New Welsh Short Stories

by Author: QuarkXPress

  My mother was rarely around during the day. The kitchen counter became a bulletin board for her messages. Dance classes. Names of friends I’d never heard of. Emergency contacts and ETAs. Sorry, love, she wrote again and again, until, eventually, she stopped altogether. She occasionally brought dinner back, dreaming of some comfortable family evening in front of the television, but by that time I’d already eaten, with an entire day of TV watching already behind me.

  ‘Bring it upstairs,’ I said, nodding at the takeaway pizza. For Toru, I meant. We no longer said his name.

  My suitcases were unpacked. The correspondences from the friends I’d made in England had thinned – I was too far away now to be involved in their lives – and my old school friends in Tokyo were all employed, working long into the evenings with no time for anyone but themselves or those closest to them. As for my own job-hunting, well, it was hardly worth mentioning. Unlike what my mother might suppose, I worked hard on my applications, polishing with a fine toothcomb even the politest phrases. But the silences and tepid rejections made my efforts seem pointless.

  I spent the first few months back in Tokyo moving between the rooms of the apartment like a rheumatic old man, struggling to get up from the sofa. I did not pick up my English books as I’d intended to, and I began to lose the language I’d sworn never to forget. I had strange dreams which put me in a thoughtful, melancholic mood. In the dreams, I’d be at home in London, standing on the tiny communal balcony, aware that there was someone behind me who I couldn’t see. I knew that if I turned round to ascertain who it was, I’d fall over the flimsy balustrade to my death. In some of them I asked, in a friendly way, Who are you? And in others, I grabbed hold of the railings and prayed he wouldn’t push me over them.

  ‘You don’t look very well.’ Mum had taken to eating her breakfast standing up at the kitchen counter, a bowl of rice held close to her mouth and one foot nestling against her thigh, making her look like an unsteady flamingo.

  ‘I haven’t been sleeping.’

  ‘When’s the last time you went for a walk?’ she asked. A walk? Just the sound of the word made me feel weak, as if someone had cut the strings that held me up. I shook my head. Mum changed legs, putting her left foot up against her thigh. ‘Why don’t you go out and do the shopping for me today?’

  ‘What about the home delivery?’ I said.

  ‘You can cook dinner then,’ she went on, gesturing at the electric hobs we never used. I shook my head again. ‘I’m busy,’ I said.

  She laughed, briefly. ‘You really look awful.’

  ‘I keep…’ I started, but something stopped me from telling her about the dream. It was nothing more than a bad feeling, I thought, an ordinary fear of death. The idea of telling someone was, frankly, a little embarrassing. So instead I said, ‘He keeps me awake. I can hear noises from his room. In the night.’

  Her leg dropped with a thud. She turned her back to me, covering her reaction by scrubbing her rice bowl in the sink. I waited for her to reply, and when she didn’t I decided to press on.

  ‘I read that people who lock themselves in their room are three times more likely to kill themselves.’

  ‘I read it might snow soon,’ she said.

  ‘He might already be dead for all we know.’

  ‘Either today or tomorrow.’

  ‘He might be rotting in there.’

  ‘I thought you said you were busy.’

  ‘The noise might not be him at all. It might be rats…’

  The bowl clattered in the sink. She didn’t even take the time to put her coat on as she left for work. I didn’t see my mother again until the following morning, and echoing through the apartment all day were the words I’d scared her with.

  One day, three months after my arrival in Tokyo, I came downstairs to find my mother in front of the TV.

  ‘Why aren’t you at work?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m sick,’ she said. And then I saw the white pallor in her face and realised she was telling the truth. ‘It’s my head. Migraine.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed?’

  She was sitting quite still and upright, her hair tied back. It was the first time I’d seen her without make-up or jewellery of any kind. She didn’t look bad, only unfamiliar. Then I realised I hadn’t heard her come back the night before as I usually did; this led me to look at her sallow expression with suspicion.

