Flash Fiction International

by Robert Shapard James Thomas

  Pierre Bui only carried one book at first, but then he realized that with more books, he would make an even better impression. Thus he started to walk around with at least three books at a time. On feast days, when there were large crowds on the streets, Pierre Bui would walk around with a dozen books.

  It didn’t matter what kinds of books they were—How to Win Friends and Influence People, Our Bodies, Ourselves, Under the Tuscan Sun, etc.—as long as they were books. Pierre Bui did seem particularly fond of extremely thick books with tiny print, however. Perhaps he thought they were more scholarly? In his rapidly growing library one could find many tomes on accounting and white pages of all the world’s greatest cities.

  The cost of acquiring so many books was not easy on Pierre Bui’s tiny bicycle repairman’s salary. He had to cut out all of his other expenses except for food. There were many days when he ate nothing but bread and sugar. In spite of this Pierre Bui never sold any of his precious volumes. The respect accorded him by all the other villagers more than compensated for the fact that his stomach was always growling.

  Pierre Bui’s absolute faith in books was rewarded in 1972 when, during one of the fiercest battles of the war, all the houses of his village were incinerated except for his leaning grass hut, where Pierre Bui squatted trembling but essentially unscathed, surrounded by at least ten thousand books.

  GERMANY

  The Attraction of Asphalt

  Stefani Nellen

  MOTHER AND DAUGHTER drive up the switchbacks to the Heiligenberg to get spring water, because black tea tastes best with spring water. Plastic canisters tumble over on the backseat as the car takes the curves. The daughter, Martina, fingers her seat belt. She imagines the canisters are alive, thirsty comic book monsters yearning for moisture.

  The mother says, “If I told you to jump out of the car because we’re going to have an accident, how fast could you do it?” She stares ahead, wrestles the steering wheel, muscles working under her tan skin.

  “Come on,” she says, “I want to know. If I said, jump out now, what would you do?”

  Martina’s hands grow hot. The heat travels up her arms, into her chest and tummy. “I don’t know.”

  The mother presses the accelerator. The switchbacks become narrower and steeper, like arrowheads pointing in a new direction each moment. One of the canisters falls to the floor. The mother’s palms slap against the leather of the steering wheel. She blows a strand of hair from the corner of her mouth and accelerates more.

  Martina says, “I’d open the door and jump out and protect my head.”

  The mother nods. “And don’t forget the seat belt. Take it off first.”

  “I will.”

  “And jump away from the car. The door could hit you and push you under the car. You don’t want that.”

  “No.” Martina sweats. Sunrays flicker dangerous messages through the leaves. She imagines opening the door. Branches snap past. The air pulls the handle out of her hand. She jumps out. Asphalt and gravel tear at her skin. Tires screech. She can’t imagine the sound of a car crashing into a tree. Do trees feel pain? Only if their roots are hurt. Otherwise, they grow new branches.

  The mother says, “Ready?”

  The seat belt buckle burns the girl’s palm. The strap bites into the side of her neck. She tightens her grip on the buckle, puts her thumb on the release. “Ready.”

  “Good.” The mother nods at the road, at the ghosts she sees. “Good. You need to be prepared.”

  The girl clutches the seat belt, waits for her mother to yell, “Jump!” She waits curve after curve, all the way up the mountain, until her mother pulls up next to the mountain spring and stops the engine and thuds her fists against the steering wheel once, twice.

  After a while, the daughter lets go of the seat belt. A red welt crosses her palm. She opens the door. The scent of moss and fresh buds seeps into the car. Birds chirp, and the nearby spring tinkles its quiet silver laughter. The hot engine settles with pings.

  Mother and daughter fill the canisters. It hasn’t rained for a long time, and the flow of the spring is weak. The mother carries four canisters at a time back to the car. The water sloshes behind milky plastic. When they are done, she opens the door of their car and, one hand atop the door, the other on her hip, says, “Come!” Her cheekbones reflect the sun.

  Martina pulls her fingertips out of the cool stream and walks around the car. She puts on her seat belt. The sound of the engine starting blocks out the birds and the mountain stream. Her mother’s knuckles rest on the steering wheel, solid, symmetrical. As they zigzag their way down, the girl waits for the yell “Jump!” to erupt from her mother. She waits for the wheels to lose traction. She imagines the switchbacks leading back and forth, back and forth, and wonders whether, over the many days of water fetching, a direction will emerge from this, a road forward, an escape. She cups the seat belt buckle with her hand. She’s prepared.

  BOLIVIA

  Barnes

  Edmundo Paz Soldán

  IT WAS ALL a mistake, Barnes understood, locked in his jail cell. He would proudly stick to the truth. Later, however, in a dim room, blinding light in his eyes, the interrogation began, accusations about assassinating the president, and he pondered his mediocrity, the massive insignificance of his life—and feeling the vain, useless weight of importance for the first time, said, yes, he had indeed killed the president. Whereupon he was accused of planting the bomb that killed two hundred eighty-seven soldiers in Tarapacá’s regiment; all he could do was laugh with contempt, embracing the blame. Later, he confessed without pause to sabotaging the gas line, which left Bolivia wrecked economically, to having started the fire consuming ninety-two percent of Cochabamba’s forested parks; to exploding the four LAB jets mid-flight, and raping the daughter of La Paz’s North American ambassador. They would execute him by firing squad at sunrise the next day, they announced. Indeed they should do so: a man like him, he agreed, had no right to live.

