Creative Writing

Under the Sun

It was early in the afternoon, somewhere in the Egyptian desert, not far from Luxor. Fayad, a brave ten year-old boy, took out the donkey of his parents, Himâr, from its pen to tie it up to some kind of basic plow. He would plow the field of his parents, which actually looked like a piece of desert, in the middle of the desert. However, seeds of barley were sowed but under the sun, and with the lack of rainy days, nothing would come out of the ground.

Fayad plowed the desert. What for? There was nothing else to do anyway. He and Himâr, slowly moved forward, with a particular sense of geometry for such a young boy, and even more unexpected were the parallel lines on the ground drawn by the donkey.

They plowed slowly but they plowed. For a reason or another, when Fayad’s eyes looked where his head led them to, the young boy saw something bright and twinkling. The plow had unearthed it from deep in the ground and there it lay on the soil.
Fayad came near it. It was some piece of gold, an ancient one, with hieroglyphs on it. Under the sun, the old coin glinted. Fayad thought a while. He didn’t know the value of such a discovery. He could never keep it for himself, he wouldn’t do that to his parents, especially his loving father. He had never felt deprived or needy, even though he could seem to live in a poor family, but maybe they could buy a second donkey? Or maybe his parents could send his eldest sister to college thanks to it? What if it was something very precious and experts came, with journalists? The burglars would be warned. Fayad really didn’t want his parents to have any kind of trouble.

With his hand, he gouged in the ground just where he had found the thing, as far as his little fingers could go in the deep of the desert. He laid it down in the bottom of the hole, and covered it. He continued to plow during all the afternoon after this episode, hiding a secret he would quickly forget under the sun. 

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Narrative style exercise
(Source material: Paul Simpson, Language Through Literature, 1997, Routledge)

Prompt: read the following newspaper report which describes certain events that took place in 1922. The report appeared in the New York Tribune and details the execution of six Greek cabinet ministers.

Now compose a short story based on the events portrayed in the newspaper text in 200 words. Feel free to omit events that you feel are less central to the main story, or to amplify certain details which you feel are thematically significant.

(PS: this exercise was given in class, and the students had around 20-25mins to come up with their own, personal version of the event).

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ATROCITIES MARKED GREEK EXECUTIONS OF FORMER LEADERS

Uncensored Account Brought From Athens – Dead Man Was Propped Up in Line

GOUNARIS NERVED BY DRUG

Ex-Premier, Dying From Illness, Was Artificially Stimulated to Stand. LONDON, Dec. 20 – The Daily Express published the first detailed account of the recent executions of the Greek ex-Ministers supplied by its correspondent who was lately in Athens.

M. Gounaris, an ex-Premier, was in a hospital in a very critical condition. About 11 a.m. he was taken out on a stretcher, placed in a motor van and driven to a place about one and a half miles outside of the city. He was left lying on his stretcher in a dying condition while the car went back to fetch five others from the prison where they had all been confined in a single room.

To begin the horrors of that morning it was discovered by the guards that one of the five had died in the van on the way out from heart failure.

On the arrival of the van Gounaris was lifted out of the stretcher to stand up and face a firing party. It was then found that this wretched man, who, after all, had been a figure in the recent history of Europe, was unable to stand at all. He was thereupon given sufficient injections of strychnine to strengthen the action of his heart to enable him to stand up in front of the firing party. The man who had died on the way out was propped up beside him – a ghastly line of four live men, one half alive and one dead man.

They were then asked – Gounaris, the dead man and all – if they had anything to say, an appalling instance of mockery. No reply was (121) made, but M. Baltazzis took out his monocle, polished it and put it back again. General Hadjanestis calmly lit a cigarette. The order to fire was given. The moment the prisoners fell the firing party rushed forward and emptied their revolvers into the corpses. Including that of the man who had died on the way from the prison. The bodies were then thrown into a lorry and taken to a public cemetery just outside of the city and were thrown out casually in a heap in the mud which covered the ground.

New York Times, Dec. 20, 1922.