  ‘We ought to talk,’ she said. ‘Since I’m home.’

  She turned the TV off. I felt uneasy in the sudden quiet, but I forced myself to stand tall, pull my shoulders back, and prepare myself.

  ‘How’s the job search?’

  I left that particular question alone. My eyes sliding off hers to a point above her right shoulder.

  ‘No luck?’ she persisted. ‘Nothing at all?’

  A hard, queasy kernel settled in my stomach, making me feel distinctly unwell. Half a minute passed. My mother put her head in her hands. The migraine, I thought.

  ‘I sent an email to your father, asking him for help,’ she muttered.

  ‘For upstairs?’

  ‘No,’ she looked up. ‘I haven’t told him about that. I asked him to help you, actually.’

  ‘You should really tell Dad about upstairs,’ I said, tripping over the word ‘Dad’ and blushing. ‘Ignoring it won’t change anything you know, you’re really handling it quite badly…’

  ‘Let’s not worry about that for now. Let’s think about your future. I talked with your father. He said they’re expanding their offices in Hong Kong and that there’s a possibility he could get work for you there. At least, a probation period while you learn the ropes,’ she said, mustering a weak smile. ‘Not too bad, is it?’

  I didn’t even know what kind of company my father managed, only that it was a company which made a lot of money. And that the way it made money caused my mother to cast doubts on my father’s ethics at the same time as it made her complain about our relative poverty. I pictured the hazy night-time illuminations of an alien city. Long white conference tables. My father in the back of a taxi, driving past me.

  ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I’ve just sent an application out to my Professor. There’s a position as a researcher at the English department. And, well, I have a good feeling about it. I think I’d rather continue on my search in my own way, thank you. You don’t need to get involved. And Dad definitely doesn’t.’

  My mother put her head in her hands again. ‘I have to get involved. Look, you need to leave. Both of you. There’s not enough money for all of you and I have plans. A life for myself. You have to go.’

  ‘Both of us?’

  My mother started to cry. ‘Oh,’ she said, in between her sobs, ‘my head. My head.’

  In the week following the conversation, an artificial calm descended on the apartment. The calm before the storm, as the English have it. I regarded my mother’s words as a simple mistake uttered in a moment of madness, brought on by sickness or too many Hawaiian cocktails. I waited patiently for the replies to my applications. Eventually, my former Professor sent me an email telling me that they already had enough researchers and advising me I ought to stay in London ‘for as long as possible. There’s nothing for young people here in Japan.’ Even though the message itself was one of despair, I felt better after reading it. It was nice to get a personal email – almost two paragraphs long! He would have taken time out of his teaching schedule to write it. He would have thought of me as he wrote each word, each punctuation mark. I printed the email out in a fit of nervous activity and the next day it was there on my desk. A bad joke. I threw it away.

  ‘Here are the details,’ said my mother. A letter headed with a company logo I did not recognise: a feather, sharpened at one end, like a western quill. ‘You should fly Monday, start on Tuesday. He’s booked you a room in their company hotel, apparently.’

  ‘Will he meet me there?’ I asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dad,’ I said.

  ‘How should
I know?’ she said, pushing the opened letter into my hands. ‘This is all I got. You’d better start packing your things.’ She regretted saying this and she put her hand on my arm and squeezed it. ‘It’ll be better there, won’t it? You like travelling. It’s an exciting new adventure.’

  If it’s so exciting, why don’t you go? I wanted to say, but I realised how childish I’d sound. When my mother left for work, I read the letter out loud in the bath. Halfway through, it dawned on me that the person I was reading it to was not, as I’d hoped, sitting opposite me, listening obediently while nervously waiting to be splashed. I was talking to myself. No one was here to ask about my imminent emigration. No one.

