Dec 2017

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The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

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Notes from New Delhi

VOLUME: 2 - ISSUE: 9 - DECEMBER - 2017

Notes from New Delhi : Dibyajyoti Sarma 02 Columns:

Sotto Voce -Indira Parthasarathy

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Letter from London-John Looker 15

The Wanderer - Andrew Fleck 19 P&P - Yonason Goldson 23 Poetry:

Duane L. Herrmann 30

Grant Guy 34

Joel Schueler 36

Amit Shankar Saha 70 John Maurer 75 Fiction:

Era.Murukan 59

Mike Sharlow 49

Tushar Jain 43 Book Review: The Heroine and Other Stories Deepalakshmi Jeyakanthan/Hannah Dhanaraj 39

Wrapper Art: IRIS SCOTT

THE WAGON MAGAZINE

KGE TEAM 4/4, FIRST FLOOR, R.R.FLATS, FIRST STREET, VEDHACHALA NAGAR, KODAMBAKKAM, CHENNAI - 600 024 Phone: +91-9382708030 e-mail: thewagonmagazine@gmail.com www.thewagonmagazine.com The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

I was introduced to Kunwar Narain when Jitendra Ramprakash (who

runs a travelling festival of poetry films called Sadho Poetry) kindly sent me the DVD, ‘The Poet’s Voice: Kunwar Narain’ (available at sadho.com/ Poetry-Albums.html) two years back. And I was a convert. Then I got hold of Narain’s ‘Selected Poems’ in Hindi, published by Kitabghar Prakashan.

I was lucky enough to meet Kunwar Narain sir at his home in CR Park, Delhi on 17 September 2016. He had just completed 89 and his hearing was weak. That did not stop us from discussing poetry, and our favourite poets, Eliot, Yeats, and Auden. He had translated almost all the major 20th western poets into Hindi. He also told us about his trip to Turkey and meeting Nazim Hikmet. The Turkish poet had just been released from one of his jail sentences, and Narain was still a starry-eyed young poet. I can still hear his voice narrating the story. “He (Hikmet) was an imposing personality. He sat next to me and put his hand on my thigh. He had huge hands.”

I identified the awe in the voice because that’s what I felt meeting The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

4 Narain, hearing him tell the tale. I gave him my book of poems and since he had already lost his eyesight, Apurva Narain, his son, suggested that I read a few poems from the book to him. I did. And he said he liked them. There couldn’t be a bigger reward.

On leaving, with the promise to meet again, I received a copy of Narain’s last masterpiece, the epic poem (kavya) ‘Kumarajiva’ published by Bharatiya Gnanpith. I found the book a tad difficult. A poetic biography of Kumarajiva, the man who introduced Buddhist literature in China, the book tackles deep philosophical questions on existence, life, death and everything in between. But the prologue, ‘In Tathagata’s Company’ moved me beyond words. I read and reread the passages a thousand times until I was ready to attempt a translation.

This translation is my humble tribute to the legacy of Kunwar Narain.

ABOUT KUNWAR NARAIN (19 September 1927 - 15 November 2017)

An outstanding presence in Indian literature, Kunwar Narain is regarded as one of the finest poets internationally and Hindi’s leading living literary figure.

He has written for over six decades now.

Widely read, he is among the few intellectuals to blend a modern international sensibility and a thorough grounding in his country’s cultural history. His work evolves continuously from a metaphysical engagement with language to a creative use of history and mythology, and from a visionary sense of beauty to the coarse ironies of socio-political reality. His poems embody a unique layering of the simple and the complex and, above all, a rare purity and a deep humanism. He writes in varied genres - poetry, epic poems, stories, criticism, translations, jottings and writings on world cinema, the arts, and areas of diverse cultural interest. Translated nationally and internationally, his honours include the Sāhitya Akādémi Award; Kabīr Sammān; Shalākā Sammān; Warsaw University’s honThe Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

5 orary medal; Italy’s Premio Feronia for distinguished international author; India’s civilian honour Padma Bhūshan; the Sāhitya Akādémi’s Senior Fellowship; and the Jnānpīth, India’s highest literary honour.

Born in 1927, he lived his early years in the twin cities of Ayodhya and Faizabad before moving to Lucknow. After over five decades there, where a major part of his writing was done and his house was a centre for literary and classical music meets, he moved to Delhi, where he now lives with his wife and son. Linked to the Nayī Kavitā in the sixties, he has expanded and inspired its frontiers since. Influences on him have been varied, from the Upanishads and epics to Kabir and Khusro, history and mythology to Buddhism and Marxism, Kafka and Cavafy to Ghalib and Gandhi. He gives formative value to his first visit to Europe, Russia, and China in 1955 and meetings with poets like Nazim Hikmet and Pablo Neruda. Later, he translated the poems of symbolists like Mallarmé and Valéry, and then of poets like Cavafy and Borges.

A characteristically polite presence in the literary world, he is wary of orthodoxies and publishes selectively. His oeuvre began in 1956 with Chakravyūh, his first poetry collection. Ātmajayī, a short epic based on the Upanishadic character of Nachiketa, is a metaphysical work widely recognised as a classic of Hindi literature. In Apné Sāmné, political and social ironies found voice and, a long hiatus later, his much- awarded collection Koī Dūsrā Nahīn became a milestone. He was honoured with Italy’s Premio Feronia in 2006, a first for any Indian writer, shared with authors like Grass, Coetzee, Adonis, Retamar, and Darwish. In 2008, his acclaimed epic poem Vājashravā Ké Bahāné recalled Ātmajayī’s memory of forty years ago, in a chain of island-like poems. An epic poem Kumarajiva, around the Buddhist scholar by the same name, is his latest book published in 2015. Journals like Yug Chétnā, Nayā Pratīk, and Chhāyānat that he co-edited; and writings on cinema, music and the arts; form yet other facets of his repertoire. Writings, translations, and works and theses on the poet have appeared in journals, anthologies and as independent collections. Book-length translations exist in Indian and foreign languages like Kannada, Dogri, Punjabi, Assamese, Odiya, English, Italian, Polish, Estonian, Spanish and Russian.

The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

6 A selection of poems in English translation, No Other World, by his son Apurva came in 2008, from which some translations are taken in the album. He continues to write, and a book of translations of foreign poets done over six decades is now in publication. (from http://www.sadho.com/The-Poet.html) In Tathagata’s Company from Kumarajiva, a narrative poem by Kunwar Narain Translated from the Hindi by Dibyajyoti Sarma I’ve embarked upon a thousand-year journey, with Tathagata; we have an eternity together – on our path we will find who knows how many cities, how many deserts.

7 in the wholeness of lost past, sometimes like a star sometime like the sun.

Kumarajiva can be resurrected again the way he resurrected Tathagata; because no one, Buddha or Kumarajiva, remain dead.

His was a life of ideas, which can be experienced any time, by going to his time or by bringing him to our time,

We’ll not stop anywhere; we’ll carry on like the blowing wind.

the way at one time Kumarajiva had found completeness, inhabiting the Buddha’s ideas in his own time,

We’ll leave behind, just a few words – some reverberation of ideas, etching on thresholds – footprints of roving mendicants.

the way man inhabits his memories and past customs rehabilitating them in present time.

The way trees and leaves soak in light and air and carry to the soil the fertilisers,

Every dedicated follower – thinker – artist draws parallel to the Time where he exists an Alternate Time of his own.

the same way will spread the fire of spiritual ideas – breathing from flowers to roots.

Digesting ugliness, there will always bloom the fragrance of beauty in the air, breaking the walls of darkness, there will always sparkle joy, and we will always be visible The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

It is a life at once contemporary and universal where resides permanently the essence of his ideas and his achievements, where they grow continuously until eternity.

I, Kumarajiva, am a vehicle of Buddha’s words, not just a translator.

Through him, I’m a message for myself too, The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

8 interspersed with his message.

With Tathagata’s teachings, there contain my dedication too.

Wrapped in my achievements, I too am my Alternate Time where I’ll endure even after me — with Tathagata — the way Tathagata is alive even after him, in his self-created Alternate Sub-Time, even today, with me.

In every moment, I live several moments.

Time cannot not divided like matter, like matter, it’s neither whole nor separate.

It’s us with our knowledge of matter that we divide Time into tiny little pieces.

Whichever epoch I fancy, I resurrect it like the present day, and the ones I don’t, I discard them.

Bringing lifelessness to existence, a conscious being, I myself transform into my past, my yesterday, my today and my future, my eternity.

It all comes to us, through our dreams, our ideas.

This is my present which has arrived after thousands of years, and it can endure for thousands of years after me, sometimes ancient, some prehistoric, sometimes medieval.

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9 With all humility, I invite Tathagata from his epoch to mine.

Like a book, I open his epoch in mine.

A lot is hidden in these writings which are not visible in the folds of time.

I study the closely-knit threading of ‘present’, when loosened, from its holes is visible a light completely different from the permanent razzmatazz of today.

Each book is a closed door opening which I immerse into the words and shower under words’ waterfall of time which is the time of that language.

I notice In the beauteous past somewhere, I’m reincarnated — in some unknown place.

My mind is Jetavana, there somewhere there’s a Shravasti, an Amravati and Tathagata’s flesh and blood companionship, a disciple listening to his teaching, where there’s Sarnath, Sanchi and Patliputra.

Matching wheels to wheels with the chariots of Licchavis, Ambapalika rides her chariot — a Ganika who claims proudly, ‘Today in my mango orchard, Tathagata will be my guest.’

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10 ‘Take thousand cowries, Ganika, and give us the pleasure to host him…’

‘I refuse even if you offer a thousand cities.’

The Licchavis heard and her chariot marched on.

I humbly return to Kucha — my own epoch — where in the caves of Kinjil, there is a festival in the honour of Maitreya’s return.

Who knows in how many different lives, in how many different ways, I have experienced the different meanings of Home.

11 carrying in my hands the same begging bowl, writings or a torch of wisdom.

(The poem was first published in sunflowercollective.blogspot.com) Dibyajyoti Sarma 2 December 2017 New Delhi

Finger painting Wrapper painting by Iris Scott

Who knows how many times I have experienced the joys of being a householder and then the pains of losing the household, the happiness of setting up a home and the sadness of witnessing its ruin.

Who knows how many times I have uttered in exasperation — I would not build any more homes and who know how many times spring up like tides, mounds of termites on the body, another home and family.

Who knows how many times I have uttered with conviction, like enlightened Buddha — ‘Oh, householder, I would not allow you to build anymore, another home — this is your last shelter.’

Yet, I am forced to return again and again, from the other world to this, The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

Iris Scott was born in 1984 to two hippies on a small farm near Seattle, WA. They named her after the Greek goddess of the rainbow. Both her mother and father worked at home self-employed. Mom taught piano lessons and tended the gardens, while Iris’ father supported the family, building custom cabinets in a shop attached to the house. As a young girl Iris had ample time to be alone with her own mind, left to play and entertain herself without a screen or numerous toys. The home was nestled at the end of a long driveway, in a clearing surrounded by lush mossy evergreen woodlands. Iris and her little sister had no shortage of pets, they grew up playing with their dogs, cats, bunnies, horses, ponies, parrots, lizards, goats and chickens. Summers were spent barefoot, digging caves in the hillside, building tree houses in the woods, and creating pottery from The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

12 clay they unearthed. On rainy days, of which there were many in Seattle, Iris holed up in her bedroom, pouring over how-to-draw books borrowed from the library. Emulating her parents, and following their modeling of “practice, practice, practice”, Iris tackled art by first teaching herself the rules of drawing realistically. She copied photos and paintings from an early age, learning the rules so that one day she could break them.

Just a few months after graduating university, and while living abroad in Taiwan, Iris in 2010 was about to stumble upon her unique career as the first professional finger painter. Over the course of college Iris had learned fundamentals of charcoal, pastels, watercolors, oils, acrylics, and clay.

With this foundation of knowledge and preparation, a lucky opportunity arose one hot and humid day in Southern Taiwan in a moment of laziness. On Iris’ easel an oil painting of yellow flowers was just a few strokes away from finished, but all the brushes were dirty and needed cleaning before proceeding. Too eager to complete the painting in that moment, Iris simply took a few swipes at the canvas with oils squeezed right upon her fingertips. The thick paint went right on; texture was suddenly easier to control. Iris was thrilled to discover what she believed could be mastered, oil finger painting. The next day she hunted down surgical gloves...

Iris has been featured in Forbes, Barron’s, Business Insider, USA Today, NowThis, CBS New York, and American Art Collector Magazine.

Several galleries carry Iris’s originals, her collectors have included Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Children’s Hospital, and Swedish Medical Centers. In contrast to much of the contemporary art scene scarcity model, Iris’ prints are intentionally accessible because she believes withholding affordable prints is not aligned with the collective conscious of art history’s future.

Iris’ vibrant rainbow palette depicting a parallel, but familiar universe, emits an energetic optimism and a respect for the natural world. Using just gloved fingertips, Iris Scott works with paint like a malleable, nearly clay-like medium. Finger painting is becoming an entire art movement, as thousands of beginners worldwide are setting down their brushes in favor of this more tactile approach. For those who want to learn finger painting as an adult, Iris offers this free video, a kit of supplies, as well as a book, Finger Painting Weekend Workshop.

Please contact her on: http://www.irisscottfineart.com The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

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SOTTO VOCE INDIRA PARTHASARATHY

Shakespearean riddle A good deal has been written about the plays by Shakespeare,

which could fill the shelves of several libraries, but not much has been told about his sonnets. Like, as in the case of our own Subhramanya Bharati, whose poems have drawn much attention more than his equally illuminating prose works.

I must confess I started reading Shakespeare’s sonnets much later as suggested by one of my literary friends in Delhi. To my great surprise, I found that Shakespeare’s sonnets have a close resemblance to the Tamil ‘akam’ (interior) poems of the Sangam era. The sonnets can be interpreted as ‘drama’. They have action and heroes. The acThe Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

14 tion consists of lyrical sequences, which slowly mount to tragedy.

There are three characters, a man, a youth and a woman. They go through all stages of love, physical infatuation, sentimental odysseys, separation, infidelity, and death.

In the Tamil akam poetry also there are three main characters, hero, heroine and the heroine’s alter ego, an inseparable female companion. All aspects of love are exhaustively studied in these poems, except, true to Tamil culture; the heroine can never be shown as given to faithlessness!

In Shakespeare’s sonnets, there is a fourth character also. This is ‘Time’ which destroys, devours and is the ultimate arbiter of all values. But ‘Time’ is an important character in the ‘puram’ (exterior) division of the Sangam poetry, where the transitory nature of human life is discussed.

It looks like that the cruel aspect of Time in its finiteness provides the subject-matter for melancholic-hang over for all the poets and artists. Leonardo da Vinci says in one of his brilliant lamentations: ‘Oh! Time! Thou that consumest all things! O envious age, thou destroyest all things with the hard teeth of the years, little by little is slow death! Helen when she looked in the mirror and saw the withered wrinkles which old age had made in her face, wept and wondered why ever she had been carried away twice.‘ Leonardo speaks of three kinds of time, geological, when the time of the earth, of oceans, and mountain erosion, archaeological time, for all history becomes archaeology, in the end, ruined pyramids, temples and kingdoms, and thirdly, human time in which the proximity of the grave to the cradle reminding us of our mortality!

The three kinds of time as spoken by Leonardo constitute the bottom line of all Shakespearean sonnets and all his tragedies. In one of the Tamil ‘puram’ poets, an old man with a hunched back and holding a battered walking stick reminisces his past as he sees young girls and boys diving in a river. His lament is dramatic when he cries ‘Oh! Time!’

The first theme of Shakespearean sonnets in its dramatized verThe Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

15 sion is to preserve beauty and love from the destructive action of time. A son or daughter is not only the descendant of a family, not only a continuation but above all, the repetition of the same faces and features; literally making time stand still. Shakespeare says in one of his sonnets; ‘Now is the time that face should form another’.

Reminding us of the old man’s deep anguish in the Sangam ‘puram’ poem that sums up the drama of human life, a Shakespearean sonnet echoes: ‘……. when alack, Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?’

Shakespeare’s sonnets have their own poetic diction, like the Sangam poems, their own drama rehearsed lyrical monologues and their own metaphysics. One hundred and twenty-six are addressed to the youth; in the remainder, he addresses the Dark Lady. The dramatic action consists in the double treachery of the youth and woman.

