )

Don't panic. Breathe. It's OK. This would have been better if I lived on the first floor. What on earth made me think this was a good idea. I am safe. I hope. My nerves will hold and so will the rope.

This was a good idea at 4 am this morning, and nothing has changed. The rope is tied to my chest of drawers, full of clothes. It's much heavier than I am. I am sure it is. It will stay still. This is a good idea, or at least well worked out. I need a new perspective. Any new perspective. And hanging out the window is a way to find one. If I just wasn't so terrified. ...Three stories isn't that high. Goblin is a small cat and he has survived three headers out the window. I can too.

Last night's dreams were too vivid and graphic. I keep seeing that dreadful argument with Paul. And me killing him! In the dream. It was just a dream. It was so real. The sound of the cast bronze hitting his flesh and breaking his skull.

I have to get it out of my head.

I will. I'm hanging upside down looking at the world. Don't look down, look out. See the world beyond.

What world beyond? All I can see is the brick wall opposite. The same view that's driven me crazy for weeks. Every day all I can see is that wall and a tiny strip of sky. You'd think it would have driven me to my studio to do some work. But no, never that.

Actually from here I get a better view of the windows and balconies opposite. Goodness I can see under the balcony. There's cobwebs. There's dozens of cobwebs. The people below must see them when they look up. Moral of the story don't take a flat with a balcony above yours.

Ok, so I can see something different. That's a change. That's good. Cos things have to change, Apart from anything else I've never wanted to physically hurt anyone before. I'm still shocked. That's it. I am shocked by myself. It's not as if it was the first time Paul stood there sneering at me, deriding my work, or for that matter my body or me. Yet I just knew I had to leave or I was going to hurt him.

There would have been a certain symmetry in beating his head in with a cast bust of his own head. Though I'm not sure that would have made a good defence.

That feeling was overwhelming. I wanted to do it. I wanted to hurt him.

I'm glad I left. The only problem is my memory goes crazy. I remember going out the door. That's all I remember, then the nightmares.

( _Bella sees a man of 60 below_ )

There's Jaimie. Will I stay quiet and let him walk by or call out? A private joke or a shared one? Bugger it.

Hello Jaimie.

( _He glances in her direction_ )

JAIMIE: Hello gorgeous, how's tricks?

BELLA: Good. How are you?

What a wonderful moment. A normal greeting, a half glance, the expectation of what he'd see, then he saw and registered. No, I'm not leaning out the window. I am hanging out my window by my feet.

JAIMIE: What are you...? Are you all right?

BELLA: I'm fine.

JAIMIE: Bella love. You... I don't quite... what do you think you're doing?

BELLA: Just thought I'd get a look at the world from a different angle. It's quite comfortable really. Though it is a little awkward getting in and out of the window. Obviously I can only speak from experience about getting out, but I'm sure getting back in will be a challenge.

JAIMIE: Yes...

BELLA: How are you today Jaimie?

JAIMIE: Fine ...I'm fine... I'm just off to do some shopping. Are you going to be there long lovey?

BELLA: Yes, I'll probably still be here when you get back. I want to embrace the experience.

JAIMIE: Bella love you are not well. Indeed you've been looking quite appalling lately. What have you been doing to yourself?

BELLA: Nothing. I haven't been looking that bad, have I?

JAIMIE: Dreadful. You've really let yourself go. Yes, you have. You know me I always say what I think. Now tell me the goss.

BELLA: There isn't any. Not really. I liked a guy. He didn't like me. I'm not going to see him any more

JAIMIE: Now that's dull. Can't you do any better than that?

BELLA: Seems not.

JAIMIE; Really. You just waste time don't you? Is this a rerun of that guy in Adelaide?

BELLA: Oh, sort of.

JAIMIE: Dear, dear, baby, repetitions and patterns are not good. It's not the way.

BELLA: No.

JAIMIE: You should do something about getting your life in order. I've never been like you. I've known exactly what I wanted and gone for it.

BELLA: I've just never managed as well as you Jaimie.

JAIMIE: No, you haven't. How's your work going?

BELLA: Fine. I... I've actually lined up an exhibition.

JAIMIE: That's nice. You must let us know when it's on. Junior likes your work. I can't imagine why.

BELLA: Thanks Jaimie, I love you too.

JAIMIE: Junior still wants to buy that horse piece you had in your last exhibition.

BELLA: Well I'm keeping it for him, after a fashion.

JAIMIE: You mean you haven't been able to sell it.

BELLA: No. Sculptures aren't like pots and plates you know.

JAIMIE: Then maybe you should start working on pots. Hmm... Anyway I must run.

BELLA: Jaimie is his usual self. I at least expected him to ask if I was doing this to improve my tits.

And this isn't like the guy in Adelaide, it's ten times worse.

Am I really looking that bad? I suppose I haven't slept well for ages and I couldn't sleep last night once the nightmares started. Maybe I've gone peculiar altogether? I wonder if Jaimie's ever had a desperate desire to hurt someone. Not the sort of thing you can ask really. He'd consider the question bizarre.

I suppose I am behaving a little bizarrely. It's not that bizarre, more awkward than anything else. All my muscles are stretching in unusual ways. This must be a healthy thing to do. People hang upside down from their doorways for their backs. And they have to attach special stirrup boot things to their door frames. I just need a rope for my version.

I think that hanging outside from a window has to be more interesting than hanging from a doorway. I get to see the world go by. Study people as a strange exercise in reversal and distortion. It's like being back at Art School, learning to look at the world anew. People look little and silly from this angle, though probably not as silly as me.

If Paul could see me he'd really have a go. I can see the sneer. His whole mouth distorts. I should sculpt him as some sort of gargoyle. How did things get so out of hand? I just hurt all the time. And I kept going back to him. Hoping he'd discover he loved me. What on earth have I been doing to myself? And I did it. I let him hurt me and put me down. God I've got no-one to blame but myself. That's awful. It's been like a merry go round. All his little denying games. I was not allowed to say hello to him in public unless he said hello to me first. Half the time he'd avoid talking to me altogether and always ostentatiously if Sarah or Max were round. Then when we were together, he'd pretend not to be home or to be alone if someone called. The games with Max were the worst. I always knew when Max was there when I rang because Paul would be icy. And if I was there when Max called he'd make a fuss about being alone. It was crazy and hurtful. And the notes from Sarah, they'd be on display and just in case I didn't notice them he'd always take them down and show me. Or report where Sarah had invited him recently.

Every time I decided not see him anymore he'd go out of his way to be nice. It could be so good then. Then the moment he knew I was hooked again he'd go back to the games. If he'd just been not interested I would have gone away but he kept ringing. He kept making arrangements to be together. Then as soon as I felt comfortable he'd say something to make sure I knew it was only this time. Only this one time, every second day for six months.

Those nightmares are the finish.

When you have graphic nightmares about killing someone it's definitely time to stop seeing them. I just wish I could stop thinking about him. Why did I have to bring him out here with me? What is out here?

There is a cat in that tree. Which one are you? Ah ha. It's Tutankhamen.

Yes hello Tutankhamen. At least you don't behave like the people walking past. You don't pretend you don't see me. They make this obvious decision not to see. I didn't think I'd be so apparent from the ground. But it seems I am. It's funny to watch. First they give a start, they probably think some poor person has fallen and needs help. Then they realise I am hanging around quite happily. They pull back. You can hear them telling themselves, do not look. Pretend this nutter isn't there.

Well yes I am here.

What new thing can I sense out here? Noises sound different. Sort of filtered, yet clearer, disembodied entities that conjure images and pass by. Actually the only thing I can sense is my growing boredom. There is no pleasing some people. My constant need for instant gratification is getting to be a concern. It's getting positively silly. I'll prepare a meal then wonder why I have to wait for things to cook. I've never had much patience but this is getting out of hand. Need, need, need. What need am I filling now? What deep psychological meaning is there in spending a morning hanging out a window? Maybe there isn't any. Oooh. Everything has deep psychological meaning. You can't just do something for fun. Or because you are bored with your own life and obsessions. It's amazing how dull taking yourself too seriously can get. I ought to know, I spend enough time doing it. It's just as well this sort of silliness lets me keep myself in perspective.

How about that? I'm glad I trusted myself. I did need a new perspective. And the perspective I needed was to see how silly I was. I just needed to laugh at myself.

OK, now the constructive bit is out of the way, how the hell am I going to get back inside? I suppose you pay a price for everything one way or another. This will be good for me. Physical exercise as well as a good laugh at myself.

( _Bella tries to reach the window with her hands. She pulls herself up by gripping her legs, going hand over hand. She reaches her feet with her hands. But though level with the sill she can't get any further_ )

Oh God. OK... So I can hold onto my feet. But that doesn't get me any closer. Wriggle girl, wriggle. I got out here, I can get back in ...No. I need leverage. If I can brace myself I should be able to. ...No. There is nothing to give me leverage. I think I want to cry. I'm too far out to wriggle back in. I'm too far out to pull myself in. What do I do now?

( _A woman in her late 30s is below_.)

SARAH: What are you doing? Trying to make yourself interesting? Seems a bit desperate.

BELLA: What? Oh. Hello Sarah. How are you?

SARAH: I am really upset. Have you heard the dreadful news? Well you wouldn't have, would you? You weren't really a close friend, but it will be a shock. ...Paul .....is .....dead.

BELLA: What? He can't be. I only dreamed it.

SARAH: I don't know anything about your dreams but he is. You know he was a very close friend of mine. That's how I know so soon. The police called me.

BELLA: The police? Why did the police call you?

SARAH: My little notes. They were all over the place. My notes were special to Paul. He kept them all. According to the police, you couldn't sit in the kitchen or the bedroom without seeing one. I had no idea how much they meant to him.

BELLA: Who knows eh?

SARAH: I should have realised he was in love with me. But I haven't seen him for ages. He never returned my calls no matter how many messages I left. My SMS and emails got no response at all. Every time I dropped round he's been out. That's why I had to resort to the notes.

BELLA: The notes were because you couldn't talk to him?

SARAH: Well, they were more than that to him. Obviously, he was so obsessed with me, he couldn't cope. I knew it had to be something like that. I have an instinct for these things you know. I can always tell.

BELLA: Oh really. Let me get this straight. Did you have an affair with Paul?

SARAH: Well... not as such. Not a physical affair. But clearly he wanted too.

BELLA: Right... So what did the police say?

SARAH: It was thrilling. The phone rang and I answered it. I heard this male voice saying he was from the police and they were hoping I could help them with their enquiries. He was very concerned about preparing me for the shock. Of course I thought it was someone fooling around.

BELLA: What did they say?

SARAH: It was really gruesome. There was blood every where.

BELLA: No there wasn't.

SARAH: How would you know?

BELLA: It was a stupid thing to say. How did they find the body so quickly?

SARAH: It wasn't quick at all. It happened sometime late yesterday. It might have been ages before anyone noticed he wasn't around. It seems, according to Max, Paul pretends to be out and screens his calls.

BELLA: So who found him?

SARAH: The police did.

BELLA: How?

SARAH: Remember that nasty fight he had in the pub. When that awful man hit him with the bottle?

BELLA: Yes.

SARAH: Anyway. That man is filing counter charges against Paul or was and the police wanted to talk to Paul. They've called a dozen times and never gotten to see him, even when he arranged the time. When they arrived this morning, his landlord was banging at the door. It seems Paul hadn't been paying his bills and things.

BELLA: Yes well. He never likes to give anything away.

SARAH: You sound quite bitter dear. You did rather fancy him didn't you? For a while there I thought he fancied you.

BELLA: Go on, what happened?

SARAH: Well the policeman and the landlord started checking round the place and a window was open. The owner wanted to break in, so the policeman did. And he found Paul. There were signs that someone else had been with him recently...Was he having an affair with anyone?

BELLA: How would I know?

SARAH: True. I rang Max as soon as I talked to the police and he's sure Paul has been seeing someone. But he'd always deny it. I think she must have been married.

BELLA: Well that's one explanation.

SARAH: Maybe she was someone he was ashamed to be seen with?

BELLA: Oh lovely. So no-one has any idea who it was?

SARAH: No and you haven't even asked how he died. He cut his wrists and some artery in his leg and lay in the bath.

BELLA: What? He killed himself. Oh... This is some sort of joke.

SARAH: Don't be ridiculous. No-one jokes about people being dead.

BELLA: Are you sure it really was the police?

SARAH: Yes I'm sure. And anyway I checked with Max. If anyone would know he would.

BELLA: Yes well. ...Presumably I'll hear from the police too.

SARAH: Why? Everyone knows you weren't close friends or anything.

BELLA: Sometimes I forget that... Did he leave a note or anything?

SARAH: No, that's why they're ringing people. Even Max has no idea why he did it.

BELLA: Max has no idea?

SARAH: Not a clue. Max didn't know anything was wrong.

BELLA: I didn't even know Paul was particularly unhappy.

SARAH: No, but you wouldn't. I think it must have been something to do with his obsession with me.

BELLA: You don't think he would have answered your calls. It might have been a bit more practical. Certainly simpler and less painful.

SARAH: Obviously, he thought it was hopeless.

BELLA: Sarah he knew you were chasing him. Everyone knows you wanted him.

SARAH: Then why did he have my notes up everywhere?

BELLA: I don't know.

SARAH: I think you are just jealous. Any way I better run, I'm having coffee with Janet and you know what she's like about appointments. I just dropped by to tell you my sad news. Bye

BELLA: Paul is dead. He killed himself? I can't believe it.

So what happened last night? I took him the bronze portrait. I worked so hard on that bust of him. When he saw it in my studio, he said he wanted it. And it was good. One of my best pieces. Then when I brought it round for him as a gift, he was so nasty about it and me. Standing over me, taunting me.

He was trying to provoke me... Like he did with that man in the pub, needling and picking. And Paul was so shocked and outraged when the man hit him. And so pleased. What would he have done to me if I hit him? Is that what he wanted? Would he be alive now if he'd struck me back? I can't deal with this. I don't even believe it. Maybe it didn't happen? Could Sarah be wrong? Paul wouldn't kill himself. He liked himself too much.

He went to such lengths to keep things secret I don't even have the right to find out he's dead. And all the games about Sarah and all the time he wasn't seeing her, just pretending.

Oh god. I feel tired. I've got to get inside and sit down.

Oooh... try harder. This is hopeless. What do I want to get back in for? To ring Max? No. He'd be rude.

...Why did he do it? Will the police ask me about last night? I suppose they won't even know I was there.

Why didn't I know he was unhappy? He was nastier than usual. But that was it. He's so powerful when he's nasty. Surely people aren't revelling in their own power when they're about to kill themselves...

He's sneered at my work. He's always thought he'd do better if he felt like trying.

...The pieces I saw... He's been working for weeks, copying my work.

His work? He had more success than I did, surely that was enough. He always thought he deserved more, sometimes I think he really believed there could only be one artist in the world at a time and he was it. He was special. Was that it? He couldn't deal with not being the special one. But if he wanted to believe that, there were enough people round who'd reinforce it. Sarah for a start and she owns a gallery. She'd exhibit him any time he liked. He was just never ready to exhibit. Never ready?... I wonder if he realised he wasn't as good as he thought? That's nasty. But none of us are as good as we like to believe. Do you kill yourself because you realise you have to join the rest of the human race?

( _Jaimie returns_ )

JAIMIE: Still there Gorgeous.

BELLA: What? Yes. Oh god, Jaimie didn't I lend you a spare key to my flat once?

JAIMIE: Did you?

BELLA: Yes. Don't you remember? When you fed the cat for me that time I went to Adelaide. I didn't take it back did I?

JAIMIE: Yes, now you mention it, I think you did leave it with me.

BELLA: He is just standing there pursing his lips. Jaimie you must know why I am asking. But you are going to make me say, aren't you?

I need your help to get back in. I can't manage by myself.

JAIMIE: Do you think I should interfere with your experiment?

BELLA: Just help me please Jaimie.

JAIMIE: We are in a touchy mood? I'll have to put my shopping away first. I went to the greengrocers and got carried away. Then I'll have a little hunt for the key. OK?

BELLA: OK. Just hurry please. I think I've pulled every muscle in my body.

Maybe if I can get my hands up on the window sill behind my back there will be some leverage. Oh God.

JAIMIE: Here you are sweetie. Auntie Jaimie to the rescue.

BELLA: Oh you sweet man. If you could just let yourself in and help me in the window. I will be grateful for life.

Through here Jaimie.

JAIMIE: Sweet thing, you really should dust more often. Your housekeeping is positively negligent.

BELLA: Yes I know. Could you just come and help please? ...Jaimie?

JAIMIE: I'm coming. OK, now what do you want me to do? Give me your hand, I think. ...No I can't really reach. And what would we do even if I could? Shake hands?

BELLA: ...Are you up to pulling me in by the rope? I can help myself once my ankles are in.

JAIMIE: I don't know dear? Shall we see?

( _Jaimie starts to pull the rope into the room_.)

BELLA: OW, oh God!

JAIMIE: I hate to say it but that little pot tum of yours is only the tip of the iceberg.

BELLA: OK, yes I am too fat.

JAIMIE: Now don't dramatise yourself.

BELLA: If we can just get my calves over the sill... Halleluiah. I'm right now. I can get in.

JAIMIE: Well, yes it looks like you can. Here let me help.

BELLA: Thanks.

JAIMIE: OK now sweetie?

BELLA: Yes.

JAIMIE: By the way Gorgeous, I did want to ask. Tell me honestly, were you doing this for your tits?

BELLA: OK. Yes Jaimie. I was. I read it in a magazine.

JAIMIE: Have you got any new ones with recipes?

BELLA: Yes, on the coffee table. Just take them. I think I need to be alone just now.

JAIMIE: No offer of a cup of tea?

BELLA: I'm sorry. Would you like a cup of tea?

JAIMIE: I always have a cup of tea after facing the shops. I deprived myself in order to rush to your rescue.

BELLA: I know and I'm grateful. I'll put the kettle on.

JAIMIE: No dear. I wouldn't think of imposing. I can see you need a rest.

BELLA: Thank you Jaimie. For your help and being so understanding.

JAIMIE: OK Baby. When you are feeling better come up for a cuppa. I have the most amazing goss for you. You won't believe it. It made me so angry I wanted to turn like a black snake. But you know what I'm like.

( _he leaves_ )

BELLA: At least Jaimie is always predictable. I need to lie down. I don't know what to think. I can't believe I could spend so much time with someone and not know they were suicidal ...and not hurt when they're dead. All I feel is relief. I thought I loved Paul. This is awful. I am awful. I can't even talk to anyone about this. God knows what I'd look like if I suddenly started saying Paul and I were lovers when no-one knew before.

I was wrong, my problem is that I need some perspective.

Greed

Philip Caveney

The Lawsons were only four days into their summer holiday when David first suggested to Jane that she was becoming obsessed with the woman who liked pastry.

It was their first trip to Florence and young and carefree though they were, they were already being overtaken by Stendhal Syndrome – that strange numbing effect caused by the practice of looking at too much art. Like most other tourists in this art-obsessed city, they had queued dutifully and endlessly for their obligatory trip around the echoing stone galleries of the Uffizi and the various other museums that dotted the area; they had stood and marvelled at the giant white wedding cake that was the Santa Maria Del Fiore, topped by Brunelleschi's colossal dome. They had cricked their necks staring up at the towering statues in the Piazza della Signoria; and they had tried in vain to memorise the names of fifty unpronounceable Renaissance artists, but remembered only the four that had also been Mutant Ninja Turtles. All this, yet none of it had exerted such a powerful pull on Jane's curiosity as the woman who liked pastry.

They had noticed her on their very first morning as they'd walked sheepishly into the dining room for breakfast. As they collected their bowls of cereal, there she was by the glass-domed hot cabinet, heaping piles of warm croissants onto two plates. Three, six, nine... more than anybody could reasonably help themselves to without feeling embarrassed, Jane thought, but the woman seemed unperturbed.

David had leaned forward and whispered into Jane's ear that the woman didn't look like somebody who ate a lot of pastries. She was thin as a whip and dressed like a footballer's wife in a gold lurex top, designer jeans and impossibly high stiletto heels. Her blonde hair was permed and primped, her makeup meticulously applied ( _over_ -applied in Jane's estimation) and she couldn't help but notice how David's gaze kept lingering on the inch or so of thong that jutted up from the back of the woman's Donna Karan jeans.

'Who takes so much trouble to dress for breakfast?' whispered Jane, irritably. She was feeling comparatively dowdy in a shapeless T-shirt and Levis.

'And who eats so many croissants?' added David, raising his eyebrows. By now, the two large plates the woman was holding were heaped with the delicacies. Jane tried to do a quick count but gave up when she got to thirty. She noticed how the hotel staff, replete in their starched white uniforms, kept directing disparaging glances in the woman's direction, as though daring her to take any more, but she seemed oblivious to their displeasure.

When Jane and David were seated with their more modest repast, they noticed the woman tottering by on her precarious heels in the direction of the marble steps that led up to the rooms, her heaped plates held in front of her like sacrificial offerings – but on the way, she paused to talk to a stolid looking man, sat at a table across from the Lawsons, who was eating a small mountain of croissants of his own. The two of them exchanged terse words in Italian and Jane found herself wishing she had some command of the language. She thought perhaps that the husband was admonishing her for not eating with him, but she couldn't be sure. The woman muttered something back at him and went out of the room, her high heels clicking on the tiled floor.

As they ate, Jane and David speculated about her story.

'She's running a rival café down the street,' said David with a grin. 'She's just stocking up for the morning rush.'

Jane shook her head. 'No, she obviously has teenage kids. They're too lazy to get up for breakfast, so she takes food up to them and they all eat in their room.'

David looked unconvinced. 'Teenagers? Are you kidding? You saw her figure, that's not a woman that's had kids.'

Jane scowled into her cereal. It was a recurring worry of hers that she could put on weight simply by looking at food and she hated it when David's attention turned to what she liked to call 'anorexia victims.'

'Well, I think it's ridiculous,' she concluded. 'She can barely walk in those shoes. And she must have applied her makeup with a trowel.'

After a short interval, the woman reappeared. She made a beeline for the hot cabinet, collected half a dozen croissants of her own, sat down opposite her husband and devoured everything in front of her in an indecently short space of time. Jane reassessed her appraisal of the woman and changed the word 'anorexic' to the word 'bulimic.' It infuriated her. How could a woman so slim eat such an indecent amount of pastry? She noticed that the woman and her husband did not exchange another word as they ate.

As the days passed, the woman was always there and her routine never varied. Jane was, quite simply, fascinated by her. She found, that despite her initial dislike, she was actually looking forward to seeing the woman each morning and she began to fret if she arrived later than usual. One morning, she and her husband didn't show at all and Jane kept putting off heading back to her own room, in the hope of seeing her – but breakfast ended at ten and eventually she had to admit defeat. She could only conclude that the mysterious couple had opted to eat elsewhere that morning.

'You _so_ fancy her,' said David teasingly as he slotted the plastic key into the door of their room. He seemed to be irrationally amused by her interest in the woman. There was a brief buzz and he pushed the door open with his shoulder, then hung the red 'do not disturb' sign on the handle. Stepping into the room, he turned and pushed the same card into another slot. There was a brief delay and then the lights clicked on.

'Don't be ridiculous,' said Jane, closing the door behind her. 'She just interests me that's all. But not in that way. I mean, she isn't in the least bit sexy.'

This was true. The woman, for all that she was so slim and fastidiously turned out, seemed to exude an aura of misery. Her blood red lips were always turned down in a scowl and her kohl-rimmed eyes radiated a kind of sullen fury.

David moved closer and put his arms around Jane, pulled her to him.

'So what is it about her that you _do_ like?' he asked softly and his mouth fastened greedily on hers.

That afternoon, they had another day wandering around the bustling streets of the city but Jane was beginning to feel oddly out of sorts. The June heat oppressed her and she was beginning to get a little fed up with being ripped off by everybody she encountered. It seemed to her that everyone wanted to extort money from her. White-faced mime artists groped her in the street and expected David to tip them for their trouble. Impassive flower sellers thrust a single rose into her face and stood there waiting to be paid to go away. In an attempt to counter all this, Jane insisted that they make their long anticipated visit to the Ponte Vecchio.

She had always pictured the medieval bridge with its jewellery stores and souvenir shops as an impossibly romantic location but in the unforgiving glare of the sunlight it looked rather dilapidated, squatting above the olive green river like a third world slum... and there was nothing romantic about the smell of backed-up drains. She overheard an English tour guide telling a group of tourists that back in the day the shops on the Pont De Vecchio had all been butcher's establishments and that the owners had habitually thrown rotting meat and offal into the river and that the river often flowed red with blood. Jane felt a wave of nausea ripple through her and decided she'd had enough of the place. She pushed her way back through the crowds of tourists, all waving their tiny digital cameras.

Seeking refuge from the heat, she ducked through the high columned entrance of one of the smaller galleries, just to relish the feel of the cool stone flags beneath her feet and David reluctantly followed. He muttered that he thought they'd seen enough art over the past week but Jane persisted. She knew he didn't much care for looking at paintings but she reasoned, she'd humoured him by pretending to be interested in the things _he_ liked, hadn't she? She'd agreed to go to that ghastly Museo Criminale in the Via Cavour and had spent more than an hour looking at grotty waxworks of the likes of Charles Manson and Ted Bundy.

'This is one of the places they mentioned in the Guardian article,' she added. 'It's supposed to be much better value than the Uffizi.'

'Whoop de dooh,' he muttered flatly; but nevertheless, he paid the admission and they went inside. The museum housed a selection of huge oil paintings by some of the lesser-known Renaissance artists. They moved from one picture to the next, staring up in silence, realising that right now, they had very little to say to each other.

'Where do you want to eat tonight?' David asked her. He sounded bored. 'I thought we might try that place with the wood-fired stove again. The chip pizza they do is absolutely phenomenal.'

She shrugged. 'I don't know,' she said, moving on to the next painting. 'I'm not really all that – ooh, that's horrible!'

They were looking up at a huge picture of a bearded man dressed only in a loincloth. He was holding a naked toddler in his muscular arms and appeared to be in the act of biting a huge chunk of flesh out of the boy's chest, while at his feet, another boy cowered in abject terror.

'Nice,' muttered David. He studied the information card on the wall, looking for the English translation. ' _Saturn devouring his sons_ ,' he said. ' _Artist unknown_.'

Despite the heat of the day, Jane felt a chill go through her.

'Let's go back to the hotel,' she said. 'I could do with a lie down.'

'Great,' said David, totally misinterpreting her mood.

The next morning, as Jane sat down with her bowl of cereal, the woman bustled into the dining room and began piling croissants onto plates as though making up for lost time. Once again the staff were looking daggers at her, but she was clearly on a mission. Her husband, as ever, sat by himself, working his way through a plate of scrambled eggs and greasy Florentine ham, his face expressionless. Jane noticed that he had a fleck of egg on his chin and had to fight down the urge to point it out to him. She had come down alone this morning because David had wanted to check the emails on his phone, but when he arrived a few moments later, he had some news. He nodded surreptitiously at the woman.

'Your pal is staying just down the hall from us,' he whispered. 'Room 147.'

'Oh yes?' Jane feigned disinterest and spooned bran flakes into her mouth.

'Yeah, it was weird. I was walking down the hall and I saw her coming out. She left the 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the door.'

'So?'

'Well, then she had a bit of a barney with a cleaning woman. I couldn't understand what they were saying, obviously, but I got the idea the cleaner wanted to go in and you know, change the sheets and so forth? But your mate wouldn't let her in. Quite a row they were having.'

'Stop calling her 'my mate,' pleaded Jane. 'She's nothing to me.'

'Yeah, but it's weird, don't you think? I mean, if she's here for two weeks like us, the room's going to be in a right state.'

Jane didn't reply but she was already drawing up her plans.

The facts were inescapable. She had to know the woman's secret. She wanted to understand her reasons for taking all that food up to her room. Did she have five children waiting up there? Or did she sit in the room and gobble down thirty croissants before coming down to eat six more? She knew it was irrational but the need to solve the puzzle was like an itch she was unable to scratch and she knew she would have no peace until it was done.

The next morning, as she and David were heading down to breakfast, she told him that she felt cold and wanted to go back for her sweater. She took the plastic key from him and turned back, telling him that she'd join him downstairs in a little while. He didn't put up much of an argument. David liked his food and had never been much good at waiting for it. Jane walked along the hall but instead of going back to her own room, she stopped outside the door of 147 and listened intently. She thought she heard a sound from within, a soft burbling noise that she couldn't readily identify and she stepped closer, pushed her ear against the door. There it was again, a kind of soft sing-song tone, more like the sound of a baby than that of a teenager.

She stepped away from the door as she heard the unmistakable sound of the woman coming back up the stone steps, her high heels clicking on marble. Jane hurried back along the hall, then turned and began to stroll along as if she had just emerged from her own room.

She timed it perfectly, arriving outside 147 at the same time as the woman, who burdened by the two plates of croissants, seemed about to set them down on the floor so she could unlock the door. Jane stepped forward, smiling.

'May I help you?' she offered and when the woman hesitated, she reached out and took one of the plates from her, then nodded towards the door. 'Now!' she said brightly. 'You have a free hand.'

There was a long moment of silence while the woman studied Jane with a look of sullen suspicion on her face; but then she seemed to reassess the situation. She nodded gratefully, pulled the plastic card from the back pocket of her jeans and slotted it into the lock. There was a buzz and she pushed the door open onto blackness – odd, Jane thought, the heavy velvet drapes in the room must have been tight shut against the daylight. The woman took a step into the room, then looked back, holding out a hand for the plate, but Jane pretended to misunderstand and simply moved closer, smiling for all she was worth. The woman frowned, then shrugged her shoulders. She motioned with her head for Jane to follow her.

There was a moment when Jane was going to back down. Actually following a stranger into her room seemed somehow too intimate, almost prurient; but then that all-encompassing curiosity got the better of her. She stepped decisively forward into the room and the door swung shut behind her, plunging her momentarily into darkness. At that moment, she became aware of two things, simultaneously. The first was a smell, an overpowering stench of rotting food that made her gorge rise. The second was the feeling of something crunching beneath the sole of her sandal.

There was a brief click as the woman slid the plastic card into its slot and then the lights snapped on. Jane was already looking downwards and she saw to her disgust that she was standing in a litter of half eaten croissants. They covered the tiled floor of the room, in various stages of decomposition and as she stared down, revulsion rising in her throat, she noticed that large, shiny bluebottles were buzzing in and out of the discarded food, laying their eggs.

All this she saw in an instant – but it was the sound, a strange gurgling noise, that snapped her gaze upwards to look at the bed. Or rather, what was _on_ the bed. She supposed that it must be a toddler, bloated and misshapen though it was, its bald head mottled and its toothless mouth smeared with chocolate and egg custard. She couldn't say if it was male or female but it was holding out its plump, sore-encrusted arms to her as though imploring a hug. She saw too the short length of chain clamped around one excrement-smeared ankle, the chain that held the creature tied to the bed frame.

Jane didn't know whether to scream or vomit. She opened her mouth to do one or other of those things but then a hand clamped down tightly on her shoulder, a hand that seemed to pulse with an almost freakish strength. Jane looked up and the woman was smiling at her, her black-rimmed eyes glittering with feral madness.

'My bambino,' she whispered. She threw the croissants onto the bed and the toddler grabbed at them and began gulping them down. The woman let the plate drop to the floor, onto the soft litter of discarded pastry. Then she reached out and selected one particularly large croissant from the bed.

'Please...' whispered Jane but the woman shook her head. She reached out and stuffed the entire croissant deep into Jane's open mouth, stifling her cry for help. Then she reached out with her free hand and pulled the plastic card from its slot.

The lights went out.

Three Poems

Jane Commane

East of here

the landscape ripples, grows dense

with ancient compounds of woods

and itinerant back lanes,

dips and drops, acrobatic,

reveals secrets, inherits itself,

pulls the boundaries from under you,

reminds you of other places you've been

– is like nowhere else at all.

Rolls and spools along the

A5's spine, draws a line

at the motorway's hard shoulder

then beds down, irons out

towns between the clouds and warehouses.

It ranges thick and derelict,

shadows strange familiar terraces with

hosiery mills, shoe factories, long

boarded up and passed into

the afterlife of a thousand trades.

Accents lift and lilt

with the Soar in the water table

watering up to the north,

planning vowels flat to the south,

whilst the sky grows and falls

lean and flat-out into the Fens.

Love Song for the Ordnance Survey

What of time sluicing through  
the dappling immortal rings of hills?

What of hollow-hearted burials,  
Saxon naves, felled steeples, hill-forts,  
ventilation mine-shafts, brick-born of water towers,  
analogue pylon's cold war transmissions, pill-box viewpoints?

What of the boundary's arcs,  
the stamina of forests' greened retreat  
beaten back at the speckled blots of settlement,  
the shaded/sloped river ruts, the symmetry of hangars?

What of the canals descending the lock's silent-shift,  
coal boats and Staffordshire china rising in the hulls and sidelined, quickened  
by the railways rising beside motorways rising beside –

What of the medicinal baths, restoring spas sought  
by new townsfolk, the tumulus of mill-races  
gone save for the great unworking cogs turning nothing  
in damp summering fields?

And what of the settlements, inherited after-other names  
slumbering in bracketed old-world italics,  
the words of places consigned to –

What of danger zones in bold red, shifting eastern coastlines  
vanishing faster than any paper can skip a heartbeat to?

(And the winter peaks absolved in mists that can neither  
be seen or heard.)

Of all demarcations multiplied  
kept in their latitudinal squares –  
the map sings of places

and I know

where I must plot my own.

Navigators

Directionless water

darkening, towpaths, tunnels

harkening release into light.

A different trajectory of time,

a melancholy rutting, map-less

dug outs, clay trench.

Each bend marks

the direction of days, months.

A navigation laid

on nameless spines.

The Cat Swindle

Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario

PROLOGUE

People often think of fairy tales as taking place in the woods. However, the literary tradition of the fairy tale more properly began in the cosmopolitan streets of Venice and Naples. Later it flourished in the salons of Paris, where many a rebellious aristocratic woman composed her tales beyond the so-called radiance of the Sun King.

My favourite tales are from Basile and D'Aulnoy, tales in which women speak their minds, happy endings aren't guaranteed, and you are just as likely to be shipwrecked as lost in the woods.

***

"The streets are narrow," I said.

"That's where the best stories are made. Places where the wanton king reigns in his palace, a couple of old crones grumbling in the basement. Or where the youngest daughter of a merchant spins fine thread and next door, an ogre grows his peonies," the Cat said. She pointed a paw toward a shop front. Over the door hung an old boot, weathered and wearied and losing its sole. The sign beneath proclaimed the presence of the finest cobbler in all the seven leagues. "And here," she announced, "where if you buy me some boots, I will make your fortune."

I turned and peered through the cheap glass window, streaked and smeared with grime. The shop's display featured tiny slippers in rainbow shades of silk. They hung from a stolen tree branch by their ribbons. Arranged below the slippers, high heeled shoes of delicately tinted leather and shiny stiletto boots with laces and folded cuffs. Such amazing shoes for such a shabby shop, I thought. The Cat rose to her hind legs and rested her forepaws upon the window, leaving more smudges, and her excited breath misted the glass.

"Such shoes would surely cost a fortune," I said.

"They are cheaper than you think," said the Cat. She tore her attention briefly from a particular pair of velvet boots – the colour of Cabernet Sauvignon and embroidered with pearls – to look at me. I don't know what she saw in my expression. Her bright amber eyes snapped back without further ado. "Did you bring a cow?"

Where was I going to get a cow? I lived in a proper cottage with Victorian gingerbread trim. The roses grew abundantly in its garden, their pure white buds blossoming a rich and vibrant scarlet.

"Even if I had a cow, bring a cow to the city? Do I look like a rude peasant?"

"Such a beast would be difficult to get down the alleys unless you had a bull," said the Cat. "I suppose the same could be said of an ass."

I knew of an ass my cousin had. He was told it would defecate gold, rubies and sapphires, but once he got it in the stable, he only ever got manure. He put it in hessian bags for me and I spread it on the rose beds.

"The boots might not even fit," I said. "They weren't designed for cat's paws." The Cat rubbed her cheeks and whiskers against the glass separating her from her heart's desire. She purred enthusiastically. I glanced up and down the street, but the bakers' wives and seamstresses were gathered around a young piper who played sweet music and collected their coins, a few buttons and a scone in his multicoloured hat. "You're embarrassing," I said in a harsh whisper.

The Cat fell onto all fours, her tail raised, gently swishing in hauteur. I thought for a moment she might stalk away, but she merely padded to the shop's door and meowed impatiently, claws lightly grazing the wood.

The bell over the door jingled as we entered. I immediately smelled champagne shoe polish and leather dust. An old man with gold rimmed spectacles, wearing a green apron fashioned to carry chisels and hammers, sat near the counter, idly tapping the edges of a sole he was fixing to a pair of work boots. He peered up at us through the gloom, continuing to tap.

"If you want custom fit shoes, you'll need to wait till the elves are up."

"Elves often sleep till dusk. They are dreadfully slack," the Cat told me. She leapt up onto the counter in one fluid motion. "I need boots. This third child of a disguised and disinherited queen will pay."

The old man stopped tapping to scratch behind his ear with the implement. "And what will you pay with, third child?"

The Cat curled lazily, her left paws hanging over the edge of the counter and swinging. "Pay him with your destiny."

"That's okay for you to say," I said. I felt grumpy. Cats don't need boots. She simply wanted them.

"I told you I'd make your fortune."

"And you're selling it to him for your boots. Which you want me to buy in return for my fortune." I grunted. "It's a scam you're trying to pull."

She yawned extravagantly. "Typical third child. No trust."

"What about your first born?" inquired the old man helpfully.

"Now you're talking," said the Cat, deigning to stretch.

"What would you do with my first born?" I asked, merely curious. I wasn't planning on children.

"I know a little man," he said.

