Fiction — Stories

My eyes have opened and my mouth is dry. Not a good sign. I get out of bed and naked walk to the kitchen. Not a good sight. I cough. Using the dwindling Yorkshire teabags my mother sent me from London before all of this started, I make a cup of tea. It is eight o’clock; my girlfriend will not be awake for a few more hours, so I have time to do whatever I please. I rinse my mouth with water, spit into the sink, try not to pick my nose, try not to touch my face. The tea isn’t as good as it should be, there were no sweeteners in the last package.

I first visited this city sometime in the late seventies. I was 18 or 19. An acquaintance of mine lived here. Two friends and I visited him between Christmas and New Year of whatever year it was. He lived in a rundown block of flats. I have no idea now of the area, nor can I recollect the name of the nearest train station. His neighbours were mostly Vietnamese.

It was never done out of malice. He meant no evil intent. He would say things in the hope of making people laugh. He was not very good at small talk and didn’t really understand the term. He was reticent in groups, better at one-on-one conversations. His foreign language skills were poor. He could understand a page of French but would be embarrassed to read it aloud.

The earth is deep brown and peppered with crows. Sorry-looking cows nuzzle the frozen refuge. Two mongrel dogs, skinny, tentative, sniff at my backside. Submerged concrete — cuboid and rectangular — creates billowing white water as if here the river whipcracks like sheets from a crumbling Soviet balcony. Small berries, black and round concealing outlandish pips, pulp under my bare feet, empurpling my skin. The sunlight on the surface of the water turns the river into the combed-back and pomaded hair of a murderous dictator — the river current his parting, the swans his dandruff, the crayfish his lice.