It is a Shakespearean riddle yet to be solved who the youth and Dark Lady are, which, in a way, is akin to the grammatical dictum followed in the Sangam love poems that the name of the hero or heroine should not be mentioned but have to be referred to only as ‘he’ or ‘she’.

Indira Parthasarathy is the pen name of R.Parthasarathy, a noted Tamil writer and playwright.

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Letter from London - 14 from John Looker

Friday night. A London bookshop. The launch of the latest issue of a poetry magazine. Why would this be a surprising event?

If you had come along with me you would have seen sign language interpreters standing next to the poets who were reading, and an audience signifying applause by waving two hands in the air in place of clapping. Many were deaf or partially so, and some would describe themselves as not ‘deaf ’ but ‘Deaf ’: their language and culture being that of British Sign Language.

You could easily have misunderstood what was going on how ever.

It looked as though an audience were listening to English poetry through interpreters, but that was only half of what was happening.

Some of the poems were being performed primarily in sign language The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

17 and the interpretation was into spoken English. Many had been composed originally in BSL, the inspiration coming through signs, body movement and facial expression. English words came later.

This raises a number of questions about the essence of poetry inspired by a signing Muse.

But before considering that, I’d better explain a bit. This was the launch of Magma 69 – the latest issue of the renowned poetry journal, Magma – and a hundred people were filling chairs in the London Review Bookshop, just round the corner from the British Museum.

Magma dedicates each issue to a broad theme. Recent topics have been ‘Bones and Breath’ and ‘Margins’. There was a Comedy Issue and one on Risk. The latest is The Deaf Issue, although as the editors said: “Before our call for submissions, we realised there was a risk in calling Magma 69 ‘The Deaf Issue’; addressing deafness as a theme and inviting responses from non-hearing and hearing poets alike, from British Sign Language (BSL) poets to poets who wear hearing aids and poets who have never misheard a word in their life.”

The 100-page issue however shows the imaginative variety of responses. At one end of the scale, for instance, is a poem by Peter Surkov, a medical student, exploring sound and hearing. His poem in free verse spreads across 80 lines; this kept the interpreter busy! He covered the physiology and neurology of the ear, the WHO definition of deafness, a father’s refusal to acknowledge hearing loss, a violin concerto, and a typical scene in modern life: the airport departure lounge.

A poem by Hannah Lowe about elderly parents, entitled The Stroke, received a very warm reception. It begins with these delicately composed lines (in which the sound of words is delectable):

For days after the stroke, she lay bed-bound, misdiagnosed – the doctor said ‘Bells Palsy’ of her weeping eye and tilted frown, her hand cold-numb below the eiderdown. The telly in the corner spun blue-light, an anarchy of voices. My father, dying himself, and lost brought trays of tea and plates of buttered toast.

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18 There are poems about the steady loss of hearing – one by a lady who joked that her husband could not hear high notes while she couldn’t pick up the low ones. There are two rather different poems about hearing aids – one from me, This is Not a Hearing Aid, which I have posted on my blog. Others consider the shock of discrimination or mundane misunderstandings in communication.

These were poems written in English. For a completely different experience I would recommend that you watch some of the sign language poems on the internet. An English translation is set out in Magma 69, but there is no substitute for viewing the signed original.

During the launch for example we had a performance from Donna Williams who had contributed two BSL poems. She herself is Deaf and a well-known poet. One of her poems is an entertaining piece about Dr Who, the TV series. Do view it – it’s at https://vimeo. com/150103141

I was fascinated by her description of how she composes as a sign language poet. It seems that she begins by jotting ideas down on paper in her own shortened notes, which, she told us, would not make much sense to others. When she is ready, she composes – assembling the poem by signing to herself in a mirror, steadily building it up. The finished version might then be recorded, and an English translation can follow.

For many of us one of the primary pleasures of poetry is the sound of the poem as it is spoken, or on the inner ear. I don’t need to elaborate; you probably feel the same. I wondered therefore about the nature of poetry that had no sound, for which sound was The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

19 not merely missing but alien. Where would the poetry lie? I guessed it might be located in narrative, in the communication of emotional experiences, in simile and metaphor. And these features are indeed present in the sign language poems of Magma’s Deaf Issue. Narrative is particularly strong, but when story-telling is paramount we might wonder whether the piece we are being offered is a poem or a short story.

Donna Williams partly addresses this in her other poem, Bilingual poet’s dilemma. You may view this at https://youtu.be/jackK3GmPHo This begins: As I hunt for inspiration, for poetry revelation, I wonder, if it’s in Sign, how to make it rhyme?

Although there is a practice known as sign-supported English, you can’t simply transpose BSL signs and English words. The grammar of signing is entirely of its own making, using positioning and movement in 3-D space to convey thoughts, augmented by facial expression. I wondered whether a poem composed in sign language might have spacial equivalents of line-breaks and enjambment, gestural echoes akin to rhyme, body movements conveying rhythm. In short, whether there would be a pleasure in watching the physical properties of the poem being signed, something distinct from the content but underpinning it.

I think I found the answer, and it was Yes. You might like to look up some of the recorded performances and see whether you agree.

John Looker lives with his wife in Surrey, south-east England. His first collection of poetry, The Human Hive, was published in 2015 by Bennison Books and was selected by the Poetry Library for the UK’s national collection. His poems have appeared in print and in online journals, on local radio and in two anthologies: When Time and Space Conspire, an anthology commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Austin International Poetry Festival, and Indra’s Net, an international collection published by Bennison Books in aid of the Book Bus charity. His blog, Poetry from John Looker, is at https://johnstevensjs.wordpress.com The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

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The Wanderer Andrew Fleck Dappled Things and Patterned Things Glory be to God for dappled things — For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough; And álltrádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

The above poem, Pied Beauty, is Hopkins’ great encomium to the irregular patterns and colours seen in nature, and – as most people with more than a passing acquaintance with his poetry are aware –for him, the beauty of nature is a gift from God. One could argue, at least half-seriously, that the Reformation gave England one of its greatest nature poets: since the great architecture and craft of old Catholic England had been snaffled by the Anglicans, Catholics like Hopkins had instead to seek out beauty, meaning and the glory of God in the great outdoors.

The word “pied” does not denote a particular pattern, rather any pattern in which there are two or more colours, and it is clear that Hopkins means patterns that are very definitely irregular: in the second stanza, Hopkins defines “pied beauty” as things “counter, original, spare, strange”. Herein lies an apparent contradiction, however, for Hopkins’ very praise of this irregular sort of beauty lies within a The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

21 tightly organized, formal poem. Hopkins took the Petrarchan sonnet (sometimes called the Italian sonnet), and reduced it by exactly one quarter. Thus, the initial eight lines of the Petrarchan sonnet become six, and the last six lines become four and a half, to make the ten and a half lines of his “curtal sonnet”. Why he only ever wrote three of them, I can’t guess, for the effect is a sort of zingier, zennier epiphany than the Petrarchan sonnet or the more ponderous Spenserian sonnet. But there is nothing irregular at all about it – the rhyme scheme is as organized as its Petrarchan forebear, and the form was devised with mathematical precision – he even wrote a formula to explain it.

The rhythm of the poem certainly is strange and original, written as it is according to the principals of Hopkins’ own “sprung rhythm.”

We needn’t go into the intricacies of “sprung rhythm” here (and in any case, I am not sure I am qualified), but it suffices to say, first, that it is more varied in its stresses than the more regularly spaced stresses of most formal verse – the tetum-tetum-tetum-tetum-tetum of iambic pentameter, for example; second, according to Hopkins, it more accurately captures the rhythm of natural English speech.

There is a preponderance of spondees– stressed syllables twinned to each other, sometimes several in a row, like blows falling in quick succession, as in the line With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim.

The line seems to pull at the tongue that reads it and the ear that hears it. However natural Hopkins supposed it to be, the aural effect, to those used to the more regular rhythm, is, well, original and strange.

The crowning effect, the great dappling of Hopkins’ poetry, however, lies in his frequent and sustained use of alliteration. An alliteration is a tool used sparingly by many poets, often with a prettifying effect, sometimes for comic effect, but this was not always so.

In fact, alliteration has been around for a lot longer than rhyme in English poetry, and if you go back to the very oldest English poetry – that of the Anglo-Saxons, it is the predominant effect, its use heavily formalised. Here is passage from Beowulf, describing the monster Grendel: Wihtunhælo, grimondgrædig, gearosonawæs,

Wight unhallowed Grim and greedy, grasping heads,

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22 reocondreþe, ond on ræstegenam Wrath and reckless, from beds of rest þritigþegna, þanon eft gewat of thirty thanes, and thence fled huðehremig to ham faran, Proudly in plunder, home`ward

repaired midþærewælfyllewicaneosan.

And with spoils of slaughter, sought he his lair.

Just like Hopkins’ verse, this seems to pull on the tongue somehow. Yet the alliteration provides not just an aural, or oral, effect, but the structural underpinning of the line. Traditionally, each line has three stressed syllables that use the same consonant sound, and one syllable with a different consonant sound. By Chaucer’s time, this technique had disappeared from the south of the country, replaced by rhyme brought over from the continent; but it held out in a few northern and western redoubts, and can be seen in full flow in the long poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. For a point of comparison with Hopkins, here is one of the more pastoral passages in the anonymous poem, describing the change from winter to spring: Botþenneþeweder of þeworldewythwynter hit þrepez, Coldeclengezadoun, cloudezvplyften, Schyreschedezþerayn in schowrezfulwarme, Fallezvpon fayre flat, flowrezþereschewen, Boþegroundez and þegreuezgrenear her wedez

(Approximately: but then the weather of the world with winter battles/cold clings down, clouds uplift / bright falls the rain in showers full warm / falling upon fair fields, flowers there showing / both ground and the grass in green garments) When the Gawain poet, as here, experiments with the Old English alliterative formula, it is to add more alliteration, not less. The effect is as striking and muscular as in Hopkins’ poetry, but much more regular– we might say repetitive. Perhaps this technique was more suited to Old English than to Middle English – the poet of Gawain was a virtuoso, no doubt, but critics agree that he often stretches for an unusual, obscure or sometimes barely appropriate word to keep the line alliterative. The technique may be barely possible in The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

23 modern English – in the English poet Simon Armitage’s recent rendition, the poet-translator is pragmatic: he uses alliteration where he can and where it works, and sometimes uses a fully alliterative line as in the original, but on the whole prefers words that are appropriate, even if only approximately alliterative. He renders the above passage: Then the world’s weather wages war on winter: Cold shrinks earthwards and clouds climb; Sun-warmed, shimmering rain comes showering Onto meadows and fields where flowers unfurl, And woods and grounds wear a wardrobe of green.

For Hopkins, the structure of the poem is provided by the rhyme scheme of the curtal sonnet, but the alliteration is the very essence of the poem – providing its dappling, its “couple-colour.” The alliteration is irregularly spaced and sometimes inexact. But in tandem with the compressive effects of sprung rhythm, it provides the poem with some startling blasts of aural beauty – my favourite: Fresh-fire coal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings. Actually, when you look closely at that line, it almost follows the very same pattern of alliteration as Gawain and the Green Knight: Hopkins, a great innovator in English poetry, always claimed he was rather discovering and defining patterns in English poetry rather than inventing them. The glory of God, too, he saw in the chance beauty we find in nature, rather than in the more regularised patterns in works of man; the poet’s job was to capture and transmit, rather than create, this beauty.

Credits Gerald Manley Hopkin’s work is in the Public Domain The translation of Beowulf is my own, but I was assisted by the MIT version, here http://www.mit.edu/~jrising/webres/beowulf.pdf The extract of Simon Armitage’s Gawain is from “Fitt 2” of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Simon Armitage, Faber and Faber, London 2007 Andrew Fleck, who has been a secondary school teacher, proof reader and EFL teacher, among other things, writes on poetry and history at sweettenorbull.com.

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24

PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE

W

hy do some songs merely entertain, where others penetrate to the depths of our souls? Why does one song leave us unmoved, where another evokes passion or joy or sorrow?

We might find an answer by framing the question differently: What is harmony?

Any thoughtful combination of notes can produce a pleasing sound. But not all composition is inspired, not all orchestration sublime. And even then, only once in a long while does the coalescence of notes and instrumental arrangement produce a true symphonic masterpiece, one that carries us to new heights of exultation.

Add to that the poetry of artful lyrics seasoned with shrewd insight into the human condition, and you will experience the fusion of heart and mind in a glorious oneness of divine synchronicity.

There is a single word to describe this. In biblical Hebrew, it is shir.

There are three words in Hebrew that translate approximately The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

25 as “music.” The first is niggun, referring to the actual production of notes and sounds in the form of melody. The second is zemer, which describes the power of musical composition to tap into the emotions and stir the heart, thereby becoming the existential chariot that carries the verbal message of inspired lyrics beyond mere intellectual understanding. This ultimate level is called shir, where words carried by melody in turn transport us themselves to a place where the intellect and the emotions blend into seamless unification.

This is true harmony – the resolution of the innate dissonance between the head and the heart, between thoughts and feelings, achieving a perfect synthesis of those conflicting human faculties by forging them into sympathetic union. It is the power of song that returns us to the source of universal peace and truth, empowering us to reconnect with our essential selves and eliminating all conflict by bringing disparate parts together in absolute oneness.

Over 2000 years ago, during the time of the Temple in Jerusalem, it was the priestly tribe of Levi who were the master musicians, putting to music the eternal words of King David’s Psalms as a backdrop to the otherworldly experience of the Temple service.

In the classical age, it was the brilliant variations on a single theme that held listeners transfixed by choral and symphonic performances set to words of theological profundity.

And although it is common for classicists to dismiss the work of moderns in comparison with the mastery of the ancients, it is ever the job of artists to discover the medium that resonates with the times and circumstances in which they find themselves. Art is communication, and both art and artists are inseparable from their audiences.

Some art is poor. Some art is good. Some art is inspired. And, occasionally, through the felicitous alignment of the stars, a creation of perfect harmony rises above the mundane and the merely beautiful. When it does, it captures the hearts and minds of those sufficiently in tune to recognize and experience the transcendence of intellect and emotion.

Wizard: You know what’s out there? A series of higher tones, The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

26 arranged by nature and governed by the laws of physics. And it’s a whole universe. It’s an energy, it’s an overtone, it’s a wavelength, and if you’re not riding it, good-lordy, you’ll never hear it.

Evan: Where do you think it comes from, what I hear?

Wizard: I think it comes from all around you, really. I mean, it comes through us – some of us. It’s invisible, but you feel it.

Evan: So only some of us can hear it?

Wizard: Only some of us are listening.

Some megahits are like fireworks, lighting up the sky and vanishing as quickly. Others establish themselves as classics, played over and over for decades. But occasionally, certain snatches of lyrics etch themselves into the bedrock of cultural consciousness and summon us to revisit them again and again and again.

Here are just a few memorable examples of lyrical genius woven together in verbal tapestries of poignant beauty and timeless wisdom that should bring a flicker of recognition and, for those who can truly hear, joyful exhilaration.

Her mind is Tiffany-twisted; she got the Mercedes Benz; She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys she calls friends.

Consistently voted one of the greatest songs of all time, the Eagles’ “Hotel California” keenly lays bare the vacuousness of popular culture and the utter cluelessness of those who worship at the altar of superficiality. In this way, the band was far ahead of its time, frequently skewering the glitter culture of which it was a part with songs like “Life in the Fast Lane,” “Get Over It,” “Life’s Been Good” and this, its undisputed masterpiece.

All lies and jest, still, a man he hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

Simon and Garfunkel’s tragic ballad “The Boxer” plucks the heartstrings of anyone who has ever fought against the odds for a distant dream. We can’t always be sensible, can’t always heed the voice of reason. And the fighter within us that makes us tilt at windmills may end up cut and bruised, but the next dream and then the The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

27 next forces him back into the ring. Eventually, he may find his way to the fight from which he emerges victorious.

Then one day you find, ten years have got behind you; No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

Every song on Pink Floyd’s classic album Dark Side of the Moon is itself a classic and “Time” is no exception. The theme of impaired perception takes center stage in this couplet, which expresses the very human failings of indecision, lack of foresight, and irresponsibility, together with the bitterness of recrimination when it’s too late to do anything but mourn opportunities lost.