"I want those boots," repeated the Cat.

"Oh, all right," I said, feeling exasperated. From the pockets of my great coat, I took out a diadem set with turquoise and pearls. I buffed it briefly on my sleeve and, tilting it slightly to ensure it gleamed, handed it to the old man. He took it greedily, biting down on the soft silver.

It was an old family heirloom.

The old man agreed to the bargain and the Cat moved with astonishing speed to carry the boots from the window, as though afraid they might be sold from under her. She poked inside their velvet creases.

"I will need some socks," she announced. The old man, practically jigging with delight over his acquisition, tossed her some grey, dirty worn things and these she stuffed into the toes and padded about her paws till the boots fit snug. Satisfied, she strode out of the shop, moving like a ballerina executing _pas de bourrée en couru_.

"Well, I hope you're happy now," I said.

She purred. I didn't tell her she looked silly just wearing a pair of boots. Undoubtedly if I had, she'd have asked for a silk turban next. We walked passed the piper and into the square, where old women gathered about their coffee cups and told wicked stories to young girls. One particularly withered crone was half way through a tale about a girl who had fallen asleep for a hundred years and the playboy prince who came upon her in all sorts of naughty ways. The coffee smelt warm and rich.

"No," said the Cat, seeing that I was turning towards one of the cafes. "We'll miss our boat."

"I had no idea we were catching a boat."

"I said I'd make your fortune. There is a boat at the harbour now, groaning with spices. It will sink. That is our boat."

I shrugged and followed. The boat was a grand merchant vessel and its captain looked both commanding and unremarkable and wore a patch over his left eye. Later I would learn that he had sought a white narwhale in his youth. His remaining eye was bright green, like a tumultuous sea.

We climbed onto the deck and the Cat performed a reverence for the captain. "As soon as we hit a wave, you'll fall overboard if you keep wearing those boots," I said in her ear. It flicked in annoyance.

"Captain Stormeye, we seek passage on your fine boat," she announced.

The Captain's eye swirled as it fell upon us. His voice barked. "You look like landlubbers in your fancy dress. Do you know a bobstay or boomkin or deadeye?"

"We need only a cabin and none of that, thank you," said the Cat.

"We are not taking on passengers." His bark was worse than his bite. I saw with amazement that he had only every second tooth left in his gums, but this was already more teeth than most of his crew between them.

"We have enough to pay our way." The Cat persisted, gesturing to me. I looked blankly at her. "Pay the nice Captain here."

"With what?"

"Do I have to think of everything?"

I fumbled in my pockets. After a few swear words, I found a golden walnut stuck in the seams. I held it up between two fingers. "I can offer this walnut."

The Captain practically split his sides. I'd once seen a hob do just that at a Christening. It was an awful sight and left such a mess.

Once his guffaws had slowed, the Captain managed to wheeze, "I'd be a nut to accept such a remittance."

I sighed at the pun and lowered my hand. "You see it is golden. It is a gift from a fairy. Within is a cloth spun so fine that although it could be tied about the earth, it can be contained within this cunning receptacle. Surely such a wonder is worth carrying two passengers aboard your boat?"

"Frigate," the Captain corrected, his eye now contemplative as it gazed upon the walnut. "Why don't you show me the cloth?"

"Why, I'd never fold it back within its shell, Captain." I held the tiny object out again to him. "But if you believe in fairies, you will have faith in its worth."

The Captain thought hard, but eventually he grabbed the walnut. We were escorted to a small cabin, in which I could not stand upright. There was the one hammock and the little space that was left in the room was filled with sacks of peppercorns that made me sneeze. The Cat did a _pas de chat_ right up into the hammock, quickly kicking off the boots that were her heart's desire. They landed with two separate thumps upon the floor, followed by a sleet of grey socks.

I picked the boots up and placed them on a peppercorn sack, sneezing afterward into my handkerchief. "There, I knew it. You're already bored with them."

She had closed her eyes, but opened her lashes just a fraction to reveal the amber glow sliding beneath. "You should get some sleep. You'll be busy soon."

"What do you mean?"

"There is a Prince on board. He has been betrayed and impersonated by his lazy valet and has since had to make his own way in the world. Thus he is employed here as a humble deck hand. But when the wind and waves rise and the boat is scuppered, he will start to drown. You should fish him out and drag him to a little island that we will come across. It is ruled by a boar who dines upon lost sailors. He roasts them upon spits in his castle's kitchens. You will have to trick him."

Worn out with her prophecy, she went to sleep for the rest of our journey aboard the boat. For a while, I tried to sleep on top of the sacks, but the peppercorns were very uncomfortable. I am a light sleeper. I was once kept up all night by a dried pea left under my mattress. As the sea began to roll and tumble, I staggered toward the deck, curious to see if I could identify the Prince.

It actually wasn't difficult. The sailors, as I had noted, all had teeth missing – not to mention a number of eyes, legs, hands and even noses. One among them, however, stood by the mainstay, his white shirt billowing and open to his waist, a pair of striped breeches clinging to his muscular legs. His teeth were even and white and he had all his appendages. The hair upon his head, attractively tied at the neck with a length of silk, was golden and there was a star upon his brow that shone like a beacon against the black and stormy sky. He looked just like the heroes I'd seen sketched in the Cat's collection of penny dreadfuls.

I wasn't able to stare long. The decks were repeatedly washed with green foamy waves and I slipped and slid back to the cabin to find the Cat awake. She had emptied the contents of a peppercorn sack and placed her boots inside. The hard little fruits rolled about carelessly. She yawned, showing her pink tongue, and bounded towards the deck, telling me that the sinking was imminent. I followed, nearly falling several times upon the pepper and cracking enough beneath my shoes that I could have seasoned all the dishes prepared for the Shah of Persia.

The deck was a flurry of activity as the masts leaned in toward the sea like sticks you might use to stir your coffee and the waves sucked out the tar that kept her seaworthy. The Cat nimbly shouldered two empty barrels, smelling strongly of pickled pork, and threw them into the raging waters. Leaping after them, she beckoned me to join her.

We bobbed for a while as the torrent died and the boat sank, but as the morning came, we were quite alone. Except for the Prince. He was easily identified by the star upon his brow and lay, stretched out and insensible, upon a few planks of decking, his feet trailing in the sea. The Cat took a piece of rope she had cleverly thought to commandeer and wrapped it around the Prince, dragging him with us towards the horizon.

It was some time before we saw the island. It appeared white and green, rising from the rippling crests of the tides. "At last," said the Cat. "If I'd known it would take this long, I would have sent you alone."

A few times, despite our care, the Prince was dunked in the sea, so that by the time we pulled him up onto the white sand, he had ceased to breathe and was turning blue. I leaned over him and blew air between his lips, as I had been taught by a wise wizard who said not everything could be cured by magic. His eyelashes fluttered briefly as he coughed up sea water and his lungs filled once more with oxygen.

Quickly, I felt in my coat and pulled out a golden thimble, so intricately wrought that it would fit only one finger in all the world. I tucked this into his breeches pocket and then collapsed on the sand beside him. I fell asleep, exhausted by my trials.

I was startled awake again as I was hefted above the ground by a gang of grizzled boars. They wore belts hung with sharp and dastardly blades and axes. My wrists and ankles were strapped to a long pole that they held aloft upon their shoulders. Their trotters marched in time as they sang, "Oh me oh my, tonight the Boar King will dine," over and over again. It was a very monotonous song and was often sung out of key.

"Cat!" I cried. "Oh, Cat! Where have you gone?"

One of my captors turned and bade me be silent. His tusks laced with spittle, daring me to use my tongue again at my own peril. There was no sign of the Cat and I would never see her again. We travelled to a handsome castle, decorated richly in flotsam and jetsam that was, I assumed, the treasure of a hundred or more sunken ships. The boars carried me down into the kitchens, which were humid and sticky and busily attended by other boars who wore white caps and aprons. They stirred boiling pots and flipped pancakes. The fire was stoked ready in the range. As I looked around, seeking any handy knife or kebab skewer, I saw that the Prince had also been carried from the beach and was about to be set upon a spit. He wiggled and squirmed and cried hot tears that dashed upon the bloodied stone floors.

"I demand to see the King!" I said abruptly.

The boars stopped stirring and flipping and looked at me with irritation. The Head Cook, identifiable by his large hat and silver spoon, put his trotters upon his hips.

"The fires are just right," he said, as though I cared for that.

"I demand to see the King!" I repeated emphatically.

"You'd better get His Majesty," said the Head Cook. "I don't like cookin' 'em while they complain."

The Boar King consequently swept down into the kitchens. He was dressed magnificently in a purple cloak and wore a large crown of rubies upon his ears. His tusks had been polished to shine like ivory and each had been studded with a solitaire diamond.

"Well, what is it?" he demanded. His voice was unexpectedly high pitched and squeaky.

I thought quickly, recalling the Cat's prophecy. "Your cooks say the fires are just right, but look. I have goose bumps!" Indeed, my skin had prickled from fear, not cold. "The fire barely tickles my skin and will never roast me. You'd best come here and see for yourself how lazy your cooks have become."

The Boar King leaned towards the fire.

"But Your Majesty, we've stoked the flames all day!" the cooks chorused, afraid of their king's wrath.

"I would not take their word. If I were you," I continued, "I'd show them how lazy they've been in stoking the fire by standing in the middle of it. That would be an impressive gesture worthy of so exalted a majesty as yourself."

The Boar King grew annoyed by the piteous pleas and begging of his cooks and, gathering up his royal robes, stepped into the midst of the flames and began, straightaway, to cook. Fortunately, he hadn't even had the sense of a boar, but I'd often found royalty to be quite stupid. I reflected upon this as I listened to his fat render, sizzling and popping in the range.

The other boars all turned back into sailors, for the Boar King had not eaten all castaways, but had transformed a number to serve him in his castle. The sailors were overjoyed to return to their human state and quickly untied myself and the Prince, who was still snivelling and needed badly to wipe his nostrils. They proposed a grand celebration, for which the Boar King would be a fitting feast. I would be made Queen, they said, and then they winked and nudged, trying to push me towards the Prince.

I looked at the Prince, who stood discombobulated and wet-eyed. Sailors who had only recently been boars were enthusiastically rubbing his wrists to remove the red slashes from where the rope had bitten into the flesh. I stepped over to him and leaned close.

"Look in your breeches pocket," I whispered in his ear, "and you will know of the beautiful girl who rescued you."

His sapphire blue eyes widened as he fumbled in his breeches pockets. I slipped away, negligently stuffing an apple into the Boar King's mouth and laughing at my own jest.

I suppose the Prince ended up ruling the island. And I suppose he never married. He will swear that he will only marry the girl whose finger fits the intricately wrought thimble. Of course, my great, great grandmother has been dead these two centuries, so I wish him luck with that.

I walked along the white sand and eventually found a small boat that didn't leak too much. I hopped in and cast off. For sometimes, you may decline the fortune a cat offers.

Great Big Baby

Will Eaves

"It's not as bad as all that." Irene offered her daughter the same glum reassurance with each visit to Bellevue Place. "You won't remember the pain afterwards. _I didn't._ "

The goading emphasis made Irene's teeth rattle with pleasure. Emily feared the threat of weakness more than the pain, and wondered, staring past the elfin stoic at the foot of the bed, what she would find in the next six months to sustain her; what books and daydreams, letters, incidents and friends – what family – could possibly absorb the vacancy of her prospects. The doctor's orders were for complete bed rest, which Emily dreaded the way she dreaded long journeys.

Irene was seventy-four, tiny and spry, clad in a pink woollen coat that she never took off. She lived along the road in Malvern Terrace in a house like her daughter's with three rickety floors (one rented out), a sloping lawn, a Singer and treadle, the bed that sounded a minor chord when you lay on it, a few chairs and no heating. To the children, Liz, Lotte and Clive, she gave delicious teas; to their mother, a feast of stony looks. Or rather – stranger – like the coat, a sort of sympathy for all seasons done up to its neck in pride. _Oh, you poor thing. I expect you'll live. How ever did I manage, on my own?_

A threat to survival and nothing less roused Irene's pity. Sometimes, not even then. She came from Hanley Road in North London, where seven families topped and tailed in five-room houses. Her husband had died while she was pregnant with Emily. They were penniless after the birth, unable to pay the hospital bill. Men arrived to take Em and her brother into care, but Irene's doctor intervened, waiving his fee. She took in work, making dresses, sleekly beautiful coats and skirts, sewing hems by evening candlelight until her head nodded and hit the bridge of the machine. At four she rose to scrub floors until eight, then walked up to Drummonds in Dalston for more piece-work. Bombs fell. Irene could not afford to stop for them. Besides, Matilda Voy upstairs had read her leaves and said she'd love to go on a journey West, maybe as far as Basingstoke. The children meanwhile, clutching kitbags and labelled underwear, went to Dorset. Irene took them to Paddington and returned home to find Miss Voy shaking beneath a tin tray on the edge of a crater two streets long. _Didn't see that one coming, did she? Don't talk to me! You think you've got it bad_.

Emily thought nothing of the sort, although perhaps she should have done: another pregnancy, and in her late thirties, had placed her in great danger. No matter – in Irene Coker's world, the instinct for self-preservation cringed before the civilising virtues of self-sacrifice. The right to be distressed, or ever to complain, did not exist. All cries for help went up in smoke.

The ashen residue was sarcasm, a diet of sly belittling designed to toughen Emily and make her grateful, which she was. From Irene Em got her wit, know-how and dexterity. She was both educated and practical, a minder and a maker: she stitched and patched and sang and laughed. Made quilts, sold them. Bore kids, raised them. Cooked meals from almost nothing, ate them – standing up.

Her talent to deride was a less certain inheritance. Once only she tried to cow her mother, to pay her back in kind, and the attempt blew up in her face.

When Irene moved to Bath, to Malvern Terrace, to be near the grandchildren, she brought with her the high bed, the Singer, a suitcase with all her clothes in it, and an album of photographs. Somewhere along the line she'd also acquired a brown Hoover that ate the carpet. The sac, fully inflated, bobbed gruesomely. Emily turned it on and nearly lost her toes. "This thing's dangerous. You should get a new one", she shouted above the noise. "We'll help." Her mother wrinkled her nose and made no reply. The monster stowed, they spent the rest of that morning shaking out sheets and stocking a chest of drawers left by the previous owner with Irene's things, light sweaters especially, many of which surprised Emily with their softness and scent of violets. She did not associate her mother with any kind of feminine sensuousness or with the word that sprang to mind as she lifted, unfolded, folded and set down on tissue paper a shell-pink crêpe de chine slip, cut on the cross – "luxurious".

The French-seamed silk belonged to the pre-war era and a mother she could not remember. She was willing to bet the slip had been made, not worn, but the plain fact of its discovery was enough: the long-sought, frail and thrilling proof of Irene's vanity; of fallibility. Emily gave an eagle cry of victory – and then spotted the letters. There was a small bundle of them tucked into one of the suitcase's peach-coloured lid pockets. At this point, Irene was downstairs, investigating the fireplace, snapping kindling. It was January. From the upstairs bedroom window the tiled roofs of the crescent below Malvern Terrace bared themselves at the sun like hardy souls determined to enjoy the fresh air on deck.

The letters were neatly folded into handkerchief-squares, their envelopes tied together with a shoelace. They were from Emily's father, the father she had never met, and – a quick glance told her – spanned many years.

The top one was from 1926, quite late on in the marriage, and post-marked Baden-Baden. The hand was evenly spaced but shaky; some of the looped fs' and ps' did not connect to the next letter. Each sentence, in the manner of the time, heaved with a kind of formalised yearning. Emotions struggled and writhed beneath set phrases, pleasantries, so that the letters as a whole were never simply decorous. For all their awkwardness they communicated things the person writing them would not have been able to say out loud:

We are all well looked after here, my dear Renie, though it is perishing in the huts at night. There is enough food at least for us, and for which I am thankful. What a carry-on it is for the ordinary people hereabouts. They must push money around all day just to eat, and even then they come up short. Well, the machines are nearly done and then I will come home to you and little Arnold. It will not be long now, I think, but I am counting the days, as you may imagine.

Your loving husband, A

Looking up from her father's bottled longings, Emily felt the necessity of a response. So she laughed. And having laughed, immediately sat down on the bed, as if she had been pushed. The machines would have been aeroplanes, for Lufthansa, she knew that much. Her brother remembered playing with the armfuls of worthless Deutschmarks that their father had brought home.

The next envelope in the pile contained a much earlier letter, sent from Montreal during the War, along with a certificate of demobilisation granted by the Royal Canadian Expeditionary Force in June, 1915. It exuded eagerness. He had been happy. By this point, he had an understanding with Irene and a heart defect. They intended to marry when he got back. Something – his happiness maybe, or her own eavesdropping – struck Emily as a dreadful betrayal. It was like confronting a person with their private habits and making a joke of them. There were things about people you might know, but were not supposed to know: the way they laughed without meaning it, their misshapen feet (Irene had a gnarled green toe), their peculiar sensitivities and coverings-up. Of course there was nothing misshapen about this letter, which was innocent and light-hearted, almost gaseous with hope. But her father had died of pneumonia. He'd been born with a hole in his heart. The adventurous, affectionate husband who'd written this, the letter she was holding, was not that man. A different man had existed. A different father, and a different mother.

"What are you up to?"

She had not known him, and she had not been told the truth about him, if such a thing could even be done; at any rate, no one had tried. It was a double blow.

" _Em_. What _are_ you laughing at?"

The inquiry came from the top of the stairs.

As she held onto the letters, Emily wondered at her own nerve. She was powerfully angry and upset. Terrified, come to that, of who the woman now advancing down the short hallway might turn out to be. But the violent feelings were not enough in themselves. She required a declaration, as a murderer requires a victim, in order for her passion to enter the world of consequences.

Irene was in the room, smiling. She had glaucoma and needed to be close up to her daughter to understand the source of amusement. When finally she did understand, she gave a little shrug, making no attempt to wrest back the bundle of letters, admitting and denying nothing.

Emily read out a few choice endearments, astonished to find herself still laughing between the lines. Her mother listened unembarrassedly. Emily turned again to the letter sent from Baden-Baden. "Dearest, sweet", she recited, almost crying with frustration. "I am counting the days. Your ever loving husband. Dear. _Sweet_." It wasn't the sentiment in the letters that beggared belief. It was Irene's toleration of them – her weakness for them, one might say. Between what Em knew for certain of her mother's disdain for romance and the wizened coquette now tutting and giggling at her side, a gulf of implausibility opened up.

"I don't know why I kept them", Irene said at last.

"Oh, you _liar_ , Mum!" Emily exclaimed with real delight. "You big fibber."

But as she crowed, she glanced about her – at the bed, the green eiderdown, the half-full chest of drawers, the nets – and saw the room of a woman, a widow, the silent correspondent, whose circumstances had always been reduced. Seen like that, the myth of sacrifice – that comforts had been refused, that there had been the option of refusing them – was one way to a kind of self-respect.

"Well, aren't you clever, being inside my head."

Now Emily felt weak. They went downstairs and boiled the kettle in a dark kitchen at the back of the house, below street level. Cars drumrolled overhead. Nothing in the kitchen was flush. The yellow formica tallboy did not fit against the wall – it wobbled if you pushed it – because the floor was uneven. The sink came away from the tiles. The paint bubbled with damp. They took their cups into the front room, which was warmer. It had a number of items picked up from Old Jack's, the junk shop on Walcot Road: a pair of wing-back armchairs, a glass cabinet on splay legs, a drop-leaf dining table. And a coal fire.

Irene sat back with her tea and asked for the letters.

"I just want to see."

Emily handed them over and her mother re-read the first two or three, carefully, considering. After that she seemed to grow bored. The two women talked about Don going to America for a term and what that would mean, about Clive's splints, Summerfield. Em said there was no question of her joining Don; he hadn't asked her, and anyway she didn't want to go. Irene grunted, listening, and reached for the tongs to open the fire door. She fed the flames one letter at a time, as if to eke out the waste with an equally consuming and purposeful thrift.

The memory of those exploding intimacies made Emily's face warm, so that on his arrival Dr Pattison took her temperature.

"Normal enough", he said, tilting his head back to read the thermometer. "Though God knows it shouldn't be. It's absolutely freezing in here, Mrs Allden. Have you not got a heater? Of some description?"

She explained that the electric heater needed a new element, without adding that she did not know what an element might be (she was simply repeating her husband's diagnosis) and that in any case it cost too much to run.

"And I'm only up here for a couple of hours in the afternoon. It'll be warm soon. It hardly seems worth it."

Dr Pattison, who was younger than he looked, smiled and sat on the bed. In the doorway Irene opened the clasp on her handbag and started fingering dryly through its meagre contents – stamps, small change, her pension book.

"I won't stay, doctor. I just popped in to give my daughter this."

She took out a postal order for five shillings.

"This is for Clive, Em. He wanted to get a book, he said, and I've an idea he wanted to choose it for himself. He told me the title."

"Five shillings! Oh, Mum, you are good."

Irene was quiet a moment, looking a little enviously at Dr Pattison and his patient. The vow of silence she observed with most visitors, anyone who was not family, could be relaxed in the doctor's favour, but the opposing discretion with which he listened made her nervous.

"He's a one, isn't he, Em", she broke out. "Little monkey. But he does read beautifully. I quite look forward to it."

"He must enjoy it or he wouldn't run along so eagerly."

Dr Pattison smiled. He was looking down at his lap, hands folded, entranced by awkwardness – a short, rather solid man, in whom a combination of shyness, soft-spoken professional competence and a surprising delicacy of movement and touch suggested sadness. His eyes were forget-me-not blue – too eerie against the dark stain of his cheeks. Others said that he drank.

As if in response to some unvoiced dissent, Irene added abruptly: "They'll all be after him, you mark my words."

"He's only eight", Emily objected. "Give him a chance. I _am_ sorry, doctor. Anyway, what about the girls? Liz's going to have a nice figure."

"Liz?" Irene sounded irritated. She had been put to work at twelve, and Liz was eleven or fast approaching, a little woman. "Liz is like you. Lotte's pretty. Was there anything else, Em? If not, I'll be off."

When she had gone, Dr Pattison asked how Emily was, and how Clive was getting on with the splints and the spectacles, and Emily was relieved to report that she was feeling quite all right and Clive was being brave and Liz was already such a help in the house –

"Have you and your husband discussed the letter, Mrs Allden? Have you looked at the forms? You do know that you'll have to decide very soon." Dr Pattison shut his eyes as he marked the words with pauses.

"Yes I do. We have, Don and I have read the – papers."

The doctor nodded.

"And I'm so grateful to you for everything. I understand everything you've told me – and I just can't bring myself to sign them."

"You're aware of the risks?"

"Don has said it's my decision. He backs me up."

Downstairs, the front door opened and the noise of traffic flowed into the passage along with the children back from school, arguing.

"It's WILL", Clive was saying furiously, his phlegmy treble charged with adult exasperation, "not 'shall'. Shall is weaker than will. It's feminine and the last line is masculine. It's WILL never be slaves, Liz, you _moron_."

"I know what you must think, doctor. But I can't do it."

"'Britons never, never, ne-ver WILL be slaves'."

"Have it your own way", a girl sighed. "But it's still 'shall'. Mr Meyler said." And with that Liz took Lotte, who was crying, downstairs to peel potatoes while Clive began his painful, expostulatory ascent to the bedroom.

"He'll be all right", Emily assured the doctor. "He likes to do it on his own. It takes him a while." She raised herself onto her elbows. "Are you managing, Clive? Dr Pattison is here. Do you want him – "

"Mr Meyler said. Mr _Meyler_ said. Who _cares_ what that fat oaf thinks? He's not a proper Briton. He's from Swansea."

"Clive?"

A gulp halted the invective at the bottom of the stairs.

"How would _he_ know?"

Clive was really her favourite child. The idea of having a favourite horrified her, but there it was. Many years later, when he returned to visit her and she could barely mumble his name – when names no longer meant anything – a part of Emily still knew this, and though by middle-age Clive himself fumed with neglect, nevertheless she clung to him. In the chill passageway beneath the framed butterflies, she turned to her other grown-up children, saying, "I love this one. I can't help it. It's true".

The same part of her tried to concentrate, now, as Neil Pattison told her all about placental insufficiency, but it was no use. Emily heard only the short-breathed stagger of her son in the background. Clive had been born blue, with the umbilical cord round his neck. Every day when he clambered up the stairs, her heart leapt at his restoration, the joy of knowing that he had survived and she had not been left on her own. Because that was the worst thing by far about a still-birth. Worse than the fact of it was the stillness and isolation of the room they put you in, the unmarked afterthought with a lone bulb in which you were abandoned to get on with things. And the dead two – one before Liz, another between her and Clive – had been hard deliveries, and she had screamed for hours, probably. When it was over, the nurses were never kind enough. They took the baby away, shut the door and let you have a good cry. Two days later, you were dressed and sent home with antibiotics. And you always felt you'd failed, no matter what people said, which wasn't much. Clive had nearly died on the way out, but not quite, so he had to be lucky.

"I'm lucky, I know."

Dr Pattison, nodding, was saying, "You have three lovely children", and seemed prepared to leave it at that, then changed his mind. Some gear of impartiality slipped as the boy stumped nearer.

"You will be in this bed for the next twenty weeks, all day and night except for one hour or two at the most, and you could still lose the child, or it will be born with defects, or it will die shortly after birth. Or you will. Having this baby could kill you, Mrs Allden – Emily. I mean it, and I wouldn't be much of a doctor if I left here feeling I hadn't got this across to you. Do you understand?"

Emily looked at her hands.

"You could die from any number of complications that we mightn't be able to detect until – "

Clive came in, elated.

"Beast!"

He saw Dr Pattison and stopped.

"Oh, _Clive_. You did it all on your own again, didn't you?"

The little boy, thin as a seed, held himself against the edge of the door, his head angled away from the doctor and his mother. He moved his jaw around, stuck for words in front of the man sitting where he, the hero, would normally sit at this time of day. The doctor smiled and checked Clive's legs, tapping the shinbone and the clamps, asking if anything he did hurt any more than usual. Clive looked at his mother out of the corner of his eyes.

Dr Pattison left and Liz, the capable one, cooked dinner. At eight she put Lotte to bed, checked on Emily, and ran Clive's bath. Don had gone back to work at the Technical College. Between tasks, Liz walked about the house on her hands.

The next morning, after his father had left for the day, Clive returned to his parents' bedroom and gave Emily his glasses to clean.

"Beastie not getting up no more? Beastie staying flat for ever and _ever_?"

A posture went with the nasal voice – shoulders hunched and arms locked straight down by his sides.

"Maybe not for ever", Emily spat and polished. "Here."

"Beastie continue to pretend she's alive by being brought tea and toast in morning which Beastie can't eat because Beastie stiff as a post?"

Don had brought her some breakfast on a tray.

"Is that what you'd like?" she said.

Clive chewed the insides of his cheeks and gave her his sideways stare. He went to the toilet next door and steadied himself. It was a fine day and from the top of the house you could see small birds speedboating across the open sky. He was full of exciting title music and fast getaways.

The possibility of a defective birth had not occurred to Emily until Dr Pattison mentioned it. Whatever the risks involved with this pregnancy, for some reason Emily took them to be of the all-or-nothing variety. She could not imagine an alternative or compromised outcome, a state between absolute loss and complete gain – which was strange, considering her job at Summerfield and considerable experience in such matters. Summerfield was the school behind the cypresses behind the approach golf course – a joke and a threat to dim kids elsewhere in the city. The children in her care were all ESN, with a range of incapacities, from the merely slow to the bawlingly disturbed. Emily minded them with great compassion: there were pictures to cut out, collages to be made, chaotic trips – occasionally – to parks and gardens to be survived. She thought it a shame that they suffered their imperfections as they did, but her sympathy couldn't extend to real empathy because she did not for a moment question the necessity of their segregation from the rest of infant society. Assessments had been made and that was that. Only now in the empty house, after Liz had led Clive away, did she consider that assessments were indeed _made_ – by someone, somewhere – and that, as a result, of all the children born equal, or not obviously deformed, there were a minority who passed from the Eden of normality into a world of certified inadequacy, for ever. They were a separate concern.

But her brother was blind in one eye. Her grandfather had had a cleft palate. Cousin Phyllis, in Edgware, could not be trusted to go to the shops and still depended on her Mum for everything. And Julie Naish, Emily's best friend over the road, who played the saxophone with one lung, smoked as though she had three to spare. Was anyone the full shilling?

She heard Irene's words, repeated with a prophetic insistence: _you won't remember the pain afterwards_. The pain that was fear and threat and dire uncertainty, a sum of conditions only secondarily, historically, physical. Her mother had carried her despite the shock of bereavement, and they had both lived. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps it was all or nothing in the end.

The thought reoccurred to Emily on several future occasions, each time with a rush of adrenaline and woozy relief. The first was when the Gas Board finally installed a heater – downstairs – on Benjamin's sixth birthday.

The gas fire had three upright bars, each the size of a large Cadbury's, and a dial at the side with two settings, Super Heat (all three bars) and Miser Rate (one bar). There was a turning-on tea ceremony-cum-birthday party at No 2 – this in the middle of the Energy Crisis – and as the weak flame leapt Irene had an inspiration. "Take off your clothes, Benjamin", she quavered, from deep within her pink fastness, "or you won't feel the benefit".

Benjamin did as he was told, and stripped. He'd seen, besides, something in his grandmother's comical, indulgent eye that his mother might have missed. It was fun, nudity, and the idea stayed with him. Spring and summer of that year were both hot, so one blistering day Benjamin decided to walk home from school, naked. It started as a dare with his school-friend Daniel and turned into a demonstration. Daniel needed a lot of persuading just to unbutton his shirt and then refused outright to take off his trousers. Benjamin sighed pityingly. If he had to take the lead, he would.

He arrived at the front door with his clothes tucked under one arm.

"D'you see your Benjum, then?" gasped a neighbour.

"You won't be able to do this when you're grown up", his mother said, and sent him back to look for the sock he'd dropped along the main road.

Don and Emily eventually got a new element for the heater in their bedroom, but it smelled funny, and on balance, and because they were the children of their generation, they preferred to do without. Nothing was safer, too. A while after the gas fire had been fitted in the front room, someone left it on unlit. The hiss was scarcely detectable beneath Clive's own hum of concentration as he settled down to watch TV, shivered a bit, got up and struck a match.

Em heard the _whoomph_! from the kitchen and was by her son's side before he had recovered himself enough to cry out. His forehead was the colour of Empire; the air smelled of burned hair. Clive brushed away his scorched specs. Little black filings – eyebrows – tickled his cheeks.

"See?", Emily cried, shaking the teenager, who had a notorious temper. "You're still in one piece, aren't you? See? _There_ you are. Oh, Clive!"

Her emotion caught up with her. She fought it back.

Clive's eyes had started to leak meanwhile and Emily, noticing, reacted as though robbed of her own fear. She almost snapped: "Would you believe it? Clive Allden, you great big baby. It's never as bad as all that."

Views from Above

Elin-Maria Evangelista

It appears to be evening in Småland as I fly over the treetops. Apart from a few specks of foreboding blue in the distance, revealing the lakes hidden in the forests, I can see nothing but fir and pine. Only tiny empty pockets create gaping holes where trees seem to have been ravaged. Not to worry, they'll plant new ones. Soon they too will stand in straight rows and salute their pointy tips towards the sky. Their shadows will join the others fawning across the twirling asphalt road and over the landscape that I am now returning to; a scenery engulfed in pine and darkness.

My arms flap effortlessly in the silky sky and my legs follow obediently as I soar through the dark landscape. The smell of pine is overwhelming. It is the familiar smell of scouting and outings and wearing gumboots in case of a snake. It is the fragrance of being forced on an orienteering expedition by the handsome Physical Education teacher Roland, and getting lost in the lingonberry thickets, despite holding onto the eternally confusing compass. Pine is the anxious odour of wondering if there is a moose nearby while eating sweaty cheese sandwiches and drinking tepid lemonade, sitting on a cold flat stone and hoping it's time to go home soon. It is the exotic scent of motor racing and strangers on the track nearby.

Like a velvet rug below me, the bog-lands are covered in moss. Soft and slushy, no wonder there was a need for gumboots. Nothing could be built on this swampy wetness. But as I head closer to Svenstorp, I remember its people. A truce has long since grudgingly been declared between the moss and the inhabitants. The people of Svenstorp have tamed the bog-lands in their own peculiar ways. Tired of the ground's uselessness for farming but most of all of being poor, they thought carefully but daringly. Factories are now dotted everywhere in the landscape; inside, people have stubbornly worked the last century ignoring the odds of success. There is nothing that hard work and grim determination can't solve they believed, with the same faith they believed in Jesus their Saviour and the perils of drinking, gambling and dancing, and it seems they were right. See how well they've all done—well, almost everyone.

One visionary Svenstorper even decided to build a racing track on the moss. He was well known for two facts: one, he was not a Believer, two, he liked to smoke a cigar and was commonly and rather affectionately it must be said, despite this sinfulness, known as the Cigar. When the Cigar bought a large chunk of moss just outside Svenstorp, he got it cheap, the owner shaking his head in amazement at such stupidity. The proof of the purchase is still here, the remnants of the old track that put the moss on the map in the early 1970s. Persuading the world to come to Svenstorp for a few glorious years was a breeze to the Cigar once he convinced the business community to get behind him, making them believe there might be a buck to be made. And thus it was born: Svenstorp Grand Motor Track, the host of two major events in alternate years: Svenstorp Formula One Grand Prix and The MC 250 CC World Championships. For a few weeks every year, the moss was covered in tents and people camping, kiosks, grill parties and shops on wheels; journalists from all over the place, and even a film crew from Swedish Television followed. Believe me, I was there.

Even His Majesty the King attended. It is true he was only a Crown-Prince then, but for a few glorious days he lived next door to my family while our neighbour moved out to make room for the prince and his security entourage. A shiny Porsche was waiting in the driveway next to our pavement. The moment our future king stepped outside to drive towards our moss, we swiftly assembled on the lawn opposite, applauding and cheering him as he reversed quickly out of the driveway, leaving his adoring subjects behind in a cloud of smoke.

My older cousin, Britt, who lived in a remote village, screamed on the phone in delight. She arrived just in time to watch the security man pull the blind down in our neighbour's bedroom, before the prince went to bed: the same time every night. A man of regular habits, our prince! We could watch it all from our back window, in the tiny bedroom that used to be a wardrobe, which suddenly had acquired the best view in Svenstorp, our heads close together, noses pressed against the cool glass, giggling excitedly. Once the blind was down, we lingered for a while, before we pulled down our own. It was a heady moment in our childhood: sleeping so close to our future king.

At night, everyone in Svenstorp would take their car for a drive to have a look at all the people; we weren't used to seeing that many all at once. Round and round the roads we went, as if participating in our own—but at a snail's pace— race. Slowly down Grand Street we made our way to the outskirts to have a peek at the campers with their beer cans and tents in the pine woods when the motorbike races were on, the smell of grilled sausages mingling with petrol and pine. When the start pistol for the more glamorous Formula One event was raised, we turned our attention to the more fancy looking people taking over every hotel in the neighbourhood. Not many of the locals saw the races; some rented out their houses and went on holidays, muttering about getting some peace and quiet, but really, as their habit was, to not to let an opportunity to make some money pass them by. The rest of us could hear it from our backyards: the buzzing sound of the Big World, out there, on our moss.

My father made business like never before. Grand Prix Svenstorp 1971, his bags declared in shiny letters, his shop filling up with big city people, exclaiming in piercing, big-city accents, "Ja men Herre Gud, Oh, my God, it's so cheap! In Stockholm we pay double the amount!"

Except for the locals, who were mainly there to have a look at the Stockholmers, and after having a good peek, would take me aside in confidence: "See, that Father of yours, 'e always takes a bit off! Know 'im well, Konrad, used to go to school together see, and 'e always gives me a good price." "Five kronor, that's the best I can do", I'd smile back as cunningly as any Svenstorper, knowing full well they couldn't possibly all have gone to school in the small village of Kulla with my father. Everyone would know that; everyone knew my father.

The motor track looks deserted now. Many years have passed since it's been in use and the King goes to Monaco on his holidays now, I think. I've seen him inside glossy magazines, diving off his yacht in the turquoise Mediterranean Sea. Moss has once again taken over the track. Soon it will completely surrender; pine trees will obstruct the view of the desolate old track and no one will remember its heady televised days in the sun anymore.

It is getting lighter as I reluctantly fly in over Svenstorp. The immaculate colour schemes glow from the new apartment blocks next to the kiosk, even on the ugly brick walls of the National Dental Service. How small Grand Street seems from this angle, there's nothing to it. It's just a street, a few lights, a frozen pond. An old, gravelled road covered with asphalt and ideas of grandeur! It's hilarious. I circle around the monument in bronze, erected in the beginning of the street. Proudly outside the bank entrance it was raised, the purchase of the good businessmen of Svenstorp for the enjoyment of all: The Statue of Liberty. It looks exactly like the one in New York, except smaller and a bit chubbier somehow. As if to make up for its size, there is an added water feature in front of it. Perhaps it's meant to resemble the water surrounding the original. Perhaps someone went there once on a holiday, taking the boat out to Long Island thinking, that's a really nice-looking statue, why don't we build one in Svenstorp too? It's not like we can't afford it! There is nothing the Svenstorpers can't afford. The cars bear witness to this fact; every car passing by is a Mercedes or Saab, only the occasional bashful Volvo. All in the latest models, all nice and shiny. Just like the houses. All nice and new. No one seems to care much for the dreary old past here, including me.

The water feature in front of the statue where I once fell in has fishes trapped inside it now. Cold bodies shimmer beneath the surface, their round fishy eyes blinking helplessly at me, before I'm hauled back onto the street.