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Student version - Jade Weill

I was lying in this white and empty room, wondering where I was exactly. All of a sudden I heard voices through the door, though I couldn’t figure out the words. Maybe they could help me recall what was going on. A small group of men entered, all dressed in uniforms and they didn’t seem very helpful. They dragged me out of the bed to a van. I was too weak to… I could feel the van moving, and the holes and bumps in the road but I couldn’t open my eyes. Out of the blue I felt vigorous again, as if an electricity jolt had gone through my entire body. I looked around me: we were still in the van, but the van was parked in a no man’s land. A syringe was lying on the floor. Now I understood. My fellow companions were all brought here. Poor Nikos was lying in the mud, but he wasn’t moving anymore. I wish I could have been dead already. We were all brought in front of a firing party, including Nikos. We were asked if we had anything to say. What would we have had to say anyway? The General facing us lit a cigarette. The men aimed at us.

The clock was ticking in General Hadjanastis’ office. 11.15 am. Gounaris must be in the van now, heading to the spot his lieutenant had checked out last Monday. Hadjanestis thought it was time he met his officers there. He asked for his driver and arrived 20 minutes later at the chosen spot. Gounaris was almost unconscious, lying in the mud, well guarded by officers. The van had already departed to fetch the other felons. What a shame! He thought. The firing party is going to be spoiled if the dead-to-be are already almost dead. 5 minutes passed and Gounaris’ 5 accomplices arrived in the same van Gounaris had been transported in earlier. One of the men was dead. Huh, thought Hadjanastis, let’s at least get the half-dead back to life so he can enjoy the firing party. He ordered that strychnine be administered to Gounaris. Greece’s former elite men were then placed in front of the aiming soldiers. Hadjanestis’ lieutenant asked if they had anything to say. No word was uttered. Hadjanastis thought it was high time to end it all. He lit a cigarette, stared at the condemned men, and waived his hand to his lieutenant as a signal to shoot. Pow! Hadjanestis slowly moved back to his car. He had a lunch to attend at the ministry. His lieutenant knew how to handle the bodies.

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Student version – Nadège Jacquin

My name is General Hadjanestis. Many people say I’m a bastard, a “f***ing bloody traitor.”

Honestly, I think that might be true but, guess what, that’s not my problem anymore. The only thing that really pisses me off now is that I always thought I would be buried back home, at Philantropis, where I was brought up. But I can’t see that happening … today is execution day for me and the other five and I have the feeling our last bed will be more like a hole in the mud than a five star-coffin!

Shit! I only have one cigarette left… too bad, I’m gonna have to wait one more hour before lighting it.

Here they come, the justice makers. A dirty van and good company for my last trip, it goes with the general picture of this day, I guess.

I wonder were we are, looks like we have been driving for a few miles or so outside the city.

Stephanopoulos couldn’t even make it. They seem to be disappointed. The bastard died before they could shoot the first bullet… I like the irony. But it looks like he will be standing with us no matter what!

Here we are. One last word? “F*** you” crosses my mind but I think it’s too vulgar, and I have my last cigarette to smoke.

Ready, steady, die.

Nienawidzę was, ojciec

Daniel could not remember how many drinks he had before he fell off his couch, face down on the laminated floor. Nor did he know what time it was. He barely was able to look outside, hardly enough to figure out that it was late at night and high time to go to bed. He tried two of three times to stand up but it was only to fall more heavily after each failed attempt. The crawling from the low-lit living room towards the bedroom felt as hard and painful as running the New York marathon. In Daniel’s eyes, his whole narrow apartment seemed to be spinning like a small sailboat tossed by some monstrous waves one can only find at the outermost parts of the oceans. The heavy rain outside was tapping on the windows and the tree branches were casting ghostly shadows on the walls.