And freedom, oh freedom, well that’s just some people talkin’; Your prison is walking through this world all alone.

In the same vein, these lines from the Eagles’ “Desperado” describe the way that fear of commitment masquerades as calculated independence, with similarly tragic results.

And when the broken-hearted people living in the world agree, There will be an answer, let it be.

Possibly the most beautiful musical composition in the last half-century, The Beatles’ “Let it Be” makes its own case for quiet resignation to all that lies beyond our control with its musical and lyrical simplicity. With far more subtlety and nuance than the giddy Utopianism of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” this single line evokes all the hope and pain of the human condition while forcing each of us to ponder our own role in finding the elusive “answer” to human suffering and injustice.

‘Cause every hand’s a winner, and every hand’s a loser; And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.

Kenny Roger’s country crossover classic “The Gambler” made a huge splash when it was released in 1978, with its compelling back-story and ingenious gleaning of life-lessons from the game of poker. In response to the feeling so many of us indulge that life has The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

28 dealt us a bad hand, the gambler casually posits that there are no winning or losing hands – success or failure depends entirely on how we play the hand we are dealt. That being said, life is a dangerous game, and to come out even may ultimately prove a greater victory than raking in the pot.

Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?

With its lament over sold-out and compromised ideals, Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” sums up the title track in this one line. On the battlefield of good versus evil, right versus wrong, and personal integrity versus the pressure of social status, most engagements are skirmishes little noticed by others and invisible to the rest of the world. Ingratiating oneself on the stage of public opinion is indeed imprisoning oneself in a cage, no matter how gilded that cage may be. The true heroes of the world are little-heralded, frequently anonymous, but absolutely critical to stemming the erosion of such vanishing values as character, loyalty, and self-sacrifice.

And I remember what she said to me, how she swore that it never

would end.

I remember how she held me oh-so-tight; wish I didn’t know now

what I didn’t know then.

Although ballads often devolve into melancholy and self-pity, Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind” wafts back and forth through the branches of nostalgic memory, lost love, and the maturity that brings at least partial redemption. Bob Dylan struck a similar chord, concluding each stanza of rebellious introspection with the refrain, I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. But where Dylan’s reflection is clever and contrived, Seger’s resonates with authenticity, longing for the passion and promise of youth while acknowledging the inevitable loss of innocence that accompanies the wisdom of experience.

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls, and whispered in the sounds of silence.

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29 The haunting harmonies and disquieting images of Simon and Garfunkel’s classic remain every bit as contemporary after half a century, evoking the plague of social ills, the indifference of society, the ineffectiveness of government, and the helplessness of those who want to make a difference. The image of graffiti not only as a symptom of urban blight but as a symbol of unheeded divine rebuke forces the song and its message to linger on and on, echoed in the interior rhyming scheme that adds urgency and melancholy.

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Virtually the last line the Beatles ever recorded, the simple but often forgotten truism contained in 15 words asserts that takers come away with nothing, while givers reap the rewards of giving. How easily we forget that putting the interests of others before our own is the infallible recipe for success in all our relationships, whether romantic, platonic, or familial.

Similarly insightful is this line from the Eagles’ “Take it to the Limit:” You can spend all your time making money; you can spend all your love making time. No matter how much we manage to grab in the short run, when our entire focus is ourselves we end up with nothing at all.

Before you cross the street take my hand; Life is just what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

In “Beautiful Boy,” one of his final compositions before his tragic death, John Lennon penned his most insightful line. How easy is it for us to miss what we have because we are trying desperately to get something more, be somewhere else, or become something better.

There’s nothing wrong with having goals and dreams, as long as they don’t cause us to miss life in the process of pursuing them.

And it’s too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around.

Does Pink Floyd really deserve another honorable mention?

Truth to tell, we could easily find more. But this line from “Dogs” outshines them all. It is completely unexpected, and it balances powThe Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

30 er and restraint depicting the outcome of a life devoted to excessive self-indulgence at the expense of others.

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a water-color

in the rain.

Don’t bother asking for explanations; she’ll just tell you that she

came – in the year of the cat.

Al Stewart was more than a one-hit wonder, although he never achieved super-stardom. His lyrics were a bit too cerebral for his audience, but this line from his greatest hit “Year of the Cat” has no equal for sheer poetic genius. You never see it coming, and its brilliant encapsulation of the blinding but fleeting passion of romantic infatuation in a single phrase leaves us caught between our own wistful imaginings and the cautionary whisper that the fantasies we create for ourselves can never last.

There is an evolution to music, and artists push the boundaries of convention, often with less than harmonic results. But only through the cacophony of experimentation do we eventually find our way to new melodic strains. And so it is with life itself, as we labor to filter out discordant messages from true poetry and lyric cleverness from timeless inspiration.

When we do, then music becomes for us what it is meant to be: God’s little reminder that there’s something else besides us in this universe, a harmonic connection between all living beings, everywhere, even the stars.

Rabbi Yonason Goldson, keynote speaker with 3,000 years’ experience, lives with his wife in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, newspaper columnist, and high school teacher.

His latest book, ‘Proverbial Beauty: Secrets for Success and Happiness from the Wisdom of the Ages’, is available on Amazon.

Visit him at yonasongoldson.com The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

31

POETRY

Duane L. Herrmann

PONY EXPRESS Small young men, fast ponies to carry mail between the ends of eastern and western rail lines over empty prairie and mountains.

They ran flying in relays to move the mail in the shortest time.

Only nineteen months this business ran until telegraph wires were strung, yet in that time legends had begun.

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33

FRONTIER TRAIL Wagon traffic passed: activity and earnestness, desperation, effort; all vanished now.

A faint line prairie winding shows the way, and only hints the way to Santa Fe.

NIGHT NECKLACES

BUFFALO SURPRISE On a lonely country road, gravel, winding through hills, along the creeks; two friends, a drive of relaxation: Where does this road go?

What will we see?

Around a curve suddenly in the trees a herd of buffalo standing but too still to be true: silhouettes with details accurately painted, quickly passed – wishing they were real.

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Strings of flames strewn across hillsides.

Large and small flaming jewels form lines and loops here and there, up, down and around.

At night the sight is awesome to behold.

Darkness hides grass from ash and contrasts smoke towering high lit by flames illuminating.

Necklaces adorning hillsides in prairie spring is normal.

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35

POETRY

WIND BLOWN Abandon farmhouse, tilting barn, dead trees and flowers gone wild: tell-tale signs of family life and hopes and dreams that lived and dried.

The well remains with cemented top that never again will provide, and lone windmill, broken parts bang, no longer source of life.

The farm has died but the wind blows on.

Duane L. Herrmann is a fifth generation Kansan, several branches of his family have been on the North American continent since before the American Revolution, with one Native branch even longer than that. He writes from, and about, all these perspectives. His fulllength collections of poetry are: Prairies of Possibilities, Ichnographical: 173, and Praise the King of Glory. His poetry has received the Robert Hayden Poetry Fellowship, inclusion in American Poets of the 1990s, the Map of Kansas Literature and the Kansas Poets Trail (Wichita, KS) and other awards. Other writing has received the Ferguson Kansas History Book and Writer’s Matrix awards The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

Grant Guy

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN They jaywalked from Eaton’s to The Met. He was thirsty.

She was cold.

Waving his arms, And saying as loud as he could, “You don’t understand.

There’s nothing new under the sun.

We can only do it better.”

He was still waving his arms When he stepped into a pothole And somersaulted on the road, His heels hit the curb.

She said, “I’ve seen that before, But can you do it better next time.”

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36

NO REGRETS

Let’s do something tonight Unlike my momma and the preacher man Will have nothing to regret

37

POETRY

Joel Schueler

When I become totally impotent Like a car up on blocks And you like a dried prune In the dog days of summer Our love will still be fueled with passion Let’s do something tonight

THE VIETNAMESE RESTAURANT The owner Of the Pho Quyhn She stood at the end of the table Shaking her finger at a customer Have not seen you for long time You must be seeing someone else

Grant Guy is a Winnipeg, Canada, poet, writer and playwright. He was the artistic director of Adhere + Deny for 16 years. His poems and writings have been published in Canada, the United States and England. He has three books published; Open Fragments, On the Bright Side of Down and Bus Stop Bus Stop. He was the 2004 recipient of the Manitoba Arts Council’s 2004 Award of Distinction and the 2017 recipient of the Winnipeg Arts Council’s Making A Difference Award The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

Days Where It’s Dark I’m not so good in the days where it’s dark.

The spine tremors during the avalanche, Ironmonger take this sheet of black and hearten it Fasten me in the scold.

Punctual, like sharpened pencils people with partners intermittently

sprout at work.

Dripping nausea, the cellophane rug in the body, quicken your act Demilitarise to dusk.

Juicy mermaid washed in her tears waltzes like a scribble on papyrus.

Sweet nothings sit by the sides of welsh hills Not enough energy to play the tumdak’ Venture forth traipsing pollination, Don’t just stand there raise me in our glow Blinking within an inch of myself I cross to lay the anvil Attachments area The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

38

39

Pending, still...

A Parody of Nothingness

You deceive your own face Your face of facades.

So non-upfront, the annoyance you emit creates acrimony, High horses roam to your layer of selfish uncaring entrapment.

Yea you silly young fool, But then turn you did, at which you spoke to me as someone real; something to treasure.

Ok so we’ll meet with arms that do not fleet A reverence futile unless earned.

Pale ghostlike ships flutter amongst the waves, I hate the way my mouth hangs.

I am an ISAW of disproportionate proportions, My eyes are lies and my nose is piqued Bowed and dislodged ears and brow unsteady.

Things are going well on the spiral to hell, Renovate all inner demons And rollick in their filth, Guitar abound, her crimson pastures found.

Melted shoe that blackened coal Toasting fire with ambers bold, Eyes of bat and scent of mole Eclipsing harmony, truth foretold…

And those moments of success will become but a distant memory; Don’t be fooled by the light of day, darkness will come, there then dismay!

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A poisoned magenta crystal of sorts lowers its eyes in tragic sunlight to the mind that all but fades whilst clambering for an icon of truth.

Pursuance of a natural core to which I cannot adhere of light and dormant quivering is more to me than life itself.

The fruits of dawn are the only items that cringe, blush then shine, And to these I pass on my world, in her sordid hive.

Freedom From All Pains Through chronic chest discomforts I lie still, yet with an air of serenity.

Behold the dented ear with its look of memorial strife And the nose that when pressed feels as though it’s been struck Even after all these months on…

The liquor at sea to cleanse away inhibitions And empowered herb to heal the soul.

Yonder the start lies a path of sweet circumstance And journey’s end will provide a maiden soused in dreams.

When I’m free from all pains I’ll then be living in the world rather than mine; Living in the world of parsimonious unrealism.

Joel Schueler is from London. He has a BA(Hons) in English Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. His works have been accepted in over a dozen publications including Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Dawntreader, Atlantean Publishing & The Bangalore Review. He is working on his first novel.

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40

Book Review

Hannah Dhanaraj

The Heroine and Other Stories translatedby Deepalakshmi Jayakanthan

Travelling into the World of JK The first time I ever heard the name Jayakanthan, or JK, was in the early 1980s. Those were the days when entire streets would congregate in a single house in the neighborhood to watch the weekly Tamil movies that DD would air. That evening, it was Sila Nerankalil Sila Manithargal. The movie is about a young woman, who is seduced by a stranger one rainy evening. Predictably, the girl regrets the encounter The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

41 and confesses to her mother. The family reacts badly and throws her out as the fallen woman. Even as the movie was playing, my mother was all eyes and hands, emoting to the small audience at home about how JK rewrote his original story as a response to his critics. In the original story, the mother calms down quickly, gives her an oil bath, tells her all is well, and that she’s now pure again. Obviously, the women folk loved the original story, even if it did involve a metaphorical cleansing.

Not more than 5 years of age, but already sprouting feminist wings, I had mentally made a note to read JK, but never realized that it would remain a dream for a while. That is, until the release of The Heroine and Other Stories, a collection of JK’s short stories translated by Deepalakshmi Jayakanthan.

Deepalakshmi has brought alive each of JK’s characters with all their subtleties and, I must say, idiosyncrasies effortlessly. She’s meticulously selected these 11 stories from a very large collection to introduce arguably a true legend of his times to an English-speaking audience. Each one of the characters is etched with absolute finesse by the master storyteller. Women and men come alive in the stories that JK spins around them. In some stories, JK holds your hand lightly and takes you on a sprightly walk through gardens filled with tender blossoms and greenery. In other stories, he plunges you right into the eye of a massive tornedo that will refuse to leave without thumping its footprint in your mind. One uniting theme across the stories is the abiding capacity of the human heart to straddle all sorts of emotions, sometimes blithely and sometimes clumsily. JK’s pen expertly pries open the inner conflicts of women trapped in loveless marriages, the selfishness of saintly motherhood, the depravity and utter vulnerability of men in intimate relationships, and the strangeness of love that at the drop of a hat will traverse from the self-sacrificing kind to the ready-to-kill.

JK’s narrative intrusions are par excellence. The black kitten in New Horizons keeps making its appearance ever so often, eye balling the characters, slurping its milk from the saucer, or purring loudly, and all the time insidiously heightening the tension that keeps buildThe Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

42 ing with every single word. As the story comes its inevitable end, leaving the reader clutching her heart in her hand, the kitten returns and looks on with its glinting eyes (sic!).

JK, I now know, is some master at creating a killer climax. If the story is too subtle with very little drama, he brings it all with a bang right in the end. In Beyond Cognizance, after what seems like a nice little chit chat about mundane philosophy that defines the existence of well, the everyday, peppering it with a little humor, he delivers a death blow in the last couple of lines, which left this writer massaging the center of her forehead while envying wistfully JK’s unparalleled art. In stories that have drama snaking through every blade of emotion, he provides the much needed respite in the climax.

The sounds and sights that JK creates in these stories are surreal, to say the least. In It’s Only Words, he draws the reader into a dark world illuminated only by sounds and touch. The story is filled with sounds of a faraway train, someone playing a flute, someone singing, the owls hooting, or the familiar touch of a little stray dog cuddling by one’s feet. His imagery is rich with colors, common people, temples, flower vendors, and so many elements that define the everyday in the Tamil milieu. In the novelette The Masquerade, JK brings alive Chidambaram, a small town off the East Coast Road, in all its splendor, complete with the temple cart, the roads, the small time textiles, the bus stop teeming with people, and of course, the site of all drama, the railway station. Next time, we drive down the ECR, Chidambaram will no more be just a name board for me. It will certainly bring to mind the undying pain of Kumaran and the large-heartedness of Veeran, and the absolute indifference of the temple town that stood stoic amidst all that heart wrenching drama.

JK’s immense understanding of human nature makes his stories and characters deeply meaningful and filled with insights on the human psyche. Just as some people, no, many people, in real life confound us with their ways, JK’s characters come in various shades, offering us a ring side view of all that goes into making a person good, bad, honest, righteous, and so much more. Many a times, his stories tend to ask us uncomfortable questions, shifting one’s center The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

43 of morality irrevocably.

The one recurrent theme across this amazing collection of stories on human emotions is that the idea of empathy and schadenfreude, each in equal measure, defines humanity.

If it was Gregory RaBassa who built a sturdy bridge for us to experience the beautiful land of Mocando, it’s Deepalakshmi who’s done the honors for us to experience the amazing world of JK. The Heroine and Other Stories is indeed a fitting tribute by a prodigiously talented daughter to a legendary father.

Deepalakshmi J is a business writer with many years of experience in

technical, marketing, and corporate communication. She also writes creatively and her work has appeared in leading English and Tamil publications. This is her first published book of translations. She lives with her family in Chennai and welcomes interaction at deepa.j.joseph@gmail.com

Hannah Dhanaraj is a documentation specialist at an IT company in Chennai. She loves travelling and blogging her travel stories. She also dabbles in gardening, storytelling, and baking. When she isn’t doing any of these, she’s busy growing up her little son into a sensitive, charming young man. You can catch her stories at ramblings456.blogspot.com and https://medium.com/@hannahdhanaraj/ The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

44

FICTION

Tushar Jain

Phone rings.