A shiny white building further down seems to be heading towards me. It's the Mission Church, run by the Swedish Missionary Society for many a proud year. Listen to the sound of chirpy singing, the trumpeting from the pulpit and the beat of a drum set! The building where "Jesus Loves His Little Children" and the movements to "This Little Light of Mine" are known by all us blessed. Where every word on the pamphlet handed out when marching steadfastly through the entrance every Sunday is sincerely felt: "I was filled with joy when told to walk into the House of Our Lord."

There was no mention of how to feel on the way out.

The white building comes to a sudden halt. Behind it, the spire of the Lutheran State Church bashfully pokes out, surprisingly still there. Nothing much exciting—and therefore good for the business community—has ever taken place there: an old building, with old visitors, surrounded by the dead. Old graves ignoring the call of the modern world, looking like they always have. Watching. Waiting. The way I'm being watched.

Opposite is the old bathhouse where swim-coach Ralf ruled. Ready to swoop us up into his sturdy arms and throw the less brave of us into the deep end of the pool. Parents didn't react to his unorthodox swimming teaching methods. They seldom did in the 1960s. His wife worked there too. She didn't pay much attention to him either. She was too busy reading magazines and eating bananas. She must have liked them a lot: a pile of banana peels was always lying next to her deckchair by the end of year one's weekly session. At the end of Ralf's throwing antics, she would sigh and reluctantly stand up, in order to lead us into the sauna and the next part of the program, a task carried out by another staffer, the enormous Ruth. We sweltered in the tiny sauna, our naked bodies hotter than the hissing stones, and tried not to panic. Ruth would place her giant bottom at the door, you could see it through the glass window, and she wasn't going to move it until it was time to push us firmly into the final ritual of hot and cold showers, muttering to the row of steaming, red-skinned seven-year-olds to hurry up.

When they built a modern pool near our school in year two, Ralf didn't follow, neither did his wife. There was talk about him having taken too much interest in certain activities, such as Ladies Only Tuesdays, where, rumour had it, he had been hiding on the small grandstand, peeping out at the ladies swimming around naked in the pool; this was Sweden, after all, where nakedness seemed a healthy and natural state to be, at the time.

The bathhouse went through a metamorphosis and began a new era as a rehearsal space for the school orchestra. We sat inside the old pool, the glazed tiles creating a strange echo, playing one popular hit after another under the Danish Maestro Jensen's conduction, who cheerfully wiggled his bottom, dancing and laughing away in, for us, a rather confusing manner at first, not behaving like the adults we were used to; too much life in him somehow. We put down his peculiar behaviour to him being Danish and got on with it: Minuet Allegro by Mozart, one, two, three.

I finally steer off Grand Street and turn right past the bust of the Cigar's head, his balding head shining in the morning sunshine. Svenstorp's only journalist, the tall and gangly Sören Svensson, is lying on the grass next to it, photographing what might be the first spring flower, or a potato in an unusual shape, which will no doubt make headlines in the local paper in days to come. I dip so close to the ground now that I can almost press his shutter before creating some rather nice strokes up Alley Road. I'm really getting the hang of this now, but it's been a long journey. I'm getting tired. I spot the pastor's wife, fru Herring, ahead of me. She is cycling with her usual boundless energy. Her feet in the pointy purple suede boots that I used to find so compellingly ugly are pedalling eagerly up the hill. She is probably on her way to our neighbour. Not the neighbour where our future king stayed, but the one on the other side. She has probably had another message from God to give to farbror Werner. His wife, tant Berta, one of the great Believers, had no such luck with her husband. He preferred to read books (profane) and hunt with his dogs that were locked up in a kennel at the back of their house, howling through the night. He was a bit frightening he was, Werner, he howled almost as much as his dogs; you have to admire fru Herring's tenacity and optimism.

Unless she falls off.

We were actually surrounded by non-Believers, which was quite remarkable in Svenstorp on such a nice street and all. Although old Harry across the street belonged to the local branch of the temperance society, which was almost the same thing, he was even the chairman, and came to our school talking about the perils of alcohol and how that "leads you into Ruin". Just one taste and you'd be hooked. I promised myself solemnly never to go near it. Not that there was much chance in our family, mind you.

Our neighbour across to the right, farbror George, also a non-Believer, even danced. He belonged to the local dance society, not in Svenstorp, of course—no such thing there—but in the very close and equally small town of Träby. There was only a moss in between us, but they might as well have lived on another planet. They didn't start their own businesses there; instead they went to work at the enormous factory that poured out fumes as you passed by on your way to Jönköping. People from Träby swore and drank and probably even voted for Prime Minister Palme.

Worst of all, they also had this dance parlour where local dance bands performed. This is where our neighbour went. He even wore a T-shirt, in itself quite a radical step, with a slogan asking: "May I?" Oh yes, you may, George! My father didn't say anything about George's t-shirt; he relied on him too much for an abundance of talents he himself did not possess. The fridge was leaking? The oil-heater in the cellar was making a strange sound? You couldn't flush the toilet? George could. Unburden my confused father, holding yet another electronic device that had given up. Patiently explain the water pipes and plumbing system, or the dishwasher's intricate inner secrets after a desperate phone call: "You wouldn't know how to change a fuse, would you, George?" Of course George did. All things considering, you would have to say a daring T-shirt suggesting what George got up to in his spare time paled into insignificance.

I decide to take a short cut across Werner's dog kennel, but there are no dogs barking now. Fru Herring has parked her bike in front of their house and is pressing their doorbell. A heavy wind is blowing, and I start to feel giddy as I finally manage to reach the old fence separating us from Werner's. Someone is laughing hysterically in the background and I try to make it stop. They're everywhere now, one of them bending down behind the garage. I need to go faster, but my arms feel so heavy.

My mother and father are standing in the garden with outstretched arms, as if they know I'm coming: Hej, hej, hello! I gasp, but they just keep waving as someone gives me a final push and I tumble in a series of clumsy somersaults across the fence.

There's the sound of a church bell. Everything suddenly feels frantic now: the tolling of the bell, the chill in the air, the flapping of my arms. I misjudge the landing onto our beautiful garden, which is blooming heavenly despite the season. I try to protest and scream Nej! Nej, as I crash land into the potato patch, but no sound will come out. The coarse soil in my mouth, the bells ringing: Dong-dong-dong!

And then everything is darkness.

When I open my eyes, gulping for air, it's still dark. The air feels sticky, the smell of pine gone. I can still hear laughter; it seems to be coming from outside. Dazed, I listen to kookaburras laughing away in the early hours of the morning, or are they seagulls? Some jogger is breathing heavily on the path below, there's the distant sound of a dog barking. I'm lying on the floor, tangled up in damp sheets, in Sue's guest room in her flat by Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne, Australia. Caesar is snoring next to me. It's 4:59 am her digital alarm clock informs me, as I stumble back into bed. Bells are still ringing. I finally reach for the phone.

Miles and miles of wire have been dug up and down and telephone poles erected. Intricate systems connected above and below the ground have journeyed over many lands and rivers, climbed mountains and crossed the seas, to the other side of the world, to a different time and day and season so that I can hear a voice in a familiar tongue from as far away as Svenstorp now so close to me.

A voice of doom, slowly reaching my still drowsy brain: The voice of my older sister.

"You better come home," Anita says, "Dad's dead."

Power of a Poster Girl

Peter Forbes

In 1943 Muriel Rukeyser, a thirty-year old poet, was attacked in an editorial in _Partisan Review_ under the heading 'Grandeur and Misery of a Poster Girl'. Without knowing the context, which I'll explain soon, the title suggested that Rukeyser must have been a lightweight, a pin-up girl who presumably had attained some fame by employing her feminine wiles. In fact, the reference was to her work in the Graphics Workshop of the US Office of War Information. But the patronising, sexist tone of the heading was borne out in the article: Muriel Rukeyser had displeased the male ultra-left establishment that ran _Partisan_ and had been adjudged by them to be due a kicking. Being literate literary types they couldn't resist that below-the-belt title.

This was not to be the only time Rukeyser, a pioneering poet, feminist and political activist, was subjected to cheap sexist attacks. Rukeyser' sensibility is one we can now more easily recognize, as women take their place in every area of life, but she was a true pioneer, fifty years ahead of her time. At 20 she learned to fly and this was the subject of her first book of poems, _Theory of Flight_ (1935), which won the Yale Younger Poets Prize, traditional first rung for an American poet. She pioneered the docu-poem with _The Book of the Dead_ (1938), in which she excoriated the Union Carbide company for the Gauley Bridge Disaster, in which hundreds of mostly black workers died from the effects of tunnelling into almost pure silica, an invitation, as the management knew, to silicosis. Gauley Bridge is in the state of West Virginia, where the recent mine tragedy occurred. She was a lesbian who brought up a son single-handedly. He said of her, "she was largely successful in inventing her own life."

Rukeyser was curious about everything – she was, as the poet and critic Alicia Suskin Ostriker said: "In love with mixings, blendings, relationships" – and wanted to see how it all added up. In the world as she saw it too many things added up to greed and narrow prejudices. She was a lifelong activist – from Gauley Bridge and Spain in the '30s, through the War, Vietnam, to her efforts just before she died on behalf of the dissident Korean poet Kim Chi Ha, imprisoned for being sympathetic to reconciliation between North and South Korea.

Science was a lifelong fascination and for daring to cross two boundaries – art/science; man/woman – she was patronised in a review as a mere "she-poet" who had no business writing a biography of a serious scientist. The book in question was the life of Willard Gibbs, a great but austere American scientist. His field, thermodynamics, is fundamental but not the most attractive and accessible area of science to an outsider. No frivolous pin-up he.

The crude, sexist attack of the _Partisan Review_ editors would not be possible today: _autre temps_ , _autre moeurs_ , we might be tempted to say. To understand how Rukeyser was maligned as a "Poster Girl" we have to enter the strange universe of leftist thought in the 1930s and 40s. As Paula Rabinowitz pointed out, in _Labor & Desire: Women's Revolutionary Fiction in Depression America_, the Left had difficulty in accepting the good faith of women in the class struggle. The symbology was easy to understand: the virile proletariat were going to triumph over the effete bourgeoisie. If the bourgeoisie were effete, bourgeois women were obviously doubly effete. Rukeyser was a bourgeois woman: for many on the Left "the bourgeois woman represented the epitome of false consciousness."

The Rukeyser Imbroglio, as _Partisan_ themselves called it, was a shocking episode in which the complacent assumption of male cultural superiority was exposed in all its tawdriness and viciousness. Rukeyser was abused simply for being a woman who dared to do too many things (for the _Partisan_ editors proof of her opportunism). The year before the Poster Girl attack, Rukeyser's booklet _Wake Island_ (a war poem) had received the snub of a one-line review by Weldon Kees: "There's one thing you can say about Muriel: she's not lazy."

Since the Imbroglio, her reputation has waxed and waned. When feminism arrived in the 1960s Rukeyser was recognised by poets such as Adrienne Rich and Anne Sexton as their torch-bearer. "No more masks!" from her poem 'The Poem as Mask' became a rallying cry, and Rukeyser is the presiding sprit of Ellen Howe's anthology _No More Masks_ (1997); Louise Bernikow's anthology _The World Split Open_ also takes its title from one of Rukeyser's poems, 'Käthe Kollwitz', and Rukeyser herself wrote the preface. Rukeyser shared many a platform with writers such as Rich, Denise Levertov and Grace Paley, and Levertov and Rukeyser went to North Vietnam together in 1972. After her death in 1980 Rukeyser's books slipped out of print but in the 'nineties a new generation of scholars began to return her work to publication and critical assessment. A _Reader_ appeared, her _The Life of Poems_ was reprinted, and a new selected poems issued; a biography has long been promised from Jan Heller Levi, editor of _A Muriel Rukeyser Reader_.

In the USA Rukeyser is revered by feminist poets who rightly regard her as "Our Mother Muriel" but she is patchily represented in anthologies. Devoted readers know where to find her best poems but, like a similarly omnivorous poet who was in love with impurity and blending, Louis MacNeice, she wrote too much. The need for a good Selected Poems has been recognised by many supporters and there have been several attempts, the latest being Adrienne Rich's _Selected Poems_ (Library of America, 2004), not published in the UK but available on Amazon. Rich is Rukeyser's most powerful advocate and, although everyone will prefer their own selection, Rich's is a good place to start.

With the best poets you enter a new landscape when you read them. In this changed world a mode of apprehension rubs off on you. I first experienced this with Rukeyser in 'Poem':

I lived in the century of world wars.

Most mornings I would be more or less insane,

The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,

The news would pour out of various devices ....

The poem was written during the Vietnam crisis of 1968 but the phantasmagoria of corrupted media it evokes is clearly even more relevant today. The genius of the poem is to evade the dulling habituation by which we become inured to this corruption by showing us the process afresh in hypercharged language. And the remedy is equally vivid: a call to arms that is believable and inspiring:

In the day I would be reminded of those men and women

Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,

Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.

Rukeyser caught the 'thirties music of Auden certainly but used it to such fresh purpose she can be forgiven those few poems in which docketed attributes of a world are smartly marshalled with half the definite articles missing:

Log's entry: "Engines faltering, charts useless, meat maggoty,

passengers grown flabby with lack of confidence,

great trust in me while I believed in my orders.

In her passionate work of poetry advocacy _The Life of Poems_ she made a case for the seamlessness of poetry and jazz and folksong and she could capture the urban blues perfectly in a poem like 'Ballad of Orange and Grape':

Most of the windows are boarded up,

the rats run out of a sack –

sticking out of the crummy garage

one shiny long Cadillac;

at the glass door of the drug-addiction center,

a man who'd like to break your back.

Rukeyser's vivid tableaux of mid-century America often recall another artist, the painter Edward Hopper. The way she tells the story in 'Orgy' for example, is pure Hopper:

There were three of them that night.

They wanted it to happen in the first woman's room.

In her later work, Rukeyser's expansiveness and proud feminism drew comparisons with Whitman. Poetry is rhythm above all else and Rukeyser's rhythms are compelling and the diction easy and natural. Her voice is one of great dignity. From 'Sand Quarry with Moving Figures' in which she rejects her father's greedy wish "to own the countryside" to 'Long Enough', a poem in which she vows to "walk out of the pudorweb / And into a lifetime', her bulletins retain their currency.

Rukeyser's touchstone was, in the critic Louse Kertesz's words: "the brave, full life which denies or simplifies no part of the human journey and which, beaten down or blocked, transforms itself into new modes." This translates into a sense of dramatic urgency in her poems which is infectious. Rukeyser is a poet who makes you want to go that extra mile: to sign up for that petition, go on that march, learn that new language, call that friend you've been neglecting. In 'Night Music' comfortable people meeting a demo in the city at night are challenged to "build a newer music rich enough to feed starvation on."

It has been said by many of her advocates that Rukeyser was such a multi-facetted writer that only to read her poetry is to miss a great deal. Besides poetry, she wrote several curiously hybrid books. _One Life_ (1957), ostensibly a biography of the politician Wendell Willkie, is a collection of prose poems and poems that weave the story – Rukeyser called it "a book: a story and a song." _Orgy_ (1967) her only 'novel' is in fact a fictionalised account of her visit to the Puck Fair at Killorglin in Ireland. Fictionalisation was a necessary device because some of the cast of characters were IRA members.

One Life is an extraordinary work. Some of the poems are reprinted in the _Collected Poems_ and stand happily alone. 'Campaign' evokes a panorama of 1940s America: the stockyards, steelyards and freightyards of a country in which the Texas oilfields produced "60% of the oil of the world. / Let the streetlamps burn all night." And the candidate? "Street corner to corner he will talk all day, / Feasting on talk at midnight to the last / Listening man."

Rukeyser seems to have invented single-handedly that spectre of the fearful right wing; the multiply challenged professional minority subject: she was by nature or choice a single parent, a Jew, a leftist, a lesbian and a poet. To have lived out this life without, for most of it, being surrounded by the like-minded or any kind of institutional support or societal understanding was very brave. For gifted young women today, from all cultures – and the future, if there is one, surely belongs to them – Rukeyser is an amazingly prescient figure. Read her and be challenged "To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves, To let go the means, to wake."

The Plot

Maureen Freely

Why did he want to see me, today of all days? Did he simply wish to gloat, or was he planning to make full use of his upper hand? As I picked my way amongst the potholes of Cihangir, I considered one answer and its opposite. Then came the vertigo, and with it a fast dissolving hope that this might not really be happening, that I might somehow have invented it. So (perhaps for the first time in my life, and against all my bohemian training) I arrived at an assignation an hour early. But I did not open the newspaper I'd brought with me.

I kept it folded, ordering a coffee and opening my net book to work through my unread messages. Six were from my disgruntled editor in London, asking why I had left so suddenly; he wasn't the only one who wanted to know. In my hasty, high-handed answers, I resorted to half truths: I was in Istanbul on urgent business. There was someone I needed to see. My father, now in his mid-eighties, still living on the university campus where he'd taught for fifty years, was in some sort of trouble. Only once, in a quick reply to a friend with inside knowledge - she made it clear in her coded way that she had bought the paper, seen the telltale photograph, and read the lies and insinuations in the columns beneath - did I let the fear seep in. _I've had the summons_ , I wrote. _Now I'm here in a cafe in Cihangir, waiting. But I have no idea what to expect_.

She wrote right back. _Then why are you there_?

_It's my only chance_ , I replied. _I need to know what he has for the next instalment_.

I did not need to name names. My friend was well aware of my long history with this man, whom I'd first met on a ship from Istanbul to Alexandria when I was nine years old, and who, during the early sixties, had so loved to boast about having files this thick about every foreigner in Istanbul. In the seventies and eighties, he had gone after every student who had ever entertained a leftist thought, making it his business to incarcerate them, torture them, crush them, succeeding in all but the last.

And then, in the spring of 2010 - four decades too late - the law had caught up with him. Or rather – this being Turkey – it briefly appeared as if it might consider doing so. It was during this lull - before the first of many sick notes allowing İsmet to use his prison cell as an occasional retreat - that I had written up his story, or rather, everything I knew about his story, for my paper in London. To close the book on him, I told myself. Though even then I must have known deep down that our war had not yet ended.

And now, at last, İsmet was preparing to slip that last card from his sleeve. It boded ill, I thought, that he was making such a meal of it. For there was only half an expose in the folded scandal sheet beneath my wrist. But it was accompanied by a never-before-seen photograph of my father, aged 36, answering to no one in that black beret of his, standing with his arms folded, halfway up the gangplank of the hulking ship. It must, I thought, have been taken from the deck above: all you could see of my father were his folded arms and his face turned defiantly upwards. In the background I could see my mother, my sister and my brother, huddled and sobbing on the pier. I was standing to their right, my Brownie camera raised to my eyes, and there, at my feet, was my old saddle bag, concealing my sketchbook and my diary and my secret vial. The three waving blurs just behind me were most probably the scandalously late arriving members of our party, for whom my father had decided the ship should wait.

No year was given, and no place. That was for the next instalment, which promised to disclose the secret of secrets, the disgrace festering at the heart of the Cold War. It would, I feared, work well with this newspaper's naive and easily manipulated readers. The villains were 'American expatriates, self-styled bohemians, who had come to Istanbul to teach the flower of Turkish youth, but who knew no shame'. In their selfish abandon they had set off the 'chain of events that had almost led to the end of life as we knew it', with the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October 1962.

From the corner of my eye I could still read the teaser: TOMORROW: AS TURKEY AND THE WORLD TEETER ON THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR DISASTER, A GROUP OF FECKLESS AMERICANS HAVE FUN AND GAMES ON A SOVIET SHIP. Which did capture something of that midwinter, mid-Mediterranean storm, and my father's wild dancing in the midst of it, and the songs with which my mother and the ship's ur-Soviet librarian and the others in our party had mocked the menacing waves, while the ship's other passengers looked on in perplexity and I took notes. Which picture would the paper choose to accompany the legendary storm party, which my father still described as the high point of our travels? Would it be the one of my mother singing _Stormy Weather_ , with İsmet frowning in the background as the ship librarian dropped to his knees to kiss her feet? Or would it be the one of my father sliding across the dance floor, crashing into tables and upsetting drinks, as the final flourish in his goat dance?

To blot out that image, and to stop my stomach churning, just as it had throughout that long-ago storm, I put away my net book and closed my eyes, to lose myself in the soft hum of conversation at the cafe's other tables and the tinny French ballad I could recognise but not identify. There was the whir of an espresso machine, the clink of a cup. A draft blew in through the suddenly opened door. As it swung shut, the hum grew softer, until there was no hum at all.

I looked up and there he was. Thinner and more drawn than last time, but still exuding the old calm. He was not yet inside; there was still a sheet of glass between us. He was standing on the pavement just next to the entrance to the smokers' terrace with one of the waiters - or was this tense young man the manager? He was nodding as İsmet told him a thing or two, in easy defiance of the three burly men behind him. All three were wearing the same uniform, which I failed to recognise.

Another black Mercedes pulled up to the curb. The men who emerged from it were not in uniform, though they might as well have been. They were wearing dark glasses, and their hair was slicked back, and they had bought these black suits of theirs from the same designer. Casting the most casual of glances in their direction, İsmet moved towards the door. But it wasn't until he was halfway across the room that the devil deigned to look at me.

And when he did, he smiled, as if to say: _Don't think for a moment that you can sway me with that plaintive look of yours. This is all your doing. You should have known better than to push me to this point_. By now everyone else in the cafe and even on the smoking terrace was looking at us. And in the eyes of the man at the table right next to mine was the glow of new interest. I wondered if he might be a journalist, enjoying a lucky day.

The first thing İsmet did after he sat down was to light up a cigarette. My eyes were drawn to his hands, and those long, thin fingers.

'I don't think I need to tell you that you have just broken the law,' I said.

He laughed. 'What do I care? Let them fine me. Let them come to my prison cell and tell me how to live.'

'So you've run out of doctor's notes, have you? And they're taking you back in?'

Again, he laughed.

I saw no choice but to go on the offensive. 'I've read your first instalment,' I said.

'So I see,' he said, nodding towards the folded paper. Tipping back his chair, he yawned as he stretched his arms. 'So tell me. How did you find it?'

'Much as I expected,' I said.

Tipping his chair back to its rightful position, he stubbed out his cigarette on the saucer of my coffee cup. Then he pressed his hands against the table, splaying them as he smiled.

The man at the next table bent over his notebook, as if in prayer.

'You know what I am going to ask you now,' İsmet said.

I waited in silence as he lit another cigarette.

Stubbing it out on my plate after only three drags, but so delicately, with those long, smooth fingers, he said, 'I want the whole story – the story I have in fact already written, that the world will read tomorrow. But when it sees the light of day, I wish it not be in the shape of an accusation, but of a shared reality. Which will, I assure you, be your only hope of mercy. So. To come straight to the point. I wish you to confess to me all you know, from the moment your father wilfully delayed the departure of the _Felix Dzerzhinsky_ from Istanbul in January 1962, preventing, for entirely selfish reasons, the raising of its gangplank, right on through to the shameless endpoint that will feature in my next instalment - when, having disrupted delicate negotiations that might have prevented the worst crisis of the Cold War - having even reduced us all to laughing stocks with his shameless conduct on the night of the storm - your father led his party of reprobates and even his own young children down that same sighing gangplank onto the Alexandrian pier.' Casting me a look of pure fury, he said, 'You will begin, in fact, by wiping that smirk off your face.'

'It's not a smirk,' I said.

He lunged forward. 'Are you trying to correct my English?'

'No, of course not. I...'

He grabbed my wrist. 'Then perhaps you are trying to have a joke at my expense?'

'I wouldn't dare,' I said.

He removed his hand. He sat back in his chair. 'Good,' he said. 'So now tell me. Why would a man with a pure and innocent heart take his wife and children to join a gang of shameless reprobates on a Soviet ship at the most sensitive moment of the Cold War?'

'It was winter vacation,' I said, struggling to keep the squeak out of my voice. 'We were going to Egypt. It was...I'm pretty sure of this....no, actually, I'm positive. It was the cheapest way to get there. The cheapest by far!'

'Hah! This is poppycock! No one takes his family onto a Soviet ship at the most sensitive moment of the Cold War because it is a cheap way to get to Egypt! This was simply a cover! As you well know! As you even knew at the time! Why else would you have agreed to be his eyes and ears?'

'Come again?' I asked. My voice came out strangled.

He waved his hand. 'Don't think you can fool me. You, with your camera. Your sketchbook, and your diary. You had your suspicions. You can't pretend otherwise. So please. Don't even try to erase your tracks. I have, after all, viewed your telltale documents, and I promise you, I have used a fine-toothed comb.'

Digesting the horror that his words provoked in me – he had read my diaries! In invisible ink! He'd examined my sketches. Found the secret numbers in the shading! Perhaps I'd not actually lost the Brownie camera. Perhaps he'd stolen it! – I struggled to achieve a blank expression. 'I am, I must admit, a little flattered that you took me so seriously. But I can assure you...'

'You were your father's second pair of eyes! His decoy! His mascot!'

'In a way. Perhaps. But not in the way you seem to imagine.'

'What way might that be?'

'I was...I was playing a game.'

'What game?'

'I was looking for the mystery.'

'What mystery?'

'That's just it. I never found it. That wasn't the point of the game, though. The point was to play detective.'

'And you were that detective?'

'Yes. I was that detective. I was pretending not to be me.'

'And who had you become, I wonder?'

' _Detective O'Brien_.'

'O'Brien. Who is O'Brien?'

'It was me. It was my codename!'

'So at last, you choose to confess.'

'İsmet. It was the codename I invented, for the game.'

Lunging forward again, he said, 'So you think you can make a fool of me? Then let me assure you. You cannot! So please. Let us waste no more time. You will confirm the facts of that journey to me, and also to this honest and hardworking man to your right! He is, as you should have noticed, hanging on our every word. You will not waste any more of his time! You will state what we both know to be the truth.'

'About what?' I asked.

'About your father's true mission.'

'Oh, I can certainly do that,' I said.

'I'm glad to hear it.' As he sat back, I thought I caught a glint of hunger in his eyes, but when he spoke again, his voice was smooth. 'So. I'm all ears. Do proceed.'

Speaking slowly, struggling to keep my voice as smooth as his, I said, 'I'm not sure how you are going to take this. But my father's true mission, as you put it, was to travel to as many countries as we could afford.'

'And?'

Drink. Be merry. Make new friends. Climb the pyramids under moonlight.'

'Of course. We know all this. But this was, as you know – _as you wrote in your own detective's diary_ – this was only the cover.'

'What I wrote in my detective's diary was pure invention! I was just trying to give a meaning to things!'

'As indeed you did.'

'But it was all nonsense! I was making it up as I went along.'

'As you have done ever since.'

'Whereas you tell the truth?'

This time he laughed as he tipped back his chair. 'You live for this don't you? It was you who started it.'

'I was only 9, for God's sake!'

'While I am only 75,' he said. 'With just a few months left. So please. You will follow my instructions. You will identify your father's true identity and purpose, and then you will trace his treachery. You will, in short, explain the secret mission that brought him to this country. You will confess how, while masquerading as a dancing fool on the _Felix Dzerzhinsky_ , he conspired with others to sever the ties of trust between your land and ours, while forging new and dangerous links between the dissidents of the two world powers!'

In a last attempt at sarcasm, I asked, 'Will that be all?'

He leaned forward, stubbing out one last cigarette on my plate. 'It will be almost all. But – as you will have anticipated – there will be one more thing. As it happens, the most important thing.'

Reaching into his briefcase, he brought out a plastic folder. Pulling out a sheaf of paper, he passed it across the table. 'These are your words,' he said. 'You shall read them, and then you shall sign.'

My fingers were trembling. The top page was blank.

'Are all the other pages blank, too?' I asked.

A smile flitted across his face, as he considered how he might have responded to my question, had he been so inclined. Slowly he lit up. Slowly he exhaled. Together we watched a third black Mercedes pull up to the kerb. He waved a hand in its direction. 'Soon I must go,' he said languidly. 'Soon I shall no longer be in a position to grant you mercy. So think about it, Mimi. Think of what this life of concealment has done to you.'

But for the first few moments I could not think. I could only lower my gaze, to feel the chill of his eyes as I kept my own fixed on his gold watch - on its second hand slowly circling. Even this I could not sustain. Even my eyelids were trembling. I let my gaze travel upwards. His hands were cupped around his chin. His long, thin fingers stretched up as far as his eyebrows, just as I had seen them do when I was 9, as we'd sat together on that Soviet ship, swaying in the midwinter storm, surrounded by the debris of that party in the harsh light of the morning after.

How much of that conversation had survived the test of time? How much had I invented? I recalled him telling me how sad he was, to hear I'd lost my Brownie camera. But how glad he was, too, to have recovered my sketchbook and detective's diary, which I'd lost during the storm. I remembered now how, heart beating ever faster, I'd flicked the pages of my diary under his enquiring gaze – how, seeing my notes were still invisible to the naked eye, I'd relaxed.

Perhaps I'd pressed down on the pages too hard when writing them. Perhaps he'd read my words from their indentations. I closed my eyes, remembering now some of the other questions ›smet had asked me on the morning after the storm party, as our chairs slipped back and forth across the swaying ship lounge– Was there something that was worrying me? Was there something he could do to help? Wasn't it unfair, the way that parents sometimes acted, having so much fun, but also, somehow, keeping us in the dark? I recalled answering politely: _No, not really. No, but thanks for asking._

Staring now at the blank page still obscuring the confession İsmet had prepared for me to sign, I struggled to remember the plot I'd invented almost fifty years ago.

I pushed away the thought – the preposterous possibility - that I had no need to remember it, that when I opened the paper in the morning, to the second installment of İsmet's expose, I'd be reading the words I had written at the age of 9, during a storm on a Soviet ship in the midwinter Mediterranean, as my parents and their friends sang and drank and danced the night away, and I slid back and forth with every wave, awash in mystery, and kept afloat by the most beautiful suspicions, which I recorded in invisible ink.

Pilgrimage

Elsa Halling

Archie McKay was impatient for something to happen; he had waited a long time for this moment, almost a lifetime it seemed. He shrugged, what did a few more minutes matter? He was here now. Leaning back in the lumpy cane chair he stared at the wooden ceiling; a small green gecko was traversing the roof beam and he watched its progress with interest. It made small chirruping noises, barely audible above the slow whirr of the ceiling fan, which was doing nothing to reduce the temperature inside the wooden building. The gecko's tongue flicked out, catching an insect, which had been careless enough to wander into its orbit. Archie lost interest as the need for a smoke became more demanding. He would really have liked a decent single malt, but this was a Muslim country and on this tiny island there was no hope of such a forbidden pleasure. He left the gecko to its hunting and went outside. The warm tropical breeze lifted his thinning hair as he leaned against the wooden wall of the hut, which had the grand title of Sanctuary Headquarters. He gazed at the pattern of light that spilled out onto the beach and lit a cigarette; as he slowly drew the smoke deep into his lungs he reflected on how it had all started.

Even now he could still smell the musky animal odour of that section of the covered market in the town where he had grown up; the section devoted to pets. Every Friday and Saturday this area was full of stalls selling pet food, hay and straw for bedding and different kinds of small pets. His sister, Marion, always headed straight for the puppies, kittens and rabbits. Occasionally, in the hopes of a sale, a stall-holder would let her hold a soft kitten or a squirming puppy. But Archie hadn't been interested in furry creatures; they were sissy things for girls. What he liked were the reptiles, they were the real boys' stuff. In those days there had been no laws about the sale of tortoises and every week there was a stall alive with the bizarre creatures. Archie was fascinated by the wonderful concentric patterns on their shells. Being of a somewhat lazy disposition himself he admired the way they ambled around their enclosure, stopping occasionally to chew languorously on dandelion leaves. Their beady eyes stared out at him unblinkingly from scaly heads, which they would quickly retract into their shells if Archie attempted to touch them. But sometimes a man came with snakes, which writhed under a glass cover and Archie would watch them, utterly spellbound, as they coiled around the deep tray, making intricate patterns in the sand which covered the base. He longed to own a snake.

Marion had got her kitten, but their mother would have nothing to do with Archie's demands for a snake. She was a determined lady, and he knew he would never win her over. However she was very fair and willing to make a compromise. Archie could have a tortoise. The young reptile was christened Toby, though whether it was a male or female tortoise no one ever discovered. It spent nine summers in Archie's garden, grazing contentedly on the small square lawn, and from time to time trespassing into the flower beds for the occasional treat of a pansy or salvia to vary his diet. Each autumn a box was prepared for his hibernation. Archie lined it with newspapers and hay, placed Toby inside, then loosely piled the rest of the hay on top of him. The box was put in a corner of the garden shed and forgotten about until the spring. Until one spring when Toby failed to wake up.

Archie was stirred from his reverie by a voice from inside the building. He dropped his cigarette and ground it into the sand. Something was happening at last. Putting his head round the door he strained his ears to learn what news the crackling walkie-talkie was delivering. The ranger at the desk shook his head, 'Nothing yet, but it won't be long,' he pronounced. Archie could feel the slow trickle of sweat between his shoulder blades so took up station outside again. The gentle lap of the waves reminded him of his new home by the sea. Not a tropical paradise like this one but it suited Archie very well, the small isolated cottage with the patch of garden running down to the sea loch on the Isle of Skye.

After Toby's demise Archie moved on to terrapins. By then he had left home and lived in a flat shared with his best mate so having a snake was an option, but he had lost interest in them. His passion now was terrapins. The testudines were a much more interesting branch of the reptile family, being far older than snakes and lizards, older too that crocodiles, and less likely to scare off girlfriends, which by now was an important factor in Archie's life.

He kept the aquarium in which the terrapins lived scrupulously clean. He had quickly learnt the disadvantages of not doing so as Colin, his flatmate, had threatened to throw the lot out of the window when they began to smell. When he finally moved into his own home Archie had devoted a whole room to his pets and bred them successfully. He made a study of the species and had yearned to have some bigger members of the family. He watched avidly any television programmes that featured tortoises or turtles of any kind, but knew that he would have to be content with owning only their smaller brethren. But if he couldn't own them then the next best thing was to see them in the wild; that was something he could do.

So Archie made his plans, and by the time he retired he had accumulated a healthy savings pot and his civil service pension was generous enough to enable him to travel. He had married, but his wife had died some years ago and there were no children to consider, so Archie felt able to indulge himself. First he had taken a trip to the Galapagos Islands to see the giant tortoises there. The following year he'd taken a holiday in Florida to marvel at the huge leatherback turtles with their rubbery shells, very different from their cousins with hard brittle carapaces. There were box turtles, snapping turtles, Hawksbill turtles and green turtles, as well as numerous species of tortoise, which Archie had learnt about and could talk for hours on if given the chance. What he had never before seen were turtles in the wild laying their eggs, and at last he was here on a tiny island off the coast of Borneo, his most distant venue yet, and the most remote. All his other jaunts had enabled him to retire to a comfortable hotel, or a cabin on board a cruise ship, but this was quite different. Earlier that day he had hired a motorboat from the quay in Sandakan and been delivered to the island to spend the night in a hut with no electricity or running water. He had planned the trip carefully to coincide with the main breeding season of the green turtles and this was the culmination of his journey.

Ideally Archie would have liked to enjoy the experience without the company of half a dozen mildly interested tourists. For him their presence was an intrusion into what he felt to be an almost religious rite. He leaned back against the hut, its wall still warm from the heat of the day, and gazed up into the black sky. The moon had not yet risen and in the inky darkness he could see the stars clearly. This close to the equator they seemed different from back home, but he was no astronomer, and couldn't identify the constellations picked out in the vast expanse of sky. He heard the walkie-talkie crackle again; another false alarm, he thought.

But the burst of activity and excited voices from within told him otherwise. He quickly went inside to retrieve the camera he had left on his seat and, fingers trembling with anticipation, he slid it into the roomy pocket of his cargo pants. The ranger gave instructions to the assembled group: no talking, walk in single file, keep strictly to the paths. 'Like being a bloody school-kid,' someone muttered, but Archie didn't care, this was what he had come for and if it meant being treated like a school-kid so be it. The small group assembled themselves behind one of the rangers and a second one brought up the rear of the party. Archie had made sure he was first in line behind the lead ranger. Using torches to pick their way through the darkness they set off to the beach on the other side of the small island. As he plodded along following the ranger Archie began to feel large spots of rain on his head, and in an instant the entire group were deluged by a sudden tropical storm. Some members of the party were eager to turn back, but Archie was glad the rangers insisted they press on or they would miss the event, the event he had been waiting half his life to observe. Rain poured down in opaque sheets, soaking the little group to the point where they could wring the water out of their clothing. But as suddenly as it had started the rain stopped. With their soaked clothes clinging to their backs the group trudged on. No one wore much: shorts, a long-sleeved shirt, and a wide-brimmed hat as protection from the earlier stark glare of the sun, and now insulation from the dripping trees. The storm had left in its wake the gift of a cooling breeze which brought with it a salty tang from the ocean. It rustled the papery fronds of palm which edged the beach and the pathway from the compound, drying the clothing on the backs of the wearers. It was now possible to walk barefoot across the sand, a feat unimaginable only a few hours before. The group trod the path cautiously, a slow procession of figures that resembled a snaking trail of glow worms as their torchlight pricked the darkness.

The trees and undergrowth thinned out as they reached the beach. Archie's heart beat faster as he tried to look ahead to see what was going on. In the faint torchlight he spotted one of the rangers bending over a dark shape in the sand. From the sea's edge to where the ranger crouched he could see a track which looked as if it might have been made by a giant tractor tyre.

'That's the track made by the turtle as she came ashore,' the ranger told them. Archie looked from the shoreline to where the man was standing and saw, with awe, the huge female turtle resting in a hollow she had dug out of the sand with her flippers. The visitors stood a respectful distance from the creature as one of the rangers took a tape measure from his pocket and placed it across the width of her shell. 'One metre exactly,' he announced proudly. 'She has finished laying now.' Between them the two rangers gently lifted the turtle out of her hollow and laid her reverently on the sand, then began to transfer the eggs into a large plastic bucket they had brought with them. 'Who would like to hold one?' Archie was the first to step forward. The ranger placed the egg into the palm of his hand. It was completely spherical and the size of a golf ball, but with a soft shell. 'It's rubbery like a peeled hard-boiled egg,' Archie whispered to the others. One by one they all picked up eggs, and had soon transferred over a hundred from the nest to the bucket. The turtle was replaced in her hollow to rest.

