Amygdala

the sound of a hooter
comes from the very depth
of my brain gorge
like a skyward red alert
coming from a city street
mystique with night lights
as we see in a Hollywood film

is it a police car chasing
or an ambulance
or is it my own amygdala
scouting for new images
of unmitigated death?

the gong of my tears
raises a spectre of hell
but the water has
no quality of redemption.

---

Traffic

a set of gnashing teeth
is on the tail of a holy cow

holier than thou
and looking like a beak
in the company of prig

shining after morning brush
and flaunting, like fun
as if brighter than the sun

the point of crossing
is a level of attrition
where the upper and the lower
meet in a civil war

over who will take
a malicious peck
a racist dig
to put off the other
and get ahead.

---

Bishnupada Ray is an Associate Professor of English at the University of North Bengal, West Bengal, India. His poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies including Indian Literature, New Quest, Makata, Brown Critique, Muse India, Shabdaguchha, Revival, VerbalArt, Phenomenal Literature, The Challenge and A Hudson View. He won a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2009.

Balwant Gargi’s original short story – ‘Kaani Vand’ was written in Punjabi.

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Rulia arranged his sons’ weddings for the same day.  The brides-to-be were sisters. The older son would marry the older sister and the younger son would marry the younger one. 

Both families were happy with this relationship. It would save money and strengthen relations four-fold. The brothers would become brothers-in-law and the sisters would become sisters-in-law. Moreover, the wife of the older brother would be both bhabi–the wife of a brother—and saali, a wife’s sister. 

The older son, Balauri, was simple while his younger brother, Kishauri, was cunning. Only two years separated them: one was 19 and the other 21. However, it appeared as if Kishauri was the elder because everyone did as he ordered.

In the family’s wholesale store, Balauri would clean and weigh the grains while Kishauri collected the customers’ money.   Balauri was tall and lanky, with an unsightly cyst on his left eye, but was very conscientious. Kishauri was very handsome with sharp features, clever in conversation, but was irascible and angered easily.

Kishauri was habituated to his place of privilege, but when it came to their wedding preparations, in every respect the older brother, Balauri, was put first.  Balauri mounted the bridal mare first. The wives of his kinfolk applied kohl to his eyes first. The priest congratulated him first on his nuptials. As the younger brother, Kishauri was forced to countenance the fact that Balauri would be first to undergo the various wedding rituals. 

When the brothers’ marriage procession reached the village Bhuccho Mandi to pick up the brides, there was a single wedding band and one golden umbrella to celebrate their arrival. They would spend the next three days enjoying the hospitality of the brides’ family together. 

After bathing, the elder sister, Dwarki, and the younger, Godavri, were draped in capacious and elaborately embroidered shawls which hindered their ability to walk. The girls’ maternal uncle, per tradition, picked them up and placed them comfortably in their house.  Their girlfriends and the nain–who was the sisters’ attendant, coiffeuse and chaperone throughout the course of wedding rituals–braided their hair, dressed them in silken suits; covered their faces and heads under long veils heavy with embroidery; applied makeup, and draped the delicate chains supporting their cumbrous nose-ornaments across their cheeks and affixed them behind the ears. First Dwarki was seated upon the ritual reed mat and then Godavri. Both brothers were joyous. Later when the wedding procession set out to return to the brothers’ home, the same nain came along to take care of both brides.

Both brothers and their brides were seated in the car. Kishauri pinched the nain’s arm and placed a five rupee note in her palm saying, “Please have the veil removed.”

The nain looked at him askance and quipped, “What’s the hurry? You can’t drink scalding milk until it’s cooled off a bit!”

Kishauri thought to himself that this nain is very clever. He whispered in her ear “You won’t always be here to keep an eye on her. Just show me what she looks like!” Then he put another five rupee note in her hand.

Balauri sat in the front seat of the car gazing out and watching the jand and kicker trees flicker past. He deeply revered the marriage rituals and ceremonies and was even amenable to not seeing his wife’s face until the suhaag raat— the night when they were expected to consummate their marriage. For now, he sat aloof in the car looking out at the jand and kicker trees passing by as they drove on. 

Clutching the ten rupees tightly in her fist, the nain whispered into the ear of Kishauri’s bride that she should peek out from under her veil.  The bride moved her head nervously. The nain said softly “Why are you embarrassed? I am the one asking you to do this.”

Inwardly, Godavri wanted to see her husband but also wanted to maintain the appearance of modesty. As she turned her head and lifted her veil, Kishauri’s jaw dropped in shock. She had a fat nose, small eyes, was as dark as an eggplant, and her cheeks were pockmarked. “This is my wife?” Kishauri asked himself. His heart sank to his ankles. He felt as if his business had gone bankrupt and he was forced to auction off his home to pay his debts. “I have lost everything in a toss of the dice.” His head began to spin.

Balauri, blissfully unaware of his brother’s ruses, was bemused by the simple pleasures of watching the trees glide by.

Kishauri quickly wrestled his emotions under control and grabbed the nain’s feet with his hands in desperation, pleading that she “give me a flash of my sister-in-law’s face.” 

The nain turned her shoulders away to rebuff this wildly inappropriate request. Kishauri took a one-hundred rupee note from his pocket and placed it in her lap. The nain considered the demand briefly, then tucked the note into the purse tied to her skirt.  She  huddled up next to Dwarki in front, and whispered in her ear to ever-so-briefly glance back. Whereupon Dwarki slightly turned her shoulders, lifted her veil, and peered directly in Kishauri’s direction. He glimpsed her round, dark eyes, and searing beauty.  Beneath the nose-ornament, her pinkish lips glimmered. Dwarki quickly beshrouded her face once again with her veil. Kishauri quivered on this brief glimpse of her face. A dark shadow of connivance spread across his forehead as he weighed his options. Suddenly, his nerves settled, likely because he had decided how to fix this predicament.

Both brothers, with their wives in tow, reached their home. All the women and girls of the village gathered to ogle the new brides. The girls sang while the baraat band played very loudly.  Hearing their arrival, the sons’ mother came out of the main gate of the family haveli and began the paani vaarna ceremony, in which she vowed to take upon herself all the problems of her sons and their families. Standing at the main gate with a silver garvi containing water infused with grass, waved it over the heads of the couples, and drank from it. She repeated this seven times as the rituals demanded.

As the two sons stepped across the threshold of their home, the dhols began to beat loudly. The loud band and boisterous singing created pandemonium. Availing of the madness and the fact that no one in his home knew which bride was his, Kishauri forcefully pushed his wife Godavri away towards Balauri, then yanked Dwarki towards himself and announced, “This is my wife!”

The mother sprinkled the water upon the couples as the sons entered the haveli with the switched wives. Everything was lost in the clamorous singing. Balauri wanted to say something to voice resentment of his brother’s bullying, but his mother was already caressing the heads of Kishauri and Dwarki, while Godavri stood next to him with her head and face covered with a long veil. Both brides had identical makeup and were wearing identical embroidered shawls and velvet slippers.  None of the onlookers could have suspected that the wives had been switched. But Balauri knew. He felt as if scissors were stabbing his heart. His eye with the cyst began to twitch. He had no idea how he would endure this indignity. 

Both brothers, with their swapped wives, began the ritual wedding game of kangna khedna. In a large flat bowl, a mixture of milk and water glimmered. The nain was seated nearby and tossed a ring into the basin. Dwarki plunged her hennaed hand into the milky water while Kishauri immersed his manly hand into the same.  Duaarki found the ring and clasped it tightly in her fist. Kishauri hurriedly grabbed her hand and squeezed it, forcing the ring to slip from her grasp.  Both felt a titillating tingling as their hands met beneath the pearly water. With this innocent yet intimate game, their relationship blossomed.

When Balauri’s turn came, the nain again tossed the ring into the milky water. Godavri immediately found the ring and cunningly hid it. Then the simple-minded Balauri thrust his hand into the water searching for the ring.  When Godavri pulled her fist out of the water, Balauri tried to pry it open. Her face flushed red with bashful discomfort and he let go of her hand. From their inability to play this silly game, Balauri concluded that the hand he found belonged to a stranger, not his wife.

That night the brothers’ mother decorated their marital beds in separate rooms on the top floor of the haveli.  Balauri remained outside, quietly sitting on the garden footpath pondering whether, inside that room, his bride was waiting for him.  Finally, he resolved to go inside.

An oil lamp was burning in a niche inside the room, and Godavri was sitting on the floor. When Balauri took her hand, she cowered to one side. From under her veil, he heard her say “Do not touch me.” 

With those words, Godavri made it abundantly obvious that she was not his wife.  Meanwhile, in the other room, his little brother was merrily consummating his marriage with Dwarki, rather than his own wife.

Godavri’s words felt like a hot knitting needle piercing his chest. Balauri felt oddly helpless and could not see clearly through the foggy haze before his eyes. He began to tremble and sob heavy tears.

Balauri left the room and went outside to sit upon the garden footpath once again. He sat on that footpath throughout the night even as celestial constellations migrated across the sky. Hundreds of thoughts crossed his mind. All the injustices he’s suffered throughout his life appeared before him. 