“Hello?”

“I’m speaking to Tushar? Tushar Jain?”

“Yup. That’s me. Who’s this?”

“This is Stuart Gill.”

“Sorry. Don’t know any Stuart Gill.”

“I –” Phone is disconnected. After a moment, it rings again.

“Hello?”

“Why did you disconnect the phone?”

“May I know who’s speaking?”

“I just told you! It’s Stuart Gill.”

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45 “And I just told you that I don’t know any Stuart Gill.”

“Wait! I –” The phone is disconnected. A beat later, it rings again.

“Tum ta-tum tum. Hello?”

“Don’t you dare hang up this time!”

“Oh. Why all the temper? And don’t shout like that. I have sensitive ears.”

“Just listen! You submitted a poem for The Brat Review, didn’t you?”

“How did you...?”

“I’m Stuart Gill, the co-editor of The Brat Review.”

“Wow! You people do personal calls? Most magazines just stick with emails. So... you’re publishing the poem?”

“No. But thanks for sending us ‘Sense and Suggestibility’. We appreciate the chance to read your work but we’ll be passing on this poem.

This is not a reflection on your writing. We pick perhaps one out of a hundred submissions. So, it’s not you, it’s us. We hope you’ll find a good home for it soon. Sincerely, Stuart Gill, The Brat Review.”

“What the... Are you reading this out?!”

“No. I had the template memorized long back.”

“And you called me to tell me my work’s been rejected? Heartless piece of–” Phone is disconnected. Rings again.

“Didn’t I tell you not to hang up!”

“What do you want now? I got the message, okay? Leave me alone. I need to sulk. I mean, sleep.”

“Not so fast. I have to discuss this poem you submitted.”

“I don’t want your critical evaluation.”

“And I’m not giving you one. This poem ‘Sense and Suggestibility’...”

“What about it?”

“I have reason to believe it’s about me.”

Pause.

“Stuart, I don’t know where you’re calling from but it’s pretty late here. I really want to go back to sleep. Why don’t you go pester some other poet?” “’Some other poet’ didn’t write a poem attacking me. You did.”

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46 “That’s ridiculous! I’ve not attacked anyone!”

“Can you categorically say that you didn’t write this poem attacking me? I’ll leave you alone and let the whole matter go.”

“Of course I can’t say that!”

“Aha!” “Aha nothing! Didn’t you read the poem? It’s Cubist! Its whole aim is to reject the singleness, the oneness of meaning. Haven’t you ever seen a Picasso? A Braque? Read Cummings? Faulkner? Cubist works are meant to throw off the reign of meaning. They mean nothing and everything at the same time. If I say the poem doesn’t specifically attack you, I might as well say the poem doesn’t exist.”

“Bullshit. Cubism’s a bloody excuse! This poem is a targeted attack on me, my wife, my daughter and my dog!”

“Jesus!”

“In the fourth stanza –” “Wait a minute! Even if the poem offends you, you cannot blame me for it. It’s already written. It exists independently of me. If you have a problem, blame the poem! Take its meter into a dark alley and break its legs. An artist is not always his art, Gill. Sometimes he’s just the brush or the pen or the paper.”

“An artist is always his art! And nothing but.”

“Oh really? By that logic, Jackson Pollock must’ve been a spaghetti fetishist.”

“In the fourth stanza of the poem, this wide, almost four inch gap between the letters ‘S’ and ‘M’ quite obviously is meant to poisonously mock the growing distance between me and my wife! ‘S’ is Stuart.

‘M’ is Meredith.”

“Your wife’s name is Meredith?”

“How the hell do you know my wife’s name?”

“Stuart, in ‘Sense and Suggestibility’, language is scattered, fractured and tossed around. That doesn’t mean–” “In the third stanza, in the word ‘expels’, the ‘S’ is italicized. Oh, I know what this is, you foul, cruel pig! The ‘S’ clearly references my seven-year-old daughter Sadie’s expulsion from school for the possession of a hand grenade, a Bushmaster QRC Tactical Semi-Auto The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

47 Rifle and an expanded edition of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.”

“Your daughter’s name is Sadie?”

“You know my daughter’s name too! Who’s feeding you this information about my family? I’ve had enough of you, I tell you. Here. Talk to my wife.”

“Your wife?!”

“Her name’s Meredith. But I guess you already knew that!”

The phone changes hands at one end.

“Hello?”

“Fils de pute! T’es un salaud! T’es rien qu’un petit connard!”

“Meredith, please calm down. I’m innocent! I –” “Je vais te casser la gueule si fort que tu vas cracher toutes les dents!”

Stuart takes back the phone.

“Okay, Meredith, dear. Have a sip of water, love. You heard all of that?

She meant every word!”

“Why did you hand the phone to your wife?”

“The poem’s about her too, isn’t it?”

“The joke’s on you. I haven’t the slightest idea what she said.”

“You don’t understand French? Wait. Here. Talk to the interpreter.”

“You have an interpreter!”

“I always have an interpreter with me. I don’t understand French either. And I’ve been married for fifteen years.”

The phone changes hands again at one end.

“Hello, sir. I am Ingrid. Ingrid the interpreter. I’m so sorry for all this.

You sound like a very nice man. Madame gets a temper at times. I hope you will not take this personally. So, first she called you a ‘son of a bitch’. Then, a ‘bastard’. Then, how do you say it in English? An ‘asshole’? I believe that is the correct expression. Finally, she said she was going to hit you so hard that you’ll end up spitting out all your teeth. I think that’s all. Wait, did I mention ‘asshole’?”

“Oh, you certainly did, Ingrid.”

“Merci. Have a good day, sir! Please talk to my employer.”

The phone is returned to Stuart.

“Hello, this is Stuart here again.”

“Enough is enough!”

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48 “You’re absolutely right. Enough is enough. I completely agree. But wait. Here. Talk to my daughter.”

“What?!”

Phone changes hands. A child squeals.

“You’re a very bad man!”

Phone changes hands again.

“Hello, it’s Stuart again. That was Sadie.”

“That’s it! No more of this! I’ll confess! Just stop handing the damn phone over to people. I’m dog-tired and I really need to get back to sleep. You want the truth? Here’s the truth. The poem is targeted at you.”

“I knew it!”

“The Brat Review has rejected three of my submissions. You think a writer will never hit back?”

“So – so, in the poem, the word ‘limp’ in the third line–” “It’s a taunt about your flagging sex life. I did my research.”

“You evil shit! And in the fourth stanza, the three-legged footstool is–” “A metaphor for your limping, three-legged dog, Trudy.”

“I’m going to kill you! But first, here. Talk to Trudy.”

“No! Don’t hand the phone–” The phone changes hands. A series of angry barks and furious growling is heard over the line for a time. Eventually, it is returned to Stuart.

“It’s Stuart again. Trudy isn’t happy with what you wrote about her.”

“Yeah, I got that feeling. Now, I’m going back to bed. I’m done with this.”

“I’m not! You know what? I think I’m going to kick your ass. Yeah, I feel like kicking your ass for this poem!”

“Good luck with that. I’m all the way in Mumbai, India! Haw haw haw!”

“I know that, poet. So am I.” Brief Pause.

“What did you say?”

“I’m staying at the hotel right opposite your building. It’ll take me all The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

49 of five minutes to come over to your place.”

“How did you even get here? You can’t afford to travel by air! You’re the editor of a literary magazine! More importantly, how the hell did you find me?”

“You submitted your address along with the poem for contributor copies, you greedy imbecile. I’m headed your way as we speak.”

“Wait, okay, tell me this much! You said you are the co-editor, right? I vaguely remember this but in the picture on the magazine’s webpage, both of you editors are standing close together. It’s difficult to make out who’s who. Are you the squat four foot nothing or the beefy, muscle-bound, six foot seven man covered in tattoos?”

“You’ll find out in exactly one minute.”

“No! Wait! Listen! It was all a joke! Come on! I didn’t actually mean–” The phone is disconnected. A doorbell rings.

Tushar Jain is a Bombay-based Indian poet, playwright, and author. He was the winner of the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, 2012 and a winner of the Poetry with Prakriti Prize, 2013. Subsequently, he won the RL Poetry Award, 2014. He was a winner of the DWL Short Story Contest 2014. He won the Toto Funds the Arts Award for Creative Writing, 2016. His work has been published in myriad literary magazines and journals such as Papercuts, The Nervous Breakdown, Antiserious, Raed Leaf India, The Young Ravens Review, The Bangalore Review, Streetcake Magazine, The Sierra Nevada Review, Into the Void Magazine, The Cape Rock Journal, Miracle, Dryland Magazine, Edify Fiction, Gramma, decomP Magazine, Priestess and Hierophant Magazine, and elsewhere.. He can be contacted at tusharjainnaulakha@gmail.com.

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50

FICTION

I grew up believing revenge was normal. It was never explained as a family value, but it was demonstrated. The “get back” always hit harder than the offense. It was quick and ruthless: a hard slap for an annoying touch, a punch in the face for a slap on the hand.

Sometimes it wasn’t physical. It was psychological: humiliation to the point of making someone cry because they were an irritant to you.

Other times, rare, it was a cold conspiracy that combined the psychological and the physical, like the plan to get back at Uncle Gary.

Uncle Gary was our Dad’s half-brother; they shared the same mother. Gary was thirteen, a year older than my brother Matt. I was two years younger than Matt. Gary spent a lot of time at our house.

At one point, Grandma Gulseth, Dad’s and Gary’s mother asked Mom and Dad if he could live with us. My brothers and I got really excited about this. Gary did funny voices and said funny things. He was imaginative and always came up with fun ideas and games to play. Unfortunately, many of his ideas and games were not approved by our Mom, and if she caught us or found out about our nefarious behavior, we would get grounded or a spanking, maybe both, and Gary would get sent home and banned from our house for at least a couple of weeks until our Mom cooled.

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51 Gary got us in trouble for playing with matches. More extensively for spraying our plastic army men with lighter fluid and setting them on fire. We did it in the sandbox behind the house. It was neat to watch them melt into an unrecognizable burning blob. We wouldn’t have been caught, but my brother Tim burned himself on the hot gooey plastic. He saw Gary, Matt, and I pick up the plastic army men, still warm and soft, and stretch them into abstract shapes.

You had to be careful and not pick them up too soon. Tim grabbed a smoldering rifleman, and the hot plastic stuck to his finger, searing his skin. He immediately screamed bloody murder. He cried like this as a defense mechanism. This was his alarm to our Mom to come and save him, usually from Matt or me, and rightfully so. We could be brutal, but he could be an annoying shit. Tim had experienced the get back many times. After the melting of the army men, which wasn’t the first time we melted or burned toys, but one of the few times we got caught, my Mom sent Gary home. She sent him home after the time we found a bat in our backyard that got injured from the storm the night before. Gary and Matt nailed its wings to a board and threw darts at it. They performed this execution in the backyard for all to see. Gary hit the bat first. It squeaked softly and must have died, because the next two hits didn’t bring a sound. My Mom saw what was going on through the kitchen window. She went apoplectic.

“What the hell are you boys doing with that filthy bat!?” I could tell she was repulsed by the violence, but her maternal instinct caused her to be more concerned about our welfare than the bat’s. “You’re going to get rabies! Don’t touch that awful thing!”

Gary was sent home, and Matt got grounded. Nothing happened to Tim or me: we were innocent bystanders.

Gary got sent home for dropping Tim on his head. Gary, Tim, and I were playing in the basement. Gary was spinning Tim around by his arms, then set him down on the floor. “Get up,” Gary ordered, and Tim would stagger to his feet and stumble around like a giddy drunk until the dizzying effect wore off. Gary and I laughed when Tim ran into something or fell. The more he fell or the harder he ran into something, the funnier it was. Then the game evolved to Gary The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

52 swinging Tim by the ankles. Gary leaned back, his shoulder length dirty blond hair thrown back by the momentum. Gary was small and wiry but strong. It helped that Tim was little for his age like Matt and I (our parents were small.) Tim’s Beatle cut white blond hair flew back and his face stretched from the centrifugal force. Watching him spin around I was surprised at how long his hair looked. Matt and I both had Beatle cuts too. Tim’s expression went from laughing glee to panic and a catch in his throat on the verge of crying, because Gary kept threatening, “I’m gonna let go! I can’t hold on any longer!”

“NO!” Tim’s elation turned to tears. He was enjoying the ride, but the fear of being launched head first into a concrete wall was terrifying. Gary had become a very scary carnival ride. “Don’t let go!”

Tim cried then laughed. As he spun, he was face up to the ceiling. I could tell Gary was getting visibly tired, and I hoped he wouldn’t let go. Gary set Tim down gently on his back.

“Lift me up. Hold me upside down,” Tim pleaded. He didn’t want the fun to end.

Gary changed his grip on Tim’s ankles and lifted him off the floor. Tim laughed, blood rushed to his head, and his face got red.

“I’m gonna drop to you.” Gary bobbed Tim up and down from few a few inches to about a foot off the concrete.

“Don’t! Please!” Tim was back to laughing then crying, laughing then crying.

Then Gary held Tim about two inches above the floor, once again threatening to drop him, and Tim pleading for him not to. I didn’t say anything. I really didn’t think he would, but I wasn’t surprised when he did. The sound of Tim’s head hitting the concrete, KLOCK!was louder than I thought it would be.By the look on Gary’s face, I think it startled him too. There was about a one second delay, then Tim burst into tears with a bellow, as he curled into a fetal position with his hands clutching his head.

“Is it bleeding?” I ran over to see.

“Sssh, don’t cry. It’s not bleeding, it’s not bleeding.” Gary tried to calm him. He didn’t want my Mom to hear upstairs.

“I’m tellin’ my Mom.” Tim unwound from a ball, jumped to his The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

53 feet, and bolted for the stairs. He knew Gary would try to stop him, and that I would collude with Gary.

“It was an accident.” Gary grabbed him and stopped him from going upstairs.

“No, it wasn’t. You did it on purpose.” Tim was right. Gary let go on purpose. I saw it. What Gary didn’t intend, was to hurt Tim bad enough to make him bawl so loud. He just wanted to hurt him a little. A little was funny. A little wasn’t enough to get in trouble.

“Tim, don’t tell,” I urged. “We’ll play anything you want. What do you want to do?” Often this worked, letting Tim decide what we did, rather than be a tag along at the mercy of us, meaning Gary, Matt, myself, and most of the neighborhood kids. I had no idea why he did follow us around, given the abuse we incurred on him. He would surely turn out to be a monster worse than we were.

Before there was even a chance to see if the bribe worked, my Mom came storming down the stairs. “What’s going on down here?

What’s wrong with your head?” She moved Tim’s hands away to examine his scalp. “How did you get that bump?”

“Gary dropped me on my head,” Tim whimpered.

Tim’s blubbering sounded fake. I’m not saying it didn’t hurt, but I knew when Tim was playing our Mom for every bit of sympathy he could get.

“It was an accident,” Gary defended.

She looked at me. “I didn’t do anything.” Defending Gary would only bring her wrath, so I only defended myself. She had already made up her mind. To her, Gary was the devil’s spawn.

“Gary, you need to go home,” she said coldly like she wanted to beat him. If it was I who had dropped Tim, she would be dragging me upstairs to crack me with the wooden spoon as rapidly as a drummer could do a one stick solo. She wouldn’t have been finished with me until I had danced twenty orbits around her, and my butt and thighs were as red fresh meat.

A couple of weeks after Gary dropped Tim on his head, Gary was back hanging out at our house, and this is when he committed the offense that caused my Dad to devise a plan with Matt to get back at him.

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54 The CBS Friday Night Movie was The Last Challenge, a western.

Before the movie started my Mom and Dad decided to take us to MacDonald’s for supper. My brothers and I always got one hamburger and one small fry. Matt and I could easily have eaten two burgers, but Dad always seems to like to keep us a little bit hungry. Whenever Gary came with us to MacDonald’s, he had to get a Filet-O-Fish. He said he didn’t like the hamburgers. My brothers and I would ask for a Filet-O-Fish too, but Dad would say, “No.” Filet-O-Fish cost more. I don’t know if this was why Dad told Gary he couldn’t go with us this time, but maybe.

He told him to go home, walk home.