'She'll stay there for an hour or so, cover the nest hole with sand, then return to the sea. Her job is complete; she will have nothing more to do with her offspring.'

'There are times when I wish I could do that,' muttered one of the visitors, 'No teenage tantrums to cope with.'

The group trailed back to the 'nursery' at the sanctuary building. The nursery was an area of sand divided into sections surrounded by wire netting buried deep into the ground.

'We move them up here to protect them from predators,' explained the ranger. They watched as the men placed the eggs in a hole in the sand, covered it up and stuck in a small wooden post labelled with that day's date. They were then ushered to a separate section of the nursery. Another respectful circle was formed. 'These were laid and transferred here fifty-two days ago,' the ranger told them, 'they almost always hatch at night as there is less chance of their being caught by a sea bird for a tasty snack. We'll not have long to wait'.

'It's just like a children's television programme back home,' one of the English women whispered, 'here's one I made earlier.' Her companion giggled. Like worshippers at some mystical ritual the group waited expectantly. Their tense anticipation was palpable. They did not have to wait long, for within minutes of their arrival the sand at their feet began to quiver and roil. Slowly the first tiny black hatchling pushed its head from its grainy dungeon and squirmed its way to the surface. It paused for a moment, taking stock of its new freedom, then scuttled a few feet away from where it had emerged and paused for a moment, as if to wait for its companions. Almost at once it was followed by a second and then a third of its siblings, until there were dozens of them scurrying around in the pen like small, round clockwork toys, all programmed to take on the hazards of life in the ocean.

The rangers quickly gathered up the tiny hatchlings and allowed the visitors to hold them. Archie took the one offered to him and held it firmly between his finger and thumb. The shell was still soft. The tiny creature waved it legs around and Archie, afraid he might drop it, reluctantly placed it, with the rest of the hatchlings, in the bucket recently occupied by the latest batch of eggs. The members of the party retraced their steps to the beach. The powerful beam of the ranger's torch made a pathway down to the softly breaking surf. His companion carefully tipped the bucket and the crowd of tiny creatures poured out and, following the beam of light, scurried down the sand and into the water. Archie marvelled that only a few of them would make it to adulthood, and perhaps four or five years hence just one of the females might return to this beach to repeat the process all over again.

He felt rather wistful as they all made their way back to the sanctuary. It was now well past midnight and the heat and excitement of the day had tired him. 'Must be getting a bit old for these jaunts,' he thought, 'perhaps this one will be my last.' The idea didn't bother him; anything else would be an anticlimax after tonight's experience. Tomorrow he would be flying home to his little cottage by the loch.

Goodnights were called as the members of the party made their way to their cabins. Archie found his and closed the door behind him. By torchlight he pulled off his shirt and hung it over the back of the chair, the only furniture in the tiny room apart from the bunk. He carefully stepped out of his cargo pants. But before folding them up he removed his camera, replete with dozens of photographs, from one of the pockets. Then sliding his hand into the other pocket he tenderly lifted out two small white spheres, wrapped them in his handkerchief and slipped them under the clean shirt in his holdall. He climbed onto the bunk and switched off his torch. Feeling intensely satisfied he pulled the thin sheet over his legs and was asleep within minutes, dreaming of a quiet Scottish sea loch populated with green turtles.

Emily Street

John Hawke

The pavement is a narrow procession

of footsteps returning home in darkness.

There is a raw gas-smell past Island Street,

the rancidness of lamb-fat that clings

to plum-coloured brickwork. A palm tree

rustles perpetually through the windless night

with percussion of heavy plastic.

There is a crumbling border a child might walk

tentatively, giddy with the danger of falling

into fathoms of lantana. As you follow in sequence,

muffling your pursuing steps, you notice

the graded curvature of hairstyle against the nape,

the way jeans shape and angle the leg,

the sculpting of muscle by the tilt of heels.

You pass the private hotel with all

its yellow windows lit, Victorian and ornate,

transient figures flitting within its walls,

a church illuminated by orange spotlights,

the fluorescence of a shop you have never entered -

then turn from the stream of commuters, down

a street which has the same name as your own.

Raqs Sharqi

September 1980

Angie Hobbs

He approached her as soon as she stepped off the train from Luxor, a gaunt ill-shaped boy of seventeen or eighteen, slightly taller than the milling heads around him.

'You have too much luggage,' he said, dragging her crammed rucksack from the train. 'I shall carry it for you.' He hoisted it on to his back – he wore a shirt and jeans, rather than the usual gallabiya of Upper Egypt – and strode off.

'Have you somewhere to stay?' He did not turn round.

'Well, the people in Cairo recommended the Grand.'

'The Grand is no good. You will stay at the pension of my brother-in-law.'

'What's wrong with the Grand?'

'It is not clean; you will get dysentery. Besides, it is full.'

'How much does your brother-in-law's place cost?' They were now outside; he paused on the top step of the flight leading up to the station and viewed the thronging square with indifference. She stood beside him, dazed by the fierce heat.

'More cheap than the Grand. And much more clean.'

She followed as best she could, impressed by the curt way he dismissed all the touts and pedlars and hordes of small children: much more effective, and probably kinder, than her own vacillatory, apologetic shrugs. Often she did give baksheesh, and was then embarrassed by the pleading soft eyes of all the children to whom she had given nothing.

The modern square in front of the station led into a wide street lined with shops selling turquoise necklaces and scarabs and heads of Nefertiti. She stopped to examine a set of tiny brass coffee cups and tray.

'For tourists,' he said, dismissively. 'No good. Fake.'

'Are you sure? They look like brass to me. And they're so beautifully engraved.'

'Fake,' he repeated stonily. 'And you have no room for them in your bag. You have Aswan to visit yet, I expect.'

This was true. She followed him meekly as he veered off the main street into a dark maze of alleys, pungent with cumin and mint and animal droppings: workrooms for copper or leather were interspersed with private homes.

'If you want to buy a gift I will take you to the shop of my uncle. He sells very fine things; very real. We will go there before lunch.'

'Well, it's awfully kind of you, but I think I'll just book in and have a sleep. The train journey was pretty tiring.'

'You should have taken the French train, not the Egyptian one. The French train is clean.'

'But six times as expensive.'

'Yes, of course. We have arrived. What is your name?'

'Ginny.'

'I am Ali. I will tell my brother-in-law to give you a very fine room.'

They entered a small, poorly-lit entrance hall with a desk along one wall and a tattered poster of President Sadat above it. The hall was empty, but behind a curtain a man and woman could be heard arguing. The woman seemed to be winning.

'Wait,' said Ali, disappearing behind the curtain. She heard him say something in Arabic and a curt male voice reply; the woman continued to articulate her grievances, undeterred. For a couple of minutes all three voices rose and fell.

'Don't worry if there's a problem. I can easily go somewhere else.'

Ali emerged; his eyes were angry. 'There is no problem. My brother-in-law is now coming. My brother-in-law has no education.'

The brother-in-law was a fat man and wore a gallabiya. He wiped his perspiring forehead with the back of his hand, nodded briefly to Ginny and asked for her passport. She rummaged in her bag, unearthing several intimate articles of clothing before finding it. The brother-in-law stared at her suspiciously and Ali stared into space.

Out in the street he still looked away from her, without expression. 'I will come for you at 6.00.'

'O.K.' She was too tired to stop him.

'You will need your passport.'

'Why? Will the banks still be open?'

'No, no, my uncle will change money for you. Very fine rates. The banks here are no good.'

***

She was sitting on her own drinking mango juice in the garden of one of the more expensive hotels overlooking the Nile, watching the moon rise full. Ali was joining her in a few minutes. He had arrived for her in magisterial fashion at 6.05 and led her very fast to the sleepy backstreet where his uncle had his shop. She had been escorted into a backroom and given an exchange rate for her Traveller's Cheques a third higher than that of the banks. Ali had then abruptly said that he must go and would meet her at 9.00 after dinner for a drink.

'What do you dream about?'

She looked up to see a tiny man in his early twenties with a neat black moustache and luxuriant eyelashes. He looked like a little painted doll.

'Money, I'm afraid.'

'Ah, don't we all? May I join you?' He sat down opposite her. 'You are here alone?'

'Yes. Well, no. I mean ...'

'You should not be alone. It is not good for happiness. What are you doing tonight?'

'I'm having a drink with ... with a friend.'

'Ah, that is sad. I could show you many beautiful things. I could show you my beautiful country. I am a guide but for you, of course, I make no charge. You are free tomorrow?'

She hesitated.

'You are worried about going out with a strange man? You have no need: I just like to be the good friend. Ask anyone in Luxor – they all know Neri. But there is no problem. We will go with my other good friends here' – he waved an arm to three young men at a nearby table, who were following the conversation with interest.

She looked over to the barman, who smiled and shrugged. 'Thank you. I'd like that. I'm going to the Valley of the Kings but I shouldn't be back late.'

'Good. He smiled sideways at his companions. 'You know belly-dancing?

'I saw it in Cairo. I've never tried it.'

'Then I will teach you.' He got up. 'It will be a most beautiful experience. We will meet you here at 9.00, yes?'

He kissed her hand, gazed deep into her eyes and returned to his table. She heard them all laughing loudly.

Ali was not pleased. He came up just as Neri was sitting down.

'What did that man say to you?'

'Oh, nothing much. He and his friends have asked me to go out with them tomorrow night.'

'You must not go. They are no good. That man especially is no good.'

'The barman thinks they are O.K. I want to go. Neri said he'd teach me to belly-dance.'

'Belly-dancing is for tourists; it was invented for French imperialists. The real old Egyptian dance is Raqs Sharqi. But that would not be suitable for you either.'

'I think it'll be fun. I'll have spent the whole day crawling in and out of tombs.'

Ali sniffed, and peremptorily ordered a beer. The waiter looked affronted. 'Then I shall come with you. But first I shall take you to the Magic Man.'

'The Magic Man? But I thought you hated all that tourist fakery.'

'He is not fake. He has real powers. He will change your life.'

They sat in silence. She glanced across at Neri and his companions: they looked simply like students on vacation with nothing much to do. They were eyeing her and Ali curiously. In their glances at Ali she thought she detected some hostility.

'Why don't you like Neri and his friends?'

'Our ways of living are very different.'

'Oh?'

'They study architecture and engineering in Cairo, but they have no real culture. And they return here only for the summer: Luxor is no longer their true home. They have interest only in the money and the foreign girls and the gambling.'

'Gambling?'

'Yes. They have no interest in books. I read many books: Descartes, Plato, Hegel ...'

'What do you want to do, Ali?'

'He looked out over the river. 'I? I shall be an inspector in the police. Then bad men like Neri will not be able to take advantage of foreign girls like you. I shall make Luxor a very fine place again.'

Neri and his friends got up to go, but she did not think they could have heard. Ali had spoken quietly.

'Some Egyptians are very stupid,' he said. 'You take good care tomorrow.'

'When shall I meet you?'

'I will come to the pension at 8.00. After dinner.'

It was then that she belatedly realised that Ali was unwilling to eat with her because he could not afford to pay.

***

The next morning she left the hotel just before dawn to catch the ferry across the Nile. The water was silky and calm and the white houses and date palms shimmered in the milky early morning light; she stretched out luxuriously on a bench and gazed up at the pale pink sky, savouring the quiet. On the far bank she hired a clattering bicycle and set off between sandstone hills as the sun rose red over the peaks. The day was sweet and fresh and young.

The Tombs of the Kings in the City of the Dead were none of these things. She clambered down into five or six of them and then decided to make her way over the hills to the Tombs of the Nobles. It was now nearly 10.00 and the valley was a like a kiln; she stared up at the steep slope to the south, trying to discern a path in the haze. Perhaps she would need some help – to begin with, anyway. Her gaze fell on a boy of about twelve who was looking at her impassively: for a few piasters he could presumably point her in the right direction.

'Excuse me, could you show me the path to the Tombs of the Nobles?' She indicated on her map where she wanted to go.

'There is no path. It is very far. I show you fine tombs here.' He seemed listless and bored.

'It doesn't look that far.' She stared up at the hills and saw a small group trudging in the direction she thought she wanted. 'Look, those people appear to have found a path.'

He eyed her narrowly, then shrugged and abruptly changed his mind. 'O.K., I take you there. I show you Tombs of the Nobles, Tombs of the Queens. Very fine tombs', he repeated mechanically.

'Oh, I only want you to point me the right way. I haven't really got enough money for a proper guide.'

'Money is no problem. I am very rich.' He produced a thick wad of notes from his gallabiya. 'The Americans give me much money today. You give me what you want.'

'Well, it's very kind of you but I don't think – '

'No, no, I finish here for the morning. I have enough money. I will show you my beautiful country.'

The boy pounced after they had been walking for about thirty minutes. She had already noticed that they were going in what appeared to be entirely the wrong direction, but when she had mentioned this he simply said, 'I show you something very special, very old.' Eventually they had rounded a corner and been confronted by a few heaps of stones, possibly arranged in some sort of order.

'Look, Roman villa. Very old stones.'

'The stones in the Tombs of the Nobles are a lot older.' He had managed to look hurt.

He leaped on her about five minutes after that. She was hardly surprised, but not much perturbed: he was slight and did not look particularly evil, and besides, she carried pepper and an alarm.

'Now we make love,' he said, knocking her water-bottle out of her hand.

'No thanks.' She pushed him away. 'How old are you anyway?'

'I am fourteen. I am very good. You will be surprised.'

'Sorry, no chance.'

He backed off a little and looked up at her with glowing eyes. 'No sex?'

'No sex.'

'No sex, no guide.' And he disappeared into the alchemical air.

***

As soon as she told Ali what had happened, she realised it was a mistake. For a long time he did not say anything, but gazed over the Nile and stroked his smooth chin. They were in the same fragrant hotel garden, drinking beer.

'Do you know the boy's name?'

'No. I never asked him.'

'But you could recognize him, I think?'

'Oh, well ...'

'I shall find him. He must be punished.'

'Oh no, Ali – I really don't want that. There was no harm done. He was only trying it on.'

'Pardon?'

'He was only trying to make a boring day more interesting. He didn't hurt me or anything.'

Ali was silent again for some moments.

'When I am inspector in the police these things will not happen.'

'You won't be able to keep your eye on everyone.'

'Then the people responsible will be punished. Some Egyptians are very ignorant. When I am inspector Luxor will be a good place.'

A few minutes later he put down his glass. 'Come. We have an appointment with the Magic Man.'

'But Neri and his friends will be here before long.'

Ali's mouth tightened. 'Then you must explain to the Magic Man why you cannot stay. You must tell him you prefer the belly-dancing. It is not good to keep the Magic Man waiting.'

The Magic Man was sitting by himself at a table in a coffee house, smoking a cigarette. He was fifty or sixty and wirily thin, with greying hair and a high-boned face delicately sculpted with lines. When he saw them he nodded gravely and indicated two chairs.

'I'm terribly sorry,' she said. 'There's been a muddle. I'm afraid I have to meet some friends now.'

He seemed to understand, but Ali translated at great length. The Magic Man nodded and exhaled slowly.

'Perhaps we could meet tomorrow instead?'

He opened out his long hands in a gesture of indifferent agreement, then smiled faintly. Ali said a stream of things in Arabic.

Walking back down the street she turned to look at him. Two tourists were being introduced by another guide. She followed a glowering Ali to the hotel garden, her aura unpurified, her life unchanged.

Neri and his friends were waiting for her and did not look pleased to see Ali. She shook hands with them.

'Hi,' said Neri, fluttering his long eyelashes in a confused attempt simultaneously to flirt and to express disapproval of Ali. 'Meet my three very good friends Mohammed, Mahmed and Big Hassan.'

The three very good friends nodded and smiled and cast sidelong glances at Ali, who stared stonily away.

'Is he coming too?' Neri asked rudely.

'Yes', said Ali, turning and fixing his stare on Neri, whose bright dark eyes looked insolent. Mohammed said something in Arabic to Mahmed and Big Hassan and the three laughed.

'So. Okay,' said Neri, looking jaunty again. 'We will take the ferry and pick up Big Hassan's car and go to Jojo's. There I will teach you belly-dancing,' he said softly to her alone, lightly touching her shoulder. Ali looked thunderous and stalked ahead, his hands thrust into his jeans pockets. Neri nudged her.

'Ali is cross with us. He is a silly boy.' He giggled. Ali glanced round at them quickly, then strode on.

They crossed the river almost in silence, with only Mohammed and Mahmed whispering together quietly in the shadows. The Nile slipped beneath then like black ink and the stars glowed yellow and near to the earth. On the far bank they climbed into Big Hassan's battered jeep and roared off with screeching tyres. The speed and the rush of the warm desert air began to excite her and she started to laugh along with Neri and his friends, even though she could not understand many of their jokes. Ali sat hunched, his arms tightly around his knees.

Jojo's place was a derelict half-built hotel at the end of a winding dirt track; it stood entirely alone and the desert lapped its walls. She clambered out of the jeep and was assailed by a strong sweet smell of jasmine mingled with hot sand. Neri led them into an empty room of cement and rubbish and guided them up three flights of crumbling stone steps to a vast dusty space beneath the roof. A handful of middle-aged men sat cross-legged on the floor, smoking and playing cards by the light of an oil lamp. They glanced cursorily at the newcomers, dispassionately assessed her figure, and continued with their game. Neri nodded at them and led his party through to a wide balcony overlooking the hills surrounding the Valley of the Kings, through which she had cycled that morning. Out of the shadows appeared a plumpish, curly-haired young man in a gallabiya; he and Neri embraced and greeted each other volubly. Neri came up to his shoulder and bobbed around him like a marionette.

'Meet Jojo,' he said to her. 'Jojo is my very very good friend. He owns this place. He is a good man.'

Jojo smiled at her and glanced around at the others; when he came to Ali he paused and she thought she saw him fleetingly raise an eyebrow at Neri, who gave a tiny shrug. Then Jojo slapped Neri on the back and said something, grinning.

'Jojo says he is honoured to offer us his hospitality. We must sit down and drink with him.'

They sat down and Jojo brought out glasses and a bottle of Greek brandy. The brandy was strong and sweet and its fumes mingled with the smell of flowers and desert and cigarette-smoke. Light-headed, she leant back on her elbows and looked up at the burning stars; out of the corner of her vision she was dimly aware that Ali was watching her and drinking heavily. She closed her eyes.

Some time later she became conscious of music and laughter and a rhythmic beat. Opening her eyes she saw the others sitting in a rough circle clapping their hands while in the middle Jojo gyrated his ample belly to a crackly cassette. The older men playing cards looked on with indifference. As the music gathered speed Jojo began to writhe and moan and roll his eyes in a parody of a woman and Neri and the others clapped faster and faster and gave little cries. She joined in, laughing.

'I do not know how you can.' Ali came and sat beside her, clearly very drunk.

'What's the harm?'

'It is cheap and vulgar. Women should not watch it.'

'But I want to see Egypt.'

'Belly-dancing is not Egypt. And this is a very bad place. When I am inspector such places as this will not exist.'

'And what will exist when you are inspector? I think Luxor will be pretty empty. You say Neri and Jojo won't be welcome. I get the feeling tourists won't be welcome either.'

'Travellers will be welcome. There is a difference.'

'Oh? And which am I?' She was also fairly drunk.

'You are a tourist. Of course.'

Neri came up and nudged her. 'You want me to show you how to belly-dance? I am a very good teacher. The best.'

She glanced defiantly at Ali. 'Yes. I do want.'

As she followed Neri towards the stairs she looked back and saw Ali watching her with eyes full of pain.

Neri led her into another completely bare room on the floor below and shut the door. The room was lit by a single naked light bulb, dangling precariously. Plaster was peeling off the walls and in the corners lay small heaps of rubble. Neri pranced into the centre of the room and posed.

'Why don't you like Ali?'

He looked surprised. 'Like I said, Ali is just a silly boy. Now, stand opposite me.'

'Why is he silly? What has he done?'

Neri shrugged. 'He is a little bit crazy, I think. Very old-fashioned. He is not popular here.'

'Have you ever been unkind to him or anything? He doesn't seem to trust you very much.'

'Oh,' Neri looked evasive. 'Maybe we tease him a little now and then. Nothing bad. Now, move your hips like this.'

He began to rotate his neat hips and pelvis in a slow rhythmic motion, gradually increasing speed. She tried to copy him but her hips would not give and her stomach did not seem to possess the right muscles. He considered her lower limbs with unnerving coolness..

'No, no – you must relax. Watch me.'

His gyrations grew more fluid than ever. He had brought a radio with him and he now turned it on and matched his movements to the throb of Radio Luxor. Though his body was relaxed, however, his face was not: his heavily-lashed dark eyes shone with concentration, and beads of sweat began to run down his forehead. His breath came out in sharp little grunts and he occasionally glanced at her to see how she was reacting. The air in the room was sticky and old and she noticed grease marks on the walls that looked like fingerprints. Neri ground his pelvis faster and faster. The radio juddered, her head swam, she remembered the pain in Ali's eyes. She had to get out.

'You see,' he said, panting. 'It is easy. Just follow me.'

She gave up even trying to copy him.

'No, it is not easy. Let's go up.'

On the balcony Jojo, Mohammed and Mahmed were talking in low voices and working their way through a second bottle of brandy. Big Hassan lay flat out, snoring. Ali was nowhere to be seen.

'Where's Ali?' Her voice was slightly slurred.

Jojo looked up with huge, innocent eyes.

'Oh, he had to go.' She had not been aware that he spoke English, but in fact he spoke it quite well. 'We tried to persuade him to stay but he had to go. He was insistent. Would you like some brandy?'

She stared out over the railing into the thick night.

'No. Thank you. I also have to get back.'

***

When she woke the next morning she decided to leave for Aswan straight away. The brandy was not mixing well with the orange and yellow wallpaper. Perhaps she could stop off at Luxor on her return to Cairo and see the temples in peace.

In the hall she found Ali. He had a small cut above his right eye and a bruise on his forehead. If he was surprised to see her bags, he did not show it.

'Oh Ali, what happened to your face?'

'There is a train for Aswan at 10.00.'

'Yes.'

They waited in silence for the brother-in-law. She glanced at Ali and thought she saw some emotion flicker briefly in his eyes, but in the gloom it was impossible to tell what it was. Angry voices could be heard and eventually the brother-in-law shambled through the curtain. He took her money and key, handed over her passport and grunted something without looking at her.

'Shukran,' she said, smiling.

He nodded and glanced towards the kitchen, in which there was the sound of something being thrown. With a scarcely perceptible shrug he returned to his wife.

Out in the narrow street Ali strode ahead even faster than usual. She had come down with her rucksack already on her back and he did not offer to take it from her; it was not clear why he was accompanying her at all. She was almost running as he scythed a path through the beggars and small children and he did not appear remotely inclined to talk.

He did not come into the station building but said goodbye on the steps. He still barely looked at her.

'I'm very sorry about the Magic Man.'

He shrugged. 'He is with other tourists now. It will make no difference to him.'

'And ... and I'm also very sorry about last night. It was my fault.'

He looked out over the square. 'They are very ignorant people. They do not read books.' His voice was stony. 'It will be better when they go back to Cairo. There is no place for them in Luxor.'

He turned at last to face her in the fierce light and she saw precisely what the emotion was.

Twenty minutes later she was sitting in the train and rocking along the banks of the Nile towards Aswan. All around her men in gallabiyas were chewing sugar-cane and staring at her. The air was clogged with cigarette smoke and the hard wooden seats were chipped and besmeared with spittle and decaying food. The train gathered speed. She peeled a banana and looked out of the window, imagining Neri standing before a uniformed Ali for some minor offence.

Recapitulated

Gruffydd Jones

The school bell weighs in. Our handmade mosaic, alive just a second ago with half caught shadows, falls a little deeper into the afternoon darkness, and we gather to the call. An indignant whistle kicks up another fuss, and the tramping of feet reaches its peak. We duck and weave into scattershot bundles. Boys and girls tumbling amongst each other like sacks of joke skeletons until symmetry assembles, and lines one through five form up, leaving little alleys where heads poke out to scratch and peel at a neighbour's name.

'Oh! Gayboy.'

It only takes one.

'Haha, you looked, you're a gayboy now.'

And it only takes a shriek of the whistle before we finally make ourselves the image of cattle they want from us. And then another shriek of the whistle just to make sure. Our pennies-in-a-jar chorus is lidded and tremulous. The ministers are tall and they are watching. Frenzied, partial, dangerous, and Welsh. Though to say it now, fifteen years on from that day, it's a little too easy to Photoshop a snapshot. Anything can change in the development. Later for the photo paper where expression sharpens up to its own malignancy.

Remade a dozen times a day, the back-then-me gets a poke from me to see what dust comes off him. Is the back-then-me seeing the same headmistress? Is the back-then-me seeing the grind she makes of her agonised face? Is the back-then-me thinking that he should feel sorry for her?

But of course, all of eight, I'm not thinking that. Or much of anything.

Or maybe I am.

She speaks:

'Rydyn ni wedi gwneud y rheolau yn digon clir.'

Something is bound to get lost in translation, but:

' _We have made the rules clear enough_ ,' And the drama goes up. ' _We have made them clear_ enough.' In Welsh, the stress goes somewhere else in the sentence - ' _We have told you time and again, and we have tried to let it sink in. But many of you, and many of you that I relied on to keep our language, your language, breathing..._ '

At some point, I don't remember the transition, we find ourselves in the assembly hall. Newly built (circa '96). It doubles as a sports hall; coloured gymnastics frames (red, white and green) stacked into the far wall. This is also where we go for our feed. But the tables and chairs are tucked away this afternoon. The forty of us, boys and girls, sit cross-legged on the floor, hands in our pockets. The lady speaks. Biblical as Gomorrah this time. And on with the frenzy.

' _...have turned your backs on everything these bricks were built for._ ' Pause for effect. ' _I hoped that you would influence those around you to keep English out of my school._ ' She holds the end-times in her hands, and puts them to her face, as if preparing for a sob. And then drops them. She takes a breath to frown. Her form is emaciate in the light of the falling day. There are windows in the ceiling. A cloud shifts in a blue sky. Years later, feeling religious, I'll make a habit of closing my eyes to a brightness, and pretend that whatever shadow crosses it is some devil come running. Different times, peculiar influences. Little boys stay little boys.

After a while, I draw my head level again, I can see that something is happening. She is drawing individuals to their feet. Those of us still seated move in towards each other, barricaded, rounded, and facing outwards. The standing ones – their numbers a sixty forty split with ours - are directed to surround us. What happens next is this:

' _These boys and girls have kept their promise_.'

Paraphrasing makes such a mad dance out of the past.

The plot thickens. The headmistress begins to direct them. Speculation on the floor abounds as to what the game is. Most of my friends are looking down at me. Scratch that. All of my friends are looking down at me. Then the strangest of things starts to happen. The standing ones. The others. They latch hands and start to circumscribe us; the seated. Walk around us. And around us. And their mantra goes:

'Cymraeg yw iaith yr ysgol. Cymraeg yw iaith yr ysgol.'

' _Welsh is the language of the school. Welsh is the language of the school_.'

Doesn't have quite the same ring to it in English.

I think about the Not. The wood plaque they'd lanyard around my ancestor's necks. Hundreds of years ago. An English leper bell for the Welsh. A single word of our language spoken would bring along the plaque to the speaker's unwanted possession. It turned my ancestors on each other. They would pass it along to the next transgressor of the day. Whoever was the last to speak the forbidden would get the lashings. Every school day a new Calvary. They tell us about that, the teachers. They tell us about that a lot. It was hundreds of years ago for them too.

While I think about this, the clutching merry-go-round goes on. The cross-legged among us remain seated and unmoving. Still far away from that day, I keep a close watch on it. I keep a close watch on the back-then-me too. Maybe a face appears in the snapshot of that moment. Maybe not. Around and around and around they go. Awkward chanting, suppressed laughter. Do I remember laughing? Am I laughing? Was I laughing? It's all a distant nowhere. It doesn't come to an end either. It doesn't spin to a stop. It's all just a picture held up for a second, dropped, and picked up again. A little more grainy each time. But not sepia. Not like the history channel.

Right now, somewhere in an assembly hall, a little boy with his hands in his pockets sees a cloud in a window above, and wonders why he isn't crying.

The Little Mermaid

Sue Kossew

You chose

legs over fishtail

land over sea

prince over family

Muteness for love

Bad choices

Turn back

Too late

Destined for betrayal

Knives pierce human feet

The price of return

more painful still

The weeping willow predicts your fate

And even now

sitting on your fragile rock

you seem unsure

Still subject to unkind cuts

Beheaded

Decapitated

Disneyfied

Shipped to Shanghai.

So small, they say,

Disappointed

We expected something more

Substantial.

Copenhagen 2009

Awaiting The Toofaan

Raj Lal

Once more, it feels like the lull. The kind before a storm unleashes its fury. I've experienced this feeling too many times in the last ten years not to be afraid. One thing is certain: this _toofaan_ will leave me feeling shipwrecked, then abandoned to float into oblivion. I'm waiting for mourners to arrive. I don't want to see them. They didn't console me ten years ago when my sister Parminder died, they won't console me now.

It started again four weeks ago today, almost ten years after my first journey into the tempest. Both times, there was lots of activity. Tidying Mum's lounge was like being a spring-cleaning DVD being played on fast forward. We cleared out furniture to make floor room where people could sit, removing every speck of normal life, knowing normality would never return. Carpets were vacuumed and white sheets spread on the floor on which the female mourners would squat to weep and wail while the men sat on the leather sofas. When the room had been cleared, we waited, feeling like we were caught in a nightmare, like voyeurs watching some sick reality show on TV, not knowing when the storm would reach us but certain it was coming.

At ten, the _toofaan_ hit. Mum sobbed as her brother walked in. He was the first mourner to arrive. Perhaps he could console his widowed sister where we had failed. It was the day after Dad died.

Over three hundred people came that day: family, friends, foes and gatecrashers. Some had not been seen since they had come to mourn Parminder's death ten years previously. I would have refused entry to some of them if I could. The day became a blur of men chatting; of wailing women chanting loud to show how much they cared, forcing tears from dry ducts then gossiping after a 'respectable' time. Of being a powerless eldest daughter feeling ignored because I wasn't the son. Shedding silent tears. Anger. Making litres of tea that was never good enough. Fearing for Mum's health. She had been hospitalised twice during the previous week because her heartbeat had dropped to dangerous levels, yet her blood pressure left her at risk of stroke.

Since then, life is a jumble of memories.

'I'm going to the loo, Dad,' or 'I'm going for a sandwich,' my sister Simran and I told him, taking turns to visit Mum downstairs in the hospital where Dad had been for seven weeks, frightened that news of Mum's hospitalisation would make him deteriorate further. Although critically ill, it amazed medical staff that he was still alive. He wasn't expected to survive the first night he was rushed into hospital, nor when he was taken in again after a few days at home. I should have refused to take him home. The Consultant had insisted Dad was well enough to leave hospital. He neglected to tell me that taking Dad home would shorten his life, only saying that he was 'medically fit' to go home.

'Can you get here for 2.30 today? The Consultant wants a family meeting with us all,' Simran asked during one of many unwelcome recent phone calls from her, starting five weeks previously to catapult me into this turmoil.

'Hiya, alright?' Even in my semi-awake, early morning state I had seen bad news hurtling towards me. 'Yeah, just to let you know, Dad went into hospital yesterday. We thought we'd let you have a good night's sleep before telling you.' _What if he'd died in the night_?

I fumbled through my jewellery, looking for my charm necklace. It was like a comfort blanket, but one with hidden thorns. It began ten years ago with the gold box-link chain, the last ever present from my sister Parminder. She never saw it. I often wondered what I sent her for her last birthday, and where it was now.

My sister's love, precious birthdays, and loss were woven into the chain. Bittersweet memories stung the eyes and stabbed the heart. After Parminder's death I threaded a crystal heart onto it. Purple. Her favourite colour. The crystal was multi-faceted, like our relationship, but transparent like her love for me. Alongside it was a gold St. Christopher, a present from my sister Prabjot, a Christmas present from eight years ago – the year I almost met my Maker twice within six months. St. Christopher was to support me back to full strength to look after my baby daughter instead of leaving her motherless. Twice I had recovered from illness and escaped the clutches of _Yam Raj_ , the greedy Angel of Death. There were other trinkets too, from family and friends, but nothing from Dad. He didn't know about the necklace, or the charms.

'Er, you better get here quick. Dad's going really downhill. He's struggling to breathe.' I had been dreading this call for weeks.

'Yeah, I'll get there.' I didn't want second-hand information about Dad's condition. Another frantic search. I still couldn't find my necklace.

Sitting in a bleak beige room waiting for the doctors, I remembered a similar room from almost ten years before. Different hospital, same news.

'We need to switch off her life support. There's no hope of recovery, and if she _did_ survive this accident, she would be severely brain-damaged – and I'm _sure_ you wouldn't want _that_ ,' Dr. Stevens, the female Consultant playing the role of God patronised with an air of certainty that we wouldn't want a disabled sister.

'She's a fighter. We can't deprive her of the chance to fight back – we can't just give up on her.'

Two days later the Consultant announced the life support machines were being switched off. So much for consulting with the family. On her last day, Paminder fought hard while we watched, while we wished for her to win this battle, and tried our best to soothe her while hiding our tears.

Then one day Prabjot left us too, perhaps unable to cope without her favourite sister Paminder.

'Thank you for coming,' Dad's Consultant, Mr. Lee said, then destroyed all hope. 'I'm sorry, but there's no recovery from Liver Disease. The only option is a liver transplant. If we try a transplant now your father will die on the operating table.'

'So basically, he's going to die and there's nothing we can do to help him?' I didn't want to ask this, but Mum needed to be told. She was in denial, planning for the day Dad would return home.

'Yes. There's no doubt about it.'

Mum wailed as reality sank in, looking crumpled in a corner of the room. She hasn't regained her normal height since, bearing her grief like the burden of Atlas.

I learned lots about my parents since losing Dad. Mum lied daily, telling people that Dad died due to 'inability to make blood', fearing the mention of Liver Disease would make people think he was an alcoholic. I listened to her telling many different versions of this 'truth' to people who came to offer their condolences. The more disliked or distant the relative, the less honest her response was to their constant questions about whether Dad was ill, or their demands to know what happened.

Dad became multi-dimensional as people reminisced about old times spent together when they arrived in England, talking about shared beds, steel foundry work, where they lived and _how_ they lived until their families came from India.

'Your Dad could have been a movie star,' Dad's cousin smiled. 'He was _very_ handsome – the most handsome out of all of us!'

_Why had they never made time to share these memories with Dad_?

'Aunt Bhanso told me about how she and Dad played together as kids. They used to go swimming in the stream and try to catch the fish that swam past!' Simran, who Dad always called his baby, smiled as she told me this.

My own childhood memories surged back.

Manga's stall of a myriad fruits in colours so bright they hurt my eyes and shapes I never knew existed. I could never walk past it without hearing 'Amrita, come here!' accompanied by beckoning gestures and huge grin visible despite his thick caterpillar-like moustache. He must have had x-ray vision because he could spot me and Parminder in the centre of a crowd as we tried to dodge him, embarrassed that he would never accept payment for what he gave us to eat, drink or take away.

'No, no – tell me what you want.' According to Manga, you were either hungry or thirsty. No was never an option despite us shaking our heads and edging away. We had no money to pay him, and he knew it.

It never stopped him. Sometimes he squeezed oranges, perhaps picked that morning from local orchards, and watched us drink the fragrant juice in small, good girl sips when what we really wanted to do was gulp it down. When in season, long sugar canes were pressed through mangle-like machinery several times to produce something that looked like dirty dishwater but tasted sweeter than ambrosia.

My favourites were ripe bananas, sliced lengthways into two and left in their skins for taking easy nibbles from as we walked home. Sprinkled with pungent, nose-wrinkling black salt, they smelled like old boiled eggs but tasted yum!

'Buy your fresh fruit here! Have some freshly squeezed fruit juice!' All day, his hypnotic patter could be heard over the din of the bazaar. The bright hummingbirds coming to taste the nectar were never disappointed.

I didn't know the name of the fruit I longed for most. The nobbly skin was the colour of strawberries in the delicate blushes before becoming scarlet ripe. Its elasticity indicated the freshness of the fruit and peeled away to reveal snow white flesh. I remembered that juice oozed with every bite, trickled through my fingers and dripped off my elbows by the time I'd had a few of the small fruits. The Indian sun soon dried it to syrup stickiness.

I couldn't believe it when I found the fruit in England fourteen years after I came to live in England. I tasted one to be sure. With the first bite of lychee I became six years old again, somersaulting, giggling, holding the hand of the beloved sister who is in all my earliest memories.

Noses pressed against the window, we used to watch children playing in the street. It was never playtime for us. Mum feared sullied reputations, Teddy Boys – any boys. We were the only girls in the street for whom the rare English sunlight was strictly rationed. Even the other Indian girls were allowed out to play.

'Let's go, quick!' I lifted the metal hook that stood between us and freedom. Heart racing, I pushed the door behind us, shutting it firmly as possible without a handle or a key, hoping Mum wouldn't notice.

We played by the garages near our home, with stifled screams of joy and smothered smiles. If we played in the street, she would see us. We thought we were safe. Engrossed in play, we only noticed how dark it was after everyone else went home.

'Come on Parminder, let's sneak back in,' I whispered. It was her name before lazy English neighbours changed it to Pam because they couldn't be bothered to learn to pronounce her real name properly. The nick-name stuck for her lifetime. Holding hands, we crept to the back door. It was locked.