His younger brother had oppressed him throughout his life. When the boys played marbles, Kishauri would always snag the ones with beautiful colors. When they played shells and walnuts, Kishauri would toss the shells into a pit or throw them across the road while keeping all the walnuts for himself. When gathering plums from the trees, Balauri would climb the tree and shake them free. The ripe plums would fall to Kishauri standing below, ready to fill his lap with the choicest plums, while leaving the worm-eaten and unripe ones for Balauri. Balauri tolerated all these outrages because Kishauri was his little brother. Over time, his little brother increasingly got the upper hand in every matter. 

Little by little, Balauri acquiesced to play second fiddle in the household. He was given second place in each and every matter. When their father divvied up sweets, Kishauri always had first dibs on the piles. For all intents and purposes, their parents considered Kishauri to be the head of the household. By acquiescing, Balauri’s sense of self slowly but surely withered. Because of the cyst on his eye, no one in the household ever regarded him as attractive, or even a sentient person with feelings and emotions. 

Balauri spent his entire life with this inferiority complex. But now, after his little brother snatched his bride as if she were yet another pile of sweets, he could suffer no more affronts. He couldn’t even bring himself to speak of this litany of tyrannies much less complain about this most recent indecency with his wife. This was the ultimate assault on his very existence. It was the final debasement which shattered his spirit into myriad scattered shards.

Balauri abruptly stood up from the footpath, descended the stairs, unlocked the main gate, and left the premises.

Dawn was breaking when the mother went upstairs with two covered glasses of milk and found Balauri’s marital bed empty and Godavri sitting on the floor.

The entire household was in turmoil over where Balauri had disappeared.

Two days passed, then five. Balauri had still not returned. His parents asked relatives whether they had received letters; they dispatched a man to visit the in-laws; they even sent telegrams to two or three of his old friends. Finally, they notified the police station. His panic-stricken parents searched high and low but there was no trace of Balauri to be found.

After ten days, a police constable appeared at the door and informed them that a man’s body had been discovered in an abandoned well in Rohi. A goat-herder had smelled a wretched stench emanating from the well. It was Balauri’s corpse.

Neither sister knew which one had become a widow.

---

About Balwant Gargi: Balwant Gargi (b. 4 December 1916 – d. 22 April 2003) is perhaps most known for his dramas in the Punjabi language as well his theater direction. However, he was also a scholar and prolific novelist and short story writer. In 1962, Gargi was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award, which is the highest Indian literary award, for his play Rang Manch. In 1972, he received the Padma Shri (1972). In 1998 he was bestowed the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in Punjabi Playwriting in 1998. Gargi is one of the few artists who received both the Sahitya Akademi and Sangeet Natak Akademi awards. In 2017, the Government of India officially released postage stamps to commemorate the birth-centenary of Balwant Gargi (1916-2016). 

About the Translator: C. Christine Fair is an Associate Professor within the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  She studies political and military events of South Asia and travels extensively throughout Asia and the Middle East. Her books include In Their Own Words: Understanding the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (OUP 2019); Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (OUP, 2014); and Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States (Globe Pequot, 2008).  She has published creative pieces in The Bark, The Dime Show Review, Clementine Unbound, Awakenings, Fifty Word Stories, The Drabble, Sandy River Review, Sonder Midwest, Black Horse Magazine, Furious Gazelle, Hyptertext, Barzakh Magazine and Bluntly Magazine among others. Her visual poetry has appeared in Awakenings, pulpMAG and several forthcoming pieces in Abstract: Contemporary Expressions, The Indianapolis Review, Typehouse Literary Magazine and PCC Inscape Magazine. She causes trouble in multiple languages.

Acknowledgements: The translator is grateful to Galwant Gargi’s son, Manu Gargi, for giving me permission to translate this story as well as for providing thoughts about how his father may have translated this story. I’m also grateful to my long-time friend and collaborator, Gurdit Singh, for being willing to discuss aspects of translating this story. I’m also grateful to my various Punjabi instructors over the years, especially Seema Miglani of the American Institute of Indian Studies program in Chandigarh.

My harbour days are full of a sameness that, secretly, I enjoy. Old women holding their grandchildren on their laps while the mothers and fathers swim, snorting, blowing bubbles like river horses. I listen as Grandma talks to a grandson of two, maybe three years old, as if he’s an adult. “And what are your plans for today? Shouldn’t be fearful of the water, you know. Learn to swim. Important, don’t you think?” And he, nodding a little too fast—more a bobbing than a nodding—says, “Yes, Gama,” as hand in hand, they move back into the shade, under an umbrella the size of a small car.

Meanwhile, a parade of eager tourists ambles by. The Germans and the English own the same body type, fleshy and red with a splash of tattoo here and there, the men shouldering strangely small backpacks, as if they are on a trek, a journey, and will most certainly need supplies.

Two Russians stop in front of my table to argue: red-faced, more tattoos, pointing to the sky, as if this particular argument is up. Mysteriously, it isn’t long before they both seem to run out of argument at the same time, their red draining away, moustaches quivering; they continue on their way, one that way, the other this way, while the one with the biggest tattoo tries one last time to make a point. I hear the word Crimea, a finger pointing straight up, but the other will have none of it, and shrugs, walking faster.

When he begins his screaming, his older sister takes his toy from him and walks off to stand in the shade under the palms. The punishment is simple enough and he crumbles to the ground, wailing. But this elder sister is a good one, and patiently she waits for him to right himself. Meanwhile he continues to squirm on the pavement, rolling in and out of the grass, red-faced, the noonday sun relentless. She waits in the shade with his toy. In the end, slowly, painfully, he loses the struggle, this clash of wills, and like some old man, rights himself piece by piece, one leg at a time, before making his way towards her, tear-lines streaking his cheeks, along with assorted snot. When he finally arrives at her place in the shade, she does three things: wipes his nose, gives him a drink of water, and picks him up. Immediately, as if this play acting is not as easy as it looks, he lays his head on her shoulder. And she smiles a smile that has nothing to do with victory.

Like always at the old harbour fort there are tourists who think nothing of spending five euros to walk around a square mud building that, in places, might have once been painted red, maybe orange. Men step out of the shade to offer their services as guides, to show them the hidden secrets of the fort. ‘Aphrodite slept here, her brother there. A roman general was assassinated there, and look,’ pointing at a hole in the wall, ‘a pirate’s cannon ball struck here. See that? See that?’

As I get ready to leave, the dark-haired woman, with cigarette and beer two tables over, turns to give me a look that says you aren’t as important as you think you are, which hurts my feelings, but never mind because I smile anyway, even though by now she is looking somewhere else, blowing cigarette smoke into the air.

In the beginning, when I didn’t know any better, I walked to the harbour and back every day. It took most of the morning and was exhausting, leaving me weak, sore-legged and unhealthy for days. However, they say that’s a good sign, sleeping muscles waking up, being used. Now, I walk to the harbour three times a week, and the vendors know me and no longer urge me to buy, to come closer to take a good look at their seashells and sponges, special all-day fishing trips. ‘How about a seat on a glass bottom boat?’ Now when they see me coming, they look the other way, at the newlyweds behind me. Although in the middle of the day, the outdoor cafes are too hot and windy and squirmy with cats, when the sun sets they are almost perfect, except for the cats. The cats have no problem clawing one another over scraps that the children throw down, thinking it is all good catty fun. At sunset the lanterns are turned on, big yellow globes necklacing the harbour rim. It is quite a sight, and families will come from miles around to see the twinkle of electricity. 

It all started in the hills above Paphos, in the village of Tala. The telephone I had inherited from Mrs. Agnes Collar, who, at 85, died of a stroke, doesn’t ring like other telephones; it sounds something like a tinny clatter, as if something isn’t quite right, or getting ready to be wrong. And when it does ring, the neighbor’s dog howls, and nearby crows swoop down to see what’s what. Its metallic chattering sets off an aching in my chest, a throbbing in my wrist.

The call is from Dr Khan’s assistant, who, I remember, as being strangely long and tall, who has perfectly square white teeth and clawy fingernails, whose purple lipstick leans off her lips. I secretly wondered why any doctor would have someone like that all dressed in blue working the front desk, saying things like ‘Good morning’ or ‘May I help you?’ or ‘Do you have an appointment?’ 

 “Hello, is this Mr. Courier? James Courier?”

“Yes, of course, but it’s John. Who is this. . . ? But wait, I know this voice.”

“Of course, John. Yes, you are in Cyprus now, is that right?”

“Yes, yes, but I know this voice. Who is this?”

When she tells me, I say, “Yes, that’s right,” and she thinks that’s funny and I can see her laughing in her long blue uniform. “Anyway, Dr Khan would like a word with you.”