“Can’t I get a ride?” Gary asked. He was already pissed off because he couldn’t go with us to, and now he was on the verge of tears.

“It’s cold out and it’s getting dark.” The temperature was in the forties, and the sun would set in about an hour. Gary was only dressed in a flannel shirt.“Can I call my Mom?” “Sure,” Mom dialed the number and handed him the phone. She was doing whatever she could to get rid of him.

“She’s not answering.” Gary slammed the phone into the cradle on the kitchen wall and slammed the door on the way out.

“Why won’t you give him a ride, Dad?” Tim asked. Matt and I knew better than to ask that question.

“It’s not on the way.”

“Why?” The kitchen began to buzz with explosive tension. Mom, Matt, and I felt it, understood it. If the situation wasn’t diffused soon, Dad would ignite and someone was going to get hurt.

“Your father wants to get home in time to watch the movie.”

Mom had become adept at self -preservation and protecting us.

“We’re watching a movie?” Even though Gary, Matt, and I had been talking about it all day, it was lost on Tim. “Yeah stupid,” Matt said. He couldn’t help himself.

“Matt?” Mom said, quietly gritting under her breath. The unasked question was: “Do you want to incite your father and get hit?”

Matt’s answer was, “No,” because he didn’t say another word.

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55 Two blocks from home, heading to MacDonald’s, we passed Gary. He was walking quickly with his hands stuffed in the front pockets of his jeans.

We ate our MacDonald’s, and my brothers and I still had some time to play outside before the movie started. When it was time, Mom called us in. The smell of hot popcorn filled the kitchen, as Mom shook her large pot over the flame of the gas stove as the kernels popped.

As we sat down to watch the movie, my brothers and I splayed on the floor in front of our first color TV, Matt decided to go get his new bb gun that he got for his birthday earlier this month.

“Why do you need that?” Mom snapped.

“I want to clean it while I watch the movie,” Matt stopped in his tracks, waiting for permission to proceed.

“Make sure it’s not loaded.”

“It’s not.” He raced off to get it before the movie started. Moments later Matt yelled from our bedroom. “Mom! Where’s my bb gun?”

“I didn’t touch it.”

I munched on handfuls of popcorn, as I sipped my ration of Pepsi; didn’t want to run out of Pepsi before I was finished eating popcorn. I was hoping the background noise between Mom and Matt would be over soon, so we could watch the movie in peace.

Matt walked into the living room. “My bb gun is gone. It was in my bedroom underneath my bed. It’s not there.”

“You must have put it somewhere else,” Mom said impatiently.

“Look in the basement. Weren’t you shooting targets down there with Gary?”

Tim and were down there too, but Matt never let us take a shot.

After a while I went outside to play. Tim stayed. He was like that: he could be ignored, even abused, and he would always come back.

Matt ran to the basement. I got involved in the movie, so I almost forgot he was down there, until he came storming back up in a panic.

“It’s not there! It’s gone!”

“Well, where the hell is it?” Dad growled. “The god-damned thing didn’t walk away.”

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56 Dad was now involved. I felt the familiar tension followed by anxiety. I didn’t take the bb gun, nor did I even touch it, but even being a possible suspect could merit a smack in the head.

“Did one of you guys take it?” It was more of an accusation than a question.

“No!” Tim and I sang out in harmonious cacophony of denial we prayed he would believe.

The repercussions were dire even without my Dad. Matt would pound the shit out of me if I even touched his precious new bb gun.

Dad got up from the couch and ordered everyone to search for the bb gun. After about a half hour it was determined that it was gone. Mom panicked and began to take inventory.

My parents never locked the house when we left, if we intended to come back within the hour, maybe even a couple of hours.

In our neighborhood, nobody worried about intruders, especially in the middle of the day.

“It was Gary,” Dad said.

“You need to call Doris.” Doris was Grandma Gulseth. Mom dialed the number and handed him the phone. The conversation didn’t last long. Dad asked to talk to Gary, but Gary refused to come to the phone.

“What’s he afraid of? Dad’s tone of voice was serious but controlled. I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. I think he was already planning on getting Gary back. He didn’t want to give anything away. “I won’t yell at him.” Dad wanted to hear Gary’s denial for himself. He never got it. He knew he never would, and he knew Grandma Gulseth would defend Gary to the end. She always did.

“What did she say?” Mom stood with her hands on her hips.

It was how she expressed seriousness to make a stand.

“Does he have my gun? It’s okay if he took it. I just want it back. Did you tell him that?” Matt knew Gary as well as anyone. He had been partners in crime with him. They had done things, stole things that I only knew about. No matter how shitty Matt treated me, I couldn’t tell on him. There was a brother’s code, and not only that, I was an accomplice on some of those things.

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57 “He said he didn’t take it, but I know he did.” My Dad hung up the phone and walked out of the kitchen.

“I don’t want him over here anymore.” Mom had said many times, but Gary always wormed his way back. He would just show up at our door, and Mom always reluctantly let him in.

Matt waited to cry until Dad was out of the kitchen. Mom didn’t console him with a hug. She stopped hugging us when we were four or five. Instead, she poured him a tall glass of Pepsi.

I went back to the living room and laid down in front of the TV to watch the movie.

Two and a half weeks had gone by and Gary hadn’t shown his face, so Dad called him up and invited him over to give him boxing lessons. Dad had been working with Matt in the basement every night for a little over a week. Tim wanted to be part of it, but Dad told him to stay out of the way. Dad asked me if I wanted to take a lesson, but I learned my lesson long ago. I knew I would have been Matt’s punching bag, so I said, “No thanks,” and went outside to play at my friend John’s house.

It had been about three weeks since Matt’s new bb gun ended up missing, and Gary was back at our house to take “boxing lessons” from Dad. I sat on the bottom of the basement stairs, just far enough away to be excluded but close enough to see. I was more comfortable being a spectator than a participant when Dad played with us. Participants usually ended up getting hurt and crying. You were either inflicting damage or the victim of it.

Dad gave one pair of gloves to Gary to put on, and he put on the other pair. They were red twenty-ounce Rocky Graziano signature gloves my brothers I got for Christmas. We never asked for them, but Dad was a boxing fame so he turned us into boxing fans whether we wanted to or not.

As Dad instructed Gary, showing him the very basic jab-jableft-right, Matt stood to the side with his arms folded tightly. He had that pissed off look on his face. The look he acquired from Dad. The look meant, “Stay out of range, because at any moment a blow hard enough hard to make you see stars was imminent.”

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58 “Why don’t you and Matt spare?” Dad took off his gloves and handed them to Matt. Matt eagerly slid the gloves on, and Dad tied them with the intensity of a trainer before a title bout.Matt pounded the gloves together like he was waiting for the bell to ring.

Gary stood awkwardly with his arms limply at his side, the big gloves inertly dangling.

“Hands up. Box!” Dad waved his hand like a referee.

Matt launched himself at Gary, throwing punches from all angles. Gary barely had a chance to get his hands up. Gary immediately retreated across the basement, as Matt pummeled his body and head. Gary attempted to make a stand and threw a flurry of punches.

He had fast hands, and a couple of punches landed on Matt. This only incited Matt. As Dad had shown, he started throwing punches with his whole body behind them, punches with bad intent.

Gary covered up, his back against the concrete block wall.

There was nowhere to go. Even the punches that landed on his arms made him wince. The blows to his head were glancing and mostly just mussed up his long hair until Matt landed a hard body shot causing Gary to drop his hands. Then Matt threw a right hook followed by a left hook, the right landed on Gary’s temple and the left landed on his jaw. His head bounced off the block wall.

“Okay! Okay!” Gary covered up and slid down the wall to his butt to avoid any more punishment.

“That’s enough.” Dad walked over to Gary and looked at him. He didn’t ask him if he was okay. It was like he wanted to be sure that the beating Matt gave him was sufficient. Then he went upstairs.

Tim followed him. “Dad, when ya gonna show me how to box?”

Matt used his teeth to untie the gloves, pulled them off between his knees and went upstairs, all the while ignoring Gary. “Matt, wait,” Gary said as he struggled to get the gloves off. I untied them for him. He had tears in his eyes and his face was pink and blotchy. His long hair was sweaty, and his hands were shaking.

When Gary and I got upstairs, Matt was laying on the living room floor reading the paper. Dad was on the couch doing the same.

Tim was in the kitchen bothering Mom, as she made supper. The The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

59 smell of greasily fried pork chops filled the house. She always made homemade gravy from the leavings, boiled potatoes, and canned corn. With almost every supper we had an iceberg lettuce salad. I poured Catalina over mine.

“Hey Matt, wanna do somethin’?” Gary stood where Matt could see him.

Matt continued looking at the paper. He didn’t answer, and he didn’t even look up.

Gary knelt beside Matt. “What are you reading?”

Matt turned the page of the paper, when Gary leaned forward to see.

From the kitchen, Mom called us for supper, and Matt got up and walked past Gary like he wasn’t there.

Everyone was seated at the kitchen table ready to say grace then eat. There wasn’t a seat for Gary. He stood there waiting for an invitation.

“Gary has to go home now. It’s time for us to eat supper.”

Mom didn’t even look at him when she said it. Gary knew exactly what had happened to him, and he was out the door before Mom said, “supper.”

The “get back” was complete. As cruel as it was, I admired the beauty of it.

It would be about a month before we would see Gary again.

The bb gun never showed up, but many years later Gary admitted to taking it. He said he threw it in the river.

Mike Sharlow lives in the Midwest in a small city on the Mississippi River. Publishing credits include, a novel - ‘Welcome to the Ranks of the Enchanted’, (as Michael David), Winston-Derek Publishing. This novel is included in the Charvat Special American Fiction Collection at the Ohio State University, ‘Nighthag’, a novel (as Michael David) Aegina Press, ‘Teenage Monsters’, a novel (as Mike Sharlow) Malice Press, ‘Starlight, Star Bright’, a novel (as Mike Sharlow) Malice Press,’The Prostitute, the Crazy Pimp, and the Counterfeiter’ & Two Other Novelettes, (as Mike Sharlow) Malice Press, poems and short stories in various magazines.

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60

FICTION

When we reached the library, we saw the corridor leading to the doors strewn with wrinkled wet feathers, like a rain-soaked trail of a debilitated eagle on its swan song flight. A small crowd of inquisitive bystanders stood bolt upright at the street corner where the road takes a turn to the left towards the river. Strains of a devotional song set to a popular filmy tune of yesteryears rendered in a brittle, old voice were trickling from the tiny, low roofed house nearby. We knew it was the old lady teaching the children to sing. They were following her with unsteady yet cheerful juvenile voices.‘‘Lo, the municipal councillors have arrived’, someone scurrying down the dusty adjacent by lane to join the crowd shouted. I observed he was carrying in his arms like an infant, a turkey painted in red and golden colours.

As we got off our bicycles, the old lady walked out of the house towards us with outstretched hands as if silently wondering how this could ever happen. Feathers were seen dropping off her aged plumage too, of the variety of that on the ground. We know her and her husband as outsiders who came to the town as basket weavers. But for the fact the aged couple sported enormous wings and could levitate a little like poultry, which would be around five feet up in the air, they were impoverished plain looking elders that one could find in all municipal towns with active councils. As bamboo weavers with The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

61 deft fingers are in short supply, our townsfolk would always like to see such artisans around to take care of all their storage and carryall needs.

Though they were welcome as basket weavers, it was generally feared, mostly by the male elders who chew areca nuts, that the flying couple could adversely impact the general cleanliness and sanitation of the municipal town through discretely easing themselves while in flight. The womenfolk, elderly and chewing areca nuts, too were worried that the feathered pair may inadvertently scare the infants being breastfed by their mothers sitting at doorsteps on full moon nights, with their abrupt short flights, like airborne giant roaches. There was also a genuine overall concern that as the fliers levitate, they may unintentionally exhibit their privates to those below, causing disgust.

Moreover, it is a well-known fact that no one can fly without a license obtained from the Central Government.

Taking into consideration all these, there was a line of thought running in the town that the elders should not be granted shelter and should only be allowed in as visitors, whenever need arises.

But we, the members of the municipal council had the votaries of such thinking vetoed out and decided to issue a renewable license valid for two years to the couple, under local governmental jurisdiction. It would enable them to conduct short flights reaching not more than three and a half feet above ground, during daytime and only when absolutely necessary.

It was on a rainy afternoon the council passed a unanimous resolution to grant them shelter on the above lines. We, the members were busy discussing the ‘M series film lyrics’, that is, those movie songs having as their first word beginning with M. An hour and a half into the absorbed discussions, we felt as one man it was time for a break, comfort and otherwise and for a hot cup of tea and spicy samosas. It was then the chairman of the council suggested that while we were waiting to be served tea, we could transact some minor business like deciding upon the application for shelter submitted by the winged elders. As the tea trays started arriving, we without any dissent voted for providing shelter to them forthwith, purely on huThe Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

62 manitarian grounds.

The municipal clerk enthused enormously by this happening, abruptly stopped the accounting he was performing in thick dusty ledgers, absolutely clueless about the logic behind that. He hurried out whistling merrily a catchy filmy tune. Most of us joined him in his cheerful whistling. In a short while, the winged pair of elders in a thanks giving mood was observed flying low outside the council building, smiling and waving frantically to catch the attention of us councillors immersed in fresh discussions about P-series film songs.

It was that old lady who approached us now at the library, with outstretched hands and looking grim.

“From when?” our chairman asked her. “It was after last night supper; my old man tried to get up and banged his head on the wall. I pleaded with him not to stir out but he muttered that the books were waiting for him and was striving to go out though he could not keep his equilibrium”, said the old lady.

“Is he a compulsive reader?” enquired the chairman of her.

“Do you have a trove of film songbooks at home? How many do you have?” he asked further. The chairman has a massive collection of more than ten thousand film songbooks in his house, as everyone is aware of.

“My old man doesn’t read or write. He knows nothing else apart from basket weaving. I’ve been forcing him for years to become a neo-literate. He did attend the literacy programme for a couple of days, diligently carrying a writing slate and a chalk pencil to write with”.

“What happened then?”

“He dropped out. Then he broke the slate and ate the chalk pencil”, she said looking serious.

“How much time would a child take to learn an old film song?” a council-mate asked her, perhaps to change the subject of the conversation, for what, I am clueless about.

“A day, at the most. I never let them go home without memorizing all the lines of the song including the interlude notes and the humming”, the old lady with a trace of pride evident in her voice reThe Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

63 plied. “I have formally learnt that way all movie songs fifty years and more old. ``` tried to teach a few of those newly written songs, on the fat content in groundnut oil and the recipe for lentil soup with a dash of asafoetida, to my old man long ago, but he was adamant not to learn them. Sometimes throughout the day, my futile pleadings with him would go on. It was then the noble souls arising from the cemeteries and arriving at our doors for fresh filter coffee laced with molasses suggested that we should move to a house near the library to make him tolerant of the aroma of books”.

There was an intermittent loud noise of someone banging the large wooden doors of the library from within.

“It is he. He is trapped in the midst of book racks. Throughout the night there was a noise coming from there. I think he is striving to fly in the narrow space between the racks”.

As the old ```lady was narrating in a sing-song voice that is assumed for singing dirges in this part of the peninsula, our chairman tucked his dhoti up the knees. He went towards the water tap in the eastern corner of the library premises and picked up a pale blue plastic bucket which he upturned and kept near the tall compound wall that encompassed the library building.

“It should be the dinner you served him last night that is to be blamed for his crazy behaviour”, told the councillor from Oil Monger Street to the old lady. “What did he eat?” I enquired with curiosity.

“I cooked for him dosa made of maize flour”, she said interrupting her narrative. “Maize pancakes are breakfast food. It is grossly illegal to serve that in the evening to anyone, even if he happens to be a municipal councillor”, categorically said my Oil Monger Street peer.

“Let us discuss the legality of all this later. For now, if the old man is not evicted from the library premises, the whole stock of books, the doors, and walls and the ceiling of the library may be affected with him caught in”, the chairman said.

The next moment he jumped the wall using the upturned plastic bucket as a springboard. Landing safe inside, he was observed through a creek on the wall, walking to the back of the library building. Within a few minutes he was able to open the back door and The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

64 was heard singing loud a film song of the last decade proclaiming repeatedly, ‘I’ve scaled the wall, I’ll now climb up the mountain”. The old lady cheerfully joined him in a duet and we all sang in the chorus.