' _Now_ what shall we do?' Tears ran in torrents down my little sister's face.

Gripping hands we walked to the front door.

'Where were you?' The calmer Mum seemed, the more trouble was in store. She was very calm.

'We were just here, Mummy _Ji_ ,' I tried to tell her.

'Get in!' Her hiss was venomous. 'How long were you out?'

'N-not long, M-Mummy _J-Ji_ ,' I stammered, petrified.

'You've been gone for hours,' she exaggerated. A habit she has not mellowed out of.

Quivering like lambs knowing they were walking into an abattoir, we followed her into the house. Mum didn't stop until she got to the garden door.

'Just wait until your father gets home!' Dad would be less scary than _she_ looked saying those words.

'Sorry Mummy _Ji_.' She ignored us.

'I'm going to tell him – I didn't know what had happened to you!'

Even at that age I had wondered why she had not come looking for us.

'We didn't hear you call for us,' I explained, mouthpiece for my still silent, quivering sister.

'That's because I didn't call you. Get out!' She pushed us into the garden, locking the door behind us.

'Please Mummy _Ji_ , let us in, we're really sorry Mummy _Ji_ , we promise we'll never go out again.' We wailed and begged but our pleas went unheard.

'Don't cry!' I hugged Parminder, wondering what we should do. It was dark. Our stomachs growled. There were no vegetables or tomatoes growing in the garden yet. I was the big sister now. I had to look after her.

'Please, Mummy _Ji_ , let us in,' we both called in case she gave in. 'We're sorry!'

No response.

'What are we going to do?' Parminder held me tight.

'We better go to sleep. She's not going to let us in. I'll make a bed.'

Grass cuttings would make a soft bed on the concrete patio. I spread them out for a mattress and blanket.

' _What_ are you doing?' Mum flung the door open. The fury of lava flashing in her eyes, she gave us both the first sharp slap of many.

The sting of it brings me back to the crumpled woman who looks like she's aged twenty years in four weeks.

'I don't want to live anymore,' Mum sobbed a few days ago. The words dug like daggers. Mourners had come unaware it was the tenth anniversary of Parminder's death. Three weeks short of a decade since her death, Dad had finally taken the place he felt should have been his, not Parminder's, guilt-ridden that she had been travelling to visit him in hospital when she had the accident that killed her.

Trying to hide the memories of hospitals, funerals and sour words deep in the recesses of my mind, I wonder how Mum will cope with scattering Dad's ashes, and the first of a lifetime of 'firsts' without him, starting with her birthday, five days before Father's Day.

I go into my bedroom to search for my necklace yet again, undaunted by previous unsuccessful attempts. Success. It's been hiding amongst my most precious jewellery.

The doorbell rings. I touch the necklace around my neck. Closing my eyes in silent prayer, I wonder if this journey will ever end. As the _toofaan_ enters, my heart thumps like an orchestra of taiko drums.

Three Poems

Nick Lawrence

Barcarolle

Better get used to yourself

wherever you turn up.

Rhizomatics ate my aromatics,

don't pledge allegiance to the flagstone.

Make maps for fingertips

find isles of langerhans

from abs to ovaries

swim languid chances.

Maybe identity

habits slow distinction

a saline snailtrack

to beat the clock.

Or daisychain decisioning

strips gears of knots.

To dip an oar

into ether.

Bivouac

Say your prayers, little one.

Let's take route A or route B

to see which one of us will die first.

Bells'll slay you. Frost

velcros your tongue

to the last post. A

deserted hideaway

awaits those who choose

door number 3.

In the forest of surveillance a smear

campaign of peanut butter rations

on pinecones blurs the difference

between freeze frame and streaming

video. We're each a bird

in the fist of a burned out

bush. Sleep

with one eye open, both

if you must.

Summons

'Raindrops on gravestones

and whiskers on bitterns

Bright cops who kettle

and warm woollen hoodlums'

Luminous particulars

illumine us

'you don't find it

it finds you'

it finds you peculiar

on a street

in a room in a house

in the camera obscura

of your relation to evening

hedged against the odds

of a sunset clause

Pea Soup

Anna Lea

This morning, like every morning, Jack takes his place at the table and reads the paper: ' _McKay investigation continues – disgraced General silent in court_.' Around him, the chairs and table are worn, faded with use like everything else in the house. Despite Jack's generous redundancy pay, nothing has changed.

Rose cracks an egg into boiling water. She knows from the way Jack is reading, hunched over, with a tight grip on the paper, that he is reading about his case, the accusations.

'Have they not stopped that nonsense yet?' she asks.

'They won't stop, Rose – not until the trial is over.'

'What are they saying now?'

'I don't know, just let me read.'

Rose serves breakfast. When she puts Jack's plate in front of him, the arthritic shake in his hands has returned.

'Silly lot. I don't know what they think they know about it' she says.

'Evidently more than I do.'

He folds the paper and throws it to the other side of the table. Rose takes her place and starts her breakfast.

'Silly lot.' She takes a bite of toast. 'Eat your egg now.'

*

By noon, the sun is warming the sitting room, reaching the first of its familiar tide lines: bleaching the spines of books on the lower shelves, fading the carpet. Rose is preparing for their dinner party tonight. She is in the kitchen, recipe books propped open, humming songs that are broken off as her attention wanders.

Jack is seeing to the car, the hood propped open as he peers at the engine. The sun has worked its way through the pine tree at the top of the driveway and now reaches the top of his head. The light catches his hair – it's not white but a respectable grey. Below him, the carburettor, plugs and distributor cap all vibrate with anticipation of a drive. The precision is pleasing.

Rose calls from the doorway of the kitchen. Her words are lost – only the tone carries, which has the ring of familiar concern. Jack pulls the soft top back, recklessly, as it is only March, and the wind will be biting when he speeds up. Waving briefly, without turning back, he pulls out of the drive.

He negotiates the local roads gently, with ease, approaching the straight where he can begin to speed up. There are no other cars, the sun is to his left now as he quickly moves up into fifth gear, building to sixty five miles per hour. The speed knocks back the grass as he passes, leaving an undulation behind him; blades bending to the force. The only noise that registers for Jack now is the speed of the air whistling about his ears. It starts to clear his mind, and he lets himself look briefly at the outlying fields, where small patches of cloud make fleeting shadows below them. There are a few animals grazing, made tiny with distance, and a pattern of greens that he hasn't time to fix in his mind. Eyes on the road.

The car keeps its grip as he presses his foot to the ground. The air is bitterly cold as he speeds up, creates a stitch of pain at the back of his head. He ignores it, eyes fixed ahead, hands at ten past ten on the wheel. Here is the straight, as he creeps up to eighty, eighty five. The touch of his foot is sure. Over two miles of flat, straight road. He views it as he always does – a pathway, his alone, where he is most sure of himself. He is in command of every element of his movement, utterly in control of the sleek creature beneath him. Ninety, ninety five. To the forest, and the horses that raise their heads as he passes, he is moving unbearably fast. He reaches one hundred and starts to feel the pull of the engine nearing its maximum. There is no strain; only the certainty of moving towards the highest speed possible. He feels the beginnings of weightlessness – his stomach lighter, his whole being lighter and more engaged. One hundred and ten, one hundred and twenty – again, a shift of sensation, a suspension from the earth. The closest to flight he will ever be. He fixes the thrill in his mind as the car roars and vibrates with its own power. Release. A release so fundamental, he cannot believe that man has not been designing this for centuries. He has, of course, because dreams and conceits of such things pass through generations before anything can be realised. But Jack is not interested in fantasy, so this does not occur to him. He sees only blueprints and production lines. Testaments to progress. The end of the straight is in sight at the horizon. The wind is making his eyes water. He risks a few more seconds at a hundred and twenty, savoring the feeling of lightness, lawlessness – as if in his defiance, he is hurtling towards the next century which he will not witness.

*

Tonight's dinner party is for Gillian, William and Lucy. There is no occasion, only Rose's desire to impress and accommodate. Gillian and William married only three years ago, and are at least ten years younger than the rest of them. They met each other in '68 or thereabouts – both widowed, shattered by the war, or the 'conflict' as the M.O.D. refers to it, that hung over the early sixties. It seems there were not enough people involved for it to be classed as a war. Gillian moved to Surrey when she was fourteen, and has been Lucy's friend ever since. She lost her husband to 'complications' that arose following a shrapnel wound. She uses this word to encompass all the other complications that it caused – bringing up her son on her own, always being poor, and the bitter sense of loneliness that she carries with her.

William did not serve in this war or any other. 'Medical reasons' he said, 'a hole in my heart. I'm an engineer by trade, though. Worked at an airbase for a spell, so I feel I've done my bit.'

There is a rapping at the front door, and Rose clangs something down in the kitchen. It is Lucy who has arrived first. She and Rose have greeted each other and now Rose hovers impatiently while Lucy is taking off her leather gloves. She looks up as Jack enters.

'Hullo Jack.'

'Lucy. Good to see you.'

'And you, you old cod. You could have picked a better night for it. Is there pea soup for dinner too?'

Rose chuckles and pats Lucy's forearm.

'No! Don't be so silly. At least you're here in one piece. Off with your coat, now.'

Lucy shrugs off her coat, which Rose takes from her.

'Thank you!' says Rose. 'Now, Jack will you see to the drinks and nibbles?'

'Yes. The _hors d'œuvres_.'

Rose smiles briefly. 'As you will. They're on the table in there.'

'Marvellous.' Lucy says, 'you are a wonder, Rose.'

'Only a few things, really', Rose says, as she hangs Lucy's coat in the hallway, then trots off to the kitchen. Jack shows Lucy into the front room. He looks at her as he crosses to the drinks cabinet. 'Care for a sip of something?'

'A little brandy to warm me up would be grand, thank you.'

Jack pours Lucy a brandy, and hands it to her.

'Cheers.' She raises her glass to him briefly, then sits on the armchair near the arch to the dining room.

'How have you been then?' asks Jack. 'Haven't seen you for a long time, have we?'

He puts his hands in his pockets as he says this, rocking back on his heels. It will stop the twinge in his back for a while, though to Lucy it gives his questions the air of accusation.

'No, no I suppose it has been quite a time hasn't it – Richard has been a driver's mate for a few months now – you know, travelling with them in the lorries. He enjoys it, and writes down what they say sometimes. For his novel.'

'Ah, yes. The masterpiece, eh?'

'I encourage him as much as I can, but I think he needs a father figure, you know.'

'You've set him up right, Lucy. Nothing to fret about.'

'Yes. Yes, I hope so...'

'Sounds like that car is pulling up close', says Jack. 'Could be the happy couple.'

'It is, it must be Gillian – you can hear her laugh a mile off!'

Jack walks into the hall and opens the front door. He cannot see anyone - he only hears two pairs of footsteps shuffling about. The fog has moved closer now and Jack wants to forget about it. He calls out.

'Gillian? William? Is it you?'

'We're on our way!' William says.

Jack watches. Ten feet from him, there is a disruption, shadows breaking through. A few feet more and two outlines appear, then the details are sketched in. Gillian is wearing a fur coat. She is holding onto William, who is wearing a greatcoat. He's a step ahead of Gillian, who is wearing more make-up than is good for her. Her lipstick is blood red, her eyes lined in kohl. Out here, it is these that stand out – her large eyes, darkly outlined, and the bow of her lips.

'Lord, what a night!' Gillian cries.

She leans in and kisses Jack briefly on the cheek, too quickly for him to respond, and walks ahead of him into the house. William gives him a stiff handshake with one hand, while gripping Jack's shoulder with the other.

'Good to see you, Jack' he says, as he too passes into the house.

Jack smiles but the camaraderie irks him, as does the greatcoat. Whether William was the miserable widower or, in this new incarnation, the jolly survivor, Jack always felt he took up too much space for one who didn't fight. Jack steps inside and shuts the door.

The party continued to mill about before dinner, and when Rose was ready to serve the meal, everyone had relaxed and found their place in the order of the room. At the table, William and Gillian sat next to each other, with Jack and Lucy opposite them and Rose at the head of the table. She carves the duck in front of them all, puts a few slices on a plate, and passes it to Lucy.

'Please help yourselves to the veg', says Rose.

'Thanks', says Lucy. 'This looks delicious. You lucked out with Rose. You know that, Jack?'

'She's a good egg, I can't argue with that', he says. The response seems genuine, but he doesn't look at Rose as he says it. When they all have full plates, Lucy raises her glass.

'Well, cheers everybody – to our gracious hosts.'

'To our hosts', echo the others.

They all take a sip of their wine, and the guests compliment Jack on his choice of such a fine year. The glory of Jack's bravery, and his handsome payout, are unspoken as a rule. Everyone knows of them, and of the scandal that is unfolding around him, yet Jack remains unchallenged – they have all made their own sacrifices for the war and know that the higher the rank, the more complex the responsibilities become. They eat over companionable talk of the time since they had last seen one another, of the preoccupations in their own lives. It is soothing to them all, to have smoothed out so much of the war and begun fresh narratives. Lucy says again how happy she is that Richard is in work, and meeting new people. William and Gillian are doing up the small house that Gillian's mother left to them. They call it their _modernisation_. Lucy leans forward to talk to Gillian.

'Will you show us when it's finished? I'd love to see what you've done.'

'Of course!' Gillian replies. 'We'll have a 'do', won't we William?'

'Indeed we shall. Bit of a labour of love, it's been – like your Jag, eh Jack?'

Jack had not been listening. His thoughts are elsewhere, and his eyes have fallen to the napkin that Gillian holds in her hands, and the red smears of lipstick across the peach cotton. He still manages to recall a few of William's words.

'Labour of love?' he asks.

'Like your Jag', says William.

'Yes. Yes, indeed.' He straightens himself in his chair. 'Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.'

William looks at Jack, reconsidering him.

'Ralph Emerson? Didn't think you were a poet's man.'

'I'm not, but he is sometimes sound, and practical in his thinking. Will you excuse me a moment? I'm just going to have a smoke before dessert.' He heads towards the hallway. William rises from his chair and hurries into the hall.

'Actually, Jack I'll join you if you don't mind', he says as he rummages through the pockets of his greatcoat.

'A good glass of wine always kicks off the craving.'

Jack leaves without a word, and William follows him.

'Well, dessert! Hmm?' Rose strains to sound nonchalant, and begins piling up plates and cutlery.

'I'll give you a hand', says Lucy as she rises from her seat.

'Rose, stop it', says Gillian, a little too sharply. 'Sit down for a moment. Lucy, you too.'

Both women sit down and look at her.

'What is it?' asks Rose.

'Let's look it in the eye, shall we?' says Gillian, lighting one of her cigarettes.

'What?'

'This elephant in the room.'

Rose looks at Gillian, refusing to say the words herself.

'Jack's trial', says Gillian. 'No, not his trial. Just Jack – you and Jack, and this house which hasn't changed for the last ten years. What are you thinking, Rose? It's not like you to be giving up.'

'Giving up?'

'Yes, sorry to say it, but well...am I wrong?'

Rose pauses, weighing up the impact of silence and of talking to these women, her friends, about her husband and the life she is living with him.

'He's got blood on his hands', she says. 'Of course he has. But what he went through – Gill, I can't hold it against him.'

'Hold what against him?'

'He doesn't want anything to change, including me. And he chooses not to share his suffering with me. I won't berate him for it.'

'Do you know what he did?'

'Of course.'

'When did he tell you?'

'He didn't. I overheard something he said to a superior on the phone once. The rest I pieced together.'

'You're a brave woman.'

'Not really.'

Gillian taps the ash from the tip of her cigarette onto her plate.

'You are, Rose' says Lucy.

'We're nothing extraordinary, Jack and I. We never have been, and I accepted that very early on.'

'If we can do anything to help-', Lucy begins.

'Yes, of course. Thank you', says Rose.

'We've all fought for what we've got', Lucy says.

The three women look at one another for a moment.

Outside, Jack is smoking quickly while William chatters on. The fog now seems to him a kind of death, an unknowing at the centre of things which makes him want to step inside again straight away, or at least be outside alone. By the time William and Jack join the others again, the apple tart, fresh from the oven, is at the centre of the table. The steam swirls above it, and the smell fills the room.

Rose feels that the world has been thrown into focus again – too sharply, too quickly. Animated exchanges quickly flair up as Lucy and Gillian conjure words to cover the silence and explanations that would have followed otherwise. They say how wonderful the dessert is and Rose tells them not to fuss. They toast to her health, regardless.

'It's 1976', thinks Rose. 'A pea souper in Surrey in 1976.'

Aubonne, Spring Day

Chandani Lokuge

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

T. S. Eliot

The cobblestone courtyard is nondescript but for the burst of sunlit purple-scented lavender against the rough-hewn grey of the sidewall.

The old man sits hunched at a table for two at the far end. Threadbare trousers, old shoes and a ragged overcoat, a hole here and there punched by a lighted cigarette, perhaps carelessly dropped. His hair is long and silver and catches a ripple of sun recalling medieval knights and silver swords. Silvery wine.

He orders a croissant and coffee.

The waitress is young and sprightly, and knows him well, it seems. She takes his order, her eyes straying to two women and a man who have just come in. They look around for a third chair. The waitress carries over to them, the vacant one at the old man's table.

Two other tables are occupied. At one, sits a woman with her baby in a pram. She leans back on the chair, as far as it can go, and lets her skin seep the sun. Then she bends over the pram. The infant opens his eyes to the ooze of milk on his mother's white tulle blouse.

Framed in the fretwork of the long stemmed lavender, draped sideways on her chair with a kind of reckless grace, is another woman. She is almost too young for her face, where grief, like an unhappy marriage, is settling in. Expressionlessly, she watches the play of light and shadow on the clusters of tiny lavender flowers. She glides her palm over them making them sway in gentle waves. She crushes a few leaves and touches their musky fragrance to her lips.

A youngish man sits opposite her. She looks at him drinking his beer from a tall clear glass. Her stout little boy – perhaps two years old is running around. The man laughs loudly as the little boy points to the baby in the pram – 'bebe, bebe', he lisps prancing around. Blond hair falling over cherubic brown eyes; the courtyard is distracted and smiling. The woman shouts at the boy to be still, not taking her eyes off the man and his beer, calls him back in her husky impatient voice, lifts him up on his chair. He wriggles out of her clutch. She surrenders with a sigh.

The man orders another beer. The waitress brings it to him, a little froth slopping over the rim. He licks it off, leans forward and kisses the woman, drawing her back. She tastes the froth greedily, looks for more. Restless, the little boy weaves between tables, further away. He stops at the entrance with its big half-open gates, and looks back at his mother – her skirt sliding up her legs, her eyes cleaving now to the beer-drinking man. And then, he runs to the road. There is traffic, cars turning sharp corners, speeding to Lavigny or Morges.

The old man stands up. He limps and shakes, and drags his feet on the uneven stones. He reaches the gates; he catches the boy in one upward swing, and lifts him into his arms. Confused and rebellious, the boy looks into bleary, red-rimmed pocketed eyes. For an infinitesimal moment, he hides his face in the ragged old coat. With a shudder, the man inhales the child.

He shuffles across the courtyard and hands him back to his mother. She looks at him from afar, does not sense the near miss of little limbs torn and broken, pools of blood. But she thanks him anyway, with an absent smile. He still stands at her side, slouching and inarticulate. The man with her squints up then looks around as if he would pull up a chair. But encountering the woman's storm-filling eyes, he does nothing, and returns to his beer. He must have been handsome once, in a rakish kind of way.

The old man returns to his chair. He dips his croissant in the mug of coffee and eats. He lights a cigarette. He looks around at the woman with the baby in the pram. At the elegant threesome enjoying cake and coffee, the sunshine and each other. At the man now staring dejectedly into his glass, the innocent child sunk tiredly in his mother's lap. And how she weaves her fingers through his hair, her grieving eyes somewhere far away, beyond them all. The old man sits in the shade with his empty mug and plate. All this has he lived through. The blurred light from a half-opened door catches dust motes like sequins on a woman's hair.

In the late evening, he shuffles down the gravel path through the dense forest. The exquisite song of a lonely bird spills like blood from a cut-open dream. The old man mumbles, and arcs his open palm around the hand of a little girl with tumbling curls. And, suddenly bending low, he lifts her up on his shoulders. Down the road they go laughing, singing their silly spring song. A bell clangs from a chapel nearby. It clangs and clangs as if it will never stop: the reclaim of prodigal memory.

The End

Castaway

Anna MacDonald

I woke to the sound of rain slapping against closed shutters and into the canal. It was late summer and I'd left both windows open. During the night, fresh air had carried the sounds of water lapping against a lacquered keel and lone footsteps crossing a nearby bridge in the dark. Night noises had circulated inside the corner room. In my sleep, I'd heard a man call out, and listened for a response that never came. Now, spray found its way through cracks between the shutter panels, which were backlit with early light. I could hear rainwater prickling papers on the desk beneath one window, and small puddles collecting on the timber floor.

I climbed from bed into the room's shuttered dark. I moved the desk away from the window and tossed a hand towel over the pools on the floor. Before closing the windows, I unlatched and opened their wooden shutters. Rain washed sleep from my bare arms and filled the gondolas, which were moored bow to stern in a narrow tributary canal. Outside, the world was dressed in low-lying cloud. I stood in the corner room where the sound of the world reached me dampened by rain and looked out as if from within the full, hooped-skirt of a _carnivale_ gown. A small, arched bridge hemmed my inland view. The Guidecca Canal had lost its other bank to cloud. In the pre-dawn, I looked south from the room as if from a ship's prow out to sea.

I fastened shut the windows and towel-dried my arms. Then I climbed into bed, leaned back against a bank of white pillows and watched the world lighten in the rain.

Someone had strung a line between this building and the apartment opposite. They'd pegged a coloured wash there and left it out to dry. A red cotton shirt hung caught in mid-dive, its blind arms rapping the air above the canal. Rain had ironed creases from the cotton, but left it sodden as if stained dark with blood. It dripped from the shirt's collar and cuffs and picked out a new rhythm against the bass drumming of the heavy shower.

By dawn, the tethered gondolas were beginning to flood. Rainwater covered their bottoms and neared the tops of their bench seats. The ladders along the inside of the canal, normally visible above the waterline, were submerged. Water lapped the paved embankment. It filled the grout-groove between stones, mimicking springtime snowmelt which follows riverbeds and creeks down mountainsides out to sea. But this water ran in reverse. It pressed up from beneath the sinking foundations of pallazi. It discovered the easiest course along alleyways. It slipped into the spaces left by skewed front doors and the cracks opened up between windows and their wooden frames. Water pooled inland in deserted piazze, and waited.

From the bank of pillows, on the bed, I watched the marooned city flood and, for the first time since I arrived, felt the ground slow and then steady beneath me.

I had arrived by train. During the journey, I sat opposite an Argentine man in late middle-age. As we entered the first in a series of long, close tunnels that led through the Alps he dug a small album of photographs from his leather bag and passed it to me across the table. I opened the album to find a lush and sprawling garden. From one tunnel into another, I turned the pages and saw stepped plantings of hunter, emerald and chlorophyll green. Against this dense and expanding backdrop, star azaleas circled rhododendrons of the scale and colour you only find in cool alpine regions; satellites orbiting their crimson planets. Through Chambéry and Modane, the man and I spoke of the southern parts of Chile and Argentina, where I had travelled during the summer after my seventeenth birthday. And as I turned the pages of his album, its vision of a private world and a distant hemisphere supplanted the view of the Alps I had hoped to find framed by a carriage window. During the course of our journey, the fleeting glimpses I was able to snatch of the Alps between tunnels became entwined in my imagination with the mountains that circle the lake at Bariloche and the pine forest there where at seventeen I had lain on a parquet of rusty needles, and waited for the new year to turn.

Tunnelling through the Alps in the company of the Argentine, I learned to recognise the cardinal points of his southern garden—the stone bird bath beneath the Antarctic beech where a single red knot once paused and rested on its migration north; a jacaranda, the first he planted, which now marked the nucleus of a radiating system of shaded paths; the sun dial, around which, in one photograph, the man's family was congregated, the youngest generation crouched in front, one infant caught crawling out of frame when the shutter closed—and I remembered another Argentine who had also loved gardens. I listened with interest to my companion's descriptions of when to prune an azalea, how to pick lace bugs from its new leaves, and recalled the other Argentine's 'Poem Written in a Copy of _Beowulf_ '. As the train leaned into an Alpine curve and entered another tunnel, I dreamed with the poet a circling, immortal soul that drew into it and remembered his study of Anglo-Saxon, my companion's knowledge of soil types and herbicides, the hesitant feel of a pine needle when it's bent, at the moment before it breaks. And I wondered, was it a comfort, that circling, immortal soul when the Argentine's night finally came down, when, on another train, he entered a tunnel sighted and emerged from it blind?

At Turin, my companion disembarked into the early evening. That late summer it was warm even after dark, but as the train eased out of the station and travelled on towards Milan, I pictured the Argentine dressed in a tweed jacket, wearing a scarf, running his calloused green fingers through his still-dark receding hair. As the train moved east, against the sun, I saw him walk into Turin's streets, proud, with the confidence of a man at home in the encompassing soul of the expanding universe, because he has found a way to dream it, and to write its stories down.

It was coming on night when the train pulled in at Santa Lucia Station. Stepping down from the carriage, the platform swelled up to meet me and let me drift, softly, down. The ground subsided under my weight. When I took a testing, tentative step along the platform I felt the first ripples of a wave build beneath my feet. At first I attributed this sensation to the fatigue of travel. But when it persisted into a second week, I began to look elsewhere for an explanation.

Even before the rain came, the world felt close inside the marooned city. Away from the lagoon, it turned in on itself. The many-storeyed pallazi restrained my vision to, at best, the width of an inland piazza. When I looked up from the pavement of another alleyway, I could just make out a sliver of blue sky which appeared to be in retreat, moving steadily away from the earth. Sounds echoed across the water so that the distant calls of stevedores unloading their wares at the Rialto markets whispered intimately into my ear. But my neighbour's voice slipped away before I could catch it. I learned to read requests—to pass the sugar, to know the time—from the tilt of a head, a raised eyebrow, a gesture towards my empty wrist. My watch had stopped soon after the train pulled in at Santa Lucia. I unbuckled and left it in the corner room. Now I let time flood and recede like a lunar tide. I kept my map in my suitcase and learned to accommodate my walk to the liquid feeling in my joints.

Waiting in the morning sun for a vaporetto, crossing an arched bridge, negotiating the uneven paving of a narrow street, resting in the shade of a cloistered step, my ankles, knees, hips undulated beneath me. I felt my vertebrae, one by one, give up the cumbersome weight of my body to the water. I spread my toes and used all the muscles in my feet and legs to propel my body forward against the restive ground. I won't say it wasn't disconcerting. But I learned to draw on my swimming know-how to steady myself inside the city. Walking its streets, my legs scissored slowly. They worked against the memory of fresh water resistance. If, for a moment, I felt that I might fall, my arms were there to steady me, my hands brushing each hip in turn, in remembrance of a buoyant crawl. In time, I found a way to fit my land-lubber body to the ground thrown up around the lagoon.

So, when the rain came, it was a shock to feel the ground slow and then steady beneath me. When I stepped from bed a second time that morning, I listened to the liquid feeling leak from my joints and regained, vertebra-by-vertebra, the weight along my spine. I walked to the corner room's east-facing window. The rain had tipped the city's precarious balance. And it had given itself up to the water without a fuss. The storied houses and apartment buildings were islanded. The boats were unseaworthy. I stood at the window, watching the water spread, and my bare feet felt firm against the wooden floor for the first time since I arrived.

My land-legs were unwieldy as I dressed and descended the three flights of stairs to the ground floor. I crossed the foyer where the Signora, in her apron and gumboots, was struggling with a water gate which she had slipped into a groove at the front door of the pensione, like a barrier built to restrict the movement of a determined toddler, just learned to walk. In the breakfast room, I took my usual seat and, while I sipped my morning coffee, listened to the heavy rain drum against the diamond pane windows and into a tributary canal.

By the time I left the breakfast room, the Signora was sweeping water out the front door from the foyer with a rubber-nibbed broom. An elderly English couple was making ungainly progress across the submerged forecourt from a water taxi drawn alongside the north bank of the Guidecca Canal. Their matching bone travel suits were washed grey and their trousers hung heavily from the knee. Their smart shoes had ruined in the rain. They clutched their bags to their trim bellies and lent forward to protect the leather from the wet. In one hand, the gentleman gripped a collapsible umbrella with which he tried to shelter his wife. By the open door, he struggled to close it and sent captured raindrops into the faces of those standing around him. When they stepped over the gate, the couple carried more water into the foyer, which the Signora promptly swept out again with her broom, railing all the time against the rain and the rising canal as she battled valiantly, and alone, against the flood.

I left the commotion in the foyer and climbed the stairs back to the quiet of the corner room with its mist-shrouded view into the open sea of the unbanked Canal. Rain was collecting along the hinges and clasps of both windows, and making its persistent way indoors. I mopped new puddles from the floor and moved the desk further into the room. I opened the windows. Then I wrapped myself in my raincoat and perched on the sill of the east-facing window to track the rapid progress of the flood.

Where I could see it, the sky was dark, the cloud cover heavier than it had been when the rain first woke me before dawn. The gondolas furthest from the embankment wall, unsheltered on the open canal side were now tilting in the water. One looked moments away from leaning into the canal and sinking beneath its compound weight. Watching the boat bend towards the water, I imagined it tipping and sinking, dragging down with it the other boats to which it was tethered, in a long unfolding line. Gondola after gondola dragged down into the dark canal, past the sinking foundations of the pensione, travelling beyond the pylons of the arched bridge at the rim of my inland view, continuing to ply their trade inside and out of sight of the drowning city.

There were no gondolas and no longer any water taxis working the canals. Through the dense mist, it was impossible to make out the sound of vaporetti dropping off and collecting passengers from the jetty nearby. But I watched from my window perch as one pedestrian turned onto the embankment from a narrow alleyway and moved south. It was a woman, cloaked in a cinch-waisted raincoat and waterproof boots. Her head was bent forward into the rain beneath the small shelter of a red umbrella. She walked quickly along the embankment and across the bridge. Her boots barely made a sound on the watered pavement. Rain fell around her with the rapid fire of static on a reel of dirty film. I lost sight of her when, eventually, she turned off the embankment into another alleyway. But I imagined her progress across the sodden city, her red umbrella a bright sail on stormy seas, her cinch-waist the drawstring of a seasoned sailor's waterproof suit. I saw rain weigh down the hull of her red-sailed boat like the backwash of testy ocean waves. I watched as she made a cup from her two hands and bailed, trusting her red sail, her rudder, and the radiating system of canals to carry her safely through the marooned city. I imagined that, eventually, her boat would find its way free from the overhanging buildings and the clotheslines that threatened to entangle even her modest mast. I kept my eye on the close horizon of the Canal-made-sea, in the hope of catching a final glimpse of her red sail as she made her way, still bailing, away from the receding island shore.

By mid-morning the city was in fragments. It spread out before me like a treasured collection of relics that have survived a flood and washed up years later on another distant shore. Building was separated from building, the east embankment from the west, the northern from the southern shore. The clothesline with its diving blood red shirt was the only thing that tethered the corner room to what was left of the drowning city. Boats were of no use now. To step into one would be to accept a lift on a Stygian ferry. But even the ferrymen had deserted the canals. The city was still. The sounds that usually rang from its stones were either missing or muffled by the water that had found its way into the most cloistered squares and was continuing to rise.

I was mopping the floor at regular intervals, ringing water from the white towel into the porcelain sink. I thought of the Signora battling the flood downstairs, armed with her rubber-nibbed broom, her hair slicked with canal sweat, her apron edged with scurf, but trying, still, to keep the rising water from the carpets in the lounge and breakfast rooms.

The rain stopped just before lunch. I felt it as a sudden retraction: of sound, of visual static, of the inner petticoats of _carnivale_ -gown cloud. The morning's shrouded tunnel vision lifted from the wet world. The open sea shrank to accommodate the Canal. Beyond the arched bridge I could make out another, further on, and a clutch of alleyways leading from the embankment in all directions. The blood red shirt flapped in the first hint of a breeze, and began to dry. As I left my room and walked down the three flights to lunch, I could hear single drops of water falling the long way from the roof to the wet embankment and swollen canal.

At the bottom of the stairs, the Signora was unbending her spine, resting her broom against the wall beside the walnut reception desk, and moving into the kitchen to harangue the waiting staff into lunchtime action. The elderly English man and woman who had arrived after breakfast were dry and relaxing in the lounge over an aperitif. During the meal, sun shone weakly through the breakfast room's diamond-pane windows.

Without the rain, I felt lost, and hemmed in by the southern bank of the narrowed Guidecca Canal. After lunch, I roamed the two windowed walls of the corner room. I paused at intervals to watch the water recede. I heard again a vaporetto pull up at the nearby jetty, and then listened to it depart, tacking purposefully across the Canal. From the bedside table, I picked up my watch, its minute and hour hands caught on an evening over a week ago, and wondered where the floodwater went. Would it hitch a ride on the ebb tide and wash up, part of the flood, on another shore? And, then where?

I ran a bath. The flood from the faucet distracted me from the stillness outside, where the sun was now shining and the first pedestrians were beginning to leave the shelter of their islanded buildings to walk out into the city's waterlogged streets. When water neared the ceramic rim, I turned off the taps and eased myself into the bath. As I lay back, letting the warm water ripple around me, feeling it relieve the weight around my shoulders and hips, along the curve of my spine, I missed the liquid sensation in my joints.

In the late afternoon, I walked out into the rinsed city. Gondoliers stood calf-deep in the water they worked hard to bucket from their sinking boats. The air was fresh and the streets and alleyways had been washed clean. The old city looked as if it had woken refreshed from dreaming of water. I drifted at random through the still-wet streets which echoed with the subdued and intimate sounds I had learned to associate with early morning. The few other pedestrians I passed had a just-bathed look, as if their day had only now begun. I spiralled alleyways and broader thoroughfares, crossed and re-crossed bridges, navigated small, private squares and larger piazze, smiled at the people I passed along the way, as if in acknowledgement of a shared and soothing dream. Down alleyways and along embankments, hemmed in on either side by many-storied pallazi, it was difficult to say which direction the sun was coming from. Across the marooned city, the slick streets reflected the yellow light of early evening, and gave it the quality of a dimming dawn.

I took my time walking back to the pensione, along the Canal's northern embankment, past the restaurants that were beginning to fill with early-dining tourists. At the front door, the Signora had removed the water gate. Before going inside, I turned and looked for a moment across the Canal. I could see the sun now. It was hitting the opposite bank in such a way that the glare blinded me to the buildings that lined it. For a moment, the Canal was returned to the open sea, with the sun dipping into the watermark of its horizon. And I saw there a small craft, moving away from land. Just before the sun dipped and the opposite bank was restored, I caught a glimpse of sun-kissed red and spied a tiny sail, and beneath it, a cinch-waisted sailor, her back to the darkening city, her face forward, moving into the horizon, guided by the arc of the slowly setting sun.

Resolute Bay

Elizabeth Manuel

Named for a ship that went in search of the lost

and in searching lost itself, the Resolute of today

looks, in pictures, tremulous at best.

The Inuit call it the place with no dawn

although there is nothing that tells if they named it

at a time of absolute darkness or at a time of continuous light.

Maybe the resolve of light's extremes

led the ship to leave its name

in the far north, far frozen lands –

lands where, in the night, crew members wrote out

copies of the _Illustrated Arctic News_

and around them the ice crept in and sealed up:

a malevolent surface tension. Some several months

spent, melancholy with cold, and with sails

stowed and hatches closed, the escape from the ice was on foot.

_Resolute is not the end of the world, but you can see it from here_ ,

signs in the town proclaim; not to be taken to heart

by those far from home and weary of winter.

Phantom Europe:

A Mosaic

Adrian Martin

Any kind of nationalism is a fiction in the worst sense of the word. I believe in some kind of cultural identity; that is, in the variety of identities. You do not need only one identity; you need many if you want to become yourself.

\- Raúl Ruiz, 1992

1.

Phantom Ladies Over Paris

Twenty-five years ago, in Sydney, Australia, I acted in a short experimental film, shot on Super-8 and completed on video. Its director, John Conomos, is a Greek-Australian – in fact, his family comes from the same region in Greece where Giorgos Miliotis (better known as George Miller, director of _Mad Max_ ) was born.

Conomos wanted to make a film, forty minutes long, inspired by the work of the great French director Jacques Rivette. It is called _Waiting in the Wings_. It takes enchanted motifs from Rivette – entrancing libraries full of secrets, 'phantom ladies over Paris', skating in the streets, hidden conspiracies, disco dance clubs, handsome conjurers, etc – and spins them into a free-form, dreamlike fiction.

I spent much of the shoot (which was as prolonged as Michael Cimino's _Heaven's Gate_ , spreading over two years, until the very day I had to leave Sydney) wearing a smart pair of pink pajamas embroidered with a skull icon derived from Rivette's _Paris nous appartient_ (1961). Where are those pajamas now, I wonder? I played a film critic (typecasting!) obsessed with Rivette, to the point of literally entering his imaginary world. John and his collaborator, architectural philosopher Mark Jackson, essentially mixed elements from the plot of _Céline and Julie Go Boating_ (1975) with quotations from classic Surrealist texts.

Several months into this gruelling process – John had put up his own home (containing several small children at the time) in order to raise the money to hire and maintain a large set/studio, far outrunning the roughly one-thousand dollars gifted to the production by the Australian Film Commission as part of its No Frills Fund – I realised something odd. John had, in fact, only ever seen two Rivette films, those I have already mentioned. Two out of, by then, at least a dozen. The obsession of my character was also, of course, his own, personal obsession ... but what was it based on, exactly?