That’s what she said ‘a word’. And I am almost certain I answered with a ‘Fine,’ or ‘Good’ or ‘Yes”, maybe even an “OK.’ However Dr Khan’s word turned out to be many, and it was not pleasant news. He had just gotten around to taking a look at my test results of three weeks ago and there appears to be something like a cancer with a small c. That’s what he said, “with a small c.” I could tell he’d practiced that with others, this, ‘with a small c,’ as he waited to see if I thought it might be funny, reassuring, comforting. When I answered, “Tell me more,” I could also tell that that wasn’t what others had said. And so he told me what it meant, and in the end I grew weary of hearing about my own body and wanted him to stop, but what I really said was, “I see.” Of course I didn’t but there is only so much a man can take at one sitting, with one long distance phone call, as I watched the big yellow cat walk across the patio, a cat that nobody seems to own, take credit for, but everybody feeds. After I say my good-byes, I immediately stretch out on the cool marble Cyprus floor and go to sleep—if not real sleep then something like it. When I wake, the room is still a warm yellow afternoon, and I have to remember why I am on the floor, and when I do I don’t believe it, thinking I must have dreamed Dr Khan’s words; some dreams are like that: more real than the stuff of dreams. I look at the telephone: harmless, the clock on the wall, the window and beyond, the summery saffron of Cyprus in June, and by now a cat-less patio. All I can think is: That was a close one. Even saying it out loud, “A close one, like, dodging bullets or a near car accident.”

Later, the sun now in the trees, a shadowy porch, I call Doctor Khan just to be sure, to double-check, but by now the time is all wrong, and I hear her dull citation, “Dr Khan’s office is closed right now, but if you care to…” 

That night there is a fire in the hills. I can see the blush from the porch. That, and there is a light mist of ash, not even ash but a grainy falling, and that brings my neighbours out of their houses to point, to look into the far off treetops to see which way the wind is blowing, to call their children to come outside and see this. The Russian family with the poodle think nothing of the fire that has grown from blush to glow. They are in their pool with the poodle splashing, laughing at what can only be some kind of Russian joke.

My neighbours have bigger, greener yards than I do, and whenever I walk by they are busily grooming, watering, raking, weeding, snipping here and there. We say Good Morning, mentioning how hot it has been, will be, could be. To talk sports and politics means I would have to slow, even stop walking, and we are not those sorts of neighbours. And so I stride on, as they, wiping the sweat from their brow, go back to watering, trimming; all the while their dog watches me suspiciously, as if I have all the makings of a potential enemy. 

With night and fire in the hills, I have more time to think about my ‘cancer with a small c’, and the more I think about it the more I recall what Dr Khan said: ‘Not serious now, but could become serious and dangerous. It’s a small c now and you want to keep it that way, know what I mean? Keep it that way. Of course there are medicines to take, exercises to do.

Exercise is important, you know. If nothing else, walking. Everybody knows this. In fact, some studies indicate walking is the key—always has been. That, and fasting. Fasting and walking. Hello? Are you still there? Exercise is everything at your age. Exercise, walk, swim. Can you swim? Never mind, something like a dog paddle is good enough. Three, four times a week. Over the long run it can make a difference, you’ll see. Make a difference. So, is there anything else?”

I answered, “No, that about covers it.”

“Right, Ok. Until next time, or not.”

I try rereading the newspaper, but my heart is not in it, so I turn off the light, and with Dr. Khan, the fire in the hills and the big yellow cat crowding my thoughts, toss and turn until the whiskey-light of dawn.

When I awake, the cat is on the patio statute-like, waiting. As a reward, I toss it a piece of yesterday’s ham, and we are friends for another day. 

This is the day I decide to ignore the harbour and go the other direction, to the top of the hill. At the top of the hill is a small shop that sells candy, newspapers, cigarettes, bottles of water. Not even a shop really, more like an outpost on the edge of the wilderness. The man who sits there all day, every day, has some of the yellowest fingers I have ever seen, and when he smiles it has nothing to do with being happy. There is a small plastic table with three plastic chairs under a nearby olive tree and as I sit, his radio playing, I watch the lizards that are minding their own lizardly business and lazing in the sunshine. I watch an ant dragging the carcass of a bumble bee, three maybe four times its size. How does it do that? It has latched on to the bee’s body, pulling it over pebbles, dirt and sand, stopping every now and again to catch its anty breath.

Like always, once at the harbour, I take a left at the scuba diving club and do my short walk to Andre’s café at the end of the street. Andrei is the waiter who works there, who never seems to have a day off, who sits in a chair in the shade, under a red umbrella, reading a magazine, who will only come to your table if you motion to him. I am the only one who seems to appreciate Andrei, and by now once he sees me, he brings me black coffee with bread and cheese, and we don’t have to say a word.

 The town of Paphos is thataway, a dusty sprawl of wheat-colored houses and sometimes buildings, fields and olive trees, next to the bluegreen Mediterreanean that stretches hazily to the edge of the world. Over there, beyond the goaty hills and olive trees, in the shallows, is Aphrodite’s birthplace, and someone official has placed a sign at the foot of the gigantic rock that asks you please not to climb the rock, the goddess’s sacred birthplace, the goddess of love. Of course people swarm over the rock, a dusty path zigzagging to the top.

And so, to keep this cancer with a small c small, even smaller, I walk. When I return, the yellow porch-cat is usually waiting, watching me huff up the drive, watchful, as if wondering what took me so long and oh by the way, what’s to eat?

It has been weeks since Dr Khan’s phone call, and of course right in the middle of thinking this, that afternoon, the telephone rings and two crows almost immediately swoop down to the porch. Dr Khan says hello, asking how I am, how’s the weather, what’s the exchange rate, “I need a vacation myself,” until finally, he asks, “You know, we all make mistakes, James, right? Human nature.”

“John, my name is John.”

“Yes, yes, of course, John.”

“You said something about a mistake?”

“Yes, a mistake. It happens. It happens to us all, you, me, everybody.”

“A mistake?”

When the neighbour’s dog starts barking, the crows step off the porch, flapping loudly.

“About this cancer stuff. The lab people tell me it’s never happened before, you know. This is the first time. That’s what they said: ‘first time. First time for everything, right?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“Well, long story short, they tell me your tests were wrong. About you and cancer, they got it wrong. Said it was a computer glitch. A misreading. That’s the word they used ‘misreading,’” Happens to the best of us, you know. So sorry about this, James, and that’s why I am calling to give you the good news. A good mistake, right?”

There is a harsh crackle of long distance static that eats up his voice, and so I ask, “Sorry what? One more time.”

Laughing, as if there is something funny with having to repeat himself, ‘I said they got it wrong, you don’t have anything like cancer, never did. Imagine that, never did.”

The yellow cat is at the screen door, peering in, its tail flicking like a second pulse.

“Can you hear me? Hello, James, you there?”

“Yes, I hear you. Yes. A glitch you say, misreading?”

Suddenly, Dr Khan is no more and his long, blue assistant is on the line, saying, “Hello, who is this? James in Cyprus, is it? James, is that you?”

I have not stopped walking. In fact, if anything I do it more often. Even when I feel terrible and have headaches, sore legs, back spasms, never mind his cancer with a small c I trudge down to the harbour. And so the next day when I am at Andre’s and he brings me my coffee with toast and jam and I say, “Nice day. Clear sky, beautiful sun,” he stops to look at me and then up at the blue sky and then back to me, shrugging, before returning to his chair under the umbrella with a magazine.

---

For the last sixteen years Craig Loomis has been teaching English at the American University of Kuwait in Kuwait City. Over the years, he has had his short fiction published in such literary journals as The Iowa Review, The Colorado Review, The Prague Revue, Sukoon Magazine, The Maryland Review, The Bombay Review, The Absurdist, The Louisville Review, Bazaar, The Rambler, The Los Angeles Review, Five on the Fifth, The Prairie Schooner, and others. 

TOKYO, JAPAN 1990

“Japanese business ees very different,” said Hamaguchi, president of Japan Publishing Company. He was a portly man in a light green double-breasted sport coat. He spoke in a low voice, as stern as a priest. “Japanese system ees very relaxing, but you must work hard. You must work seexty seconds of every minute.” 

I sat in Hamaguchi’s office with the other new salesman, and we nodded enthusiastically. 

“I promise you all unlimited salary,” Hamaguchi continued, spreading his hands wide as if he were offering the pearls of heaven. “You will each determine your salary with your sales quota…” He paused to let this sink in. “You must learn sales technique. I will explain eet.” He picked up a copy of Tokyo Time magazine and held it up in front of each one of us so we could get a good look. “Companies which already advertise are thee best possibility.” 

“I bought a new Tokyo English Yellow Pages so I can look for prospects.” I took the phonebook out of my briefcase and flipped through the pages. The display ads flashed and disappeared. 

Hamaguchi ignored me. He slurped at a cup of tea and wiped his mouth with his fingers. “Now we are all part of the company. And I am company president. What is best for the company is best for all of us. And we have company pin, and meishi! Business cards for each one…” From another drawer, Hamaguchi took out four boxes and handed one to each of us. “In Japan, you must have meishi to be professional.” 

I opened my box, pulled out a card, and read my name in katakana, with the first and family names reversed. Below was my title: “Advertising Director.” I felt a quiver of excitement then. The other new salesmen seemed equally pleased. 

The cards were printed in English on one side and Japanese on the other. In the lower left corner of each card was a red and black J.P.C. symbol, a stick-figured body with a smiling round face gazing at a magazine—very un-Japanese. But it didn’t matter. I had a good job now, a real Tokyo business job. 

“I wish all of you good luck,” said Hamaguchi, clenching his fists like a boxing coach. 

“You must work hard. You must push beeg for sales. You must be… persistent. Then you will be a success.” 