The front doors of the library were now opened from within by our chairman and everyone attempted to rush in, singing together.

It appeared like a stream of devotees pious and possessed entering a place of worship.

“Please, please listen to me”, pleaded the chairman, unfolding his dhoti to cover his ankles. “Let only the people’s representatives, our municipal councillors enter”, he made an earnest request. Those in the crowd on their way to the riverbank for their morning ablutions and the ones cycling to the neighbouring villages to procure milk and eggs immediately withdrew. Rest of the crowd dissipated soon.

Only the old lady was standing out as we closed the doors shut on entering the library. “She could have been called in to be with us”, the councillor of Oil Monger Street opined whereupon the chairman broke into another song, “emotional backpacks impede our progress, our progress, oh our progress”, from a movie a whole fifty years old.

He stopped singing as he realized he did not have any accompaniment.

Contrary to our expectation of encountering a miasma, there was no putrid odour of urine or of human excreta in the building.

The only surprise we had was our finding someone sitting on the ceiling fan in the main hall. He was not the old man we came searching for.

The one who was perched on the ceiling fan had golden wings and a face like a bald eagle. Cheeks stretched up and jaw kept straight, he was singing aloud a song we have never heard, in an unfamiliar language.

“I am the god of books”, he claimed. We did not respond to him but were busy with our search for the winged old man. “This celestial being can wait”, I said and all the councillors in unison said that he indeed could. We stand united always and heated discussions like those on M-series songs only make the bonding still stronger.

All the songbooks in the racks were kept dust free and in strict The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

65 order throughout the library hall. Their aloofness was compounded with the last page note offering a brief snapshot of the story of the film having those songs and always ending: ‘watch the rest on the silver screen of a theatre near your place’. Being in all the languages known the world around and used for speaking and more so for singing, the books gave all of us a kind of disappointment in not understanding them and get benefited from the knowledge they seem to have embedded in them. Not only the words, but even the tunes in which they are to be sung were out of the boundary of our limited knowledge, giving us a complex of inferior beings. Of course, they are not required for meaningful discussions we have in the council as we are guided by our exposure and the knowledge in film songs imparted across the generations, picking up only the best that has survived over the years.

There was no sign of the old man in the library. But for the wholesome overpowering odour of old books and the malodour of the perspiring wings of the angel, no other scent was permeating there. Had the old man dropped dead exhausted, the stench of death would have densely come down there like the furnace smoke trapped in snowfall. Had he hidden, he would be visible after all the diligent searches in the cabinets and racks by us the councillors and our beloved chairman. The old man was not to be seen anywhere.

The old woman was lamenting at the gates that her man would have plucked off his geriatric plume for certain. Bereft of feathered wings, he would have courted death by now, she was moaning. She had raised her voice obviously to catch our attention, we councillors knew.

“We have a huge backlog of municipal duties. We have to complete gathering and indexing a minimum of a thousand songs of the silver era and another five hundred of the copper era, by this weekend. We can’t allow angels and flight-enabled old men and other sundry things to squander our time”, said the councillor of Tank Street with a single row of houses. He is the one who approaches the municipal council discussions with the emotional frame a lover would have courting his lady love when the moment for privacy has arrived The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

66 and her corset string unties with ease. He would become nervous and anxious if the primal pleasure is denied or postponed. When an earlier discussion was once paused by the unannounced arrival of the townsfolk who barged into the council hall to wish the councillors a happy new year, he could not bear that interruption. Sitting cross-legged near the window, he showed all unmistakable signs of one, experiencing coitus interrupt us.

As he waved his hands towards the stranger angel, the later climbed down from the ceiling fan. The wings of the fan began to rotate and push around dry stale air as the Tank Street councillor sported a contented smile perhaps because he had made it impossible for the angel to climb up the fan again. He impatiently told the angel to self-introduce himself briefly within two minutes.

Anyone responding to a request to tell about oneself by way of introduction would generally commence with details of the geographical location they come from, their family background, educational and professional background and all before embarking on specific details about the individual. However as he was asked to keep the ceremony brief, he only said he is an angel on the flight towards Anandpuri, a sleepy town 134 miles away from here to the East. He explained he picked up the frequencies of the thuds the old man made last night bumping onto the walls of the library after the door accidentally closed, wedging the corners tight against the crevices on the wall, making it difficult to open from inside. He disclosed he does have identification, not a name like most other angels in this part of Earth, but a distinct prime number of 14 digits. He was evidently happy with his unique prime number that in measured tones he repeated it all over again. We the municipal councillors were not prepared to waste any further time and efforts on idiotic pursuits like mathematics or astronomy or asynchronous wave propagation, as we have more important tasks to complete without any further loss of time.

Descending into the library, he said, he was curious to watch the old man flying in circles across the cramped space interlaid with racks of books in rows. He claimed the old man was weeping bitterly The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

67 lamenting he cannot read even a single book from the lot there. The angel, as he said, promised the elder a fresh pair of wings and unique knowledge of books more valuable than those there.

“What unique knowledge are you talking about?”, enquired the chairman, of the angel with apparent impatience. “It is the knowledge not found in songbooks”, declared the angel solemnly. “Strange but true, one can assimilate it from the books kept in the inner vault from times immemorial. Generation after generation dusted them, rearranged them and worshipped them before closing the vault, as an annual ritual. But none cared to understand what knowledge is waiting to be made available in those volumes regarded by all as plain sacraments”. The real knowledge is the sum total of the vision each and every book in the vault would provide to the reader and at the overall level, it is a symbiotic progression of pristine knowledge one should be proud to possess”.

None of us councillors liked what the angel was telling with gusto. We gathered at a corner out of earshot of the angel. All the councillors hated the temerity and audacity with which he proclaimed that he would empower an old basket weaver, totally a stranger to him, with pure knowledge. The old one, armed with that would share it with ten of his customers and they, with another ten or twenty.

And soon there will be clamour for the ancient books in safe custody in the inner vault. None can gauge precisely the effect of taking out the vaulted books. Added to that risk, this angel fellow is compounding it with a promise to enable the elder to shed his ancient wings and fly off with a new plumage. We wondered whether he knew that flying against the gravitational pull requires a license from the government and the entities are to be examined before granting it, through a cumbersome yet totally transparent process. Better not to fly would be our suggestion if asked for our view on this. There can’t be a different set of laws codified for eavesdropping angels in flight descending on peaceful townships. Such acts challenging the legal framework are to be outright discouraged.

Unwilling to expend more time with this queer one, the Tank Street councillor asked him, “All that you mention can wait. Now tell The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

68 us where the damned old man is”.

“The old man confided in me that he had been told by the dervish running a gambling joint in the town that upon going round these racks with songbooks a thousand times before the night slips into dawn, he will be blessed with the knowledge to read all these books albeit a tad slow at it and also the skills to remember and sing out the lyrics without faltering a single note, a veritable feat considering his age”.

“What happened then?”, with mounting impatience, the chairman asked him.

“Nothing worth recalling. I blocked his way and emphasised that real knowledge is not that hidden in the songbooks but is that lying dark and thick in the vaulted books. The old fool became very agitated and bad mouthed me, my father, mother and everyone in the angel village. He said what I consider as knowledge is the prime equivalent of his greying pubic hairs and untying his vest, was keen on exhibiting himself. He spat on my face when the door further closed tight against the wall and both the wretched old man and me, the inquisitive angel, were trapped inside”, he paused his narrative and with a broad smile, angels are capable of wearing, was looking intently at us.

“That was all that happened?”, I asked him, part out of curiosity and for the rest, propelled by the urge to complete this encounter as soon as possible as my bowels were screaming to be relieved.

“The old imbecile moved away escaping my clutches and opened the inner door leading to the vault. Once inside, like performing a Satanic ritual, he ran gingerly dodging the cabinets containing the books revered but not read. He was screaming and was hopping around with a horrible smile, cursing one and all including you, the councillors, that you are impotent faecal feasting swine”.

“Enough”, we said in unison. “Oh, you should know what happened next”, mentioning temptingly, the angel fellow proceeded with his narrative.

“Then?”

“Then what? I morphed him into a book. A book with life. A The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

69

book when touched will move. One that can see. Small in stature it sits at the corner of the vault waiting to be picked up. It is a fresh book without any line in any page underlined crudely with a blunt pencil or an ink-soaked fountain pen. No one has folded a page of this book causing pain and deformity. It is a book emitting the fresh fragrance of printing ink, rejuvenating many a life when held near the nostrils and read with relish. It is a book with added fragrance of angel feathers and Eastern cosmetic rose essence. The book when you open once will provide complex algorithmic calculations about the Sphinx will deal in detail with medical jurisprudence when leafed through again. It will provide in-depth analysis and pattern recognition algorithms for reading Indus scripts when someone else opens it and will contain the whole lost epic remaining so for the past one thousand years, a time even angels were not born, for the next reading. And it is a book on God particle, also called Higg Boson and other subatomic particles, in the eyes of an astrophysicist. The winged old man has become an incomparable polymorphic book, to deploy brevity of expression as you would like to have”, the angel delivered a long lecture to our amazement, smiling in all benevolence.

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70 I opened the steel door of the pathway leading to the vault. It was pitch-dark and after a few seconds, I could see reasonably well into the darkness. My eyes fell on something crawling on the floor.

It was a book with eyes on the jacket, pleading with me to lift it and carry it along with me as I leave. The eyes of the book were cajoling and plain begging after a minute.

I shut the interior door up securely and walked out. ‘There are thousands of ancient books in eternal slumber there, arranged neat and looking fresh from the press. I haven’t met anyone, old or young there”. I told the gathered councillors, almost in a whisper.

“Where is he?”, the Chairman asked. ‘He would have flown out to a distant land where books are a taboo and wives don’t sing”, I said.

The angel started moving towards the entrance, still in smiles. He exuded the scent of an oriental perfume and a streak of obnoxious vapours as he farted. We waited for him to turn the street corner from where he elegantly took off with wings opening like a lotus. We also saw the old lady back at her doorstep, resuming her basket weaving, after placing a cursory glance at the receding back of the angel.

If we, the councillors, when discussing M-series songs find some respite in between emotionally involved outbursts, in unison we would be passing a resolution to grant a monthly pension to the destitute old lady. When I threw the suggestion at the crowd, there were cheerful claps and loud humming arising from our group of councillors. We all know we shall hum like transformers when the old lady would be laid to rest, sometime in the future.

71

POETRY

Amit Shankar Saha

Toothbrushing Toothbrushing is one of the most self-absorbing work I do every day and no, it is not about you.

I take a moderate amount of toothpaste, Colgate Sensitive Original, on my toothbrush, Oral B. I don’t know what ‘B’ stands for but I know about sensitivity and originality.

Sometimes, I stretch this morning job for some length of time and no, it’s not about me thinking about you all the while.

I massage my gums, my teeth, interstices and my broken down bad tooth. And then I discover the tongue cleaner on the other side of the toothbrush. I clean all lingering taste of the previous day extant on my tongue and all lingering aftertaste too.

Murugan Ramasami • Techno banker and project management professional heading large banking IT projects in UK, Thailand and USA • An author with 28 books to his credit, novelist, short story writer, poet, tech-travel-humor columnist (Tamil and English) • Playwright in Tamil • Movie script - dialogue writer • Translator from Malayalam, English to Tamil The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

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73

Lost Object

Telescope So I buy this incredible telescope.

It brings things closer.

I focus it on the moon and it comes closer.

I focus it on the stars and see grandma there.

Then I focus it on you but you don’t come any closer.

So I realise that the telescope is not incredible after all, it is just our eyes.

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I have lived with your loss, said the object I lost.

I have lived without your familiar touch, care, love and possessiveness.

I have lived abandoned, desecrated, left alone like a child without childhood.

I have lived on that side of your forgetfulness where the wounds of history rupture into a sore.

I have lived with the others, with the label ‘owners lost’, in the nook of a cupboard of the school you have left.

When you wake from your sleep, I sleep with your missing dream, illicit in your mind like a whore of the night.

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74

75

Your Mandatory Haircut Selfie Ghosting

From your mandatory haircut selfie your eyes meet me.

A chain with a pendant

At the fourth avenue of a long road, I get run over by a car and die a sudden death.

How fortunate that now I can enter your door without knocking and see you feeding your children breakfast of happiness.

Later you fill patience into bottles of days that I had abandoned illicit in your head.

You try to dust off things that you think I have kept in your mind’s cabinets but you don’t seem to know what is gone, what is left.

In this world no one dies, they all live as undead.

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run over your collar bone. Blue and white flecks on your T. There is so much to look at but there is so much I cannot see.

Dr. Amit Shankar Saha is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Seacom Skills University. He did his PhD in English from Calcutta University in 2010. He is also a researcher, a short story writer and a poet. His research articles, essays, reviews, short stories and poems have appeared in journals and anthologies nationally and internationally. He has won the Poiesis Award for Excellence in Literature (2015), Wordweavers Poetry Contest (2011), Wordweavers Short Story Contest (2014), The Leaky Pot - Stranger than Fiction Prize (2014). Dr. Amit Shankar Saha is the co-founder of Rhythm Divine Poets, a Kolkata-based poets group dedicated to the promotion of poetry. He has co-edited a collection of short stories titled “Dynami Zois: Life Force” and has authored a collection of poems titled “Balconies of Time.”

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77

POETRY

Innocent Flowers

John Maurer Candlelit

My voice surprised me when it tumbled out Of the back of my closet with the vinyl’s They have never felt a needle, So very different from me, Bleeding to learn how to stop bleeding Holding my breath in order to catch it Nothing dies in the garden where I bury myself Flowers bloom and blossom from my tomb I could be those flowers wrapped in damp tissue I could be flowers of apology for who I used to be

The Statue Inside Me The oracle walks up candlelit stairs Sits cross-legged at my feet Washes them with a crystal ball cleaning cloth Could your third eye not tell you what I will The past is for historians I do not have fossils under my fingernails The present is for the lovers I do not fall I’m too grateful for the graceful The future is for you What does a candle need to see but its own flame Oracle! Oh, Oracle!

Yes it is hard to examine oneself When one is burning alive The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

All the spinnings of clay into nebulas that can only happen between snapping synaptic gapings The thought that hasn’t been thought yet always shines like my memory of your

bite But requires magenta to be spilled, Spaniards don’t even drink wine to know this Filling glasses with maroon dyed glycerin to spray into light over clubs for ironic gentlemen I choose to stay home with my cigarettes To peel my brain off of a world filled with dragons and fairies to spin out into a nebula I will become a smoking pot, overflowing and growing over With what is between what could be and what is

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79

FICTION

Old Fashion Ice in my veins makes me stay better in a cocktail Is the reason I drink so many, stumbling through the streets Of who-knows-what city scrawling on a bar napkin If it is about the journey, then why have a destination at all?

Best not to synchronize swim in clouded water Especially with wings picked of their quills Nobody can even see my body melting up From the bottom, I almost look human now

John Maurer is a 22-year-old writer that writes fiction, poetry, and everything in-between, things that aren’t boring to read, hopefully.

He has been previously published at Quail Bell, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Thought Catalog, The Scarlet Leaf Review, and The Foliate Oak. Soon to be published in Claudius Speaks. @JohnPMaurer The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

Novella

The Queen of Astoria

The Prounis family had the time of its life. Maybe a lot of the other people, even well-meaning friends, were looking down on them with disapproval. The Asimakopoulos’, for example, all thought the Prounis’ were getting too carried away, that the new ways which weren’t their ways had gone to their heads.

Not that the Asimakopoulos’ weren’t real Americans like everyone else; the wonderful John Asimakopoulos had died at Bataan, for heaven’s sake! But dying for your country didn’t mean forgetting what’s important to your own people, or behaving like giddy teenage children. John Asimakopoulos’ descendants would always gladly break bread with the Prounis’, but sometimes they seemed to need a warning.