I have seen many more Rivette films in the two decades since, and (I imagine) so has John. Rivette has changed – from improvisation, wild sound directly recorded, sprawling modernist narrative structures – into something more serene and classical, though no less achieved or rich. And all of us involved in _Waiting in the Wings_ have changed, too, in one way or another. But when I look back on the experience of that chaotic amateur-artistic film in Sydney, I am struck by the realisation (which nagged at me even at the time) that what animated its maker was not so much a direct, analytical engagement with the work of Rivette, but rather an absorption or investment in a _fantasy_ of Rivette: an enticing myth, woven together by many hands around the world, over the course of many years.

Fantasy or myth: sometimes, at some particular moment in some particular part of the world, that is all we have of the culture (or the cinema) that we love, that we desire, that we aspire to emulate: like John wanting to give form to his dream of Jacques Rivette, no matter how lopsided, how lacking of the actual adored object, that dream was – as dreams perhaps often are. This essay is about one specific fantasy cinema, which I call Phantom Europe; I hope to conjure it through a mosaic in four layers.

The outsider's perspective is not often one that is respected within film pedagogy, particularly with the explosion of multicultural studies – often keenly and instructively political – within academic and critical circles today. Haven't we had enough of phantom cinemas - the Orientalist East, darkest Africa, exotic Eastern Europe, mythic America, down under Australia, ancient Japan, and all the rest? Haven't we had enough of all those Primitives or Sophisticates, these timeless traditions or avant-garde metropolises, these centres and margins? Just so many useless, sedimented, tired clichés. After all, this is supposed to be an age of pervasive exile and disapora, the ceaseless movement and exchange between cultures and nations, the time of hybrid identities.

In fact, this is what my Rivette story is also about. The collective Australian identity that comprised the production team of that zany little film was many things at once: Greek, Anglo, Spanish, Asian ... And our mental space was, likewise, an amalgam of ideas from France, America, England, Japan. Everything inside and outside us was re-routed through a map of the world; our supposed outsider, non-European vantage-point was already impure, contaminated, porous. And, anyhow, is it really such a crime to embark on a practical, creative love of cinema on the basis of a fantasy of otherness, another country, another culture, another world?

In any such fantasy of otherness, as Bérénice Reynaud once suggested, there is something enabling (not to mention exciting): the de-familiarising mirror of the Other. And better that there is this spark of desire for the Other – which feeds and leads back to new thoughts and experiments in the place where one lives – than either a bland reduction of all cultures to the Same, or the hands-off, excessive respect for the Other. As Slavoj Zizek often tells us, such an exaggerated code of politically correct tolerance leads to nothing good, and often hides a brutal, murderous kind of envy.

2.

The Glocal and the Lobal

Sometimes it seems as if no single article, conference or café discussion on contemporary European cinema can even begin without an agonising disquisition on definitions and limits: what is Europe? What is a European film? The disaporic, hybrid trend begun by Michelangelo Antonioni with _Blow Up_ in 1966 – Italian director, British location, American money – has caused a growing headache for critics and commentators ever since. I once heard a cultural studies scholar make a hilariously convoluted attempt to capture these complexities in a few magic keywords: alongside what we think of as the _global_ and the _local_ (he explained), we must also grasp the _glocal_ and the _lobal_ , in other words, the global that is inside the local, and the local that is inside the global ...

The headache continues. Now, many attention-grabbing films flaunt their multinational, multicultural status: whether Olivier Assayas' _Boarding Gate_ (2007), with its plot and cast moving around Europe and Asia; or the intriguing case of Sofia Coppola's largely European-financed (but still very American in sensibility) _Marie Antoinette_ (2006), with its wild cast-list from all corners of the globe.

In a way, what we are seeing is the retread of an older, even venerable form of fiction: the international crime-spy-underworld story (to which the plot of _Boarding Gate_ returns), in which money is the _lingua franca_ , and there exists a fluid parallel globe for low-key gangsters, dealers, mercenaries and terrorists to appear, intermingle and disappear. This is not only a form of popular fiction (James Bond, _The Third Man_ , etc), but also a vision of cosmopolitan identity romanticised in the music of John Cale (songs like 'Córdoba'), and radicalised in the cinema and writing of Robert Kramer ( _Guns_ , 1980): Antonioni's later _The Passenger_ (1975) is, in this sense, the harbinger of our current pan-European cinema.

This cinema comes to us today not just with its own look (courtesy of cinematographers such as Chris Doyle), but even its own rotating cast of indie stars: Asia Argento, Vincent Gallo, Béatrice Dalle, Mathieu Almaric, Jeanne Balibar, Maggie Cheung, or (from a slightly earlier era) Patrick Bauchau. 2006 gave us the weirdest imaginable appropriation of this cosmopolitan style (again in its criminal-terrorist variant): Spielberg's globe-crossing _Munich_ , with Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Hanns Zischler and several Australian actors.

For a long time, the greatest contemporary Asian filmmakers seemed to remain structurally aloof from this dizzy pan-European cosmopolitan cinema: "As long as he can't speak English", one Taiwanese cultural expert said to me of Hou Hsiao-hsien, "then he's safe ... "; and one could say the same (at least so far) of Jia Zhang-ke. But even Hou, or Tsai Ming-liang, have been drawn in recent years into European co-productions, like Hou's _Flight of the Red Balloon_ (2007) with Juliette Binoche. This continues the line of unlikely cultural conversions we have seen in international cinema over the past twenty years, like Krzysztof Kieslowski swapping his Polish realism for European fantasy-mysticism, or the seemingly intractable Suwa Nobuhiro becoming a highly French, intimist filmmaker in _A Perfect Couple_ (2005), or – strangest path of all – Michael Haneke transforming himself, after his hard-edge Austrian beginnings, first into a chronicler of French bourgeois malaise (in _The Piano Teacher and Caché_ ) and then remaking his own _Funny Games_ in the US in 2007.

Against the powerful and alluring forces of globalisation (not always a bad thing!) sit the gestures of localisation – cinemas that are regional rather than national. In _Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia_ , critic and Austrian Filmmuseum director Alex Howarth remarked: "I am much more interested in filmmakers who speak in concrete words and voices, from a concrete place, about concrete places and characters" – making works which, as Howarth expresses, have dialects that are "way too specific to fit into the global commerce of goods". He takes the example of the Dardenne brothers: "I like the image of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, standing somewhere in the middle of industrial Belgian suburbia, looking around and saying, 'All these landscapes make up our language'." (2) And in Howarth's distaste (typical among today's progressive critics) for the 'European Union' or Pan-Asian visions of Zhang Yimou, Tom Tykwer, Pedro Almodóvar, Ang Lee or the latter-day Kieslowski, a long debate is being replayed.

3.

What Can Travel?

Stepping sharply back now from this kind of giddy cinematic (or cinephilic) Utopia – truly a worldly vision – I will explore another way to grasp how European cinema is seen and understood outside Europe. This way is to ask: just what films are distributed and screened? What _travels_ , in all sense of this word: what moves, what translates? Of course, under this, the real question is one of power within the cultural industry: who gets to decide what translates and, hence, what will be chosen to travel?

The largest audience for European cinema in Australia attends 'event' festivals that tour the country and appear in the arthouse chains that organise them. These events are mainly devoted to national cinemas – Greek, French, Russian, German, Spanish (the list sometimes feels as big as the world itself, except that places like Netherlands and Switzerland are always missing). They are the main source, in many countries, of what constitute the general image of what European cinema is today, and they immediately feed into the selection of the handful of films (usually only one or two from each of the countries highlighted) which get further, individual distribution.

Let us be brutally to the point here. What kind of European cinema are we talking about? _Brides_ (2004) from Greece (advertised with Martin Scorsese's name as Executive Producer), _The Lives of Others_ (2006) from Germany, _Volver_ (2006) from Spain, _The Singer_ (2006) from France, the almost-complete works of François Ozon ... Films that win American Oscars, films with the few non-Anglo transnational stars that exist today (like Gérard Depardieu or Penélope Cruz); domestic or romantic comedies, social-issue or big-history dramas, epic humanist tearjerkers (the model being Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso), perhaps an adaptation of an international best-seller (the model being Alfonso Arau's _Like Water for Chocolate_ ). Sometimes the system bends enough to include a _Cœurs_ (2006) by Alain Resnais or a _Il Caimano_ (2006) by Nanni Moretti. But the essential flavour of this type of selection is always clear: it is appallingly conservative, and will likely never make room for a José Luis Guerín or a Philippe Grandrieux, a Werner Schroeter or a Stephen Dwoskin, an Amos Gitai or a Harun Farocki, a Nanouk Leopold ( _Wolfsbergen_ , Netherlands, 2007) or a Kornél Mundruczó ( _Johanna_ , Hungary, 2005).

Indeed, now more than over, the Film Festivals proper are regarded as a kind of ghetto in which what are uncharitably called Festival Films – meaning difficult, challenging, innovative films – can be relegated, to be watched by the very few people who actively seek them out. The smaller, nationally-slanted, event festivals, on the other hand, aim to be crowd pleasers, with all the condescension, opportunism and lack of aesthetic ambition that phrase suggests.

Is it any wonder, in this context, that conventional, mainstream film critics/reviewers – the kind who do not attend real Film Festivals, let alone conferences on European cinema – often make world-weary pronouncements, in their year-end surveys of the cinematic globe, that 'nothing much is happening in Italy' or that 'Greek cinema is moribund'? They make this judgement on the basis on one or two often safe, banal films! This is truly – but in a completely different sense to those already described – a Phantom Europe.

I will now tell another Australian story, about a specific incident: the Spanish Film Festival. Whenever there is an event devoted to a national cinema, local audiences simply have to take on trust that they are getting a representative selection of the best and most interesting work available. In the case of the Spanish survey, I decided to test this assumption. In 2005, I contacted a group of top Spanish critics associated with the most progressive film magazines – publications with which I regularly collaborate – and showed them the screening list of this local festival-event. Their responses were eye-opening.

José Manuel López of _Tren de sombras_ stated that "flat comedies and prefabricated dramas" are the norm in Spain today, and that these dominated the Melbourne event. Álvaro Arroba of _Letras_ de cine commented: "There have been several good Spanish films over the past two years, and none of them are in the list." Fermin Martínez, also of _Tren de Sombras_ , admitted: "I don't watch many Spanish movies, because they just make the same, silly thing over and over again." And Carlos Losilla, who sent me his eight-thousand word manifesto "Against This Spanish Cinema" published in the _Archivos de la Filmoteca de Valencia_ , summed up: "The Melbourne selection is very conventional but representative, because Spanish cinema is poor, very poor".

What is happening here? The truth is a sad, awful business: how European cinema is seen abroad is determined by sales agents and national promotional bodies. The locally-based programmers, in Australia as elsewhere, who quickly want to gather their representative sample of marketable foreign films, get their access to – as well as their knowledge of – national cinemas filtered, frankly determined by these promoters and agents. And trips to the actual nation, when sponsored by these same interest-groups, reinforce rather than complicate the situation.

We might, on a good day, believe that we live in a time when World Cinema truly travels the world. But look at the scary facts of arthouse distribution in Australia: two films apiece by Godard and Hou have achieved slim arthouse distribution in Australia over a course of a quarter of a century! And, in recent years, even the most progressive television channel, the explicitly multicultural SBS (now with its cable spin-off World Movies), has retreated to largely recycling the popular fare that appears first in the touring national cinema events. It no longer screens, as a policy, the films of Edward Yang, Sergei Paradjanov, Miklos Jancsó or Youssef Chahine; instead, we get the latest confections of Cedric Klapisch or Gabriele Muccino, with only an occasional blast from Emir Kusturica or Tony Gatlif to break the monotony – but mainly because their films foreground exotic music and dance styles, not for their provocative politics or aesthetic innovation.

What is to be done about any of this? In large part, cinephilia here wages a perpetual, losing war against the changing face of capitalism and its ruthless shaping of consumer desires in ever-smaller, micro-managed niches of the marketplace. The middle-class middlebrow is everywhere triumphant. Has it ever been any different? The battle will continue only as long as we believe in its high stakes.

4.

... **And a Little Bit of Theory**

Film theory and criticism find themselves at a crossroads today, poised between two paths, two approaches. The noblest path presents itself as the legacy of the great French critic André Bazin. This is a criticism which argues in favour of the _ethics of the image_ and against the _culture of the (audio)visual_. The Bazinian legacy stresses 'real presence', the importance of recording, registering and imprinting something real (even if it is only a tree, or a gesture, or the physicality of an actor); it valorises the modesty, the rightness, the moral compassion of the auteur-camera's gaze or _regard_ upon the world; it defends the continuing practice of a holistic _mise en scène_ over the manipulative fragmentations of montage.

This forms a major debate in European cinema today: the champions of the holistic regard alight on masters like Victor Erice or protégés like Mercedes Alvarez ( _The Sky Turns_ , 2005); or on the messy, complex rawness of post-Pialat, post-Cassavetes figures like Abel Ferrara and Xavier Beauvois – and they reject all in cinema that is slick, glossy, pre-programmed or pre-visualised, dragging all such artifice down to the level of Baz Luhrmann, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Alejandro Amenábar or Luc Besson. Iran's Abbas Kiarostami, because of what philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy describes as the 'evidence of film' in his work, constitutes the veritable Godhead of this widespread Bazinian gesture in contemporary theory/criticism.

Yet much of the proselytising in this area today has an aura of nostalgia, a once-upon-a-time longing for things lost or passing away: disappearing from the world itself, as well as from cinema. The digital audiovisual age – and a renewed artificialism that finds its historic inspiration not in Roberto Rossellini or Jean Renoir and documentary, but in Michael Powell or Jean Epstein and animation – does not necessarily have to go the way of the Hollywood special-effects blockbuster. Raúl Ruiz (who jokingly calls himself "the only anti-Bazinian in France") is a stirring example of a mixed-realm artist who sits outside our tidy critical systems and options.

The challenge today, as Nicole Brenez put it in her prophetic 1993 essay "The Ultimate Journey", is to maintain a "Bazinian exigency ... in the heart of a type of non-Bazinian analysis that no longer takes the real as second nature or as the second nature of film and which, in every way, does not have the same conception of the real: to find the way the cinema discovers human experience [...] and the way the cinema sets that experience forth naked, in its radical strangeness, in that which is unnameable in it." (2)

I end with another theoretical/critical citation from an influential recent book: Thomas Elsaesser's _European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood_. It navigates dexterously between the currently circulating, rather ominous image of a Fortress Europe and another new Europe which, in every respect, seems scattered to every end of the globe, involved and entangled with every imaginable cultural Other. Elsaesser, like Brenez, comes to reject the idea that the most appropriate gesture for cinema today is to simply film or present (however eloquently) the evidence of reality.

In the digital filming of Heddy Honigman's _A Good Husband, A Dear Son_ (2001), a documentary about survivors in Bosnia, Elsaesser finds a new possibility for cinematic evidence, and its redefinition in a medium of ghostly artifice – in the context of a post-postmodern reality that has created another kind of Phantom Europe, shifting in and out of focus and solidity right before our eyes and under our feet:

_This is what the future of the past, the future of memory, is going to be all about: to mark the sites, but now no longer in their pristineness, but precisely in their layeredness – only sites that are 'archaeological' will be perceived as authentic, remediated sites if you like, multiply inscribed, like video-overlay, or multiply occupied, like land claimed by several owners. An authentic historical building will be seen as a fake, where a ruin, with bullet-holes and shot to pieces will strike us as authentic, because it is a material representation of its multiple existences, its realities as well as its virtualities_. (5)

That's what Jean-Luc Godard discovered, too, among the buildings and streets and people of Sarajevo, waiting in the wings: _Notre musique_ (the title of his 2005 film), our music, or the 'material representation of its multiple existences' – within Europe and beyond it.

NOTES

1.Alexander Horwath, "Movie Mutations: Letters from (and to) Some Children of 1960", in Adrian Martin & Jonathan Rosenbaum (eds.), _Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia_ (London: British Film Institute, 2003), p. 13.

2.Nicole Brenez, "The Ultimate Journey: Remarks on Contemporary Theory", _Screening the Past, no. 2_ (1997), <http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/reruns/brenez.html>.

3.Thomas Elsaesser, "Our Balkanist Gaze: About Memory's No Man's Land", in _European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood_ (Amsterdam University Press, 2005), p. 368.

Copyright Adrian Martin May 2011

To Effigy Mounds, Iowa

Michael McKimm

I

Past truck-stops, funeral parlours, pumpkins

piled on tables, clapboard houses and chapels,

a flag jutting from every stoop, and loud

advertisements for God and Halloween.

Out to the heart of a world that's turned

to corn, glacial-waves, hawks holding court

above the darting prairie shrew, only the arm

of a dozing combine and silos pointing up

like cropped cigars, still in their foil, gleaming.

You have to let it in, the whole wide world,

the land that like an ocean swells and stretches out

incomprehensibly, freakish

to the eyes that know the light as cut by right

angles, not the bleached horizon out of reach.

II

Not the mounds themselves, grassy hummocks

barely discernable from the forest floor.

Not the shaded walk, quaking aspen, bladdernut,

nor the Mississippi wide with beauty

and the slow evolution of its cargo; no,

it was the moment that I stood to take

a snap and the forest loosed its acorns

on my head, targeted, precise, full pelt –

as if the trees intended then to knock

me out and smuggle me away to the

forest's darker core – that I understood

the legends that we struggle to ignore:

that the forest's song is heavy weighted

dropping, the soft path studded with acorns.

III

I must have misunderstood, but signing

the visitor's book, the ranger told me

of a tug-of-war between Wisconsin

and Iowa, across the Mississippi,

a mile long piece of rope and two teams

pulling it taut above the muddy water,

their feet lodged firm, backs arched, each

muscle strained and further strained

at the judge's whistle. I must have

misunderstood, but stranger things have

happened, so why not a burly team

losing strength and slugging into water,

and the victors on the far shore, long after the fact,

well past their bedtimes, gathering the slack.

The Circling Game

David Morley

John hammered and hammered hell-hot iron on his anvil.

Work was slow in the water that summer so what work he had

he struck more art into it. These horseshoes were a set, a double-set,

a dapper pattern, a gift for some girl he had long had his eye on.

There was a slap at the open smithy door and in loped

this lad, not more than sixteen by his skin and under his arm

a woman all wrought wrong like she'd been raddled under a wagon.

The lad asked, 'Let me a loan of the fire, bellows, anvil and hammers;

and let me work here alone'. Later the lad looked in on John.

The girl had been made right. She looked more than mended.

John fetched five guineas from him for that fire and free hour.

'But don't be doing as you spy others doing. The tatcho drom

to be a jinney-mengro is to shoon, dick and rig in zi', the lad warned

holding the girl's arm as he left. John had a mind to try the lad's trick,

so tranced up he was by the art of it. He sized up his fresh horseshoes,

squinted through the nail-eyes, all over their harped, heavy angles.

Those shoes might have proved half the art he needed for love

but John had a hidden, beaten shame in him - a hair-wide snick

in his soul's steel. He couldn't court the girl with such work.

He doused the smithy-fire, hooped the eight hot rings on a wire

with his hope and walked across the valley to the town for a drink.

_________________________________________

Romany translation: 'The tatcho drom to be a jinney-mengro is to shoon, dick and rig in zi': 'the true way to be a wise man is to hear, see and bear in mind'

A fair was in town. There were posters tigering the shop-windows

and streetlamps. A horse-river ripped through lanes and ginnels.

Cobbles chuckled, shined under that iron tide. Street-silt, sheep-muck

and salt-grit from a slown winter shook up dust devils and mare's tails.

Rainbow tents and caravans flowered in the river-meadows.

John ran through them to hear their colours, to smell canvas slapping,

guy-ropes springing and pinging on pleached pegs, wounding

scents of grasses into his nostrils, making the penned ponies slaver.

John strove to stand square, to glimpse between dazzling horsecloths,

for there were horses here that John might as well imagine as see

– Andalusians, Spanish Barbs, Lipizzans, Camargues -

three thousand or more with their masters and flexing foals.

And children. The streams, the becks, the waterfalling children

bucketing like water from slamming caravan doors. The horse fair

ran with children. One sleet shout could freeze them before

they thawed to laughter. John looked out over the fair's field.

He thought he was witnessing the world or one bright field of it

with old counties buried but still breathing beneath counties.

When work was slow in the water you could go and come and go

through the mirrors of these fairs. John's hammer and hardware

hung jangling on his work-belt. There was always luck to a fair.

The fair roved every other week. It was as if the tall tents tucked

up their skirts and scuttled from one field to another. So quick

and sprack and spry were these moonlit flits from village to village

the tent-pegs had barely pushed down a first root before being plucked.

The gypsies' wagons evicted curlews from their sites. For two weeks

they havered within hearing of each other. The sorrow-flutes

of the birds bubbled and purled over fenland and moorland.

Three skiving summer months John wrestled with, then won,

the trust of the hooves of high horses. For the shyer creatures

he played them the circling game - the send, the allow and the bring back -

then they'd nuzzle him softly for sugar and his salve for whip-cuts.

That gave John the nod of the horse masters, and means for meals,

yet money flapped about the fair, not a note of it settling near John.

He could sniff the stuff wodged in the pockets of the masters' jackets:

brash, burnished bundles of cash for buying up ponies on the spot.

The masters stank of rancid bank-notes. Their palms were plummy.

Their palms were planed purple with done deals and sure things.

John played a circling game with the horse masters, sending

himself off when wanted most, shying on the end of a lunge line

of their flattery, letting himself be talked back to the fair with a drink

before coming back and laying out the tackle and terms of his trade.

The horse masters answered to no man but their king, a gypsy himself

who joined John as he worked, enjoying the sound and sight of skill.

As the days drew on, and John's silence drew him, the king spoke

of his own pain: how last summer his shire horses shied at an adder,

casting their wagon with his one daughter inside it, how since then

she was broken in body, blunt and blind. John asked to take a look.

The daughter was wrought wrong and John thirsted to find favour.

Months back, John had watched that lad gain a girl from the dead

with fire and hammer. He'd spied the lot through an eye-high knot

in the wood grain of the smithy door that he'd knocked out so

John could keep a look-out on customers with fast fingers. John coaxed

the king's pain from him with a promise he might mend the daughter,

remake her whole. And if he did, the king said, John might be more

than a brother to the tribe and king. The daughter was given

mashed poppies: stewed slurring flowers in a steaming steel mug

that slid her to sleep. Father and masters kept vigil in their vardos.

All night John had his furnace flaring, its bellows rasping and blasting.

The daughter's body flamed and melted. Her hair fled, flew up. By dawn

she was all dust. John poured her ash across the anvil. He palmed it,

gathered it, chopped and hammered it. John spat and mixed and waited.

He remembered he could barely remember a word that lad had said.

Cockerels were volleying vowels from valley to valley. John sensed

snaps and snags of twigs as deer drew darkly back into the woods.

The furnace grew cool and quiet. The daughter's ashes were damp.

John was weeping. He was already dead. He listened to the world waking,

eavesdropped dawn's massacres hooked in an owl's eyes. Below

cold clay's skin, moles waged war on each other, twittering, brawling

as blind as worms in their looped, lapsed trenches. John parleyed

with the silence with prayers. The dust stirred on the anvil's altar.

Blackbirds and thrushes broke their voices in the blue darkness

between tree canopies. Dunnocks drew bows in their throats

and fired music through the walls all around the silent smithy.

John knew in his mind there were nouns to each sound, prayers

in their pattern, noise with no name in the ear's echoing chambers.

What speck of the lad's spell had John not spoken? The daughter

was dust. Her ashes on the anvil were asking and answering him.

Then John heard a knock nagging at some distant door.

In leaped the young lad as though through the bare wall

beside the winking anvil. He blinked at John's work as if he were

staring through the blacksmith, sighting his soul's hair-wide snick:

'Man, it's not her. It's you need the mending. Didn't I tell you

not to do what you spied me do? Down tools and watch my work.'

The lad plied the daughter's dust and blew over those grains

until they glowed, embering on the anvil as the lad let slip

sharp sure calls, kind words and calm words. Shamed, John slid

towards the door wandering, still weeping. The lad turned on John,

'Man, go home and give yourself to a girl who can melt and mend

the tears in you. Love's the craft of it. The fire from its flint can bend

and make anything find fresh form. But let love circle you, mind.

Love's no shying horse for the asking and the shoeing. Send

love from you, as you have, and it will not allow that nor come back'.

As he said this the daughter's dust sparked. It spoored up between

the lad's arms as he lent art and shape. The daughter woke, melted

into life, leaning into the lad's neck, breathing his known name.

No gypsy noticed John as he left, his tools still sulking in his hands.

When John reached home he gloomed for three months, then rose,

woke the flames of his furnace and frenzied a glow with his bellows.

Work was work, but what work he had he struck a lighter heart into it.

He sized up the old horseshoes, squinnying through the nail-eyes,

all over their harped, heavy angles. They were a set, a double set

with a circling pattern, a gift for a girl he had long ago had his eye on.

John tipped and hammered and tapped those deft shoes on his anvil.

Sunlight leant through the open smithy door and in strode the girl.

Looking Home

_Catherine Noske_

She is in France, on a farm, staring down the rows of vegetables when she first sees the resemblance to home. It is in the hills, away down the valley. Somewhere behind her, Monsieur le Fermier is pulling up his sheet plastic, his sons rolling it onto a drum. She is in front, digging out plant roots with an adze. And though she can't stop, hunched over the current plant as she is, the glimpse of it haunts her all afternoon. That evening it comes back to her again and again – the lie of that one hill, the set of the crops trailing gently away towards the crest, and the line of trees edging up the right to catch the sun as it set. It must face due west, like home. Only it isn't. Here they use the plastic over the earth to keep the weeds down, and here the slugs are as big and fat as a man's thumb, and here the dank smell of the earth is almost sickly sweet; and at home it is dry, dry to dust.

When she left, it was mid-summer, and ground was slowly peeling away into a maze of cracks. The water in the tanks had sunk down to sludge. The afternoon she watched her mother pour the dregs of her tea over the dying vegetable garden she decided. She left in the morning, and the house sat grey and disappointed behind her. It was quiet, in the early light. The warmth of the day was already rising from the ground. Lying on the smelly mattress in her camper-van she would suddenly give anything to feel that warmth again. She can hear the family in the farmhouse, arguing over the television. They hadn't wanted a girl. They only took her because she would be cheap. She is starting to hate them, she thinks. And now, slowly, everything is beginning to remind her of home. It is haunting her, following her, and yet whenever she stops to stare, to fix it in her eye, the resemblance slips away and only memory is left. She is starting to hate this place. The colours are all wrong.

It is raining again, in the morning, a fine drizzle that soaks into everything, and leaves the fields a sticky mess. They work anyway, clearing, raising beds for planting, and the rain comes down in sheets that hide them from her, so that they only emerge when they need something of her, ghosts in beanies and yellow plastic ponchos. The hills are hidden, and for the most part she is alone.

The wife appears, the next day, as she eats the breakfast left out for her in the little kitchen. She looks up in surprise. She has never met her before – all her business has been with the farmer or his sons.

'Come,' she says, in English.

She leads her to a little stone building, a room, really; thatched and a little apart from the rest of the farm buildings. She looks at her with something like pity, and smiles. It is scattered with cardboard and huge bars of polystyrene foam. There is a bucket on the floor, and a couple of sacks, a broom, a mop and some cleaning detergents. She looks up at the little French woman, and smiles back.

'You want me to clean?' She asks.

'Oui,' says the wife, and smiles and nods. 'S'il vous plait?'

She picks up the sack and starts clearing the rubbish from the corners of the room. When she looks around again, the woman has gone. She peers out the window, but it looks onto the fields. There, in the distance, she can see the yellow blobs of the men through the rain. She turns back to the little room, and almost sighs in relief. There is a table in the corner, and a little fireplace with a few logs stacked beside it. She clears a couple of old bird nests from the chimney with the handle of the broom, and uses the rubbish to lay a little fire. Playing house, she thinks, and fetches matches from her van. It crackles merrily as she scrubs and cleans. When the wife calls her, she goes in for lunch. She watches the farmer strip off the layers of his sodden clothes, and feels warm inside. The wife lays out their food, and disappears again.

The wife appears once more at breakfast, the next morning, but the farmer has got there first. She smiles at her and shrugs her shoulders as she follows him out. The sons are already out there, she can see them at the tractor with a new roll of plastic for the next row. She grabs her adze and heads towards the fields to join them, but he snarls at her, and throws her a shovel.

'Le cochon,' he says, and walks off.

The muck in the pig sty is almost knee-deep, but she grins as she shovels it, the pig grunting and snuffling in one corner. The fumes bring tears to her eyes. She pulls her t-shirt up from under her jacket over her mouth and nose. The handle of the shovel is splintered and rough, it rubs up soft spots on the palms of her hands. Bastard, she thinks, and grins again. At least she has the satisfaction of knowing it got to him, her cozy little day cleaning. She shovels madly, and in the afternoon is allowed once more to join them in the fields. The sweet air is a relief, even in the rain. The rubs on her hands swell to blisters and burst. Every now and again she holds them out to the rain and tries not to wince.

They give her the afternoon off, on the Friday. She smiles and thanks them, but she knows it is only because they want to go and get drunk. It is still raining, and she could stay in her van, but the roof is leaking, and it smells like wet dog. She goes walking, in the end. The younger son eyes her as she sets off. She ignores him. She doesn't know what else to do. She is glad when she turns the corner and is out of sight. She marches along until she runs out of road. Everything leads back to the big motorway, back to Brest, and she turns back into the fields and laneways. When she hits a dead end, she jumps the ditch, foaming and gurgling with water, and climbs up to the edge of the field. A bull, a Charolais, stares at her from behind an electric tape. She stops dead, and eyes him carefully. When he doesn't move, she turns and makes her way down the slippery little path along the fence. The field on her other side turns into woods. The path hits a little laneway, the ditch peters out and empties into it. The laneway is a quagmire, a pool of glistening mud, churned to liquid silk by cows' hooves. She grimaces and wades through it towards dryer land. There are woods along here, too. They drip green and brown. She considers walking through them, but they are fenced, they might be private. She follows the laneway. The rain eases, and she looks up to see blue sky for the first time in days. Watery sunlight filters down and she holds her face up to it eagerly. The woods light up with the sound of birds, and steam rises gently from the earth of the fields. It smells beautiful, she thinks. Rich, wonderful. She smiles, and walks on.

She turns a corner and catches a little group of horses by surprise, hidden in a little thicket of trees behind a tangle of barbed wire fencing. They jump, and snorting, ears pricked, stare at her. She stands still, and the one closest lowers his head slightly, takes a step towards her, another, stands right at the fence and watches her. She makes soothing noises, talks to him quietly, and watches his ears flick as he listens. She smiles again. Youngsters, she thinks, just babies. Arabs, possibly, though not pureblood. The one closest is a ragged chestnut, his winter coat thick and shaggy, his mane long, and twisted into mats. A sweet face. A honey, she thinks. A real sweetie. He snorts again, and it speaks of excitement and distrust. She can see he is holding himself tense; as though electrified, every muscle taut. She takes a tiny step forward, and the spell is broken. She pretends not to mind when they swing around and charge off, tails kinked, snorting and blowing and stirring around. A clod of mud flicks up and hits her cheek. The sting of it burns in the cold. A single chestnut hair flutters gently, caught on the barbs. She twists it in her fingers as she walks back.

That night she sits in her van and thinks about writing a letter home. They know where she is, she called them when she found work. She should have called sooner, probably; but the airport at Wagga Wagga depressed her. She wasn't the only one. There were ten of them, on her flight alone; ghosts like her, young people with their lives strapped to their backs, fleeing the country. Rats from a sinking ship. Clichés longing for new starts, new lives, in the city or elsewhere. Sinking ship, she remembers thinking. Ha! How ironic. She looked out the window to the stale, dried grass of the airfield, and tried to imagine it underwater. Sitting there, she reconstructed it, everything, piece by piece, as silver sheets of water lapping gently at the aircraft and the terminal. When they called the flight, and they all filed one by one across the tarmac, the heat waves shimmering from the runway almost made it look real. She closed her eyes at they took off. She didn't look down until they were approaching Melbourne. Sitting in her van she thinks about writing and gives it up. What could she tell them? Guess what, Mum? It rains every day here! She tears out the page and screws it up. It bounces off the wall and lands in a puddle on the floor. She wraps another blanket around her shoulders, and watches as slowly, slowly, it absorbs the water, and the ink blossoms and spreads.

The Saturday is market morning, and they pile everything into the beat-up panel van and wind along the tiny back lanes until they reach the village. The day is clear, bright, and the market place is alive with people and colour and sound. The giant umbrella over their table paints the world with yellow light. Her French is good enough that they leave her on the table. People come and go, locals, friends even, and strangers, tourists, Americans cooing and calling out, fingering everything and never buying. Oh, honey, would ya just look at the size of that garlic! She smiles politely, and talks only in French. The man selling Paella from a giant cauldron next to her grins and winks. Eventually it slows. The church lights up as the sun passes the zenith; it shines blue. The stone is the colour of home. The bells mark the hour, and then the next. From her perch on an upturned crate she can see them through the window of the local pub. They will be drunk when they come out, father and sons alike, and she will have to drive home. She hates that still. The narrowness of the lanes gives her the heebie-geebies, not to mention being on the right-hand-side. But at least sitting there in the sunshine is a break, and a pleasant one at that, with the bustle of the market. Plus the lunch today will be good in celebration of her sales, and likely progress until dinner, if they are drunk enough not to notice. If only it were a little warmer, it would be perfect. The heat is too soft, almost damp. She would give a week's wage for ten minutes of sunshine from home.

They are drunk, when they emerge. It is later then usual – the market place is long empty, and the sun has disappeared. It always seems to in the afternoon. They pile out of the pub in a heap, laughing and shouting to mates, reminding her of her brothers at the George, back home. Smaller than her brothers. There isn't space to grow here. No open sky. Her mother always said a boy needs open sky. She has already packed the van, waiting for them, and eaten the last of the unsold apples, along with a handful of loose beans. It was only when they are all jammed into the front, and she smells the alcohol on their breath, that she realises quite how drunk they are. Thank God it isn't far home. The light on the cobbles as they drive out reminds her again of the bluestone of home. Yes, of afternoons in the shade of the veranda. Her mother's failed grapevine, struggling up the beams, and the yellow of her sparse lawn, fading into the red and yellow of the dusty paddocks behind. Focus girl. Here, now. The hedgerows along the road are claustrophobic in comparison.

They are out of the village when the trouble starts. They are singing, the farmer and his boys, football songs, (though it is soccer, really, isn't it?), and then dirty drinking songs, involving English whores, and French soldiers.

'Elle est anglais!' yells the youngest, sliding a sly hand up her thigh.

'Je suis pas,' she spits, and slaps him away. His brother laughs, punches his arm. Even the father smiles. Her brother would have hit them for her. She grinds her teeth in anger.

They go on, silent for a while, and it becomes a chant in her head – nearly there, nearly there, not far, nearly there; till they reach the dirt road to the farm, and he tries again. She hits at his hand, eyes still on the road, and misses, gets her own leg – he laughs. His brother and father ignored him. He slides his hand further, and she swats at him, annoyed now, but he doesn't move it. She pulls at his fingers, peeling his hand back, but he grabs at her hard enough to hurt, and now she is livid. Looking across finally she punches him in the leg, again and again, high as she can reach, and he laughs, but it isn't until his brother yells that he lets go, and she looks up, and by then it is too late to do anything but brake and scream. They are sideways when they hit the gatepost; the tractor in the road has turned them round, and the empty vegetable crates in the back spill over their headrests to rain stupidly down on top of them as they spin. When they come to rest on their side in the paddock, two rows of potatoes are unearthed behind them. The back door has opened, and the umbrella sticks out at a rakish angle, half open, its cover fluttering gently over by the hedge. The rotted remains of the gate are shattered, one piece skewered in their wheels, and the father is slumped crookedly over the gear-stick.

It is the younger brother who pulls her out, his hands shaking. His brother is half crawling from the broken windscreen, crying, strangely, a stream of abuse rattling from between his wet lips. It slurs together, and she can't force it to make sense, but she knows he is talking to her. The youngest is staring around himself with wild eyes, alternately leaning into the cab grabbing at his father; and yelling out for help, his head thrown back, eyes closed. It makes her want to giggle; he looks like an actor in a bad film. She lies back where they have left her. No hurry, help will come. The tractor was empty, so a farmer will be near. Sitting where she is, half propped against a tyre, she is delightfully warm; and somehow she is looking out to that hill again, and this time the resemblance to home is fixed, and she can drink it in, hungrily. Their place is there, just over the ridge and to the left. The stream is down on the right, and on the other side of the hill it cuts back across to the south, before snaking away down into the valley. The sun will be setting soon, and then even the colours will be right, red and gold, just as she remembers it. She closes her eyes, and waits. The noise of the brothers behind her slowly fades into the background. Perhaps it is time she went home.

A fifteen minute delay at a provincial Italian train station

Leila Rasheed

Almost no longer morning, somewhere hot;

this station is a lost funereal ship

becalmed in zones of cabbages, light industry.

Tall stems of rushes prop the heavy sky

and skeletons of fruit trees sprawl in fields

like crucified remains of birds, caught on

electric wire. Behind the glass, on wheels,

we're anxious, waiting shellfire from the sun.

Where is this place? What is its weight, its name?

Can it be tamed? Will it come home with us?

We know we should descend, explore.

But the guidebook says no comment, and what's more

some doves are laughing at us openly.

What are we here for if not to explore?

Decisively we glance towards the door.

But will nine hundred seconds be enough

to get a coffee and admire the church?

As we talk strategy, the train exhales stale air

and gathers up its skirts, and carries on.

We are relieved to find ourselves escaped -

merely nine hundred seconds late,

trailing behind our future up the track.

Meanwhile the local mountain shows its fist

and God prepares to fall upon us like

a brigand, wanting life, or something else

we cannot quite lay hands on.