Hamaguchi had dictated to us exactly what to say when we telephoned a prospect company. He had made each of us write out a script, the “sales pitch.” I sat down at my desk and scanned through my phone book. On page eleven was a full-color advertisement for Sako Department Store with a photo of three happy foreigners buying a kimono from a bowing Japanese salesgirl. I dialed the number and read my lines directly from the sales script: “Good Afternoon. This is Japan Publishing Company—” 

“Mushi mushi??” asked the telephone girl. 

“Yes, I am calling from Japan Publishing Company and—” 

“Mushi mushi??”

I saw that Hamaguchi was watching me, assessing my performance. This was the first sales call by one of his new employees. 

“Please may I speak with the advertising manager?” I continued, reading the second line of my script. 

“Mushi mushi?”

I didn’t answer. 

I heard some clicks on the line. Evidently I was being transferred to an English-speaking manager. Now I was getting somewhere. I gave Hamaguchi a nod to indicate good progress. 

A new voice took the call. “Mushi mushi?”

“Yes, I—”

“Mushi mushi?”

This was ridiculous. Almost a Monty Python gag… So I switched to Japanese to tell the girl what company I was calling from—I hadn’t studied two years for nothing: “Kochira wa Nihon Shuppansha desu,” 

“Hai!” She acknowledged. 

“—You must speak English!” Hamaguchi interrupted. He stepped closer and pressed his fingers like the teeth of a rake onto the top of my desk. I covered the mouth piece and whispered, “But they don’t understand.” 

“Then you must hang up.” 

“Thank you,” I said, and hung up the phone like like an obedient little boy. “I was just going to use Japanese to try to get the advertising manager on the line.” 

Hamaguchi shook his head. “I know this must be… dee-fi-cult for you to understand. You must speak only English. Japanese are very impressed to get call from foreigner. You must expect that they will speak English.” 

I was getting a little tired of Hamaguchi’s use of the verb must. “Well what happens if they don’t understand and keep repeating ‘mushi mushi mushi’?” 

“Then you must say Thank You and make other call.” Suddenly, Hamaguchi turned around to face the rest of the office staff. “I weel be back at three o’clock,” he announced, as if declaring a summit meeting. And without another word, he walked out of the office. 

I sat perfectly still for a moment. I didn’t like this “English-only” rule. I didn’t like it at all. I had come to Tokyo to speak Japanese. To learn about the culture. Not to speak English to people who didn’t understand… Did Hamaguchi know from experience that only companies which had English-speaking staff would want to advertise in English-language publications? But that didn’t make sense. Sako Department Store had that huge ad in the Tokyo English yellow pages… 

With a glance to my right and left to make sure no one was listening, I dialed Sako again. I disobeyed Hamaguchi, spoke again in Japanese, and requested to speak with the advertising manager: “Senden bu no senkininsha onegai shimasu?” 

Instantly, the line was transferred to the advertising department. I explained about Tokyo Time and set an appointment with a “Mr. Arisaka” for that afternoon. Then I couldn’t keep a smile from starting. I bit my lip to prevent it. I slipped the advertising samples into my brief case and stuck the company pin through my lapel. It was my first appointment, my Japanese corporate baptism. 

On the ritzy Harumi Dori, land values were the highest in the world. It was said that you could lay a thousand-dollar bill on the sidewalk and the ground below it would be worth ten times more. I walked past a number of swanky department stores, glittering jewelry stores, high-fashion retailers and, of all things, a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, complete with a picture of the smiling myopic Colonel. KFC customer lines stretched out the door and into the street. Then I saw it—SAKO DEPAATO! It wasn’t quite as big as the other department stores but looked classier, with polished brass trim around the windows. Two enormous gleaming doors opened automatically to let me in.

A sparkling chrome and gold perfume counter stood close to the entry. It was staffed by two picture-perfect Japanese girls, exactly the same height. They stood at attention, hands clasped, posed still as mannequins. 

“Excuse me,” I said. 

Together, the girls swiveled their heads to look at me. They gave automatic bows. But one of them seemed to be smirking. Was this just my imagination? Was I just nervous?

I spoke Japanese in slow, solemn tones. “Where is Arisaka-san’s office? He is the advertising manager. We have an appointment.” 

At the mention of Arisaka’s name, there were rapid inhalations. Both girls’ expressions changed. Their eyes opened wider. They leaned forward, utterly alert and completely respectful. Now I was royalty. I was anointed. I knew Arisaka-san! 

“Hai!” said one of the girls. I wasn’t sure which one had spoken. She bowed and asked me to “sho-sho omatte”—to have a short, honorable wait. Then she bowed three more times and ran over to another counter. Clearly she knew that I wasn’t just a stupid tourist looking for smelly perfume. I was a revered advertising executive with keys to the city. 

Three more clerks bowed at once. “Hai! Hai! Hai!” they said and escorted me, the esteemed manager-meeter, to a chain of private offices in the back. I was ushered to a green leather couch and given a cup of tea for another honorable wait, while the receptionist made a few frantic phone calls involving frenetic whispers and worried glances, as if I might buy the entire store—building, property and all—right out from under her feet. But when she looked up again, I gave her a calm smile, a reassurance that she needn’t fret. 

Then a younger man escorted me to another office and introduced me to two salarymen. Slowly and deliberately, as if in a Zen ritual, I pulled out my business card and offered it with two hands in the polite Japanese way, so the printing faced the receiver. The men stared at the cards. The one on the left tilted his head in a parakeet’s twitch and then slid a business card out of his jacket pocket, which he offered with only one hand. It was a gesture soon duplicated by the other man.

I studied their cards. I had read that after careful consideration, the higher-ranking person’s card was supposed to be placed above the other cards on the discussion table, available for easy reference during the meeting. But I couldn’t tell who was in charge here, so I lay the cards side-by-side. Really, I could tell only one thing from these cards: Neither of these men was Arisaka. My abdomen tensed, and I fought back the queasiness in my stomach.

The first man spoke in halting English. “We are… very sorry. But Mr. Arisaka-san had emergency meeting. He has asked us to listen to your proposal.” 

“Thank you,” I said, and bent my head forward in a little “seated bow” which I had designed myself, but seemed appropriate. I took the advertising samples out of my briefcase and lay them in front of the men. There were copies of the last two issues of Tokyo Time, a letter from one of the big Japanese hotels expressing how much the guests liked the magazine, a notarized statement from U.S. Ambassador Mike Mansfield which said he had read the magazine, and a pamphlet detailing the number of copies distributed per month.

Then I started my sales talk. 

The Japanese men nodded. They gave a big nod when I showed them an ad in last month’s Tokyo Time from Seibu Depaato, one of their competitors. And they nodded again when I pointed to the distribution list and tapped my ballpoint near the list of hotels. I might actually sell an ad, I realized. Yes, I could do it! 

I forced myself not to talk too fast. I Japanized my English with throaty syllables, so the men would be sure to understand. I nodded a lot and made earnest expressions and shook my samples. Finally, I brought out the contract and showed all of the different ad spaces and types…

But the men nodded enthusiastically at each space—and I knew it was all fake. I knew I had no chance. They were nodding mechanically, agreeing automatically like yes-men sidekicks of an inane talk show host. Their nods were not signs of acceptance; they were signs of understanding, validating each point of my presentation. There was no consent. But I thrust my big question, anyway. I was tired of all this nodding and grunting. Now the men had to choose. “So what advertisement size would be appropriate for Sako department store?” I asked bluntly. 

“Yes,” said the English speaker. “We are… very impressed by your publication. Our advertising budget will start in July. We shall consider your Tokyo Time.” 

My cheeks burned. My shins perspired. It was stupid of me to think that I could convince them to buy. The Great Arisaka wasn’t even there. And Japanese businessmen were famed for making decisions very slowly. All facets of a proposal had to be considered by all possible members of the organization. All aspects had to be analyzed and re-analyzed. Then there was a concerted hgroup action. Of course I shouldn’t feel too bad that I hadn’t gotten an immediate decision, right? 

But there was another possibility. Maybe the men simply weren’t interested. Maybe they were just stalling for three months under the guise of “consideration.” Pinpoints of heat flashed on the back of my neck. I took a deep breath. “Thank you for considering my proposal,” I said. 

“Oh, you are most welcome. It ees our pleasure.” They smiled at me, then at each other. “But don’t you need more customers before July?”

The men’s faces fell, sagged like leaking water bottles. “Yes… of course,” said the speaking one. “We will consider your proposal, very carefully.” 

I was beaten. “Thank you,” I said, and felt the blood rush to my temples. 

We all stood up. The non-speaker bowed first. He must be the lower-ranking one. The higher-ranking English speaker bowed afterwards. I made sure that I bowed last, but started my bow just after the English-speaker so my presumptuousness would be more subtle. 

***

On the top floor of the NDD building, the company cafeteria was surprisingly spacious. Ferns and paintings dotted the walls. A panoramic window offered spectacular views of the city. I sat with Mr. Otosaki, a middle-aged advertising manager and his assistant Miss Kawano, highcheek-boned and high-breasted. A pair of heavy reading glasses covered Miss Kawano’s eyes. 