Others could think no wrong of Nick Prounis, his wife Eleni, their sons John and George, the lovely daughter Joyce, and Nick’s brother Ari, who you’d think lived more at Nick’s house on 34th off The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

80 31st Avenue than at his own place closer to Steinway St. The enthusiasms of such people as the Prounis’, so figured the Panagiotopoulos’, the Kapochunas’, even the Papadopoulos’, who were in some ways as old-fashioned as the Asimakopoulos’, couldn’t be so very bad after all. Who were they hurting? It might not be how they themselves would ever feel comfortable living their lives, but what was so indecent? Nothing at all! The Prounis’ were good neighbors, ever since they moved over from Nauplia.

You could say a certain respectful forbearance reigned among their detractors, while the approbation of their supporters was not without a faintly heedful anxiety. A lot of the people figured it was Ari who made the Prounis’ a little different. It was interesting that it didn’t really matter how long people were over here. The Asimakopoulos’ came to the United States a long time ago, since before the 1930s, yet sometimes they still acted like people who pulled water out of a cistern. The Prounis family was here less than twenty years, but they had Ari, and Ari had a real flair for America. Sometimes he was also critical of what he saw, not so much of how Americans behaved as of how people lived here, as when he compared linoleum to tile. “Remember the way our floors used to look, and how they were colorful and looked like a human being had made them, and had real dignity even when they got dirty,” he declared once at the diner after a third or fourth whiskey. “They felt so fine and chilly against your bare feet. And they were pretty. The blue tiles on the yellow, and the white ones at the baseboards.”

Life here was too much linoleum. The home supply stores on Steinway that vended the endless sheets of the stuff oppressed Ari just to walk past, especially since he knew there wasn’t much point trying to use anything better. Unless you were a rich man, the aesthetic struggle was wholly intractable. It was, for example, no use painting the apartments fresh every year because the dirty light and dust wore down the sheen in just a few months. Meanwhile, the facades built up inexorable accretions of soot, block after Samish block. No way to freshen or change them. Once he went to see his friends the Donleavy brothers who lived with their grandfather Al The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

81 on 30th St. It looked just like his own apartment except smaller. The sight of the place as you walked in was like an unpleasant modern painting because all there was to see were three rooms that weren’t very big, with each of the three bordering floors a different color of light-toned linoleum.

But the way Ari kept telling it to Nick, there was still a great life here waiting to be lived, and it wasn’t just the money you could make.

It was all the thousands of miles in every direction, with people everywhere and room for more, having adventures and never knowing what the next day would bring. That was why people kept coming here, and why Joyce, who was an angel, was old enough at eighteen to go to the dance after the big dinner. Everyone from the neighborhood and others they never saw or met before from Long Island City and even Manhattan would be going, all except the Asimakopoulos’, who would let their three daughters only go to the dinner. The Kapochunas’ were undecided and said they’d wait as late as Friday before making up their minds about Antigone.

Eleni Prounis giggled a little when she looked at Ari and Joyce, only pretending she’d be on their side in case Nick had second thoughts about Joyce going to the dance. Beautiful Mama! When Eleni called Ari on the phone, what she had to say filled him with gladness. “I saw a beautiful dress on 31st Ave. It was very elegant and it wasn’t too expensive. It’s a dress that if Joyce wears it on Saturday everybody will remember.”

“That will make old man Asimakopoulos think twice!” exclaimed Ari. “Like the whole world is going crazy!” laughed Eleni.

“And passing him by!” said Ari. “I can’t wait until you see it,” said Eleni. She described it vaguely: a little low cut, just a little, but the white lace at the bosom made her seem an angel. Swirls of braided beige overlay snaked on down to her ankles. “It’s a little revealing,” admitted Eleni, “but it’s decent.”

That evening when he visited, Ari shook his head sternly in mock disapproval. He clucked his tongue and told Joyce her Mama had told him all about the dress for the party, and that he and her The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

82 father were both outraged. Nick, playing along, affected a sour, tragic face as he put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “After all my hard work,” said Papa, “you turn out to be such a bad girl!”

Joyce was that day wearing blue jeans and a sweater, just like all the girls from Astoria and Long Island City who’d already gotten started in the public school when she and Mama and Papa were still in Nauplia. She picked up the cue. She scowled with her hands on her hips. “Shame on you, shame on you both! I’m a good girl!”

“We’re sending you back right now,” said Ari. “You’ll go home and marry a fisherman.”

“And your mother, we’re sending her back too!” exclaimed Nick.

“So I’ll have a nice cruise!” Eleni called out from the kitchen, where she’d gone to see to dinner. “Send me to Thera.”

Ari was bursting with joy inside. It could have been the sense alive within him that, in the ten years since he came to New York, this was the very first time he was really embracing the new life and feeling himself a part of the great hurly-burly. Not that Greece hadn’t made him feel alive too, especially around the islands, or when he went as far as Heraklion, where he was friendly with a prostitute who confided her secrets whenever he visited.

He was a small dark man whose rugged lined face was always a little stubbly. It was his wont to jostle things affectionately, like this very way he enjoyed teasing his beloved niece. Nick often played along, but Nick was a much quieter and less ambitious man, ambitious in the sense of how some men always want to swallow up life.

Ari was a conqueror by nature, in the best sense of the word. Ever since he’d landed in the United States, he felt almost a responsibility to gorge on life here too, and to feel it just as keenly as when he used to sail the other side.

Ari’s dream was to drive a car clear across to California, but he knew he’d never get away long enough from the liquor warehouse in Maspeth where he worked. That was a shame. He wanted to see the Grand Canyon and the Mississippi River. The squat grime of Queens didn’t fit, never could fit, he knew, the bursting emotion that was the rest of the great city, the real city, much less the endless wonderment The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

83 of the whole big recumbent country itself. It had been awfully frustrating, to be here and yet not quite taste it.

Joyce was a way to taste it, especially since, although he loved adventure, he hated being away from his family. He was pulled in two directions, and his family usually won him over. But Joyce was both adventure and love, the deep tie to the family that grew even deeper after she was born, a joy in the heart when she was a child, always happy and tugging at you, she was, at your face and nose and shirt collar. Now that she was a lady, it was as if the family had accomplished a great thing, because something had flowered here which, even in Greece, might have gotten lost in ancient linen and perpetual custom and the smell of new paint on old clapboard. That this lovely thing was Nick’s, was his brother’s own, made their bond yet stronger, and caused him too to love his brother’s wife as if she were his own sister. It was such a joy to be so close to a beautiful woman like Eleni, so physically close, without lust intruding or being allowed to intrude. What an achievement for a man, to feel that way so close beside a beautiful woman-- and, as she got older and her figure grew wonderfully full, Joyce too. The smell of her was also intensely like a woman’s.

Let’s have a party before the party,” Ari said. “A family party, to celebrate your beautiful new dress. Just us and your brothers and maybe the Panagiotopoulos’. Invite them for Thursday. A preview!”

“I’ll be embarrassed,” said Joyce.

“It’s a rehearsal,” said Uncle Ari. “There has to be a rehearsal.

One step at a time. Soon you’ll be a star, the first girl since Maria Callas to marry a billionaire. You’ll marry Onassis!”

“He’s dead, and when he was alive he was fat,” pouted Joyce. “I want to marry Mel Gibson.”

The Panagiotopoulos’ came, toting the Croat who’d married Melina Panagiotopoulos’ sister, and who drank too much. He did so again tonight, leering at Joyce even before she put on the dress. No one cared much. There was gaiety in the air, and the Croat was a pathetic soul. The usual thing was to feel sorry for his wife.

“Last year the dinner was fine but the party later got too wild, The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

84 I think,” said Melina, referring a little suggestively to the upcoming event, but not, really, with all that much concern or censure in her tone.

“What, `wild’?” argued Ari. “Some of the Irish kids were fighting outside in the parking lot,” laughed Eleni. “They had bloody noses, but now they’re friends again.”

“I know their family,” intoned the Croat. “The Riordan family.

Good people.”

Ari rested his eyes on the icons in high relief on the part of the kitchen door jutting into the living room. In the other corner of the kitchen, John and George were watching an old Perry Mason rerun on the small TV by the window. A buzzer sounded for Eleni to take the food out of the oven. Joyce helped with the plates. The saffron-smelling seasoning she given the big casserole of orzo and lamb seemed a little foreign to the house, as if from another part of the world.

“Things like that fight,” warned Nick, “give Asimakopoulos something to worry about.”

“So let them look down their noses,” said Ari. “Asimakopoulos is a good man,” said Melinda.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t,” answered Ari. “Maybe Greeks stick together too much,” commented Nick, without bitterness.

After dinner, they called for the dress. Joyce hurried off, a little embarrassed but savoring the attention. It was a chance to conspire with her beloved uncle against the whole world. The Panagiotopoulos’ sat back to wait. “Put them all to shame,” Ari called out toward the bedroom where Joyce was changing.

“We don’t need you, you bum, to tell us what a beautiful girl this is,” said the old grandmother, Helen Panagiotopoulos, who lived in New Jersey but, for some reason, came and stayed for month-long visits every spring. It was one of those strange family habits that no one ever quite understands or asks about, but it made Ari squirm a little like it was something odd, both old-fashioned and oddly comThe Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

85 pulsive, that was too often accepted without question. Maybe Greeks do stick together too much, thought Ari, even more than the Italians.

Joyce was lovely! As the beige braid work followed her long legs to the floor, the elegance of the thing seemed to work on her own mind, and on her whole notion of herself. She even arched her back in a grander manner than the family was used to. The beginnings of her breasts were visible but not lurid, more like how statuary shows anatomy if the stone could be made warm and slightly dark to the senses. Her black eyes glimmered, proudly, and a little mischievously.

What excitement there was in the neighborhood the night of the dinner that the masons had been sponsoring every year for the past six years, along with the special gala party for the younger kids which the local Astoria order threw separately at the party hall on 27th St. Even strangers on the street seemed to sense an effervescence that carried over from school into the diners, and to the cafes where a younger alien but friendly bunch of young people who worked in Manhattan lately gathered, mainly on the weekends. To Joyce, at least, its life abounding was ubiquitous.

That very night, though, Joyce would frighten herself a little, because she couldn’t stop looking at herself naked before she put her dress on. Such an intimate moment with herself she’d only have once in a while on certain nights just before going to sleep or right after taking a warm bath. A few hairs dangled around her nipples, and she reached for scissors to snip them. But then she blanched.

Why should she be doing this now? It shouldn’t make any difference whether there were hairs there or not. She was a good girl, and she blushed naked for a second or two as she dashed the guilty thoughts out of her mind.

She put the dress on and felt it cling to her undergarments. The bravado she’d shown for Uncle Ari and the Panagiotopoulos’ at the party before the party was gone. She was excited, but a little bewildered. She heard Mama open the apartment door for Ari. Her thoughts went there with them, relieved, feeling alive because the beloved and incredible uncle was with her now and she wouldn’t need to be worried or ashamed about anything.

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86 Uncle had come to wish her a good time. “It’s like you’re brand new!” he exclaimed, his eyes jubilating up and down the dress, like to feast on the silken fibers. “You won’t be a wallflower tonight. That would be wrong.”

Beautiful Mama was right behind him. Her head was lowered a little, and she was smiling a warm little smile that, at one moment, suggested a joyful giggle inside her also, coyly, trying to hide. “Ari,” she said to her brother-in-law, “it’s not girls’ fault when no one wants to dance with them. Some just aren’t so attractive.”

“It is their fault when they don’t want to be a success,” said Ari. “Or when they dress so old-fashioned, nobody wants to dance with them.”

By the same token, it wasn’t as if people were looking down their noses at the half-dozen or so girls who did come to the dinner that night dressed conservatively in stitched wool sweaters, colorful but wholly covering the contours of their bodies. Such girls were inevitable parts of the scenery in this Greek neighborhood and were, for that matter, a welcome sight to some of the men who figured they’d ultimately be safer falling in love and marrying them than more modern types like Joyce.

Who would fall in love with Joyce? He’d be a teacher, maybe, someone who taught engineering in Athens, and was waiting for a job in the United States or was going for an advanced degree. He’d be very modern in his attitudes. Maybe he’d be a businessman, working for an American company rather than one of those slightly shady Greek entrepreneurs you’d see sometimes around the neighborhood visiting their parents. Joyce’s husband would expect her to think in a forward-looking manner. With such prospects before her, even the small and private moments of life ahead might be wonderful in a way many of her friends could never understand. Life would be exciting all the time. Sometimes, when she was alone, and was in the right mood, and wasn’t embarrassed to think about such things, Joyce thought about kissing and hugging, and what it would mean in terms of love-making to marry a forward-thinking man, and how modernity might improve on Old World models.

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87 It was a consanguinity too close, perhaps, for Uncle Ari to approve of, but the Croatians, the ones living by the church on 33rd right off 31st Avenue (not the crowd of the Panagiotopoulos’ Croat, who was from Jackson Heights), were all seated together at the dinner. Papa probably wouldn’t approve either. “It’s our fault too,” she once heard him say, after a local confirmation party where some friends of the Papadopoulos’ had politely invited some Irish families, but who then huddled together in a corner by themselves throughout. “We share our food and our drink, but we don’t really give of ourselves,” he said.

The dinner was lovely. Mr. Papadopoulos kept nodding at her and smiling throughout as if he were happy to be with her even though she was dressed--as he had begrudgingly complimented her upon their being seated---”oh like a real society lady!” It must be admitted, Joyce was a little disappointed that the only people her own age at the table were Helen Papadopoulos, a numbingly silent 16-year old, and George Parisis, a neighbor of the Kapochunas’, a sweet boy but a little immature, who kept staring at her dress, particularly when she bent slightly to drink her egg soup. He always made very crude jokes. There was the one famous time he nearly got expelled from school because of a remark. They were reading The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton in history class. Mr. Parker asked a broad and challenging question: “Sum up for me, what is the Greek way?” George bellowed out something in reply about people’s rear ends. Not only was it gross, Joyce couldn’t imagine such things. No one she ever met would do that. Why did they say these things about the Greeks? Why did the Greeks say such things about themselves?

They had their choice of chicken or fish in big helpings with nice tomato sauces, although Joyce never expected cooking at restaurants or public gatherings to be as sumptuous as what people served in their own homes, including her own. She worried sometimes if she married someone who was forward-looking, and they moved to Manhattan, or to another city, maybe a foreign city, would they only eat delicious food when they came home for a visit to Astoria? On the other hand, she herself could always cook the good stews and broil The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

88 fish like she was used to. But then she worried if a forward-looking man, even a Greek from a Greek family, would appreciate her kind of food.

She was able to circulate after eating and go chat with the Malanos twins at another table. Theo Kampani was there too, one of the more personable boys who’d already gotten early acceptance to go to Stanford University. She wished her family knew his better. Once she even planned to mention them to Uncle Ari in hopes he’d make an effort to cultivate their friendship. Not that the Kampanis stood out particularly in the neighborhood – Theo was the first Kampani to go to a great school like Stanford – but something about their company was invigorating and it was a treat to see the family at neighborhood gatherings. It was even in the way they smiled. Admittedly, Joyce felt, by way of contrast, a certain contempt for the Papadopoulos’ sitting through the dinner hardly speaking, or feeling much of an obligation to do so. Their attentions were focused entirely on the food, and the extent to which the meal enhanced the aggregate quality of their lives or failed to do so. That was a cautionary lesson, perhaps: maybe she herself shouldn’t be worrying so much about food when she pondered the future and envisioned the forward-looking man she’d someday marry.

The party on 27th Street was loud and warm and full of young people jumping and gyrating on the dance floor. The hall was decorated with big signs welcoming different youth groups: Welcome, 34th St. Wildcats. Welcome, Achilles Warriors. Welcome, Fighting 43rd. There were trophies everywhere and bright paper decorations fluttering, and helium balloons hovering. She’d felt a little overdressed at the dinner as if the splendid dress Mama and she picked out and tried on and paid (Joyce guessed) $200 or more for, had finally been only for the dubious benefit of the Papadopoulos clan.

But here it was different. Here dark young eyes lit up at the sight of her. At first, she was a little nervous being so prominent, but many of the boys were friends of her, while other boys she’d just chatted with on occasion in school or around the neighborhood gathered around her for conversation. Other young men, she’d never met kept staring.

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89 What fancy fine pedigrees and great adventurous biographies they must be imagining in their heads to explain someone as elegant as herself! But it wasn’t her fault if they were misled. She wasn’t lying or misrepresenting herself. She was simply dressing well, and if people she didn’t know thought she was some kind of a queen because of it, well, she had no control over what they thought.