  Translated by Kirk Nesset

  PALESTINE/UNITED STATES

  A Sailor

  Randa Jarrar

  SHE FUCKS A sailor, a Turkish sailor, the summer she spends in Istanbul. When she comes home to Wisconsin, it takes her three days to come clean about it to her husband.

  He says this doesn’t bother him, and she tells him that it bothers her that it doesn’t bother him. He asks if she prefers him to be the kind of man who is bothered by fleeting moments, and she tells him that yes, she prefers that he be that kind of man. He tells her he thinks she married him because he is precisely the kind of man who doesn’t dwell on fleeting moments, because he is the kind of man who does not hold a grudge. She tells him that holding a grudge and working up some anger about one’s wife fucking a sailor is not the same thing. He agrees that holding a grudge isn’t the same as working up some anger about one’s wife fucking a sailor, but, he adds, one’s wife, specifically his own, would never leave him for a sailor, and not a Turkish sailor. In fact, he says, she did not leave him for the Turkish sailor. She is here. So why should he be angry?

  Now, she becomes angry, and asks him why he assumes she did not consider leaving him for the sailor. Besides, she says, she and the sailor shared a Muslim cultural identity, something she does not share with her husband. She asks him if he thought of that.

  He says he had not thought of it, and that even if she had considered leaving him for the Turkish sailor, she must have decided not to. And he acquiesces that the Turkish sailor and she must have shared a strong bond over being culturally Muslim, because, he says, he cannot imagine what else she would have had in common with a Turkish sailor.

  Plenty! she shouts at him. She had plenty in common with the Turkish sailor.

  Her husband wants to know what she had in common with the Turkish sailor.

  She had nothing in common with the Turkish sailor except that she was attracted to him and he was attracted to her and they spent a night in an unairconditioned room in Karakoy, by Galata tower.
In the morning, she woke up to the sound of seagulls circling the tower, zooming around it hungrily, loudly. The Turkish sailor had heard the seagulls too. Then, she had left. That was really all they had in common: the cultural identity, the sex, and the seagulls.

  She tells her husband this story. He asks her what she wants him to say. She tells him to say that he is angry that she fucked a Turkish sailor. She tells him to say that he wishes he had fucked her in the unairconditioned room near Galata tower. She tells him to shout it.

  Her husband refuses to say any of it. His refusal is quiet, itself not angry.

  When she sees him placidly gazing at her, and refusing to say any of these things, she understands that this is his way of getting back at her for fucking the Turkish sailor.

  And she also understand that this, his lack of passion, his sense of logic, is one of the reasons she fucked the Turkish sailor, and, it is also the reason she came home.

  MEXICO

  The Voice of the Enemy

  Juan Villoro

  WHEN MEXICO CITY still existed I wore a beautiful yellow helmet. I listened to telephone conversations on top of a pole. The sky was a morning of cables; the electricity vibrated, wrapped in soft plastics. From time to time a thick blue spark fell to the street. That moment justified my being on the pole. My belt was filled with tools but I preferred a small pair of bird-beak pliers. Their bite mended the wound, the electricity ran again.

  In front, there was a movie theater with a cardboard castle rising above the marquee. In back, a building was switching on red lights to protect it from planes. Their engines were making a noise, but it was impossible to see them in the thick sky.

  The Electrical Supervisor demanded that we keep a close ear on the cables. Our enemies were making their way to us. I didn’t know who they were, but I knew they were coming: it was necessary to listen to calls, to search for anything strange in them. One raining afternoon, tied to the pole, I heard a strange voice. The woman was talking as if she were trying to hide; in a soft tone, frightened, she said “birdseed,” “brightness,” “magnolia,” “broken balcony.” I was there to listen to conversations and guarantee that they flowed without interruptions. I heard those random words, vibrating like a senseless code. I was supposed to report them, but I didn’t do anything; I allowed someone else, somewhere else, to understand what I didn’t understand.

  A few days later I found out about the scorched palm trees. The enemies burned a neighborhood where there were still plants. Fixed to my pole, I couldn’t tell if the city was expanding or shrinking. Occasionally, between trumpets and bugles, loyal troops would talk on the cables; then a bomb, the grating voice of another militia.

  On the opposite corner something strange happened; the yellow helmet didn’t move for several hours. I tried to let someone know that my coworker was dead; my fingers bled dialing so many busy numbers. As I looked at the motionless helmet, I heard the soft, terrifying words again: “bedroom,” “cinnamon,” “statue.” I imagined, thoroughly envious, that those words were a message for someone else. For me they were just sad. I didn’t talk to the Electrical Supervisor then either.

  Early one morning an explosion shook me. I opened the wiring box: the photoelectric sensors were emitting a putrid smoke. I turned on my flashlight; I had batteries to last for weeks but something told me that the pole wouldn’t last that long.