After our meeting, Otosaki had insisted that I “enjoy” an NDD lunch even though it was 3:30 in the afternoon. I wasn’t hungry. Actually I was a bit ill, but I agreed with an artificial smile and a compliant bow. 

The waiter brought our bowls of rice and a plate of tsunomono bean appetizer.He gave me a curious glance.

“Do you like Japanese food?” asked Miss Kawano, as if to take my attention away from the waiter. She closed her mouth in a round, lipsticked smile. 

Before I could answer, Otosaki clarified the question with a hearty laugh and a slight lean forward. “Do you like Japanese rice?”

“Yes oishi— delicious,” I said. 

Miss Kawano nodded in quick, jerking motions and shot a fast look at Otosaki, as if my answer had proven something which they had discussed before. 

“Yes Japanese rice is best,” said Otosaki. “Japanese rice is sticky rice. Sticks to chopstick. Better to eat. Better for taste,” he explained.

When the waiter served a chicken plate to each of us, I decided to ingratiate myself as much as possible with my possible new clients. I spread both hands over my plate. “I like all Japanese food,” I said, “Sashimi and bean candy and natto,” which was a particularly smelly fermented bean paste that I’d never tried, but was known to make most foreigners puke.

Kawano and Otosaki exchanged another glance, almost an “I-told-you-so” look. But I really wasn’t sure just what they were affirming. 

“Miss Kawano has traveled a lot. She has lived in Bu-ritain and Fu-ransu,” said

Ototsaki. 

“Good.” I tried to give a lively nod. Of course we had to know each other’s entire 

background before we could do business. That was the Japanese custom, right? Business partners had to have total knowledge about each other to engender trust. And in my case, they had to know the exact degree of my love for Japan. They would exhaust all other topics of conversation and then maybe, just maybe, Otosaki would mention the contract. I would wait. I knew how to wait. 

“I had Furenchu boifurendo,” offered Miss Kawano, wide-eyed and breathless as if I would be eager to hear this. 

“Oh, great. Congratulations…” What the hell was I supposed to say? 

“Are you married?” asked Otosaki, inhaling a piece of chicken. 

“No.” I shook my head. 

“You are single?” he persisted. 

“Yes.”

Otosaki laughed and ordered some beer from the waiter. “For better or for worse, Miss Kawano is single, too…” This time Otosaki didn’t look me in the eyes. He pinched a big pile of rice with his chopsticks. Miss Kawano rearranged her napkin and gave me a suggestive, heart-shaped smile and a slight lift of her eyebrows. 

I was embarrassed. My thighs were hot. Of course! I was being set up. Like on The Dating Game. Miss Kawano had lived abroad and had foreign boyfriends. She was known to desire Western men. Her only option was to find a Western boyfriend, like me, who just happened to be there at the right place at the right time. And Otosaki, like a favorite uncle, was helping her out. 

Otosaki gave Miss Kawano another optimistic nod and a soft grunt, and she adjusted her napkin again. “Do you like music?” he asked me. 

Now they were closing in… It was time to be aggressive. Time for an affirmative defense. I would ask Miss Kawano a question. “What kind of music do you like?” I inquired. 

She quivered and lay a hand on the table to steady herself. Her new suitor had put her to examination. Now she had to perform. “Oh…” Her chest rose. “Oh I don’t know…” She had a dazed look as if I had asked her about the wonders of the universe, the fabled Spring of Youth or the Mouth of Eden. Shaking, she set down her chopsticks. “It ees, difficult, to eat and to speak, English.” 

“Ummm…” I made an understanding grunt and nodded consolingly. I glanced at Otosaki. He was fully engaged in eating chopsticked mounds of food, and for all intents and purposes seemed to have left the two prospective lovers, Miss Kawano and I, to our own devices. Otosaki was indeed our chaperone—but a permissive one… His duties were finished. Now he was convinced that his two kindlings were mature enough to go at it alone. 

The beer arrived and Otosaki filled a glass for me, then poured one for himself as well. Miss Kawano wasn’t given any beer. “Drink, please,” said Otosaki. Simultaneously, we each took a sip of the frothy beer and lowered our glasses. But a millisecond before Otosaki’s glass met the table, he spoke. “I’m sorry, we are not interested in your advertising proposal.” Then in almost a continuance of the same sentence, he asked, “How was your lunch?” 

I was caught by surprise. I managed to mutter, “Oh, very good… Thanks,” and reached for my beer again. It was a sudden grab to cover my blush. 

Not interested. The words echoed through my head. Not interested in your proposal. Obviously Otosaki had waited until the beer was served, as if we were all out drinking in the evening. Only in the presence of alcohol was it possible for him to speak frankly. So he had engineered an entire replica of an evening out, complete with female companionship. When businessmen went to drink together, often the biggest deals were made—or unmade. One of my Japanese guidebooks advised that you literally pour your drinks on the floor (spilling them discreetly, of course), so you wouldn’t be too drunk to catch the flicker of business revelations, quick and fleeting as falling stars. 

Well, if this was an evening out, and we were all drunk and candid, I could speak openly too, right? I would try. “Your competitor, KTT, Kokusai Telephone, already advertises in our publication,” I said. 

Otosaki held his chicken bone down with one chopstick, and began to scrape off the fat with the other. 

“Their market is exactly the same as NDD’s,” I continued. 

With two fingers, in a gentle slide, Otosaki moved his beer glass so it was precisely spaced between the beer bottle and his plate. Then he swiveled it so the grease mark from his mouth faced him directly. 

I stopped talking. I sat perfectly still. It was no use. I was being ignored. They had given an answer already, and no amount of evidence would change their minds. If I kept talking, I was only alienating them, convincing them that I was a rikutsuppoi, a “reason freak” who speaks in repulsive cold logic. 

At that moment, in a surreal epiphany, I saw myself as forever separate from the Japanese, like a lumbering cauliflower-eared boxer in a stadium of slim, agile karate champions wearing matching gi… Yes, I could learn Japanese ways and I could understand the language, but would I ever really fit in? 

After lunch, I escaped the moist lingering eyes of Miss Kawano with a series of bows, all the way to the elevator. There I was saved by the whirring, humming close of its doors. 

***

At my first Nissan appointment, Tokyo Time magazine had only gotten a lukewarm reception. I was given a tamamushi-colored decision. Like the tamamushi beetle’s iridescent back, this kind of response reflected a different color depending upon which way you looked at it. Miss Ishi, the early-thirtyish advertising representative with an odd face but a very curvy figure, had told me that she had to discuss my offer with the “Advertising Team.” But I had pressed her to meet with me again in two weeks. And now it was time. It was the final moment.

I stepped off the elevator on the sixth floor of the Nissan building in Ginza. In front of me lay several partitioned corridors, maze-like and circuitous. I turned left but soon found myself wandering through unfamiliar offices. These were huge wide rooms crammed with tiny desks and mounds of paper work. I turned around and paced toward the elevators—or where I thought the elevators should be. There was only a dead-end corridor. So I headed back around the other way. Finally, a bowing young Nissanite tapped me on the shoulders and, polite and contrite as a choir boy, pointed me down the right passageway. He followed me until I was safely seated in just the right place, behind a potted tree, and brought a cup of dark green tea. 

The tea was bitter, absinthian, which I took as a compliment. Nissan assumed that I was Japanized enough to like strong ocha, green tea, and that I wouldn’t demand only coffee like a pushy foreigner. 

Miss Ishi hurried over, rushing as much as she could in a pencil skirt which forced her into a knock-kneed trot. Her lower lip pouted a bit as she said, “Ummm… We are very sorry that after, considering—”

“—Oh!” I interrupted. “I brought something very interesting to show you.” I wasn’t going to give her the time to reject the contract. 

“You did?” she asked, cocking her head. 

“Yes…” I opened my magazine to a glossy Mercedes advertisement, rolling back the pages and spreading them like a sacred scroll. 

“No.” Miss Ishi shook her nose. “We have already seen this.” 

“You saw this two-page ad?” 

“I theenk you showed us smaller one.” 

“Oh, because I wanted to show you the large ad,” I stalled—then I had an idea, a grand idea. “This is the advertisement size that Toyota was very interested in…” 

“TOYOTA!” Miss Ishi twitched into instant alertness. She stood very still and even seemed to stop breathing. 

“Yes,” I said again, trying not to laugh, “Because with Toyota, we had discussed the full-size, two-page ad.” —Which wasn’t entirely true. I did have an appointment with Toyota’s advertising company and they had given me the usual answer: They were considering it. But if the Japanese used tamamushi decisions with me, I would use tamamushi statements back at them. Fair is fair. 

“Toyota will advertise in Tokyo Time?” Miss Ishi asked.

“Well, we’re just finalizing negotiations, but Toyota is interested for the next… period.” “Just a 

minute purease,” she said and walked away again… 

I waited. I could feel the tingle on the fishing line now, the jiggle at the end of the pole. It was a “we-too” fish! Whatever the competition does, we must do it too… 

Soon Miss Ishi came back. She was walking more relaxedly now, clicking along like an off-duty shop girl. “Okay, so please you will let us know if Toyota will advertise.” She closed her notebook. 