It was additionally thrilling because there were young people here from throughout the area, a variety the Astoria masons had arranged on purpose. They wanted their children mixing with other people’s children so everything wouldn’t always just be Greek, with a few Croats tossed in from time to time. You could tell most of the couples in the middle of the dance floor were Italians. That was sometimes a disadvantage in mixing, that some groups can’t help but start to take over. Joyce didn’t mind too much, though, especially when she recognized Tony and Joe Vecchio, whose father, the older man who owned the newsstand on Steinway, was always so nice.

Tony and Joe were sorts of naughty guys, but they were always sweet, never obnoxious like George Parisis, and they meant no harm.

What if she didn’t marry a Greek? What would happen then?

Uncle Ari might be happy, and she guessed Mama and Daddy would be too. But then what if there were some kind of trouble? What if they suffered marital discord? It would be like confirming what everyone predicted and would have warned her against had they felt at liberty to do so. The thought of her tail stuck between her legs because she’d married an Italian or an Irishman who turned out to not be worthy of her was just too awful. It would be like everything she had tried to be, everything she believed in, would be disproved to people who were too smug and small to ever believe in living differently from the way they were.

Tony and Joe made a big deal of her dress by starting in to tease her. “Hey, fox, you wanna move closer to Steinway?” called Tony.

“Look who’d you’d be right next door to.”

“No kidding, Joyce, we wouldn’t let you go walking by yourself,” said Joe, “especially not wearin’ that thing. Whoa!”

Two others she’d never seen before were standing just behind The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

90 Tony and Joe and smiling broadly. They seemed very nice. One appeared to be Irish or just plain American. The other had an Italian complexion, but she couldn’t quite tell. And then a third figure appeared, hard to see behind those two. “I’m surprised we’ve never met you before,” said the young half-hidden man. “We’re in this neighborhood a lot.”

“Yeah, I’m here a lot too,” said the Italian-looking one, his voice, unexpectedly, a most displeasing nasal twang. “I was in Greece once,” he continued. “Ever hear of Epidaurus?” The twang vibrated with a sudden pride in its ability to say the name of that distant and ancient place. “They got a big theater there where all the old-time people went to see plays. You go all the way to the back of the theater and they drop coins on the stage, which you can hear perfect from the all the way in the back. That’s how good the acoustics were even though it was in ancient times. You can sit there and even hear dimes.”

“Sure,” said Joyce. “My family is from Nauplia, which isn’t really too far from there.”

“Oh I was there too,” said the twangy guy. “They got really fresh fish there. I love real fresh fish,” he said as his companions smiled broadly and even a little strangely.

She started dancing with George Trypanis from school. George’s mother was once very close to Eleni before something happened, a mysterious and very personal dispute that Mama never talked about and no one asked about. Then Tony Vecchio cut in. As the music got faster, the American-looking guy she’d never seen before cut in and, as he gyrated, loomed real close toward Joyce. The tempo redoubled and Joyce flushed from the motion, then blushed at the sudden intensity with which she and the others were moving. She backed off.

“Sorry,” said the young man, nodding deferentially toward Tony as well. “I certainly didn’t mean to be forward.”

“You know them?” asked Jay Trypanis, George’s brother. She shook her head. “No one else here does either.”

The American-type returned to Joyce’s side and asked, respectfully, almost too respectfully, to dance with her again. Joyce was interested in being fair, as well in being open-minded, and she thought The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

91 he was an interesting-looking sort, with a face kind of craggy beyond his years. He had on a string tie no one else in the neighborhood ever wore. As he led, wonderfully, Joyce caught sight of a coterie of Greek girls, each of whom she knew by name but never really conversed with, huddled together, whispering among themselves but mainly saying nothing. It was so strange to Joyce, as her partner whirled her to the music of the band and the appreciative scrutiny of the band members who were all crimson shirts and darkish ties and soft, almost effeminate faces with pronounced mustaches. So strange: these girls, one of whom she too might easily be but for circumstance, easily draped like one of them in a black dress, a pubescent widow. It was a staring dark conspiratorial circle but for the occasional girlish giggle.

The dance ended and Joyce accompanied her partner as he rejoined his friends. “How you getting home?” asked the Italian-looking boy with the twang.

“My father and uncle are picking me up at 12:30,” she answered matter-of-factly, pleasantly.

“And here I was, figuring to get a hot kiss goodnight,” said the twang, laughing as he said it and blushing a mite to boot. Joyce smelled beer on his breath.

Joyce moved away, put off and scared a little but excited at the same time. She sat, just far enough from George Parisis so they wouldn’t have to talk, on a small sofa by the wall where she could snatch a moment of her own to reflect and wonder if this was finally it: that she was a young woman now, that she’d entered a forbidden realm of talk and knowledge and unspoken messages that yet wasn’t so forbidden people like Mama and Daddy hadn’t themselves been here and known the feelings and cherished the memories. Repellent things, like the beer smell, were part of it too, something adults realized had to be accepted as part of life. George Parisis was different: her disgust with him was the disgust of an adult for a child. Maybe that’s why she’d chosen to sit down not far from him after the more intimidating presence of the Italian with the twang. George was only harmlessly ridiculous.

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92 As she sat coldly ignoring George so as not to let his ridiculous presence obtrude on her burgeoning mood, she felt the dress slink up to a little over her ankles. End now, she thought to herself. Everything, the evening and the dance and life maybe even, end now while it’s all so perfect. End like this in one big bubble right here and now.

By midnight, she and the other girls from the school were out in the parking lot waiting for rides home. Others there, mainly a few young men who lived close enough to walk home, were dawdling and hoping to flirt. The young man in the string tie came up behind Joyce. “Can I see you again?” he asked, stepping so close she was taken aback. “I’ll show you around. I’ll show you Brooklyn Heights and parts of Manhattan you’ve never been to.”

Joyce was silent as he continued. “I’ll show you nightclubs in Brighton Beach where no one else goes to eat and dance except Russian gangsters. I’ll take you to live shows in Greenwich Village and Soho in New York where they do things too weird to do on Broadway.” Then he said his name, Robert Adams.

Next day, the Prounis’ were nonplussed when she told them about this invitation. These were adventures no one in the family had had, not even Uncle Ari, but they weren’t necessarily disapproving.

Mama and Papa were even a little excited for her. It was five years since Eleni spent a whole evening in Manhattan. All she said was, “you’ve got to be careful in New York.”

“You used to go to Athens all by yourself,” Joyce reminded her.

“Remember you told me about how a handsome French foreigner tried to talk to you at the cafe on Lykabettos!”

Mama blushed. “Oh, all he asked was what he should see in the city, and how to best get there.”

“What if Robert calls?” asked Joyce in a lowered tone, intent on getting a definite answer.

“You can go,” said Nick. His smile of gentle approbation!

The call came two days later. “I thought we could take in an early show at Radio City on Wednesday and then have dinner. Ever been to Rock Center?” He said `Rock Center’ in the blithe way a real Manhattanite would say it.

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93 Excited, she phoned Uncle Ari, and he was excited with her. She put the dress on that very afternoon, not that she was necessarily planning to wear it on Wednesday, but it had such a feel to it, the way the white cotton clung, and the top of her breasts peeked out, and the braided thread migrated so pronouncedly to her ankles, that it made the excitement of life itself echo in the apartment. Only her generation among the clans had ever had such opportunities.

Mama called upstairs to say she was leaving for Steinway to shop.

Minutes later, Joyce felt it jubilate and bolt inside her, an impulse to show off again. She’d walk the opposite direction from Steinway, so Mama wouldn’t see her, traipse the repetitive side streets and drink up the quizzical, the few disapproving but mainly admiring glances from the workers on the street and the old ladies in their lawn chairs.

Outside, it was a cool spring day, and the breeze pressed with the cotton against her thighs. She was so conscious of her thighs...28th St. 29th, 30th, then an alley she had never seen before. The rutted asphalt wedged between two liquor stores. Beyond the stores, there was nothing, more asphalt and an empty lot full of weeds. Being alone in her dress was a pleasure all to itself as she strode majestically down the homely road, almost as if she were in a dream.

But she wasn’t alone. There were footsteps behind her, and she didn’t feel at all comfortable about turning around to see whose they were, not so much because she was afraid as from some sense that it would be improper to do so. Meanwhile, there was no one and nothing in front of her, and the brief alleyways on her left and right were likewise empty. Then she heard it, a kind of hollowness, an eerie empty clomp in the footfalls behind her. She felt a sudden terror, yet couldn’t bring herself to quicken her pace. Her legs were like ice. And she felt a kind of indecency, a terror at herself for having capriciously and without reason worn the dress. It covered her up, she wasn’t being a bad girl, yet inexplicably she felt like a helpless and audacious intruder in her own neighborhood.

She knew the alley would let out at last on a busy street. Yet it was as if space itself was weirdly funneled; she couldn’t see the point, only a few hundred yards away, where the lonely byway ended.

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94 She’d keep walking, arrive at last at some street or, who knows, some bridge or tunnel – but then where would she be? Someplace else, someplace strange when she craved the listless comfort of her own neighborhood. She was lost.

Joyce now resolved to turn around and walk back to where she’d started, but the hollow ringing footsteps were louder and more insistent now. There was no going back, so she forced herself to run and when she did, her worst fears were confirmed. The footsteps were running after her, faster now, until they were upon her. Then the dress was in tatters and the stuff that was softer than cotton and the cool inner cloth were rent and, before she felt hands upon her or a hot male’s rancid breath, she mainly heard the hissing sound of fabric being ripped. Then a sharp cut, a warm release--she couldn’t tell from what part of her body--and all was dark.

Nick Prounis faced away from the window, unblinking, at the edge of the wall framing the sill, away too from the murmuring people inside. Aristotle Prounis gazed full-faced out the window toward one of the dull trees squatting at the curb, planted some long-gone time ago in the history of the great city. Each sob audible behind him lay heavily on his mind. Virgins are so fine and clean, and Joyce was the sweetest and sunniest one of all. The defiled body lay a few feet away, posed in a white gown the funeral home had provided, very much the flower which lives only a few days before the first chill descends. If he tried hard enough, he could quicken his sense of smell to pick up something too faint for the others, but which he knew to be – but couldn’t bear to think of – as – decomposition. It was, at the very least, the end of his own hopes.

The Asimakopoulos’ filed in, dutifully somber, yet theirs were faces subtly self-justifying, as if, a wiser and more prudent crew, death and despair couldn’t touch them. Not just Ari, but Eleni too in her silent grief took note of it. A simpler person, perhaps, than her brother-in-law, it thus hurt her more, this invidiousness in such old friends. Who’d have expected her to have to bear another hurt on top of the indescribable hurt?

“She only wanted to live a little,” said John Prounis. Joyce’s The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER - 2017

95 brother sounded angry, although whether he too had perceived the tacit censure of the Asimakopoulos’, or whether it was the unspeakable fact of what had happened to his sister that enraged him, Eleni couldn’t tell. She wanted to comfort him. There was a hush as if people were indeed waiting for a comment from someone, a suggestion the blame did lay with Joyce and her family. Blessedly, none came.

“Saints don’t suffer like this,” said Eleni aloud, although her voice was surprisingly steady. Perhaps it was a little defiance that made her stalwart. Part of her was poised to defend the dead daughter who’d walked alone on the streets with cool cotton clinging to her brownish body.

Ari’s senses quickened. He rose toward his brother but Nick was buried in his trance, closing his eyes and hunching his shoulders closer to the wall as Ari approached. There was a violence inside Ari as he loomed above his beloved brother; he could only retreat back to his chair where he turned his attention, or, rather, hurled it, back out the window, toward the ungainly trees in their dry clumps of soil.

“She’s with God now,” added Timos Panagiotopoulos. Ari, his vision darkening beyond endurance, heard in that good man’s tone the slight lilt of someone glad it wasn’t his daughter butchered like an animal. The Kapochunas’ filed in late, with Antigone bewildered in her dark eyes. Her mother loosed a few platitudes. They had finally allowed Antigone to go to the dance after the party, but Ari assumed many years would now go by before that leash was ever loosened again. They had--what was the expression?--dodged a bullet, and were thanking heaven they’d been taught a lesson they’d never dare forget.

That morning, Ari had felt fear for himself, a cold sweat at the thought his own good name was to be besmirched behind his back, or, worse yet, his very presence spurned by openly hostile neighbors laying all the blame on him for the new, foolish ideas that had brought his brother’s family to this horrible ruin. Then grief for Joyce supplanted his fears, and, for all he cared, the world could drop its ax and eradicate him utterly--Ari swore he’d never dishonor Joyce again with anxieties about so paltry a thing as his own good name The Wagon Magazine - DECEMBER- 2017

96 in a world of such mean-spirited peasants--yet how he couldn’t stop hating everything they stood for. Worse, if his dream still lived, there was no one to live it. His nephews John and George were fine men but too simple to dare it, especially since it seemed their charge now to mainly attend the devastated parents. Their lives were set.

And Nick? Ari couldn’t bear to let his imagination roam that future, so he squelched the clammy fear his brother would blame him too, though say nothing in the unbroken silence that would stretch on for decades ahead. And Eleni, whom he loved? Eleni, so little resentful by nature, could yet grow bitter with the years until time itself pushes her to find and flay some convenient, close-by paschal lamb.

He stopped thinking about it all. There wasn’t the time now for these grieving premonitions of further loss. He’d bear them later, and bury now instead of the young queen in her virgin white.

It was when the Trypanis’ arrived, and the long-estranged Olympia Trypanis embraced her, that Eleni finally let go her nonpareil keening. The depth of it was greater, it seemed to Ari, for whatever old wounds had once separated the two women. Nick Prounis emerged from his trance long enough to glance in their direction; Ari, seeing him, thought to make another effort to approach. But it was no good. He was afraid, at least for now, to test his brother’s love, though his own was desperate. Again, he bent back toward the window and took up surveillance of the trees outside.

Melina Panagiotopoulos stood at the table and poured whiskey for her husband. “These days, it could have been anyone who did it,” she commented tersely.

“They’ll never catch him,” said her husband. Melina glared at him for the thoughtless remark, even though his point was already implicit in what she herself had just said. Ari saw his nephews tense up; their faces were like granite. Now, suddenly, he was hearing another awful unspoken supposition in the room: “What if a nigger did it! What if a nigger had her before killed her?” In a minute, not just rape and death, but a likelihood of primal defilement hung over the scene.

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97 who saw her at the dance.”

“We’ll never know,” her husband said, still being thoughtless.

Nick Prounis, with such ineffable drama because he’d been so still and silent so long, spoke at last. “I hope it was a stranger,” he said.

“Better that than one of us.”

Ari glanced passionately at his brother, who had stunned the room with this unexpected oracular pronouncement. His beloved Nick! Nick still understood how beautiful Joyce was, and how what Joyce wanted to become was always neither more nor less than another metamorphosis of beauty. Thank God, thank God for Nick!

But the room was full of angry incomprehension. One of us? One of us? What does he mean?

Their silence was deep as death. Nick and Ari could see with the same eyes this population of pitiless creatures, their neighbors. Maybe, like himself, Nick could envision too that whole other new world stretched before him, its flickering bulbs in a million ranch homes in the dark nights of Kansas and Arizona, or track-house facades of suburban Virginia and Ohio just as dull but cleaner and bigger than Astoria, and full of untold condescending strangers crying crocodile tears for the sad family that tried but could not fit in. From Old World and New, the cry We Told You So rang down on the dead girl like a thunderbolt, as all that yet could be, the dazzling light, must now await some new Greek queen in clinging wind-blown cotton white.

Larry Smith’s novella, Patrick Fitzmike and Mike Fitzpatrick, was published 2016 by Outpost 19. His poetry has appeared in Descant (Canada), Write This, and Elimae, among others.

Smith’s story “Tight Like That” appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern (print edition), #27. “The Shield of Paris” was in Low Rent and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Other recent stories were published in Exquisite Corpse, The Collagist, Curbside Splendor, Sequestrum, PANK, among numerous others. His articles and essays have appeared in Modern Fiction Studies, Social Text, The Boston Phoenix, and others.

Visit Larrysmithfiction.com.

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