  I moved around the empty rooms of the flat with the grains of bad dreams in my head. The worry about Hong Kong flared up from time to time, surprising me when I poured tea or brushed my teeth. I found myself not walking, but creeping, with the same tense, wary attentiveness of a child rifling through his parent’s coat pockets, afraid to get caught. I found myself frequently looking over my shoulder. I would start sweating even though it was really quite cold. Once, while I was cutting up radish for my breakfast, I held the knife a little too long, unwilling to put it away in case someone else picked it up. I blamed this eeriness on my lack of sleep. I felt like I was being watched. My every movement observed. And then I remembered that, even though I was lonely, I was never alone.

  ‘Have you mentioned anything to upstairs? About Hong Kong?’ I asked Mum as she was arranging her handbag. I nodded up at the stairs, unwilling to say his name in case he was listening.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you try?’

  That night, I took out the pen from its box, the one with his name inscribed in Roman alphabet, strange and unfamiliar. I wrote furiously, covering a sheet of paper in a moment. Ink splattering from the nib. I wrote about Hong Kong, Dad, the email from the Professor. I wrote about how I’d envisaged things turning out differently. How everything had seemed better in London, the whole world a bright, easy place, like a lobby of a luxury hotel, where there was always someone to open the door, someone to pick up my suitcases. Here, the door was shut, and all the secrets of how to live one’s life were locked inside. I wrote about holding the knife in the kitchen. I wrote about how scared I was of him, when, surely, I should be scared for him. I wrote about my dream. I wrote, Sometimes I think you’re not alive. Sometimes I think you’ve killed yourself and it’s your ghost which is following me.

  Rereading the clinging, wheedling script, my confidence faltered. What did he care about my worries? I ripped it up and threw it on the floor. As soon as the strips of paper reached the ground, I regretted it. I took up the pen and tried again. This time, I folded the message, smudging the ink in my hurry, and marched straight to his room before my doubts caught up with me. I pressed my ear to his door. I heard nothing. Nothing. My heart was beating wildly. The door. That insulting door, heavy and dark and dull, like the surface of an anvil, to be pounded against, pointlessly, unremittingly, again and again. Why did he defy me like this, my weak bespectacled little brother? Why couldn’t he love me like I loved him, embrace me, welcome me back? I stuck the note through the gap, angrily pushing it to the other side. Then I kicked the door. Twice for good measure, the wood jolting on its hinges. As I kicked, my anger leaked away. I breathed deeply, steeling myself, my heart racing.

  Suddenly, I wanted to cry. I shouldn’t have kicked like that, I thought. Perhaps I’d scared him, my sick, frail brother. I was sorry I disturbed his quiet. Sorry, I whispered. I placed my palms and forehead against the wooden panels, listening to my slowing breath. My mind grew dark and empty. The memory of London at night emerged in front of my eyes, light by city light, window by window, glittering in the dark; the familiar view from my balcony, the silhouettes of neighbouring men and women, dark shapes, walking through the rooms of their apartments. I began to cry. Quietly, so that he might not hear me.

  Toru, are you there?

  I waited. Finally, from behind the door, I heard something stir. I held my breath, pressing my ear close to the wood. I heard, I think, paper rustling. An exhalation of breath. And a step, taken towards me.

  BALM-OF-GILEAD

  Robert Minhinnick

  Gimme, Gimme, Gimme?

  Nah.

  That’s what you need, isn’t it?

  What?

  A man after midnight?

  Oh, fuck off. Well, as long as he’s not a cormorant.

  ‘Take a Chance on Me’?

  Can’t remember. But we finished with ‘Waterloo’.

  No, we finished with the encore … ‘Thank you for the Music’…

  Loved it, didn’t they?

  Yeah, all dressed up. Those Swedish wigs. The satin shoulders.

  People there you’d never think. And you’d never think the old man…

  But why did he take us?

  For that audience. It’s all about breaking it down, he said. Kind of mixing. Or smashing it up. Slowly. Yeah, that night showed how to subvert the culture. His word. All the phoney stereotypes made meaningless…

  And remember that angry bloke? Appeared from behind the smoke machine and said look, we’ve come here for a concert. Not to watch your stupid dancing. I’ll never forget that. Thought, this is it. When the old man is finally taught a lesson.