But I wasn’t finished. “Yes… I will do that. Do you think that Nissan would like to advertise next to Toyota advertisement?” 

“Eet it is very possible.” She gave me an encouraging smile. 

“Oh good. Only—” Here I frowned, creased my forehead as if the notion pained me terribly, as if I were reporting a death in the family. “I cannot promise you that we will still have advertising space. Our magazine is very popular now you know, what with Toyota and so on. All the spaces may be filling up.” 

“Ah!” Miss Ishi’s look got intense again and she let out a small gasp. “Just a minute, purease…” And I got to watch the walk once more. 

When Ms. Ishi marched back again, I tried to appear as nonchalant as possible. I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my chin. That was what you did when you made ten-thousand dollar deals with Toyota and Nissan everyday. 

“Wheech space was Toyota interested in?” she asked again. Now she was talking. 

“Well, we had promised them the center two-page spread, but still we have available C-

space, single-page. That was the space I discussed with Rolls Royce, Japan. But I told them I could not reserve it without payment.” 

Miss Ishi was studying the page like a designer dress—flipping it back and forth, holding it up to the window, rubbing its surface with her index finger and sighing. Finally she spoke. “All right. Nissan will take C-Space.” 

I nodded and clenched my teeth so my smile wouldn’t be too wide, so my cheeks wouldn’t glow like airport landing lights. “Yes, very good. Excellent decision… Nissan and Toyota. Let me just get the paper work.” 

I reached into my briefcase and pulled out the yellow contract sheet. Then Ms. Ishi squinted as if to shield her eyes from a blazing desert sun. Japanese didn’t like contracts, hated them in fact. They much preferred oral agreements, thinking that anything which purported to force two parties to rigid conditions smacked of deceit. Just one last push was necessary. 

“So a copy of this paper we give to our printer, then he knows exactly what size to reserve, and we will have space for Nissan ad.” I clicked out the ball point of my pen and wrote “Nissan July” and checked “C-space.” Then I offered Ms. Ishi the pen. 

“Just a minute purease,” she said again, and stood up. 

Dammit! Just when I was so close. Just when I could see my co-worker’s jealous smirks. Just when I could feel Hamaguchi’s pat on the back, recommending me for a promotion… Shit. 

When Ms. Ishi came back, I didn’t look up from the table. 

Then she spoke. “Here,” she said. “I have hanko now.” A hanko was a Japanese stamp used in place of a signature on important documents. It was a traditional seal of approval. 

I guided her hand to just the right spot. There… Finally. Finally, I was a success. 

And bending the truth to sell the ad really didn’t matter, right? 

---

R. Sebastian Bennett taught Fiction Writing at the University of California – Los Angeles, the University of Louisiana – Lafayette, and directed the Creative Writing program at Muskingum University. His writing appears in Columbia Journal, Fiction International, Indiana Review, Mississippi Review, NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH, Texas Review, George Washington Review, Los Angeles Review, Oxford Magazine, Tulane Review, Paris Transcontintental – Sorbonne (FRANCE), Modern Literature (INDIA), and Alecart (ROMANIA), among others. He was the founding editor of THE SOUTHERN ANTHOLOGY. The story, “Tamamushi,” is from an unpublished collection, SEASONS OF YEN, which was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award.

GRASSES hissed seriously as Fanny twitched her neck and craned it up to tell me: “Sorry feller, have to leave tomorrow morn.” I brooded over this lump of a thought and listened to her mouth some explanations. We were lying wide awake in the blistering November sun across the hillocks in the brush, and the bite of the wind set us all up for a fine picnic. There were lemonades and scampis and sandwiches swishing in front of us, luring us to wolf them up just because we both prepared the grindages ourselves, and for the benefit of her blandishment I levied the heftier acknowledgement for her cooks. So the funny feeling we stashed in our tummy. “You gifted lummox, let’s eat!” she trilled. 

Just that easy the world spun between us like a wrecking ball. Cool coolabahs and calm canaries milled round as if eavesdropping the lines from our lips in utter awareness, consciously interested just how I felt when my heart dropped in a soup of sadness hearing those words from her: sorry and leaving. All afternoon I bleakly couldn’t say good arvo to the trees, the river; her lips jerked irritably and couldn’t believe what she has just said to me. Staring into each other’s eyes, silence was a framed 1999 in our quiet minds.  

Fanny clutched a smile to jazz up the glooms. I flopped down an Indian seat, never raved about anything, about the apparent leaving tomorrow. Not that I did want to rummage through her decision nor any other reconnaissance to impose on her, but just some tea and curiosity I sifted through, flung my eyes at her, and jacketed my patience to keep to myself that such things, albeit beyond my ken, do happen for a reason. 

“Watch, a fleecy cloud is scudding like white elephants!” enthralling herself as we lay on our backs in a pool of dandelion amazement. “In your dreams,” I ribbed on purpose, “don’t you know that those are white sails reefing, wait, why’d you say white elephants? Read Hemingway?” She brushed aside the questions, words lisped round like lizards in her hiding voice, no thanks, and many a smile has tunneled her from entertaining my… my… eagle-spread doubt about the departure. 

Up the hedges came towering the shadows of the earth, the grasses wavered to shimmy with the wind and only her shoulders squirmed smoothly with which the spindly branches of the trees sweetened the taste of this sadness I was ditching. The sound, though not a crash test major flop, the conversation licked us closer over a minute when our feet felt the flesh of our souls.

“The trains, they’re like the clouds, they come and go, but myself,” blinking her eyes as daylight receded from the alabaster skytube, “I mean the leaving, I don’t want to talk about it Jake and that’s final.” We spurned cold the issue under the brimming sunset. When the sun immured its light bright bridges ballooned nether the foothill and listlessly we packed up and descended. Down the town we passed by was now empty, voices faded in the sleeves of the ribbiting frogs, red eyes shone in the ebony webs of the rookery, and the footfalls of the townies were buried to the deaf ears of the waters. Fanny sauntered forward, bewildered, and remembered the berry patches as I remembered her climb up a tree wearing a smile.

As we stumbled into the unpeopled plaza where the fountain now kept flowing spears of mudjuice, Fanny lolled by and after her I surveyed the area which sprouted unfamiliarity than the one we crossed early morn. She held her head high and pinned her attention to the quiet houses callipered by peculiarity, and oh the moonlight not that breezy in here. So we decided to tread farther until Fanny cut across empty barber shops past the church toward a vacant lot laden with a lungful of floodlights foaming the site. “Look Jake, all the people are here!”

Should this be a gathering? Maybe a helluva mass outdoor. A parade? We’ve known this town for yonks but never in a hairline did we see people collect like this. There were myriads of dins blanketing our tympana but they were the sweeter ones, colorful vestiges of zzzounds. Yeah Fanny’s right when all the townies were shrilling for familiar fun only children like us knew: the Giorgio de Chirico of our surreal fantasia. I knew we’re already twenty-six. That’s right, and with this our curious feet carried us to the carnival. 

All the people, as expected, were relishing in the broad moonbeams shooting through their circus smiles, a bucketful of families competed in different games and embarked on the all-time favourite rides. Fanny and I paid the whack-a-mole game in which she pounded my inept hand with a rubber mallet on purpose which was sweet, in return—to her surprise—I kissed her neck.

“Don’t have to do that, kittiwake Jake!” She fled to the skeeball to join the children to enter their world one more time to see the world a-spinnin’ for the last time, in my eyes. “Over here, just won a stuffie.” I said great, a magnetic grin flickered between us.

As we walked past entertainment booths Fanny noticed a charming whelp with bunny ears, scuttling its way to the right kennel of a master. It’s dressed to the nines and must belong to someone I ought to conclude. She grabbed the whelp like a baby. I watched her croon as if lulling it to sleep until it slipped out of her arms and scurried away. My hand touched hers, “It’s all right. Things are meant to come back.” Then all of a sudden the floodlights blinked ceaselessly—fast-forward!—clowns, jugglers, jesters clouded my sight as they billowed all around me in a daze—shoo shoo I jabbered then juggled to her place but she was nowhere to be found—asked the lion tamers, carnies, trampolinists, and even the freaks if they have seen Fanny. It is in the prima facie mega-tive evidence I sure hell netted. 

“Here Jake, come” that voice I heard and the mazy looking-path just so I saw escorting me to somewhere a place. 

I went after her rant rattling ‘here, here’ and shouldered my way through the crowds and their shrewd dragon-like chuckles of this spectacular starry show called life. And my search was a galaxy for my Eta Carina to pulsate deep in my chest. “Fanny, where art thou? Ain’t say ciao now.”

Alas I stumbled into a majestic river out of the knifing guffaws from the park. Fanny’s voice dwindled. I flushed my qualms with wonder, as in magic and atom bomb came crashing through the beauty of the river as it was with her. I ushered to the riverside, mumbled for hungry words to shuffle the fogs out of the horizon, and drank its water. Thank God I didn’t get smashed nor suffered from amnesia, for it’s just pure myth I imagined this would be Lethe. But no wonder such a ravishing prima donna loomed up so brusquely I couldn’t move a bone. Okay, that was her, blooming as ever. Finally found Fanny, lucky me.            