It was the same cold rain that was pouring earlier that day, when several black silhouettes had gathered around Daniel to pay a last tribute to his father. For years before that, Daniel had been thinking of what he would say when that day had finally come and he would be asked to say a few words about his old man. That very person with whom he had spoken so little in fifty five years of a banal life, yet satisfying enough for that modest man who hated nothing more than being put in the light with dozens of anonymous eyes pointing at him. He didn’t know if, in the bottom of his heart, he really loved or hated his father. What could he say in front of all those people hypocritically called “friends” and “family”? Daniel knew his father had never really had close friends as he never let anyone, not even his wife and his only son, enter his intimacy. God only knew what he was hiding in the abyss of his heart. As for his family, apart from Daniel and his mother Melinda, no one could ever uncover the carefully concealed secrets about his family. If someone dared to ask the littlest question about Matthew Lieuz, he would enter one of this tremendous angers his wife jokingly nicknamed ira divina, the wrath of the gods. So nobody knew the slightest thing about Daniel’s father past and background before the day he met Melinda, a sunny Saturday afternoon on the green lawn of Central Park, in the summer of 1949. Mr. Lieuz claimed he was born in 1922 in a small town in Missouri from Polish immigrants, but who could tell if this was true or of pure invention? Only his accent could denote the fact he was or Eastern European descent.

After the short but dignified ceremony, Daniel and mother would have dinner in a fancy place and share memories of their husband and father. Melinda, who saw her son only once or twice a year, used every occasion to ask him about his life and the fact he was living like a hermit in the middle of the most restless city in the world. If Daniel tried to subtly tell his mother he started to feel uncomfortable about this inquiry, she would answer in the very direct manner he had always known.

- You know, I almost never see you, I want to know what is new in your life. And after all, I’m your mother, so I’m concerned and you can never change that. I shared my spouse life with a man carrying more secrets than anyone should be allowed to. Please don’t act with me like your father did…

Daniel would whisper for an answer and an awkward silence would ensue until the waiter broke it, asking what they would order for dessert.

It was not until he came home, closed carefully the locks of the main door, threw his keys on the floor with a gesture of anger mixed with intense sadness, and sat on the couch that he allowed himself to cry. It was like all the tears he had carefully kept behind his eyes for so long had decided to flow at the same moment. Then he lifted up his eye and saw the bottle of whisky standing on the coffee table. He decided to pour himself one drink, then another one, and finally automatically filled the glass every time he found it empty…

When Daniel woke up the next day, though the weather was better than the night before and tiny rays of sun entered the room through the closed curtains, everything was dull and foggy in his head. It felt like the whole New York Philharmonic was playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony within. He finally managed to get up from his bed, stumbled on his slippers and headed to the kitchen to get a cup of very black coffee. When he passed next to the entrance door, he noticed a small piece of paper lying on the floor. He picked it up and examined it. On the front was displayed an old portrait in black in white. Though the man on the picture looked in his early twenties and was impeccably dressed in a grey suit with a black tie, his black hair plastered backward, Daniel immediately recognized his father. On the back of the photo was written, in a smart old-fashioned writing, only a series of figures: 3443522415132432. Daniel wondered for a while what this could mean but put the picture on the coffee table and did not pay attention to it any longer.

Like any other ordinary day, Daniel would put his anonymous suit, drown in the crowd of the subway and accomplish his everyday tasks as an accountant in a big firm in lower Manhattan. While looking at endless statistic tables, his mind got lost in countless thoughts that had no logical link between them. This was the way he remembered the picture he had found a few hours earlier. His thoughts were clear now and he started to wonder how this picture had landed in his lobby or where it had come from. Though he had been able to recognize his father, he realized it was the very first time he was contemplating such an ancient picture of his dad. Actually, he had never seen any picture of his father during his youth and had always known him as a middle-aged man first, later as an old man carrying the weight of years with difficulty yet an inextinguishable pride at the same time. And those numbers on the back, what could they mean?