  There was another man, with silver hair, in a silver suit. Like a ghost. He came from nowhere, out of the smoke and said, leave it out, gentlemen. Some of us are trying to enjoy ourselves…

  Yeah, the old man could always get up other people’s noses. His arms in the air, back and fore. Like a real fanatic. ‘Take a Chance on Me’? Didn’t think he liked that stuff.

  Well, he didn’t. Wasn’t that the point?

  He was pretty loose by then … All that Sol in the Pavilion bar. I can still see the red labels lined up. Those rays of Mexican sun? Stronger than he expected. And wine with the meal. Remember that? What did he say? Just a sequence of sequins, these people tonight. Quoting himself, as ever.

  Didn’t care, did he?

  Yeah, a carafe. I just looked at the colour of that wine. Black, to me. But afterwards I always asked if we could have wine in a carafe. Or a jug. But never a bottle… Had to be black wine…

  Buying us booze, too. You were fifteen. Just turned… And a girl.

  Thanks. I was really out of it, that night.

  Taught us to drink though, didn’t he? Look, this is something you need to learn, he said. Just know two chords on a guitar. Just one parable by Borges… Hey, put another one on. Drag the pallet across…

  Fish and chips and red wine. And my chips were cold.

  I can still see your tongue. All the blotches on your cheeks. Came up immediately. Like a fever…

  Never got over it…

  ‘Fernando’, wasn’t it?

  Could have been. Nah. You gotta learn, I can hear the old man saying, how to find the diamonds in the caca.

  It’s all cac now.

  Well…

  Yeah… But the old man? At Abbamania?

  Why not? There’s nothing not weird now…

  So you want to know what I see?

  Want to see what I know? I know what you see. I see it too.

  No, I mean what I see when I shut my eyes.

  Okay…

  Firelight on the beach is what I see. When I’m in the sleeping bag under the bushes. The ones that creep across the dune and smell so great…

  Bit like medicine … Eucalyptus?

  And I feel almost safe there. What did the old man call those bushes?

  I know…

  And look, I haven’t felt like that for ages. Almost since Mam…

  That’s five years. And five months.

  Lying in the sand, looking up at Orion. What did he say? Brick-red blink of Beetlejuice…? Something like that…

  Yeah. Something like that…

  But, another world.

  Right on.

  ’Nother world.

  It was
hard on him, the old man.

  On us all.

  At his age, I mean. Everything he knew.

  But we were ready. Expecting it.

  Listen, it was everything we knew too. You remember what he was like. No phone. No Facebook. Remembered life before the net. Prehistoric. But he was ready for it.

  Rooted, used to be the word.

  Capable of love. Loved stars. Certainly loved sand.

  People? Not sure about people. But capable of lying, the devious bastard.

  Yeah. All those old types seemed to have something. Relied on memories, see. Till they started remembering things that never happened. They were different from us.

  But he was fading. Admit it.

  No, he…

  Look, I used to ask him stuff and he’d pretend to know. But you can only conceal so much…

  Memory was another form of sand, to quote him. Revealing, concealing. Never stable…

  Told me he couldn’t tell what’s real and what a dream… That it didn’t matter.

  Who can? These days? It’s all a nightmare. But Sea of where? You were saying?

  Put those smaller bits on now.

  Want it to turn colour? I’ll put the weed on too.

  He loved that, didn’t he?

  Put it out a few times when it was too wet. Seaweed smoke.

  I woke up once with him before dawn. Height of summer. Only about three o’ clock but there were the first signs of light. I was helping with that ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ thing he was doing. But he must have already been awake and heaved an armful on just before. Tiny green flames running over the sand, there were. In those relays they race. Seemed as many as lights in the bay. When the bay was lit. I remember there was a light on top of the Meridian. That wasn’t so long ago. Considering.