A Gallipoli Story:

Imagining History

Bruce Scates

In 1926, George Roy Irwin's parents made their way to Gallipoli. They had lost their son in 1915. Last seen plunging into Turkish trenches at Lone Pine, Roy's body was never recovered from the battlefield. His mother Sarah began writing to the Red Cross almost the moment Roy was posted 'missing'. To this day the pain cries out from the pages,

I have interviewed so many boys who were with mine in the enemy trench and were blown up that I have ... come to think that he might have been in one of these explosions, and been carried to some hospital in England suffering from loss of memory ... I've been told ... there were a number of cases like this...

The Irwins, and innumerable families like them, continued to hope, pray and imagine until the very end of the war.

'I have never been able to think of him as dead', Sarah confessed, 'I feel he is still living somewhere. I write regularly to Turkey, but hardly expect a reply still something urges me to write and I will keep on trusting and hoping, until this dreadful war is over and all the prisoners are exchanged.'

Eleven years after his death, Roy Irwin's parents finally made their landfall on Gallipoli. Their journey had taken them 12,000 miles from Australia, first to Britain, then to Italy and finally across the Mediterranean to Turkey. They travelled in the company of 300 others, grieving parents and returning soldiers, one of the first of many such pilgrimages to the Peninsula. All were united in a common quest; all knew a part of them was buried there.

In the searing heat of September, the Irwins climbed to the summit of Lone Pine and Australia's Memorial to the Missing. Unable to lay the body of their son to rest, they take a rubbing of all that is left of him - a name.

A single photograph published in the Sydney press captured the moment for many a mourning family. It was seen in darkened drawing rooms across the country, treasured by loved ones who could never make the journey themselves, set alongside the letters, diaries and old blistered photographs of young men who marched proudly to war but would never march home again. Mrs Irwin, whose search for her son has finally ended, is crumpled at the base of the memorial. Her face hidden from view, her hands limp and motionless, her eyes fixed on Roy's name as it is traced out before her. A formal wreath of paper poppies (carried by the pilgrimage party) and her own ragged posy of freshly picked flowers rest beside her. It is Mr. Irwin who kneels level with his son's name, a firm hand holding the paper in place, stoic, solemn, reverent.

Historians cannot say with any certainty what they were thinking that day. Their lips are sealed forever in the photograph. But very probably they uttered a prayer, finishing prayers uttered by dying men, in every corner of the killing fields.

This story retraces the Irwins' journey. It begins in 1915 with the loss of a soldier at Gallipoli. It relates the search to find him, fusing evidence in the archives with 'memory traces' scattered across the generations. And it follows CEW Bean, first historian of the campaign, back to the battlefields when the war is finally over. His journey traverses a physical and emotional terrain, a storied landscape steeped in memory. Aided by George Lambert, an artist detailed to accompany the 'Gallipoli Mission', Bean sets out to solve the riddles of the campaign – why had the campaign failed, where were men lost, how should they be remembered? In the process, he grapples with the needless waste of war and the mystery of Roy Irwin. "Dangerous Ground" captures the experience of a lost generation. It relates the long and haunted journey whereby we lay our war dead to rest and experiments with new ways of fusing history with fiction. These five brief extracts from the book chart Bean's journey from Lemnos, the Greek Island from which the invasion was launched, through the Narrows where the Allied Fleet was turned back, to Constantinople, the ultimate objective of the campaign and finally back to Anzac, where Bean and Lambert wrestle with their memory of the fighting. This journey took place in 1919. Here archival testimony is woven with words not spoken but imagined. "Dangerous Ground" opens up a conversation with the past silenced by a more conventional historical narrative. It is the story behind the Irwins' picture.

I. Lemnos, en route to Gallipoli, 1919

I dig my hands deep in my greatcoat pockets, stretch out my frozen fingers and fill the muffled spaces. For a moment, I let them linger there, sinking knuckles into well-worn corners. Searching. Then, in a quick, clean and much rehearsed action, I lift my pipe to my mouth and bite down on ebony. Instantly the taste of it is on my tongue. Dry breath and moist tobacco. A match strikes red in the morning light. The first curls of smoke billow up around me. The smell from the ember is warm, comforting, familiar.

I look out across the water to a smudge of hills set deep on the horizon. Clouds nestle across them; a thick blanket of white piling up towards the winter sunshine. Even from here, from my distant hut on the isle of Lemnos, the landscape of Gallipoli is unmistakable. I can trace sharp ridges running down to the sea, plot the course of broken gullies, scan the buckled shoreline. My eyes run down gullies like a finger. I steel my face against the wind and wonder where trenches cut across hills, guess which of the heights gave Turkish gunners the best reach of the beaches. It seems a lifetime ago now. And yet it was real and as close as if the Landing was yesterday. In the half-light of early morning, the hillscape of Gallipoli whispers memory across the waters. How strange it is I feel so homesick for Anzac...

II. Through the Dardanelles

I wake early on the island. Sea birds fly in from the ocean, squawking tales of the sea, their bellies brimming with bass and mackerel. The noise shakes me from my slumber but still I lie there, clutching the warmth in prickly blankets, digging my head deeper in the pillow...

We are four hours at sea before we finally sight the land again. _HMS Hunter_ rounded the toe of the Peninsula, skirting the very beaches where French and British troops lumbered ashore in 1915. At the tip of Cape Helles, two ships had been sunk to form a breakwater. Their dead hulls glare at the _Hunter_ reproachfully. It was as if they somehow resented their sacrifice and longed to set to sea again.

I stare at the hulk of a collier stranded high in the shallow water. It bleeds rust into the sea, like a whale disembowelled on the shoreline. I can just make out the name peeling on the bow. _The River Clyde_. Its cargo today is its story. This was the boat we'd run ashore on the first day of the landings, thousands of British troops packed in her bowels. We called her 'the Trojan Horse of the Dardanelles'. Covered by Maxim guns blazing from her bows the Tommies were to wade ashore and take the Turkish trenches. But I knew it didn't happen like that.

I look at the place where the _Clyde_ has come to rest – and scan the distance to the shore. A hundred feet – two hundred, maybe. I jot '200' in my notebook ... But today it's not a blank space my mind is measuring. I imagine men drowning in the sea, dragged down by the weight of their packs, cut to pieces by machine guns. Imagine waves of lead lashing reddened water, corpses, like a black shoal of fish, drifting...

For twenty minutes we steam close beside the coast, running the length and breadth of the old Allied encampment. My eyes squint at the shore. Line after line of empty trenches stretch out parallel from the beach, still waiting (it seems) for some lost army to fill them. Another roar of engines and propellers churn the fathomless deep. Then the _Hunter_ strikes out for the Narrows, retracing the course of a doomed Allied fleet four years earlier.

We sail into the straits. The European shore rises up from the sea. I look up at a forest clinging to the cliff face. Scruffy and sparse, like the mottled scrub of Bathurst, reaching to the sky at impossible angles, as if planted there by God. Ranging across these ridges, batteries of mobile Howitzers had pounded the invading fleet, moving on before the ships' guns could find them. I wonder, again, where Turkish artillery was sited; remember the bursts of flame and smoke that spat down death and mayhem. Then, as the sea-lane narrows, the white rounded walls of _Kilitbahir_ stare back at me.

Kilitbahir: 'lock of the sea'. ...

Every journalist can weigh the value of a word.

'Impassable', I jot in my notebook.

Something clangs against the _Hunter's_ hull. A dull metallic thud, reproaching itself. I look nervously around me. Not all the mines had been cleared from the straits and it was mines that sent French and British battleships, their stacks still fuming, to the bottom.

I look down at the deep and wonder if nets ever tangled in the wrecks, or drag the skeletons of seamen to the surface. I imagine bodies rocking in their watery grave and shoals of fish weaving through the bones of sailors. And I shudder at the thought of that watery world surging beneath us...

III. Landing at Constantinople

The waters of the Bosporus smell like nothing I have ever smelt before. They run deep and dark along the seawall, rising up to lap the heels of fishermen, then plunging down to drench the breakwater. I fill my lungs with heady, sun soaked sea spray. Even in the bitterest winter, the waters of the Bosporus carry the scent of summer. They run tirelessly from one corner of the Ottoman Empire to the other and decided their rambling course a thousand centuries before Constantinople began.

My eyes scan the shoreline to where city walls look out on the sea. They are in ruins now, battered by one invader after another, pillaged for stone by industrious builders, worn down with centuries of wind and rain. The homeless of the city have carved out a space for themselves beneath the broken arches. I see lines of washing flapping from the battlements, surrendering memory where Greek, Persian and Christian armies once laid siege. I can hear the wind rustling through crumbling limestone and remember an Oxford Don, almost as ancient, retracing the rise and fall of Empires. An army of the city's stray cats pisses and plays in the rubble of history.

My eyes follow the lines of the city upwards. Constantinople's skyline is cut into frosty blue. A symphony of soaring minarets, medieval towers and arching domes frames the heavens. I blink once or twice in sheer astonishment. For all its shabby splendour this is the most beautiful city I have ever seen... And yet this is the place we were charged with destroying. I frown as I imagine these rich skies ablaze.

... Our staff car coughed and purred towards the Western district of the city. It crossed the cobbled bridge that spans the Golden Horn, skirted the Galata Tower's medieval stonework and climbed the winding streets that separate ancient Constantinople from the modern. En route, I count over a hundred wayside stalls, tiny fires cooking chestnuts and corn, men with bread piled high on their heads, shoe shine boys and salesmen plying their commerce on the streets of the city. Twenty minutes after our journey began the car spluttered to a stop outside the British Consulate ... The smell of whisky and cigars beckons us towards the building.

IV. The first view of Anzac

Some places are like a magnet. They beckon you, hold you – a promise longing to be fulfilled, a secret love, an unfinished dream. For me Anzac was all those things. Despite its terror, despite its tragedy. Or perhaps because of that. Gallipoli had become a memory that fed upon itself, a part of me I had to return to.

... The Cove was peaceful that morning. The night's storm had blown to a standstill in the gullies. From the slight rise of Ari Burnu, I can see the debris of war scattered on the sea-bed. There was the wreck of a landing craft, weapons and crates, even the rotting hull of a monitor that had strayed too close to the shoreline. Water seeps through shingle on the cove, a rushing sound mingling with a breeze. I remembered plunging into the cold blue of the warm Aegean what seemed an age ago. And wonder how so fearful a place could also be so beautiful.

V. Walking the Nek

The winter dawn breaks slowly this morning. Like an old man too weak to rise, it slumps its shallow light on the horizon. Lambert prepares his paints and easel by lamplight. He had come to capture the first rays of morning sun on the small wooden panel that serves as a canvas, come to paint the dawn the way men who charged the Nek would have seen it. In his pocket he carries a notebook; a record of an interview with one of the battle's few survivors.

'4.30am. Light – dim, flat, diffused, stars just fading, sky - soft lavender. Turkish machine guns firing from the flank. Dead men falling back in the trench'.

It wasn't hard to imagine.

Down in the gully Lambert can hear the jackals howling. A shrill demented cry, a scream the sound of evil. It was a pack this time, not just the lone wolves that ranged the ridges. The artist's lip began to quiver. He knew what grim feast brought the wild dogs together. The scavengers had dragged a body from its shallow grave. They snarled as they ate, breaking bones with their teeth, sucking dry the marrow. There was a rustle in the bush to his left and Lambert reaches for his rifle. An instant later a shot rang out, echoing in the valleys around him. A clamour in the scrub, and a wounded creature limps away. Lambert swears and swigs from his hip flask. He had only winged the bastard.

The moment the shot was fired the valley plunged into silence. It was as if the landscape remembered. At the height of the campaign the longest stretch between gunfire was just a few seconds. Now, a single shot echoed all the cruelty that was done here.

Lambert looks around him. In the sickly light of dawn, the first thing he can see is bones bleaching in No Man's Land. The jackals must have had a field day. He takes another swig from his flask, moves the rifle a little closer and picks up his brush. The first stroke either made or lost a painting. A deep swathe of red moved across the willow board. Red for the baked earth of August, red for the blood that had flowed there. Lambert looked out across No Man's Land again, studying the lie of the land, noting each crucified bush, each crumpled hollow. Across this stretch of ground, four waves of the Australian Light Horse had charged to their death, nearly 400 men cut down by machine guns within a few feet of their trenches. Men sent out to face that didn't stand a chance, and they knew it. They shook hands and said good-bye before diving over the parapet. "Like swimmers into cleanness leaping"? No, Lambert knew better than that now.

The artist waved his brush again. Another splash of red marked sun on a distant ridgeline. They would have charged into the frail morning light, the first and last thing they saw was that promise of dawn on the horizon. Lambert wanted to take another swig but knew to keep his head clear and his hand steady. The men who had fallen here deserved some small sacrifice. His hands were numb with the cold. There was a dull ache deep in his chest; perhaps the strain of overwork, perhaps the pain of being there.

He stops for a moment and sniffs the still air. Pipe tobacco. The smell of London's streets and clubrooms, a cosy studio in Regent's Park, a drinking hole in Soho. And Bean. He turns at last and sees me seated on a campstool. I have sat there twenty minutes. Watching. Waiting. "Don't mind me, George, you keep painting."

Lambert didn't mind at all. The Nek was a haunted place and he had need of company...

Lambert looks up from the painting again and studies the open grave called a landscape. For a moment he considered asking me to lie out there in No Man's Land. 'Playing dead' the men of the Mission called it and intent on recapturing the scene of battle Lambert had called on most of us as models. But I look the other way. I was not keen to lie on that bleak earth and I knew exactly what the artist was thinking. So instead Lambert asked the obvious.

"It was murder here, wasn't it Charley? Sheer, bloody murder."

It was not like Lambert to speak like that. I wondered what had got into him.

"Wasn't supposed to be, George. Ships' guns were supposed to take out the machine guns and our artillery had the range of their trenches. But the bombardment ended before anyone expected, the guns had to shift their fire you see," I look back to where the batteries were placed, "had to move on to the next target."

Lambert sketched the first body withering in the blast. "Sounds like murder to me, Bean. And who do you think your historians will find responsible?"

I shudder. Allocating blame for the debacle at the Nek had already become a popular pastime. Blaming the British was probably the easiest course and one all too suited to the mythology of Anzac. The shores of Suvla Bay curl out beneath us. Here the British expeditionary force had come ashore, failed to advance and squandered any slim hope of victory. But history was seldom so simple.

"It's hard to understand why we kept sending men out there," I note another figure buckling into Lambert's willow board. "Any fool could see it was hopeless. But they charged, George, to draw Turkish fire away from the New Zealanders on Chunuk Bair. If the Fernleaves had hung on there, we might have taken the heights, then taken Baby 700."

"And could they hang on, Charley?"

I remembered the men massed against them, a tide of steel sweeping down the ridges. Remembered the guns of British battleships blowing our men from the slopes. Remembered the wounded weeping for water beneath the pitiless sun of August. Canterbury and Wellington, Auckland and Otago, all butchered. Maori and Pakeha bleeding beside baby faced boys from Lancashire.

It would have been easier to lie out there in No Man's Land.

"Had to withdraw, George – as did the British."

"So it was murder then?"

A few weeks before I would have said heroism – now I didn't answer... The morning wind rustles in the scrub and rattles bones littered around us.

I drew closer to Lambert and study the painting. Men plunge blindly forward, backs bent down under the withering fire, clinging to rifles as drowning men cling to a life raft. Their forms are shaped with firm horizontal brushstrokes. The paint sat heavy on the canvas, almost sculptural in quality. At the edges of the sheet, a man was lifted up like a puppet on a string, suspended for a moment in the air before he fell down limp and lifeless. To the right, a blinded man stared at eternity. A single bullet had punctured his hand. It dripped with blood like a stigmata. In the half-light of early morning, Lambert's painting had summoned spirits up from the earth. It was as if those scattered bones had charged again across the canvas. This was the second their souls were lifted from them. Even so, I was bound to find fault with it. Lambert would have been disappointed if I hadn't.

"There were a lot of 3rd Light Horse that day, George -reinforcements from Western Australia and Victoria. I don't know that many of them were wearing slouch hats."

"Were some?"

"I expect so."

"This is art, Charley." His brush pulled back the wide brim of a bushman's hat. "And here Art will get the better of History." ...

The artist hears another pack of jackals howling in the gullies. "Bastards," he mumbles as he paints another dying digger onto the willow board.

Post Script

In the second week of August 1915, Sister Elsie Forest sat in the far corner of the Isolation Ward at Lemnos. At last the hospital was silent. In the hour before dawn the moans of the wounded had given way to oblivion. Elsie watched as a padre administered the last rites to bed 19.

Bed 19: GSW., Post Op., No fluids.

Normally, she would know a dying soldier's name; in the fitful hours between the dressing and morphine she would gather enough details to write consolingly and convincingly home to Australia. But Bed 19 seemed to slip away– too far gone to say anything. The dying man was unaware of all the formalities breaking out above him. He saw nothing of the padre's hands sketching the sign of the cross, felt no finger on his forehead, heard no silken clatter of the rosary. Elsie wondered if he caught a single syllable of that final prayer. Wondered if, in that last glimmer of life, the poor boy really understood anything. She was not sure she understood anything herself now. Bed 19 could not have been as many years. And in a few hours' time they would take that young body and cover it with the sandy soil of Lemnos. 'Waste' was an understatement. The shabby walls of the Isolation Hut witnessed the passing of a generation.

The orderlies walked briskly by her, a stretcher slung by their side. Quickly, quietly, with no fuss and less ceremony, they laid out the body for the mortuary. It was their ninetieth trip for that day. Of the last boatload that came in they had lost almost everyone. Nor was it just the wounds that killed them. From the ridges at Lone Pine to the beach at Mudros it was at least an eighty-hour journey. Men were left to bake in the sun, the last drop of moisture leeching from their bodies. In a way, Bed 19 was one of the lucky ones: unable to feel the pain or heat or thirst, incapable of reckoning his own slight chances of survival. It was the men who struggled who found it the hardest, Elsie thought. Those who swam against the tide. Their own will to live made the act of dying so much more difficult.

Elsie ruled a neat line through the case notes. Life extinct: 4.05 am, Cardiac Arrest. Again, she wondered why they bothered. What good could such details possibly do anyone? Elsie drew a sheet of paper from the drawer of the desk and began the inevitable letter home to Australia: 'It is with deep regret that I write ...'. She glanced up to the corner of the case notes; Bed 19 had a name after all...

" _Dangerous Ground" will be published by UWA press in April 2012_.

How Cats Land on Their Feet

Ian Stewart

Falling cats can turn over in mid-air. Well, most cats can. Our first cat, Seamus, didn't have a clue. My wife, worried he might fall off a fence and hurt himself, tried to train him by holding him over a cushion and letting go. He enjoyed the game, but he never learned how to flip himself over.

Maybe Seamus was puzzled for the same reason scientists were, a hundred years ago. On the face of it, the feat seems impossible. Flapping your paws and hoping that air resistance will do the trick is over-optimistic. Since the cat has nothing to push against, how can it make itself rotate?

In fact, there seems to be a good mathematical reason why it can't be possible. It's called the law of conservation of angular momentum, which is a fancy way to say that you can't create spin from nothing. How can an upside-down cat turn over without spinning?

In 1894 a French doctor, Étienne Jules Marey, took a series of photos of a falling cat and discovered that it doesn't. Spin, that is. But it does turn over. How come?

Now they had pictures to look at, the scientists figured it out. What really matters isn't little bits of spin here and there. What can't change is the overall spin of the entire cat. It starts with a total spin of zero: motionless. The same is true at the end. So the cat doesn't have to create or lose any spin. It just has to wiggle various appendages so that the spin remains zero, but the cat flips over.

That wouldn't be possible if the cat were a rigid body, but it's actually very flexible. It can change its shape. And shape-changing is what makes the trick work. Some bits of the animal can turn one way, while other bits simultaneously turn the other way, keeping the overall spin at zero. Fit it all together, and the cat can flip over.

Here's how. First, the cat sticks out its back legs and pulls in its front legs. Then it twists its rear end slightly one way, and twists its front end in the opposite direction. The total spin remains zero, but the front end twists a lot more than the rear because of the positions of the legs. Then the cat pulls in its back legs, sticks out its front legs, and twists everything back the way it came. However, the back end now twists more than the front, because of the changes in which legs stick out and which don't. So neither end of the cat goes back to its original position.

The net effect is that the cat flips over, but the total spin at all stages is zero.

The cat has to do all this in mid-air, while falling. I doubt it does the sums: the technique is instinctive. The ability must have evolved over millions of years. Somewhere along the line, Seamus missed out.

Driving to Saturday's Rally for Refugees

Jenny Strauss

Quitting mild-mannered Malvern

past Central Park, knowing I'd rather stay –

admire the newly-flourished garden beds,

or watch that small girl on a pink bike,

wobble ecstatically . . .

Why then go? Because

within my country's desert heart

are children without flowers, no toys, nothing

but dust and hope;

because I've seen

the spiky leaves of my courtyard tree.

casting a shadow too much like barbed wire.

By Richmond station football crowds

spill on the road, taking their right of way.

And I, who've never been to the MCG –

does that make me un-Australian,

non-participant? Should I park right now,

buy scarf and beanie, claim my birth-right

of licensed tribalism?

I can't,

too mindful of another playing field,

green with lies and fear, fear and lies,

where the goal of freedom's mocked

by asylum madness.

And someone needs to speak –

above the roar of the crowd.

'My Journey from Kumasi' by Matthew Tipple, Class 4TF, Oatlands Junior School, Harrogate, UK, July 1982

Nicholas Tipple

Ghana is hot and colourful, and we do something interesting every day. I lived in Kumasi for one and a half years and I still go back to visit Mum and Dad. Kumasi is not the capital city of Ghana, that's Accra; that's where I fly to. I fly from Leeds Bradford with British Caledonian. When I travel by myself, I'm called an 'unaccompanied minor' which means I always get on the plane before the other passengers.

I visit Ghana in the school holidays, and sometimes I have a few days off school. I visited at Easter and Christmas in 1980 and 1981. I took English things in my suitcase for Mum and Dad, and I took letters for them and their friends. They gave me letters to bring back to England. When I took them out of my suitcase in Harrogate they smelled of wood and soil, just like Ghana. Grandma put stamps on the letters and put them in the post. Grandma and Grandpa like the mangoes that I bring back. Grandma writes to Mum and Dad every week, while I send them drawings.

I only enjoy school when I'm learning things. Mum tells people that, when I was two, I asked her why the word 'daffodil' was written on our toilet paper. People laugh at the story but I can't remember it. She also tells people I taught my sister, Eleanor, to read, but I can't remember that, either.

I enjoy living with Grandma and Grandpa, in Harrogate. If I want to do something, I just do it. I watch television on Saturday mornings – Swap Shop and Tiswas – and I don't have to change the programme for anyone. When I go back to Ghana, Mum says I have to be a 'diplomatic diplodocus' with Eleanor and the twins. If I see something interesting, I try and tell everyone but they can't see it and they cry. And whenever I want something, they want the same thing, so I have to share, or give them mine. Living in Harrogate is different to living in Kumasi. I have to wear shoes every time I go outside and there are lots of shops; some of them are just for toys.

The journey I remember most was when the army took over the country on New Year's Eve. I heard their leader gave a speech on the radio. Dad said that people were happy the army were in control, but the soldiers weren't very nice. They carried guns around the streets and put drums and chunks of concrete in the road. The soldiers would stand close to the car, staring into the windows, while we had to drive really slowly. Sometimes they would stop us. I could tell Dad didn't like them, because he talked loudly and said the same thing over and over again. I would be very quiet, and I would make sure Eleanor and the twins were quiet too.

Everybody had to stay inside their houses at night or they got into trouble. Mum and Dad didn't talk very much about what was happening, but sometimes I overheard them. Dad was worried about a man at his university because he was put in prison and no one could visit. There was also a man driving around when it was dark; he didn't want to get caught by soldiers so he pretended to be mad. He hid his car, took all his clothes off and walked home. The soldiers laughed at him for having no clothes and being mad, but he didn't get beaten. He went back and got his car the next day. I think he was must have put on some spare clothes.

At first, Dad told me I couldn't get my flight back to Harrogate because the army had stopped everyone flying. A few days later, he said I could fly if I had some special paperwork from Accra. There were nine other children trying to fly to school from the university campus where we lived so we drove to Accra together. The journey was hot; we got covered in pink dust from the road and we stuck to the plastic seats. Sometimes we drove past soldiers. At one place, we saw a man being pulled out of his car. Dad said everything was going to be okay, but I wasn't sure he really thought that. In Accra, there were more soldiers: one waved at us with his gun. Dad got out; he was shaking and I wanted to cry, but I held my breath instead. The soldier asked what we were doing and Dad said he was taking me to the airport. The soldier asked why I was going to the airport and Dad said it was so that I could go to school in England. The soldier asked why I went to school in England and Dad said because nobody pointed guns at me there. The soldier looked at our papers. I was breathing fast, like I'd been running in a race. When the soldier told us to go, Dad drove away from them quickly. After a few minutes, he stopped and gave me a cuddle. He was shaking a bit and gave me some water. I was only meant to have a sip but I drank most of the bottle.

We went to see someone who was from the British Government. He sent us to a big house that was full of furniture, which looked like someone lived there, but it was only used as an office. Dad and the other parents left to get papers for us to fly, while the eldest girl looked after us. She was from a family at the university and she was very nice. Although some children complained, I knew we couldn't do anything apart from wait for the adults so I didn't say anything. I was asleep when they came back.

Dad woke me very early in the morning. He told me he couldn't get papers the day before. We had bananas for breakfast and went to a football stadium where we waited with lots of people. It was just like there was a football match on, but people were just standing outside, and there were lots of soldiers. Dad said everyone who wanted to leave the country had to go there to get permission. He said most of the people wanted to drive lorries out of Ghana. The sun was very hot. Dad had some water in a thermos flask, which didn't taste very nice. I showed Dad the mosquito bites I had from the big house. There were 77. By the afternoon, some soldiers were walking around telling people to go home. Some people were complaining to them, but the soldiers didn't say anything else. We were tired so we went back to the house.

The next day, all the children from the university went back to the stadium. There was hardly anyone there and we walked straight into the middle of the pitch where a man sitting at a desk looked at my passport. He signed a piece of paper and another man stamped it.

We all drove from the stadium to the airport. Dad said there weren't any flights out of Accra, except one that went to Zurich. He said I had to go to Zurich but the stewardesses would look after me and make sure I got to Grandma. He gave me the plastic wallet that I carry round my neck whenever I travel. It had my name written on it and it said I was an unaccompanied minor. My passport was inside, with the paper from the football stadium. Dad gave me a big cuddle and told me to do whatever the air stewardesses told me. There were 39 unaccompanied minors getting on the flight with me. He waited on a balcony so I could see him while I waited to go on the plane, but I couldn't talk to him. He waved before we were taken out of the airport. The heat near the plane was so strong it made me feel sick. The stewardess showed us where we needed to walk. She said something but we were so close to the engines that I couldn't hear her. There were jeeps and tanks on the runway, and I recognised the big square trucks that carry soldiers. I wanted to get to the plane quickly, but I thought it would be dangerous to run, like crossing the road.

I had my satchel with me on the plane. Grandma bought it for my first trip to Ghana. It's brown and leather, with two brass buckles on the front. I keep books and comics in it but I didn't read very much on the flight.

The stewardess woke me up when we landed in Zurich. The British children were collected together in the airport (there were about 20 of us). She told us there was a flight to London but it was on the next morning and it was with a different airline. A stewardess from the new airline took us all to the Sheraton hotel, near the airport. I fell asleep straight away because I was so tired. I couldn't sleep for very long because I was woken up by the stewardess knocking on my door. I didn't know what time it was, but it was dark. She took us back into the airport and we had sweet pastries and orange juice in a café. I found a franc on the floor. There was a pencil and pencil-sharpener that both added to a franc. The man in the shop told me I couldn't buy them because the franc was from France and not from Switzerland.

It didn't take very long to fly to Heathrow. Dad asked one of the bigger boys to phone Grandma from London: he tried but her phone was engaged. I told him Grandma liked talking on the phone, especially to Aunty Dorothy who lives in Tillicultry. The bigger boy got a flight to Ireland and I was the only one going to Leeds Bradford. The stewardess gave me a sandwich and a new _Beano_.

The flight to Leeds Bradford was in a small plane with two seats on each side. After we landed, the stewardess gave me my suitcase and let me wait for Grandma and Grandpa in an office. There were two men in the office who were both very smart. One was quite large, with a moustache and he talked on the phone a lot, mainly about golf. The other man was young with round glasses. He worked on a typewriter. I finished reading my new _Beano_ while I waited for Grandma. Then I read the old _Beano_ I had in my satchel. After a while, the man with the moustache asked me how I was. I said I was fine and I was waiting for Grandma. He said I'd been waiting for an hour and asked if I was sure someone was coming for me. I said I was sure that Grandma was coming. He took the papers around my neck and then dialled a number on his telephone. After waiting for a minute, he asked if he was speaking to Agnes Scholey. That's Grandma's name so I knew she must have finished talking to Aunty Dorothy. He told Grandma he had a little boy who said he belonged to her. The man smiled and laughed. He put the phone down, gave me my papers back and said Grandma was coming. I said I knew that she was coming and decided to read my new _Beano_ again.

Grandma arrived a bit later. She had her apron on under her coat and, when she gave me a big cuddle, she smelled of flowers and pastry. She said that she was expecting me in a few days. I told her that the army had taken over the country and Swiss Air made sure I got back to England. I told her about the boy who tried to telephone her but she wasn't cross. She said someone called Barbara was travelling from Penrith to Ghana; she would go to the university and tell Mum and Dad I was okay. I told her Mum and Dad wouldn't worry about me because the people at Swiss Air were very nice and they took good care of me.

Hotel Jugoslavija

Dragan Todorovic

Game: Partisans and Nazis

The rules:

The participants separate into two groups—the Partisans and the Nazis. The Nazis first arrest a few Partisans, and then the rest of the Partisans try to set them free and arrest or "kill" the enemy.

The reality:

The strongest boys are always among the Partisans. Identification with the Resistance runs high enough for participants to soon forget it's only a game, so the other side gets beaten, spat on, and hit with the weapon of the day. The Nazis play half-heartedly, for they know they have to lose. But they do play, because they hope to be the Partisans the next time.

The usual duet, an ordinary song

My father's health started deteriorating while I was still in the fourth year of high school. It was mysterious and slow. Dušan complained of dizziness, but only sometimes, and no other symptoms appeared. A few months later, on some days he would be fine, while on others he was so unsteady he couldn't get out of bed. Slowly it worsened—he would try to sit and then immediately fall to the side. The doctors in Kragujevac—an industrial town about a hundred kilometres south of Belgrade—with all the tests coming back negative, kept pronouncing him healthy. At some point one of them called him a malingerer, which in communist Yugoslavia was the Mother of All Shames. I thought it was psychological, and hoped it would go away.

Then again, this thing with Dad was troubling: he was always in perfect health, never avoided heavy work, and never even had a cold. The doctors terminated his sick leave several times, forcing him back to work, and he would indeed go, only to fall at some point in Zastava car factory and be brought home by ambulance. And it kept dragging on like that. He became desperate, and so did Mom and I. In the meantime I started studying law—without much élan—and worked as freelance journalist for Belgrade magazines. Writing was what kept me going.

In November 1980 I got a job offer. Ratomir Mirić, one of the best editors in Serbian journalism at the time, called me from Belgrade one day: he wanted me to work as an editor with his magazine _Omladinske novine_ , for which I was writing very frequently. There was no opening on the magazine itself, but there was an opening with their publisher—the Socialist Youth League of Serbia (SYLS). They needed a new Culture Secretary.

On the map of the Yugoslav political system this organisation was the light green of everyplace. Anyone within the elastic borders of youth was considered a member. But the communist cadre was recruited from that playground, so it carried a certain weight.

Although Ratomir understood that I wasn't interested in politics, he thought he would be killing two birds with one stone—I would get an insider's perspective before I joined his editorial team, and they would get their man in the publisher's office. The salary was beyond my wildest dreams, and something I would probably never be able to achieve if I remained where I was.

"Stay there for a year, two tops, and then come to the magazine and do what you really want to do," he said.

Hm. It sounded like jail. Would they allow me to have my books? Visits? Can I write? Are the cells cold?

Then he remembered: "Oh, by the way, I got the whole idea when they gave you an award today."

"What award?"

"You are now the Best Young Journalist in Serbia. Congrats. Take a couple of days to think it over. Don't let me down, old man. You will rot if you stay there. It's a backwater. Come to Belgrade."

Just two days earlier, after several months of trying, my mother had finally succeeded in finding some connection who'd made it possible to get Dušan an exam with the country's top medical specialists, at the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade. The first thing the good doctor said when I took my father into his office was, "Except for Parkinson's disease, what else is wrong?" And, indeed, there was something else—Dad had diabetes. We were both relieved that he wasn't a malingerer; and then we also understood from the specialist's carefully chosen words that Dušan would not only never work again, he would be increasingly confined to his bed.

So, in the same week, I received a curse and a blessing. The curse was like a behemoth: heavy, grotesque, and motionless. The blessing, as usual, was there on its flight to someone else.

I shared the news of the call with my mother, and she cried. "You cannot leave," she said, "your father needs you."

I told my father about the offer, and he said, "You have to take it, you have to go. I'll be OK."

Shine

One morning early in January of 1981 I found myself in an ugly concrete building in New Belgrade, a mushroom-city that sprang up in the early sixties, with its Government and Party offices, and blocks of stern, discouraging, monolithic dormitories that communist regimes were proudly erecting all over the Eastern Bloc, showcasing them as the fruit of their care for the working class. This whole area sat on marshes filled with stone and sand, leaving long stretches of barren land between the buildings. Public transportation was never good, and—although New Belgrade was just across the river—it took me around forty-five minutes to get here from Belgrade's Central Bus Station.

As I sat in the corridor, my shoes and my trousers sprayed with slush, my yellow duffel bag dirty from the bus floor, I watched people passing by. Some of them went slowly, reading thick typewritten materials. I seemed to be among the youngest employees in the headquarters of the Socialist Youth League of Serbia.

After almost an hour, someone came and took me to meet the current President and his deputy. The President, in his early thirties, was a medical student from Belgrade, tall but stocky, his round face shiny below thinning blonde hair, his glasses constantly sliding down his greasy nose. I recognized the type: probably a good student in high school, recommended early and made a member of the Communist Party, unlucky with the girls, boring to everyone except those interested in politics. Thousands like him out there, so he must have been chosen by the "key".

Every political function in Yugoslavia had to be filled using the so-called "key", meaning that, for each position on the federal level, every nationality and every republic had to have its shot. On the lower level, in each of the republics, different cities would have their go in different years. Also, if the position in the last three rotations had been filled by men, this time it would have to be a woman, and vice versa. Add to this the occupational quota: you couldn't have students only, you had to give a chance to workers, dentists, writers, whomever. In theory, this was a good way of preventing jealousy and making sure that all groups had their voices heard; in practice, pushing democracy to this extreme mocked it. The cadre selected by way of the "key" was overwhelmingly incompetent, in milder cases just funny, in the worst, destructive to the very cause they were supposed to represent. But the system won either way: if the representative was good, it was because the selection mechanism was fine; if the person performed poorly, she would be more susceptible to orders from above.

Sitting in a leather chair across the table from the President, and listening to him welcome me in bureaucratese on the edge of comprehensible, I was wondering if they took me in because my three predecessors were all smart.

The deputy, Tomović, was another story: tall, dark-haired, with piercing eyes and a poker face, he had a square jaw and big hands, giving away his factory background and toughness. When we shook hands I felt my bones cracking. He spoke in short sentences, never a redundant word, and his eyes seemed to be cutting through the usual blandness of the situation. While I was trying to decide if I liked the deputy or not, the President finished his fifteen-minute speech. Deputy Tomović just said, "Welcome. You, along with all our new colleagues, will be staying at the Hotel Jugoslavija in the beginning. The driver is waiting to take you to there, and back, if you're fast. Try to be fast, because we have an important meeting at 1:00 that you have to attend. Your secretary, Irena, will also be at the meeting. See you later." And he crushed my hand again.

At twenty-two, I was in. My official title was Secretary for Culture of SYLS, my salary was two times higher than my parents' combined wage, I'd just moved to the capital, I had a driver at my disposal, a private secretary, and my future was so bright that I had to buy new, darker sunglasses.

A view of War Island

Hotel Jugoslavija was a five-star affair on the bank of the Danube. It was built and decorated without much taste, but it was imposing, sitting alone on a beautiful stretch of the river, in the area where the concrete buildings of New Belgrade come close to the old brick houses of Zemun. It was built after WWII to provide accommodation to various foreign state officials visiting the nearby government buildings. The interior of the hotel looked much better than its façade. The two huge restaurants, strategically positioned looking out over the river were luxurious, with marble floors and tables and leather chairs; there was a small swimming pool with a sauna on one side of the lobby and a whole bunch of shops on the other. Known as the hotel for diplomats, spies, and journalists, it was a magnet for high class prostitutes. At any time of day or night one could find beautiful girls sitting alone in the foyer or in the restaurants. Their pimps were the receptionists.

I was put in a room on the third floor. The whole floor was reserved for the hotel entertainers and longer staying guests—the higher floors were less noisy. Mine was a relatively small room, decorated in a brownish palette, with textile wallpaper, a single bed, a radio and a small bathroom. The painting on the wall was a depressing landscape of the same sad valley by the blue river that every hotel manager of this world loves. The light green of art.

The day after I arrived I went out and purchased some theatre posters, some postcards, and sticky tape, to make my habitat less clinical. The several books I'd brought with me I dispersed around the room. I hung my only jacket on the back of the desk chair. Now it was starting to look like a normal place. I went to the supermarket nearby, purchased some instant coffee, some crackers, and some dry sausages since the room didn't have a fridge. I always got hungry around midnight, and ate while reading, which would put me to sleep. Finally it felt like home, and I took off my sneakers, made a coffee and lit a cigarette. My room had a view of War Island, a long, wooded stretch of land that separated the Danube in two. The trees across the river looked naked and helpless against the sharp north wind. The radio was playing some slow music, the lamplight was subdued, and I dozed off in the recliner by the door to the balcony.