The moon was low tonight while the breeze intoxicated itself with some medication of the warmth we shared. We slept sheepishly, the arid fireweeds disposed of their narcoleptic romance in order to catch us fall in love again. But for the last time.   

So we lay on our backs. Grasses hissed seriously as Fanny twitched her neck and craned it up to tell me: “Goodnight kittiwake Jake!” I smiled and gladly greeted her to sleep. 

Morning’s up and I felt fine as usual. When I woke up the sunlight waltzed effulgently to the fore. But it took me unawares to realize that Fanny was not beside me. In spite of her leaving today there’s something strange nestled by my side that morn… the charming whelp with bunny ears. 

I looked up pensively at the sky and an airship darted across. “I knew. I knew,” and else ‘twas something strange the whelp twined my attention to the honeysuckle.  

“I thought…”

“Just when I thought too” she spieled.

We shrugged off smiling until the end of the century.  

---

Nisha is going to a workshop for BIPOC writers, and Josie should come too. 

What’s BIPOC? Josie asks, nervously. It sounds like a counter-culture movement. Definitely alternative, possibly deviant. Something she should stay away from if she wants to stand any chance of fitting in with society in general, and school in particular. 

Nisha doesn’t ask if Josie’s been living under a rock. She says, Black, Indigenous, People of Colour. The words roll off her tongue. 

Am I People of Colour? Josie asks. 

You’re Asian-Canadian.

Josie’s foundation shade is Medium Ivory, just two formulas away from Nisha’s Medium Taupe. 

It’s not about your actual skin colour, Nisha adds. It’s more about having a maginalised voice because you come from a different background.

Nisha has the annoying knack of answering Josie’s questions before she even asks. It’s because she grew up in a large family ‒ you learn how to read people fast.

You know I’m not a group person, Josie says.

There won’t be that many people.

How do you know?
How many BIPOC writers do you know?

Josie thinks for a moment. In all of her first-year classes, white Canadians outnumber international and non-white students. If each of them was a writer, what would be the total number?

Stop trying to do the math, Nisha says. Just look at it as a way to make new friends.

I already have friends, says Josie. It’s just that she can count them on one hand, while Nisha befriends everyone she meets. Why can’t you go without me?

Because you’re the only friend I have who’s into this sort of thing. 

But I’m not even a writer!

Yes you are ‒ you’re always writing in that notebook. 

That’s journalling, says Josie. It’s not the same.

But Nisha won’t stop there. Lots of writers write about themselves, she says. Anne Sexton, Jeanette Winterson, Pasha Malla. People love reading that kind of stuff.

The idea of being read by other people makes Josie feel like a snail that’s been poked with a stick.

Nisha says: You don’t have to share your writing with the class, if you’re not comfortable.

Last term, there was a party at the student house Josie shares with three other Medical Sciences majors. She tried to avoid it by staying late at the library. Nisha found her and dragged her home, because the guy she’d been crushed on all term would be there, and she needed moral support. Besides, Josie was the one who’d told her about the party, and she wasn’t going to show up uninvited and alone. 

Josie agreed because Nisha promised, in her sweetest voice, not to leave her stranded. With Nisha by her side, Josie wouldn’t have to worry about awkward introductions. She could simply coast in the wake of already opened conversations. 

Nisha’s crush never showed. Sometime after midnight, she decided she was drunk enough to call him, but her phone was dead.

Josie said, Why don’t you use my land line? 

She put Nisha in her bedroom, and closed the door on her. Then she went to sit outside on the front porch, where it was quieter ‒ the stoned kids passing a joint around didn’t seem keen on conversation. The downside was breathing in their second-hand smoke. 

Half an hour later, the party showed no signs of winding down, and Josie was getting cold. She went upstairs and banged on her bedroom door, but the living-room funk jam rocking the house was louder, so she opened the door and stuck her head in. Nisha sat on the edge of Josie’s bed, phone clamped between ear and shoulder. She was leafing through a spiral-bound notebook in her hands. 

As soon as she saw Josie, she flipped the book shut and slammed it back down on the night stand. Josie sprang back as if she’d been repelled by an electric fence, and pulled door shut behind her. 

Five minutes later, Nisha was back downstairs. Sorry I took so long, she said. 

Josie has never asked Nisha what the hell she was doing, snooping through her journal. Isn’t Nisha the closest thing she has to a best friend? What could she possibly have read that Josie wouldn’t willingly confide? How much does it matter what Nisha ‒ or anyone, really ‒ knows or thinks about her?

On the other hand, Josie feels like she ought to put the record straight. Some days, she writes things in her notebook that she feels with every fibre of her being. The next day, she’ll read her own words and wonder who that person was, whether that life was real or imagined. 

Not everything in Josie’s journal is true just because she wrote it.

We all need community, Nisha says. You are not an island. 

Josie pictures the Toronto Islands, crowded with tourists, wedding parties, lost poets, landscape painters, nude bathers and cyclists. You go there to get away from the city, only to find that everyone else had the same idea ‒ we’re all in the same boat.

Besides, Nisha says in her cajoling voice, maybe Brian will be there.

I didn’t know that Brian was a writer. 

Josie’s read his poems in the student magazine. She cut them out carefully, and slipped them between the pages of Essentials of Clinical Geriatrics. Each time she reads them, she’s amazed by how you’d never know that English is his second language. But she’s not going tell Nisha that.

Not everyone there will be a writer writer, says Nisha. It’s inclusive ‒ that’s the whole point. 

Inclusive, meaning including bad writers?

You’re not a bad writer. 

Josie looks Nisha in the eye and says, How do you know I’m not a bad writer? 

There, she’s said it now. And it was easier than she thought it would be. 

Up to this point, she wasn’t sure she’d ever ask. She’s still not sure what kind of response she’s expecting. Maybe an apology for what Nisha did that night, alone in Josie’s room. Or a confession at least.

She feels bad for putting Nisha on the spot though.

It’s fine, Josie says. You don’t have to answer if you’re not comfortable ‒

No, you’re right, Nisha interrupts her. I read your notebook. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.

And? says Josie. 

I’m sorry, Nisha says again. Please don’t be mad. I didn’t see much, I swear ‒

I’m not mad, says Josie, I just want to know what you think.

Okay, says Nisha. If you really want my opinion, I think you should just ask Brian out already, instead of writing about him.

That’s not what I meant, Josie says. What did you think of my writing?

I think I’d have to read it more closely, Nisha begins.

You were in my room for half an hour!

I was on the phone, says Nisha. But to be honest, your writing was way more interesting than the conversation.

So if I go to this BIPOC thing with you, Josie says, arms crossed, are you saying I’ll magically fit in?

People are people, Nisha says. But it’s time you found your tribe.

Josie pictures a room full of people who have nothing in common, brought together because they want to write. They may not know that they are writers yet,  each on the verge of discovering a strange, new identity. What will they write about, let alone talk about? How will they find common ground? 

When they look around the room at each other, their differences will be instantly obvious. Because it is about colour after all. Colour shifts, changes, fades, merges, blooms and shimmers like a hologram. How can she put these colours into words on a page that simply say: I am?

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Phoebe Tsang is a Hong-Kong born Chinese, British and Canadian poet, author, librettist and playwright. Her poetry and short fiction has been published internationally in journals and anthologies, including Asia Literary Review and Literary Review of Canada. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Contents of a Mermaid’s Purse (Tightrope Books, Canada), and the recipient of numerous artist grants in North America. www.phoebetsang.com.

Thank you for coming here to read the most expert analysis of the US Presidential race, 2020. We are the only international magazine covering the elections from a literary view point. 

Kanye, poet, rapper, Presidential candidate, Kim (Jong-un)‘s fan, designer, motivational speaker, God – for President.

Watch this space for real time updates as we follow the US Presidential elections, 2020.

But since you are here, the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was recently published by HarperCollins. It is time the United States took a leaf out of India’s thriving literary scene, and learnt the importance of having a Head of State who is a creative writer, performs in open mics, is a renowned orator; and exclusively dabbles in fiction and poetry.

 

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‘This is not an attempt at literary writing; the passages featured in this book are reflections of my observations and sometimes unprocessed thoughts, expressed without filters… I am not a writer, most of us are not; but everybody seeks expression, and when the urge to unload becomes overpowering there is no option but to take pen to paper, not necessarily to write but to introspect and unravel what is happening within the heart and the head, and why.’ – Narendra Modi As a young man, Narendra Modi had got into the habit of writing a letter to the Mother Goddess, whom he addressed as jagat janani, every night before going to bed. The topics were varied: there were seething sorrows, fleeting joys, lingering memories. In Modi’s writings there was the enthusiasm of a youngster and the passion to usher in change. But every few months, Modi would tear up the pages and consign them to a bonfire. The pages of one diary, dating back to 1986, survived, however. These are now available in English for the very first time as Letters to Mother, in a powerful translation by Bhawana Somaaya. Modi describes these letters as conversations with the Mother Goddess: ‘My feelings of fear … of anxiety … of distress… the ordinary feelings of an ordinary man.’

– Amazon description.

You look at me when I shout, “Jump” at you. Your eyes change colour. You turn around, away from us, and look at the water which is deep and green and wet with sun. 