  During his calls, the Supervisor said: “Whoever controls the cables controls the city.” The enemies had cut the electricity, the movie theater burned in a reddish cloud, but the phones were working. I heard the woman say “fragrance,” “planets,” “candy,” “smooth stones.” I couldn’t report her. Slowly, terrified, and with precise cruelty, I understood how wonderful the enemy’s voice was.

  I must have been asleep when they took my coworker down from the opposite post. It was my turn next; a gloved hand pulled me by my back. I was drunk from breathing the malignant air, and I never found out how I left the burning city.

  For weeks, perhaps months, I’ve been living in a room with metal walls. They showed me a terrible photo on a computer. It’s called City of Palaces and it shows the movie theater with its cardboard castle, the tall building in the back, and the cables that I once took care of. “There’s sixty-seven,” said the voice of my captor. It was true. I was in charge of sixty-seven cables and I protected them from our imprecise enemies. For days that were indistinguishable from night I saved the electricity and the calls. Only once did I damage a cable. It happened a few days before I came down from the pole.

  The only thing left of the city is photographs. If I pointed out the damaged cable, my guards would be able to enter the labyrinth, follow the thread to the photograph, to the house where that different voice lived. In front of me are the sixty-seven cables that were my life. One of them can take them to the woman. I know which one. But I’m not going to say.

  Translated by George Henson

  CZECHOSLOVAKIA

  An Imperial Message

  Franz Kafka

  THE EMPEROR HAS sent a message, directly from his deathbed, to you alone, his pathetic subject, a tiny shadow which has taken refuge at the furthest distance from the imperial sun. He ordered the herald to kneel down beside his bed and whispered the message in his ear. He thought it was so important that he had the herald speak it back to him. He confirmed the accuracy of the verbal message by nodding his head. And in front of the entire crowd of those witnessing his death—all the obstructing walls have been broken down, and all the great ones of his empire are standing in a circle on the broad and high soaring flights of stairs—in front of all of them he dispatched his herald. The messenger started off at once, a powerful, tireless man. Sticking one arm out and then another, he makes his way through the crowd. If he runs into resistance, he points to his breast where there is a sign of the sun. So he moves forward easily, unlike anyone else. But the crowd is so huge; its dwelling places are infinite. If there were an open field, how he would fly along, and soon you would hear the marvelous pounding of his fist on your door. But instead of that, how futile are all his efforts. He is still forcing his way through the private rooms of the innermost palace. Never will he win his way through. And if he did manage that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to fight his way down the steps, and, if he managed to do that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to stride through the courtyards, and after the courtyards through the second palace encircling the first, and, then again, through stairs and courtyards, and then, once again, a palace, and so on for thousands of years. And if he finally burst through the outermost door—but that can never, never happen—the royal capital city, the center of the world, is still there in front of him, piled high and full of sediment. No one pushes his way through here, certainly not someone with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window and dream of that message when evening comes.

  Translated by Ian Johnston

  VENEZUELA

  Trilogy

  Antonio López Ortega

  I HAVE THREE SONS by three different men. The first was a Kurd in the resistance living in exile in Paris; the second was a Belgian from Antwerp, a functionary in his country’s embassy; the third was a Chilean painter who had his studio in the Place d’Italie. I had relationships with all three while I was still a young student in France.

  I have raised my sons with passion. Since my return to Caracas, my mother has had to make space for me in her house in San Bernardino. The boys run around and play in the garden. They are three brothers with three different last names; there have been certain difficulties when it was time to enroll them in school.

  Each one inherited a different trait from his father: the oldest, the green eyes and height of the Kurd; the middle one, the straight hair and the indifference of the Belgian; the third, the distant self-absorption of the Chilean. I like this variety, this symphony. It’s like having my past fresh, running around the house; it’s like having all the variety concentrated in one plac
e.

  Strengths and weaknesses accompany me; also the good and the bad moments. Some days are happy (the birthdays, the day trips) and others truly wretched (the recurrent nightmares of the littlest one). The boys develop without ghosts and I have tried to make paternity a remote idea compared to my mother’s warm house.

  I see each one’s face and I think I am seeing each of their fathers. They are interwoven sequels: the encounters in the cafés, the parties, the parks, the trips to the movies, the museums. They were distinct worlds: from the lurking danger of the Kurd (a true paranoid who couldn’t meet me in a café without constantly looking in every direction), passing through the Belgian’s diplomatic coolness, ending in the Chilean’s romantic passion, always jumping from his canvases to my body or vice versa. All of that richness runs through me from head to tail and, upon remembering, I tremble, I long for the past.

  My sons have grown up without any great traumas and I can say that now they are young men. What a shame that with such a great variety no man wants me now. Occasionally I go out on a date with one or another but I have learned to omit any reference to my sons. Each day the boys spend more time with my mother and less time with me. I know that they’ll be fine at home. Taking them anywhere is a problem in the agitated life of these times. I have begun to travel with a few friends, I have met other men. Only this time I have taken care not to leave any traces.

  Translated by Nathan Budoff

  SRI LANKA

  Shattered