***

In the dream, I was a writer. I was sitting at my desk in my parents' home, typing a novel. On my left, there was a thin bundle of finished pages, and on my right was a fat bunch of blank sheets. The room was warm and lit just the way the writers like. There was an Al Stewart record on the turntable, a coffee by my side, and a plate of hot cookies my mother must have brought in just recently. My right hand was bigger, yet softer than my left hand. Another odd thing: every time I would finish a page, take it out of the typewriter, and put it on the left bundle, that pile would grow thinner, while the blank group would get bigger. But that was OK: I just needed to type faster.

So I typed faster, with the same result. Finally, I had only one finished page on my left, and the blank bunch on the right was so big I couldn't see the door anymore. While I was thinking what to do—I was afraid to type another page, because somehow I knew that everything would disappear then, including me—the door opened. My father came in. He was tall and straight, with no wrinkles on his face. He just stood there and looked at me.

"How are you?" I asked.

"Good. See, I don't have Parkinson's anymore. But watch out for your mother. She is sad. Sadness breaks your wings. Sadness can dry trees out. Look through the window, at those poplars in the cemetery. They were sad a long time."

"What should I do about this?" I said, nodding toward the only remaining page on the left.

"You are doing it wrong. Instead of typing, you should be erasing. Then you will have your autobiography."

"Autobiography? But I'm writing a novel."

"No," said my father, "it's your story, it always is, that's why you have to erase."

"Do you know why my right hand is bigger than my left? Yours are normal, mother's too."

"Your hand is normal, it's only your middle finger that's longer, that's all."

I looked again at my hand, and he was right. "Oh, I understand now," I said, with a mischievous smile.

"You are wrong. It's not like that so you can show it to everybody whenever you please. It's to put you in danger." And he left.

Confused by his last sentence, I opened the door to ask him but it wasn't our apartment on the other side—it was a white surgical room. There were people everywhere, some naked, some in white robes with surgical masks over their faces. There was a group of tables in the centre, and I came to one of those under the bright light and saw that they were making a new man by stitching together pieces of other people, who were lying on the surrounding tables and chatting merrily with the nurses and doctors who were cutting them. There was no blood anywhere in sight and the whole atmosphere was relaxed. Then I looked closer at the face of the man in the making, and he was me. His left eye was still missing, but it was undeniably my face.

"What will happen to me?" I asked a doctor next to me. He was a pleasant, middle-aged guy, with a soothing voice and very fine hands that held a cigarette.

"Oh, don't worry, comrade," he said, "what do you think this is, Dr. Mengele's office?" Everybody laughed and looked at me. He slapped my shoulder in a very comforting manner, and said, "See how everybody is smiling here? This is a happy thing. You will become a much, much better man now, and your old self will stay here for other people who need parts of you to be perfect. In the end, we all become better here."

While I wanted to ask more, a gorgeous woman came to me. She had the body of Raquel Welch and the face of my secretary Irena, and she was a nurse—this I recognized by her small white cap, the only piece of clothing she wore. "Follow me, dear, there's a table ready for you." She took my hand in hers and led me to a table on the side, where a team was already waiting. They stripped me, laid me on the table, and she handed me a huge joint. "Take this," she said, "and inhale deeply." While I was smoking the joint, they were telling jokes around me, laughing and enjoying themselves. "He is ready now," Raquel-Irena said, looking at my eyes. A jovial doctor brought a scalpel to my face. "Your mother needs your eyes," he said. "She cried hers out, and yours are nice and dry."

I woke up in a sweat and went to the balcony to take a sharp blow of wind. War Island was dark.

***

The next day, when I returned from work and unlocked the door to my room, I stood shocked. Somebody must have stolen all my things. I stepped back to see the number on the door, and it was 309, my place. But there were no posters and no postcards on the wall, and everything was back in the same place and the same state as when I first came in. Even the recliner was as it had been, at exactly 20 degrees northeast. I stepped in and found my jacket in the closet, my shoes in a drawer, and my books hidden between the bed and the night table. My food had disappeared completely, and the posters and postcards were neatly tucked inside the writing desk drawer.

I was angry. Why would they want to erase the traces of me? I unpacked everything again, stuck the posters to the wall, threw the books around, added newspapers, put my shoes under the bed, and then brought a plant from the corridor into my room. There.

The day after, the same: the invisible force removed everything, including the tiniest particles of dust, aired the room, and, yes, she found the shoes. I sat down and wrote a note. It said that I was supposed to live here, not just sleep, that I was to stay for a longer period, possibly several months or even longer, so she simply didn't have to bother with my room. Then I messed up the place. I left the note on the desk before I went to work the next morning.

And found everything tidied away when I came back. So I wrote a letter this time. I went soft, mentioned my childhood, happy family, my recent move to Belgrade, and my new life far from my friends. I described how small details meant much to a guy living alone, how I wasn't trying to ruin anything, just cut my piece of space in the big city. I left a flower on top of the envelope.

No result. The woman's soul was replaced with a vacuum cleaner. My next note was stern, mentioning my high rank in a political organization (I didn't specify), my need for privacy, the sensitive files I was bringing from work, and possible repercussions. The room was even tidier after that one.

In the coming days I visited the reception desk to complain about the obsessive maid, I talked to the manager, and I tried to find out who she was by inquiring with the hotel staff. They were not able to tell me who the person was, or if it was always the same woman. The only result was that the hotel personnel started eyeing me in a strange way. I probably had the reputation now of an utterly annoying weirdo who hated hygiene.

After three weeks I gave up. I wasn't allowed to leave any traces in Hotel Jugoslavija.

[From The Book of Revenge, Random House Canada, 2006]

Mutilated Images

George Ttoouli

In Lefkosia I watched a cockroach

walk beneath the barricade.

My battlescars unhealed

and the wounds started

oozing.

A red dawn

on the milky sands -

Why so sour? What do

you warn me of?

What are you trying to say?

I write to try and close them:

There was a man from Cyprus

whose wounds were oozing pus.

He lost his faith

in nationhood.

Is there something we need to discuss?

In Lefkosia I watched a cockroach

crawl beneath the barricade.

Some images arrest you,

take you out of the house

hours before dawn

into the street with a rifle to your head

so you can mark the make

on the barrel: MADE IN US

some images set fire to your homes

and wait by the wells for the men

some images line the village

women in the street

lift their skirts up with bayonets

and stab them in their stomachs

when the women slap their faces

while other images take you into the dark

between two huts and rape you

and rape you again

and some images raise many questions

while some questions don't have any answers

and other images cannot be answered back to

and some images return to me mutilated

and some images return to me mutilated

and some images return to me mutilated

In Lefkosia I saw a cockroach

reaching for a molotov.

No, that's not right.

In Lefkosia I socked a rock

and swung it at a soldier.

In Lefkosia the crawl of progress

crashes into barricades.

In Lefkosia I cocked a gun

and breached the bloody barricade.

In Lefkosia the hotrod preachers

speak of flaming hurricanes.

In Lefkosia the twilight sky

wakes up to stark incendiaries.

In Lefkosia electric pylons

fade into statistics.

In Lefkosia a dirty language

crawls along the tenements.

In Lefkosia the UN line

encroaches on our merriment.

In Lefkosia there's nothing holding

insects to the barriers.

In Lefkosia they open fire

on politician's motorcades.

In Lefkosia I threw my passport

on the burning placards

What? What am I trying to say?

In Lefkosia I watched a cockroach

crawl beneath the barricades.

The Lord of the Limbo Line

Ndaeyo Uko

Captain George 'Robbie' Robertson puffed hard at his cigar as he hauled the Super Constellation —he called it his Connie—into the starless African sky. Now, he could see through the corrugated sheets of nimbus clouds an array of twinkling city lights scattered over Bissau, Portuguese Guinea, like somnolent fireflies.

This ominous winter night just was one of those rare nights when the aged Connie was truly clean—that's to say, for once, it was not carrying smuggled arms and mercenaries. But Robbie knew his cargo and passengers could put him in even greater trouble.

The Connie cruised in the direction of Biafra, even though Engine Number Two had caught a high fever and was losing oil. Flying this sick plane into a raging civil war was nothing to Robbie. The money was good—$1,500 dollars, more than regular pilots earned in a month. As a pilot for the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) during World War II, Robbie had been known to tear out log sheets to be able to clock more than the maximum 130 hours the CNAC allowed its pilots to fly. An experienced and intrepid pilot, he held just about every aircraft type-rating there was, including jets, large and small, and was a sort of freelance Captain on all of them. He had been one of the few pilots who could ferry a C-46 solo on the longest overwater leg from West Africa to Miami. This required many barrels of fuel and oil with associated wobble pumps and plumbing in the cabin. He boasted to mates that he'd "trim 'er up and put 'er on ... and run back in the cabin and wobble like hell" until he saw nothing but blue water through the cockpit windshield up forward. Then he'd "run back up to the cockpit and recover from the dive, only to do it again and again until all the fuel had been transferred".

This was the last and most dangerous leg of the perilous flight that had started from a remote dark corner of the Lisbon International Airport a few days earlier. The 2,200-mile Lisbon-Bissau leg had been a breeze—for the Connie and for Robbie, that is. Robbie ALWAYS had a lit cigar in his mouth, while taxiing, flying, and landing. What infuriated Robbie's co-pilots most was that he put the ashes and cigars out in the window channel over the pilot's lap.... There was no way to dodge them unless you were on autopilot and moved to one side. Now his co-pilot, a taciturn ex-RAF airman named Jim, was trying hard to suppress his anger.

Port Harcourt was approaching.

Death fluttered in Robbie's mind like a referee's flag. He banked to the right and made an arc over the Atlantic, ready to sneak in from the sea and request runway lights with a brief coded radio signal at the last minute. But on final approach, a mild tropical squall tickled the Connie. "Please, fasten your seatbelts," Robbie said in his southern American drawl. "Keep your seatbelts fastened until we land." His passengers—an Irish Catholic priest, an old Irish nun and two young Biafran novices—checked their seatbelts. The five Biafran soldiers on board had no seats; they clasped the boxes they were sitting on.

The squall turned into a sudden and unreasonable calm, as if by the switch of a button. The calm was black, sarcastic and brief.

In the darkness below, Father Dermot Doran, an Irish priest, threw his plump body against a phalanx of Biafran soldiers in combat fatigues. The soldiers were pushing him back and shouting, ordering him to go back; this was a military airfield, and no civilian was allowed at anytime, let alone at this time. It was a little past 12.30 in the morning Biafran time on Thursday, 8 February 1968. The shouts could not drown the irregular drone of a fast approaching aircraft. "There are priests on the plane," Doran shouted, "It is not your plane." The Biafrans knew the plane now thundering towards them at tree level; it was certainly theirs.

Everywhere and everything was dark—the Connie and the terminal below. The vast black tarpaulin of moonless sky stretched over the thin, jagged runway. In the cockpit, Robbie could see nothing, except the red blinks on the control panel: the temperature of Engine Number Two had hit the maximum. Seconds later, it lit up.

He nudged Jim to raise the tower on the Biafran radio frequency. Jim blurted out the secret landing code and requested runway lights and the special set-up with the radio beacons.

"Red 47 to control," he said with unreasonable calm, requesting emergency landing.

"Roger, 47. Standing by and good luck. Out," the traffic controller said, and turned the runway lights on for a few seconds—giving Robbie just enough time to light his last cigar, take a few rapid puffs, apologise to Jim for the smoke and swoop down. A violent gust of wind caught the port wing, making the Connie stagger. "We are going in," Robbie mumbled, chewing at his cigar. A canopy of smoke hovered over him like a cartoon cloud.

Two other engines shut down as another gust thumped the Connie, throwing it further to starboard and forcing it down.

Robbie flung the Connie down ten yards short of the runway. It kicked the soggy field with its left wheel. The dragging action and the grind of the mud ripped out the wheel and tore part of the undercarriage. The Connie skidded, spun around, cart wheeled, then horse-kicked the burning engine into the wet field, rolled over and started its slide on the tarmac, upside down. The darkness became full of light and sparks. The last surviving engine pumped fuel fumes into the fuselage. In slow motion, the Connie skated past the blacked out terminal building, past Doran and the wall of terrified Biafran soldiers, past trenches filled surrounded by bolt action rifles and rustic antiaircraft guns, toward the fuel silo at the end of the airfield.

***

Father Dermot Doran had known he was looking for trouble when he walked into the crammed bar of the Hotel Tivoli on the Avenida da Liberdad in downtown Lisbon on the night of Friday, 23rd December 1967. He had stationed himself a few tables from a small group of men in bomber jackets. They were tipping down scotch after scotch after scotch and shouting to each other above the din—something about the weather and what sounded like _By-ah-fra_. They had leathery sun-frazzled faces of overindulgent forty-something-year-olds, all except the Humphrey Bogart look-alike who was huffing, puffing and rocking with laughter inside a capsule of smoke. His blood-shot eyes were buried in a pale neighbourly face that was red and mildly creased. He was in his mid fifties, about 6' tall, if that much, with hair still blond and blue eyes, and just a tad chubby. Holding his beer delicately like a candle in a windy night, Doran waded through the smoke towards the men in bomber jackets.

"What are you doing here?" _Humphrey Bogart_ hollered in a gruff American southern drawl, pointing a nicotine-stained finger at Doran's Roman collar made even more conspicuous by the long-sleeved black shirt. "You should be in church!" he hollered, letting out a tidal laughter.

The newcomer shot out a damp chunky hand. "Father Dermot Doran"

"Cap'n George Arthur Robertson. Call me Robbie." He introduced his co-pilot, a tall, ex-RAF pilot he called Jim, and his other mates—first officers, co-pilots, flight engineers and bouncers—Americans, Europeans, everything.

Doran got straight to the point: when was the next flight to Biafra and would Robbie take him? He might have been an unblushing teenager telling a crude joke at the dinner table. Robbie sat still for a few seconds munching the smoke he had wanted to exhale. He fired a puff just above Doran's head, grated the butt onto the ashtray and struck a match. The flicker exposed a gold-plated tooth floating in a crowd of tar-stained teeth like a lone star in a black sky. After a long hissing puff, Robbie twirled the smoke in the hollow of his mouth and let out a roar of laughter—long, raucous and full of smoke. He leaned menacingly towards Doran and said with his teeth, " _By-ah-fra_? Do you know what it means to fly into _By-ah-fra_?" Doran should have said he thought he did, that he had worked there _before_ the war—before the war. Instead, he nodded ebulliently. Biafra? Of course!

"What the hell, come along!" Robbie clinked glasses with his mates and then with Doran, and gulped the remaining finger of whiskey. To _By-ah-fra_!

"I want to take something with me, if you don't mind."

"What?"

"A hundred thousand Hosts for Christmas."

"What's that?" Robbie did not understand why anyone should want to take Hosts—whatever they were - into a raging African war.

Doran did. This time he really did.

A few hours before daybreak on Christmas Eve, 1967 Robbie began to lower his Connie into Port Harcourt, Biafra. The sky was decorated with red and yellow streaks: luminous balls that looked like rotten tangerines. Doran asked the flight engineer what he made of the colourful sky. The response was unbearably calm. Doran made a sign of the cross, and another and another, in his head, his trembling right hand kneading the prayer bead in his right pocket. The soundless words of the rosary collided in his brain; a priest's audible prayer would bring the crew nothing but despair.

Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be Thy name; thy kingdom come ...

Robbie wove the Connie between the glowing streaks as Doran, eyes firmly shut, sped through his first three Hail Marys. His sweating thumb skipped several prayer beads and latched straight onto the crucifix, which he twiddled as the Connie skidded and steadied again. Robbie flicked ash out the cockpit window. The wind blew it back in.

A former WWII combat pilot, he had tamed saucier skies. This was nothing compared to a storm, which ordinary pilots dreaded. He was not an ordinary pilot. Once, while coming in to land in Miami he had been greeted by a feisty storm. Robbie was not one to wait. With one hand fiddling with a screwdriver on the cockpit's overhead panel, he had flown the approach through the thunderstorm, basically with his knees and feet only, and scarcely a glance at the instruments. He had finished his display of magical airmanship with a perfect three-point landing in heavy rain.

Robbie continued to ride the Connie like an ace cowboy, galloping playfully and wheeling and weaving between the luminous balls. Doran doubled up and tripled up on the Hail Marys. By now, he had said at least 50—more Hail Marys than he had said in his entire life. It was not death that scared him. It was the McGlade treatment. When they captured Father Des McGlade, they had tortured him and twisted his wrist into a claw. Nothing would delight the Nigerians more than laying their hands on another Irish Priest— a friend of Biafrans.

The night was suddenly black and free of balls. Robbie stopped weaving. Doran stopped praying. An hour later, Robbie lowered the Connie, whistling like a flying sieve, onto Sao Tome 400 miles away from the luminous balls—the barrage of torpedoes, rockets and bullets—the Navy frigate NNS Nigeria had fired upon his beloved Connie.

To think that the same Robbie has just been brought down, not by rockets, but by a freak tropical Biafran storm!

***

"Let me through," Doran shouted, pushing aside the rifles and bursting through the cordon. Tonight Doran was not dressed in his white soutane because it was hard to drive in it.

"Father, you'll get killed," a frightened Biafran soldier screamed. "Stop, Father!"

He expected a chase and a volley of bullets. Instead, the soldiers sprinted in the opposite direction and dived into tiny pools of darkness behind the terminal, covering their ears, and waiting for the explosion.

The Connie stopped—just short of the silo. Doran stopped. A sheet of suffocating heat from the burning wreck pressed against his face like a giant assassin's palm. He muttered a muffled final blessing for the departed.

_Give them eternal rest, O Lord, ...In your mercy and love, forgive whatever sins they have committed through human weakness. Amen_.

The silence that followed stretched across the airfield and swallowed the footsteps of the soldiers who splashed out of the shadows and raced towards the amber glow of the burning wreck. Inside the cockpit, Robbie was still hanging upside down, stunned, his cigar raining hot ashes onto the roof of the cockpit. Jim, two other crew members, the Biafran Novices and soldiers scaled over the crates and boxes of medicines and powdered milk and escaped through the rear exit. Jim's pink face floated like a bubble in a sea of black faces lit up by amber firelight spat up by the Connie's detached engine. Inside the smoking ruin, a man regained consciousness to find his khaki pants and short-sleeved jacket covered in soot.

Doran saw what looked like an apparition crawl out of the plane, pat its shirt and back pockets and go back in. Moments later, it crept back down with a lit cigar in its mouth.

Another ghost crawled out from the cockpit window. With surprising agility, he jumped down from a rope ladder and looked around, dazed. He staggered away from the plane, patting his pockets and throwing his hands in the air in despair. "That man must be crazy!" Doran muttered to himself. Why didn't he just run? It was about 12.45 in the morning.

***

Some two thousand miles away in Dublin, Nuala Waters turned and twisted in her bed without waking her husband, Frank. In her dream, she was seeing towers of flames and smoke bursting out of a plane in a strange airfield. A man was bouncing up the stairs of a burning plane. Couldn't he see the fire and all that smoke? Then the man turned; it was her brother. "Fintan!" she screamed. "Fintaaan!" Startled by her own screams, she sprang from the bed and searched under the pillow for her Rosary beads. They were not there. Still trembling, she fumbled for the switch on the bedside lamp with one sweaty hand—there beside her missal lay the beads curled like a snake—and with the other she shook Frank violently. From the family Rosary, they began to recite prayers for her brother Father Fintan Kilbride in Biafra. _Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.... Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen._

Outside, the pale Dublin night lay still, silent and cold like a corpse.

***

Father Doran recognised the ghost. "Fintan, Fintan!" he screamed, wiping smoke and tears from his eyes and waving frantically. Fintan Kilbride did not turn. He crawled back into the burning plane. The spurts of fire revealed the silhouette of a skinny old woman dressed in a white habit hanging motionless, upside down, like a fruit bat, and covered in smoke. It was the old nun, Sister Mary Michael Joseph.

Within ten minutes, or twenty or more, it was all over. The reek of burnt milk powder meant for the starving Biafran children, rubber, penicillin and Robbie's cigar smoke filled the night. His beloved Connie, like his future as a captain on the Limbo Line, now lay still under a shroud of smoke—an incinerated grey ghost. Saying nothing to Doran, Robbie stomped away, head bowed, trailed by a cloud of smoke like a swarm of flies, his angry Air Force boots grinding mud onto the tarmac.

Eka honda wedak, neda?

Robert JC Young

Yes it would have been a good thing.

It would still be a good thing even now

Though the good thing disappeared

A long time ago, at that indiscernible moment

When present turns into past without our knowing.

Our lives are full of anarchy, our loves come

Close behind. Where there is unfinished business

We keep looking for closure, as if someone else

Could end a journey that they never started.

It's asking altogether too much I know.

Yet it's impossible to make a new beginning

Once you have already begun, once you have

Already been strung out in the curls of the spray and the starlight,

Once you have started that silent walk to Bambalapitiya

Between the railways tracks and the Galle Road, thinking,

It would have been a good thing, no?

Biographies

**Peter Blegvad** , born in New York, lives in London. Musician, illustrator, writer, broadcaster, psychonaut. He teaches at the University of Warwick.

**Lauren Bliss** is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Film and Television Studies at Monash University, Melbourne. She is currently researching the representation of the pregnant body in the cinema. Her work has been featured in the journal _Screening the Past_ , the anthology _Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia, Catastrophe_ and in BAFICI press.

**Elleke Boehmer** is the author of _Colonial and Postcolonial Literature_ (1995, 2005), _Empire, the National and the Postcolonial_ , 1890-1920 (2002) and _Stories of Women_ (2005), and the biography _Nelson Mandela_ (2008). She has published four novels, _Screens again the Sky_ (1990), _An Immaculate Figure_ (1993), _Bloodlines,_ and _Nile Baby_ (2008). She edited Robert Baden-Powell's _Scouting for Boys_ (2004), and the anthology _Empire Writing_ (1998), and co-edited _JM Coetzee in Writing and Theory_ (2009), _Terror and the Postcolonial_ (2009), and _The Indian Postcolonial_ (2010). _Sharmilla and Other Portraits_ (2010) is her first short story collection. Elleke Boehmer is the Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford.

**Halina Boniszewska** was born in the UK to Polish parents. She started writing fiction four years ago while still working as a senior commissioning editor with an educational publisher. Her fiction has been short-listed in a number of national competitions.

**Janine Burke** is an art historian, biographer and novelist. Between 1977-1982, she lectured in art history at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. She won the 1987 Victorian Premier's Award for fiction. Her series of books about the Heide circle includes _The Heart Garden: Sunday Reed and Heide_ (2004), _Australian Gothic, A Life of Albert Tucker_ (2002) and _Joy Hester_ (1983). _The Gods of Freud: Sigmund Freud's Art Collection_ was shortlisted for the 2007 NSW Premier's Award for non-fiction. Her forthcoming book is _Nest: The Art of Birds_. She is a research fellow, Monash University.

**Professor Ed Byrne** is the Vice-Chancellor of Monash University. His book of poems entitled _Poems from the City: A London Interlude_ was published by Melbourne University Publishing in 2010.

**Peter Carpenter** has been a teacher of English and Creative Writing since 1980. He has published five collections of poetry and has a _New and Selected Poems_ forthcoming from Smith Doorstop in 2012. The poems that make up his submission have appeared in _Poetry Ireland Review_ , _The North_ and _Speaking English_ (Five Leaves Press, 2007), as well as _Catch_ (Shoestring, 2006) and _After the Goldrush_ (Nine Arches, 2009). The last poem is dedicated to Amanda Carpenter.

**Maryrose Casey** is Director of the Performance Research Unit in the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University. Her scholarly work focuses on race relations, indigeneity, cultural identity, nationalism, and the politics and reception of cross-cultural engagement. Her major publications include _Creating Frames; Contemporary Indigenous Theatre_ (UQP 2004), _Transnational Whiteness Matters_. (Rowan Littlefield 2008) co-edited with Aileen Moreton-Robinson and Fiona Nicoll and Telling Stories Aboriginal and _Torres Strait Islander Theatre Practices_ (2011 ASP). She has published award winning short stories and had performance texts produced.

**Philip Caveney's** first novel, _The Sins Of Rachel Ellis_ was published in 1976 and he went on to publish another 11 novels for adults including _Speak No Evil_ and _Burn Down Easy_. In 2007, his first children's book, _Sebastian Darke: Prince Of Fools_ was published in 20 countries around the world. His latest book for young readers, _Night On Terror Island_ is available from all good bookshops. Philip is also a fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and was based at Warwick University in 2010-2011.

**Jane Commane** was born in Coventry in 1983 and is a poet, editor and writing tutor. She is co-editor of Nine Arches Press and _Under the Radar_ magazine. She has taught poetry in numerous community workshops in a variety of interesting settings, including at the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth and along the River Avon. Jane has also worked in museums education and in archive conservation since 2005. She has been previously published in _Sherb_ : _New Urban Writing from Coventry_ (Heaventree, 2006) and in various magazines, including _Horizon Review_ , _Tears in the Fence_ , _Iota_ , _Anon_ , _Litter_ and _Hand +Star_.

**Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario** teaches fairy tale, fantasy and children's literature at Monash University. She has published on a variety of subjects including Disney musicals, Harry Potter and book publishing with recent articles in the journals _Marvels & Tales, Musicology Australia_ and _Script & Print_. Her current research interest is fashion in fairy tale.

**Will Eaves** is the author of three novels, _The Oversight_ , _Nothing To Be Afraid Of_ and _This Is Paradise_ (forthcoming, 2012). His first collection of poems, _Sound Houses_ , will be published later this year. For many years he was the Arts Editor of the TLS. He now teaches at the University of Warwick.

**Elin-Maria Evangelista** holds a PhD in Creative Writing. She is an assistant lecturer at Monash University and has been acknowledged for excellence in teaching. Elin-Maria has been an editor for ABES Routledge and a chief editor of Monash short fiction anthology _Verge_. A 'Living Book' at the _Emerging Writers Festival_ for two years, she has also done many public readings of her prize-winning short stories, including at _Desert Nights_ , _Rising Stars_ writers festival in Arizona. Her academic research is to appear in a forthcoming publication on self-translation. She is Swedish and has a background as an actor and translator.

**Peter Forbes** is a writer with a special interest in the relationship between art and science. He edited the Poetry Society's _Poetry Review_ from 1986-2002 and his anthology _The Picador Book of Wedding Poems_ will be published in January 2012. _Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage_ (Yale University Press) won the 2011 Warwick Prize for Writing. The paperback will be published in September 2011. He is currently Royal Literary Fund Fellow at St George's, University of London.

**Maureen Freely** was born in the US but grew up in Turkey, where her family still lives. Educated at Radcliffe College (Harvard University), she has spent most of her adult life in England. A Professor at the University of Warwick, she writes frequently in the British press on feminism, politics, and contemporary writing. She is perhaps best known for her translations of the work of the Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk and for her campaigning journalism after he and many others were prosecuted for insulting Turkishness or the memory of Ataturk. Her sixth novel, _Enlightenment_ (2007), is set in Istanbul, as is her work-in-progress.

**Elsa Halling** gained her BA from Warwick in her early forties, and after a career in teaching she returned to her _alma mater_ in 2010 to study for an MA in Writing. She prefers the challenge of creating short stories, for both adults and children, because it demands the development of a strong plot and plausible characters within a limited space. She enjoys travel, so many of her stories have been inspired by the people and places she has encountered; her long experience in the classroom has given her a clear insight into the minds of young readers.

**John Hawke** is a Sydney poet and critic currently teaching at Monash University.

**Angie Hobbs** FRSA studied Classics at the University of Cambridge. After a Research Fellowship at Christ's College, Cambridge, she is now Senior Fellow in the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. Her chief interests are in ancient philosophy and literature, ethics and political theory, and she has published widely in these areas, including _Plato and the Hero_ (Cambridge University Press: paperback 2006). She contributes regularly to radio and TV programmes, newspapers, websites and festivals. She is currently writing a book on heroism, courage and fame and producing a new translation of, and commentary on, Plato's _Symposium_.

**Gruff Jones** spent his formative years, was educated, was bred, was universitied in Wales. Beyond that, he has been studying a Writing Masters at Warwick University, spending the last year or so in the good company of great people and better writers. He is currently working on a novel that may or may not become a black comedy about euthanasia based in Cardiff and other local areas. He hopes one day to do this scribing gig full-time. If not, there's always wayfaring.

**Sue Kossew** is Professor of English at Monash University. She has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on postcolonial, Australian and South African literature. Her monographs include _Writing Woman, Writing Place: Contemporary Australian and South African Fiction_ (2004) and _Pen and Power: A Post-Colonial Reading of J.M. Coetzee and André Brink_ (1996) and, as editor, _Lighting Dark Places: Essays on Kate Grenville_ (2010), _Re-Imagining Africa: New Critical Perspectives_ (2001, with Dianne Schwerdt) and _Critical Essays in World Literature: J.M. Coetzee_ (1998). She has co-edited a volume of essays entitled _Strong Opinions: J.M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction_ (2011).

**Raj K. Lal** started writing as a hobby which became a passion. It has led to meeting and working with exciting new and established writers from all over the world. She has performed her own work in many places. She co-wrote and acted in a play _A Caribbean Christmas_. Raj also writes short stories and has dabbled in poetry. Raj is currently working on her novel _Batwara_ which is set in present-day England and India now and during the Partition era.

**Nick Lawrence** teaches American literature, world literature and critical theory at the University of Warwick. His poetry and prose have appeared in _Grand Street, Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics_ , _Talisman_ , _Ecopoetics_ and _Mandorla_ , among other magazines. He is the author of _Timeserver_ (Lift Press) and studies of Whitman, Hawthorne and Adorno.

**Anna Lea** studied her BA and the MA in Writing at the University of Warwick and now teaches screenwriting at the University. Anna has worked as an Audio Producer for BBC Audiobooks and as Curator of Short Film for the Hay Festival and the Bath Festival of Literature. She continues to work as a freelance writer. Her writing credits include a UK Film Council funded short film, _Isaac_ , a teleplay for CBBC, Walking Tours for Lonely Planet and original audio content for BBC Audiobooks. Her poetry has been published in several anthologies.

Among **Chandani Lokuge's** 14 books are the novels, _Softly, as I Leave You_ (2011), _Turtle Nest_ and _If the Moon Smiled_ , and _Moth and Other Stories_. Awards include short-listing for New South Wales Premier's Prize; Grant from the Literature Board of the Australian Council; and Residency at Chateau de Lavigny, International Writers' Centre, Switzerland. As Editor, _Oxford Classics Reissues_ series, Chandani has published 7 critical editions of Indian women's writing. Guest-edited journals include _Meanjin_ and _Moving Worlds_. Chandani is Associate Professor of English; Director, Centre for Postcolonial Writing; and Head, Creative Writing at Monash University. She migrated to Australia from Sri Lanka.

**Anna MacDonald** is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the School of English, Communication, and Performance Studies, Monash University, Melbourne. She has published numerous essays, including for the Edinburgh International Festival (2009) and the Venice Biennale (2007). She was an editor of the creative writing anthologies _Verge 2010: Other Places_ and _Verge 2011: The Unknowable_ (forthcoming).

**Liz Manuel** was born in 1981 and grew up in Ipswich and Bristol. She attended the University of Warwick where she read English and Creative Writing. In 2004 she received an Eric Gregory Award. She lives and works in Bedfordshire.

**Adrian Martin** is Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies and Co-Director of the Research Unit in Film Culture and Theory, Monash University. He is the author of five published books and the forthcoming _A Secret Cinema_ (re:press 2012), as well as several thousand articles and reviews since 1979. His work on film and the other arts has been translated into over twenty languages. He is Co-Editor of the new online journal _LOLA_. A thirty-year web archive of his critical writing will be launched late 2011.

**Michael McKimm** graduated from the Warwick Writing Programme in 2004 and won an Eric Gregory Award in 2007. In 2010 he was British Council Writer-in-Residence at the University of Iowa, as part of the International Writing Program. A poem from his first collection, _Still This Need_ , was selected for _Best of Irish Poetry 2010_ (Southword Editions, 2009). Poems have recently appeared, or are forthcoming, in _The Iowa Review_ , _Magma_ , _PN Review_ , _The SHOp_ , _Southword_ and an Irish writers special issue of _Prairie Schooner_ (University of Nebraska). www.michaelmckimm.co.uk

**David Morley** has won fourteen writing awards and a National Teaching Fellowship. His latest collection _Enchantment_ (Carcanet) was a Sunday Telegraph Book of the Year. His creative writing podcasts are among the most popular literature downloads on iTunes worldwide. He writes essays, criticism and reviews for _The Guardian_ and _Poetry Review_. He teaches at the University of Warwick where he is Professor of Writing. www.davidmorley.org.uk

**Catherine Noske** is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Monash University. Her interests lie mainly in contemporary representations of the Australian Gothic. She was an editor for _Verge 2011: The Unknowable_ (forthcoming), co-edited _Verge 2007_ , and has twice been published in _Verge_. She was awarded the prize for the best Creative Writing Honours thesis at Monash in 2008, and her short stories have been twice awarded the Elyne Mitchell Prize for Rural Women Writers. The farmers she worked for in Brittany were much nicer than their fictional counter-parts.

**Leila Rasheed** is a graduate of and a part-time tutor on the Warwick MA in Writing. She writes children's fiction: www.usborne.co.uk/bathsheba . She spends a lot of time in the Campania region of Italy.

**Bruce Scates** holds the Chair of History and Australian Studies at Monash University. He is the author of _Return to Gallipoli_ (Cambridge University Press, 2006), _A Place to Remember_ (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and a number of other historical studies of the memory of war. He is currently lead investigator on three Australian Research Council grants, including internal collaborations examining the history of Anzac Day and pilgrimages to WW2 traumascapes. Professor Scates is committed to new ways of exploring the past. 'A Gallipoli Story' is based on his forthcoming novel, _Dangerous Ground_ , to be published UWA Press in 2012.

**Ian Stewart** is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Warwick University. His awards include the Royal Society's Faraday Medal, the Gold Medal of the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications, the Public Understanding of Science Award of the AAAS, and the LMS/IMA Zeeman Medal. He has four honorary doctorates. His many books include _Mathematics of Life_ , _Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities_ , _Why Beauty is Truth_ , and _The Science of Discworld_ trilogy with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, appears frequently on radio and television, and does research on pattern formation and network dynamics.

**Jennifer Strauss** has had a long career as academic (mostly at Monash University), critic, editor and poet. Her collections of poetry are _Children and Other Strangers_ , _Winter Driving_ , _Labour Ward_ , and _Tierra del Fuego_ : _New and Selected Poems_. Represented in a number of anthologies of Australian poetry, she has herself edited the anthologies _The Oxford Book of Australian Love Poems_ and _Family Ties: Australian Poems of the Family_ as well as _The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore_. Other publications include co-editorship of The Oxford Literary History of Australia, monographs on poets Judith Wright and Gwen Harwood and numerous articles and reviews.

**Nicholas Tipple** first graduated from Warwick University in 1999 with a MChem (Hons) degree in chemistry and returned ten years later to do the part-time MA in Writing. He spent the intervening period working in industry, latterly at Sellafield, Cumbria. He still isn't sure how much the experience awakened his mind to the creative process, but the reprocessing micro-community has now become the centre-piece for his first novel. And it features the undead. At Warwick, he helped produce the 2010 MA anthology _Onwards_ ; project managed the 2011 edition, _The Draft_ , and he is a co-editor of the Monash-Warwick collaboration, _Verge 2011_.

**Dragan Todorovic** is a writer and multimedia artist whose publications include eight books of non-fiction, poetry and fiction. He has worked extensively in print and electronic media, both in Serbia (where he was born) and in Canada (where he moved in 1995). Among other projects, he wrote and directed several radio-plays and theatre shows, two TV documentaries and hosted over 150 live TV shows. _The Book of Revenge_ , his first work in English, won The Nereus Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize. _Diary of Interrupted Days_ , a novel, was short listed for several awards, including Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Amazon First Novel Award. He has been living in the UK since 2005. www.dragantodorovic.com.

**George Ttoouli** is an Honorary Teaching Fellow for the Warwick Writing Programme. He co-edits _Gists and Piths_ with Simon Turner, an experiment in poetry e-zining and is Editor of _Polarity Magazine UK_ , a surrealist experiment in bankruptcy, which won the 2011 Saboteur Award for best independent literary magazine. His debut collection of poetry is _Static Exile_ (Penned in the Margins, 2009), described as "a compelling case for the power of satire, dark comedy and surrealism in contemporary experimental / linguistically innovative poetry" (Steve Van-Hagen, Eyewear). He is about to embark on a doctorate in ecopoetry.

**Ndaeyo Uko** is writing a creative nonfiction book on the intrigues of the humanitarian catastrophe that confounded the world during the oil-fuelled Biafra war (1967-1970). This anthology piece is an excerpt from his Biafra project. His book, _Story Building: Narrative Techniques for News and Feature Writers_ (2007), received glowing endorsements from leading writers and narrative scholars, including experts from Harvard University and the New York Times. Dr Uko's awards include the British Chevening Fellowship, the Hubert Humphrey (Fulbright) Fellowship, the Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar Award, and a Monash University postgraduate scholarship to complete his PhD in Creative Writing.

**Robert J. C. Young** has occasionally published poetry since he was a teenager. In writing prose, he is interested in breaking down barriers between the creative and academic to develop new genres that belong to neither. The 'writings' section of his website hosts other different kinds of writing, including some poems. His academic publications, _White Mythologies: Writing History and the West; Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Culture, Theory and Race; Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction_ and _The Idea of English_ _Ethnicity_ are among the most influential books in postcolonial studies. Robert is Julius Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University.
