Twelfth Night

The streets were busy. Most residents were out clearing the dust, which was everywhere piled up in corners, concealing the town’s contours under its pallid sheets. Children ran with wheelbarrows before and behind them, while their parents worked bent backed or marshalled the efforts of others.

Three days before, the town had been swamped by a wall of dust travelling faster than a sprinting dog. The towering red cloud, wider than the town itself, had driven everyone indoors. From there they watched their windows darken and heard and felt their houses being battered.

After the storm passed, the town people rediscovered was one strewn with odd bits of lawn furniture and criss-crossed with fallen trees. Lifeless animals had to be cleared away. One family found a dog dead in their garden. It had run onto their property from god-knows-where, only to have its life squeezed out on the edge of their lawn.

Having choked on baking dry air, most now feared sickness. They babbled about the spread of imagined disease. The corner theorists claimed that a fungus had been swept up in the storm and all plants would now wilt and die. Some spoke convincingly of bacteria borne on hot-air currents, now incubating in bodies all around. While doctors worked to heal people still unable to breathe normally, everyone else added the fear of miasma to list of their worries. To protect themselves from this spectre, half of the town went about wrapped up like multi-coloured mummies.

Stephen Farkas was fleeing. He was not local and now had less reason than ever to stay. The track was clear and the train was running and he was making his brisk way for the three o’clock departure. Less than an hour earlier, he’d been ransacking a neighbour’s chest of drawers. From that particular piece of furniture he’d gleaned a watch, five pairs of earrings and a couple of necklaces.

He’d taken some things just for the fun of it, justifying this to himself by repeating “a thing worth doing is worth doing right”. Under the licence of this homely wisdom he’d rifled through some important looking business papers and taken a selection, which he had no intention of keeping; he’d stolen two passports, just to be a nuisance, as well as placing, into his newly pilfered suitcase, a photograph of an old man and a still wrapped and labelled gift.

In all, he’d gone through three separate apartments, grinning all the while. There was tranquillity in these empty places. Away from the heat, in cool, private rooms, wild instincts had threatened to take charge, but he’d thrilled quietly. There was disorder enough in this invasion and its chance of being caught. In a living room shaded by balcony awnings, he shivered a little bit. While everyone else toiled in the streets, he stood before a family’s piano and played an arpeggio that his aunt had taught him so simply years before. With the first, third and fifth fingers he made a chord twice.

Only when leaving did he realise it was a bad idea to carry a stolen suitcase through the neighbourhood he’d taken it from. By then it was too late. He kept a sharp pace past the working harlequins, wrapped up in motley. He sweated freely and got part blinded by the lowering sun.

In front of the station, he wished he’d gotten there later and didn’t have to wait around. The station was a two platform affair, with no real façade and no interior at all. At the drinks stall outside, Stephen now paid for a watermelon juice and put down his suitcase by the counter.

Stopped there, he saw the boy. It was older than eight, perhaps ten, but it was a runt. The runt coughed pathetically and was plastered with dust and sweat. It lived in the building next to Stephen’s but didn’t belong to one of the households he’d robbed.

When the child came closer, Stephen spoke to him, saying “What are you doing here?”

“I came to get something for my mum,” the skinny thing replied in his mock streetwise voice. At some point, he had learned it was good to be cheeky. Thinking he was being amusing, rather than just annoying, the boy took every opportunity to be unhelpful.

“Which one is your mum? Is she blonde?” Stephen asked.

“She used to be. She dyed her hair,” came the reply, before “Why you here?” went the question, which would stay unanswered.

“I think I know who she is,” said Stephen. “She’s very tall, isn’t she?”

“Hmmm.” This question seemed to fascinate the dusty child. He narrowed his eyes, as if considering a philosophical problem and made aw-ing, umming noises. “Well.” He drew out the word, so its tail went in a thin whisper. “She’s not very tall. She’s quite tall for a woman, but she’s not the tallest woman in our building, let alone anything else.”

“Is your mother the Polish lady?”

“Yes. But there are loads of Polish families in our building. Aren’t you Polish?”

“No. I can’t speak Polish. You can see that.”

“My brother can’t speak Polish. He’s Polish and he doesn’t even know a single word.”

Speaking to the child was taking Stephen’s mind off the blinding sun. “What was your name again?” he asked.

“You can’t remember?”

“Could you give me a straight answer?”

“I am giving you straight answers. I’m answering all your questions.”

After a few seconds, Stephen made his mind up. “I’m going away,” he said “And I may not be back.” While thinking how to phrase the next bit, he was stopped by the boy, who sounded less obnoxious than normal.

“You should stay,” it said.

“That can’t happen, for many reasons. But since I can’t go back, I won’t have a chance to drop off this suitcase. Could you do it?”

“What’s in it?”

The boy would of course ask this. He was the kind of boy who snatched things.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll give you some money to take it to my building, as long as you don’t ask any questions. Understand?”

The boy made it clear that he did. He asked three or four more questions, but was finally made to be silent. The train, five minutes before departure, pulled into the station. Stephen thanked the boy and told him to get a move on. He had instructions to leave the case with the Winkelmanns on the first floor. 

Impatience ate him up. There were five minutes before he saw the platform move back. When they pulled away, he felt overwhelming relief. It was the right time to move on.

As the Twelfth Night title of the post is doubly irrelevant, with there being no Shakespeare reference intended and it having been far more than twelve nights since I last posted anything, there were double reasons for me to write this story. I set myself the task of writing a short short story. I aimed for 1000 words and overshot by about 100. I also aimed to write something with a coherent plot, for once. Please let me know if you liked it or not. Any comments would be helpful.