It’s not just my voice. Everyone is shouting it at you, the girl who’s scared of water. But you only turn around when Ralph punches me in the elbow and the word stains my tongue too. You turn. I can see your thumb scratching yellow nail varnish off your little finger, in a curled fist. You don’t look at me again, at any of us, before you jump in.

***

“Is this love then?” you say, as you hold my hand.

“Could be. How do we tell?”

“I think we’re just supposed to know.” You scratch your knee with your finger and take my hand with you.

“Maybe we should run away.”

“Where to?”

“Somewhere we won’t know anyone. Scotland. Antarctica.”

“I don’t like the cold.” You frown and the shape of your face changes. This is the first thing I noticed about you when we arrived here. As we were setting up our tent and mum was shouting at dad and dad was shouting at mum, I watched you walk to the taps and back. The weight of the water changed your face so completely I almost didn’t recognise you, which made me want to know you so well that I would always recognise you.

“Okay then. The desert.”

You laugh and move your hands up my skin. “You’d burn. You’d look like a pig.” You kiss me, then bite my lip. “Anyway, how would we get there?”

“We could just jump in at the jetty and keep swimming.”

You shake your head. “I can’t.”

“Sure you can. We could swim until we found an island of our own.” I roll onto my front and grin at you.

You shake your head again. “I can’t swim. The water it -” You let go of my hands and put your palms over my eyes. “What can you see?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s what I see when I look into the lake. I have this feeling that if I swam in there, I would never come out. Not that I’d die. I’m not scared of drowning. Just that I’d stop being anything.” You take your hands away from my eyes. “Get it?”

Our families all have their tents lined up next to each other. Ralph’s is the biggest, this alien-like green thing with extra compartments inside. Dad says our tent is vintage. It’s square and it’s only got a piece of canvas he’s sewed along the middle that you can drop to split it in two.  Between ours and Ralph’s there’s Elba’s (pink and yellow like a battenburg), Kurt’s (black and blue like a bruise) and Sonia’s (red and green like Christmas).

On the first evening, you walk past and I smile and you smile back.

“What you smiling at?” says Ralph to you. “Don’t you have any friends of your own?” You look away. He puts a marshmallow in his mouth and the sugar sticks to his lips. 

I copy him. The sugar is hot on my tongue. I feel my face go pink with the heat. 

Later that night I can’t sleep. I rustle out of my sleeping bag, unzip the tent and sit at the plastic table. You aren’t wearing shoes so I don’t hear you come up behind me. “The beach is perfect this time of night. You want to see?” I nod, and we follow your torch’s orb down to the edge of the lake. The moon is dead straight across like it’s cutting the bowl of water in two. 

“I can’t imagine water that black is clear,” you say.

“Who are you here with?” I ask.

“My dad. He likes camping. My mum doesn’t. It’s one of the reasons they stopped speaking.” You draw a circle in the sand.

“Are they divorced?” I ask. I place my fist inside the circle.

“No.” You shake your head. “They just don’t talk to each other.”

“One of them must have done something pretty bad,” I say, thinking about my own parents.

You shrug. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

The question shocks me. I pick up a pebble and roll it around my palm, then throw it out to sea. We watch it sink. “I threw stones at someone,” I say. You look at me but I can’t tell what you are thinking. “I didn’t want to do it. Ralph can be very persuasive. He doesn’t like to hurt people alone.” 

You nod. “I slit my wrists at a summer camp. My roommate found me, which I hadn’t even thought about. She was 11. So was I.”

In the moonlight you look older, more grown up. The bones in your face come forwards. “Why did you ask me that?” I say.

“I think you can learn a lot about a person from asking a question like that. I know a lot more about you. Do you know me yet?”

I kiss you. It’s not something I’ve done before, and I don’t realise I’m doing it until my lips are stuck to yours. You taste of sand and mint toothpaste. You laugh. “I actually wasn’t expecting that,” you say, and then you kiss me.

The first time I see them making fun of you, I hide. You’re in a pink swimming costume and shorts and you’re lying on your front drawing pictures into the sand. The ball hits you in the thigh, not hard. You roll lazily around and throw it back from land – where you are – to water – where they are, but the wind pulls it away from them.

“Again,” says Sonia, holding up her arms. “Throw it again.” You shake your head. The ball’s on the edge of the water now, brought back in by a wave. 

Kurt’s closest. He swims towards you, drops to his knees, picks up the ball and turns. Then at the last moment he swoops back around, his arms like a basin, throwing water towards you. You don’t mean to, but you scream. They are quiet for a second, because screams, real belly-fear screams, are strange things to hear in the sun.

And then they begin to laugh. All four of them, teeth flashing in the light.

I watch you shrug to no one in particular, then curl back into the sand.

Later on, with your hair over my legs, I let you tell me about it and I never mention that I saw it too. You tell it differently to what I saw. When you tell it, you don’t scream. When you tell it they all looked mad with heat. 

“Loads of people can’t swim,” I say, as I plait three strands of your hair together. “I bet there’s lots of really important people who can’t swim.” 

“Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake, Oprah.” You count them out on your fingers. “Anyway, everyone’s scared of something.”

“Not me.” I hold my arms out wide. “Not anything.”

“Heights? Fire? Spiders?” I shake my head. “Death? Climate change? Parents?” I stroke your ear. “Ralph.” You say it quietly and we both stay very still. 

Eventually I say, “I’m not scared of Ralph.”

You hold my hand. You say, “You are. You’re scared to tell him about me. You’re scared to tell him that you’re – gay.” It’s the first time that word has hung between us. 

“No I’m not,” I say, suddenly aware that I never want to lose you, that I never want this summer to end, this summer where we are close. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Okay,” you say. “Okay.”

The time they nearly catch us is one of the scariest days of my life. My heart beats double speed for days afterwards. You are naked and I’m just in bikini bottoms. Light is pouring through the gaps in the trees above us and our bodies are covered in shapes. You are circling your finger around my nipple and telling me about what you want to do when school is done. We’re both only 15 but we both agree we can’t stop thinking about it. We are ready to be filled up by the world like vats. 

You hear them first. “Can you hear something?”

“No,” I say, because I am thinking about your finger and the circles it is making.

“Sure?”

“Stop worrying. No one’s here but us,” I say, which is when I hear them too. I scramble up. “Hide, hide, hide,” I say. I dive into a bush but you are still struggling to push your legs into your swimming costume when they come round the corner. Ralph is group leader. 

“I told you she was weird,” he says, to the rest of them as they all watch you put the swimming costume over your shoulders. “Didn’t I tell you? First she’s scared of water, now she’s getting naked in the woods.”

You don’t say anything. I stay more still than I have ever been, my arms across my bare chest, my face in the ground. I don’t look at you. I don’t watch.

You run. You’re faster than all of them. I know you are because you raced me along the beach one night and won by miles and on a good day I’m as fast as Ralph. I stay curled into myself in the bush for a long time after they have gone. I listen to them chase after you. I hear them lose you. I hear them pass not too far away in the direction of the jetty. I hear the wind pick up and die down. Then I brush the leaves off my legs and walk back to the tent. 

Elba is the one who tells me you are crying. I’m sitting at the plastic table between our tents, picking at the corners until I bleed.

“Thought you guys were all at the jetty,” I say, when she comes and sits down beside me.

“We were, but then that weird girl ran by crying and the others wanted to find her. You know how Ralph likes to take the piss out of crying girls.” I nod. “But I didn’t feel like it today.”

I nod again. I know Elba is talking about you. 

It takes me hours to find you, but you don’t look surprised when I do. You have been crying and your face is the colour of bruises. I sit down next to you but you don’t let me hold your hand. We sit like that and the sky changes and I watch your face change with it. 

“I love you,” I say.

“You left me,” you say. We sit, quiet again. 

I put my hand on your knee and you let me. “Sorry,” I say like I don’t mean it, even though I mean it more than I have ever meant anything.

Eventually you turn to me. You put both hands on my face like you are holding it up. Our foreheads are very close together and you look unlike I have ever seen you look. “Just promise me, promise me you’ll never do anything like that to me again.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” I say, and I kiss you everywhere I can see.

***

After the splash we all go very quiet like there isn’t anyone here at all. For a while all anyone can hear is the sound of you thrashing like that, before you sink. 

We do try to save you, I swear that to you. Ralph and Sonia and Elba and Kurt and I, we all jump in. We swim down and down into the lake that has no bottom. Kurt is sick, his lungs heaving with seawater. Elba gets out next, sits on the jetty. She wraps a towel around herself and shivers in the heat. I think Sonia is next, although I don’t see her get out. But I know that for a moment it’s just Ralph and me. For a moment he looks into my eyes which are red. Then he puts his arm around my waist and drags me to the jetty as I bite his wrist in two. 

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Amelia is a queer writer and creative, whose work is particularly concerned with queer experience, love and endings. She was a member of the 2018-19 Roundhouse Poetry Collective with whom she has performed her poetry at Hay Festival, Last Word Festival, Brainchild Festival and UniSlam. She is currently writing her first novel which was shortlisted for Penguin’s WriteNow mentorship programme, and longlisted for Mslexia’s Novel Award. Her short story ‘Heat’ was published in the anthology ‘Transforming Being’.