Bombarded with so many questions that he could not focus on his work anymore, Daniel told his manager he had just got an urgent phone call from his mother as a pretext to run back home. Once back in his apartment, he slammed the door and grabbed the picture. He read again and again the sixteen-digit number, tried several combinations to maybe decode it, if ever it was a coded message, but remained unsuccessful. Outside, the sun was already setting when Daniel angrily threw another piece of paper full of useless notes. He was about to help himself to a glass of whisky to contain his irritation when someone knocked at the door. He put down the bottle, went to the door, and opened it. In the door frame was standing Greg, his neighbor from the third-floor, a strange 25-year-old so-called student who spent his days playing video games and browsing the Internet rather than actually go to college. As usual, he was dressed in a black tee-shirt and a pair of jeans, his hair was messy and he obviously had not shaved for several days. They had hardly ever spoken since Greg moved in the condominium, three years ago, and every conversation was filled with the banalities two people exchange when they want to get away from each other as soon as possible without upsetting their collocutor. Daniel was surprised Greg had quit his virtual world to come down to his apartment. He saw Greg’s fingers were twitching and his face showed nervousness.

- Hi. I hope I'm not bothering you but I learnt about your father from the caretaker and I just wanted to say… Well, sorry for your loss…

- Ah… Thanks.

The two remained silent for a while when Daniel suddenly thought that maybe Greg knew something about encryption techniques. He invited him into the apartment and showed him the back of the picture. Greg looked carefully at him for not even ten seconds when he exclaimed:

- Polybius!

- What?

- You mean “who”! Polybius was an ancient Greek historian. He invented an encryption technique known as the Polybius square. It’s one of the ancestors of cryptography, even if, for the anecdote, he didn’t conceive it for that purpose. I know it because I love playing puzzle games on the Web and this is a classic in enigmas.

- Ok, ok… I got it… Can you read it?

- Sure! Actually, it’s pretty easy to decode. You just have to draw a five on five table and write the 26 letters of the alphabet from left to right, top to bottom.

- Um… A five on five grid? There are only twenty five squares in that.

- I know! It was basically designed to use the twenty-four letter Greek alphabet, not our Latin alphabet. So to get round the difficulty, we place the “i” and the “j” in the same square. Then to assign letters to digits, you simply write down the coordinates of your letter: its row number first and its column number then.

Greg took a piece of paper and drew the grid and started to decode the message. After two minutes, he came to Daniel with the paper. On it was simply written one word: Oswiecim.

- Oswiecim? Daniel exclaimed. What the hell is that? Is that German or I don’t know what language?

- Polish exactly, Greg replied, a slight expression of superiority enlightening his face. What do you know about the Holocaust? 

- I’ve seen Schindler List…

- Ok, you should know enough. Oswiecim is a small Polish town in south Poland, about thirty miles west of Krakow.

- So…?

- Well, it’s better known under its German name…

Greg’s tiny smile suddenly faded. He took a deep breath and ended his sentence in a low voice, like he was about to uncover some evil truth.

- Auschwitz…

- What? The concentration camp? What does it have to do with my father or even me?

- Well… I guess it’s your job to find it… I have to go. But if you need information, just knock on my door.

- Ok, thanks anyway.

Greg left the apartment, letting Daniel fixed in an attitude showing the shock of this revelation and the thousand questions it implied. Daniel could not find sleep that night until he took an exaggerated amount of sleeping pills. When he finally woke up the next day, the sun was already high in the sky. To his terror, he found another picture on the floor. This time, the photograph, of bad quality, showed a bunch of people dressed in prisoner uniforms. A red circle surrounded his father, also dressed as a prisoner, wearing a small red triangle on his chest. On the back was written another coded word: 25113534. Daniel ran up the stairs towards Greg apartment, and knocked loudly on the door. A half-sleeping Greg opened the door. Daniel said, panting between words:

- Sorry to wake you up. I need your help. And your knowledge!

Greg instantly understood what this was about when Daniel held out the picture to him. They both came into Greg’s bedroom, an incredible mess of computer devices, various books from superheroes comics to encyclopedia volumes, and clothes laid out through the entire room. Greg sat on his computer chair and examined the photograph with a magnifier.

- Do you see the green triangle on your father’s chest? The Nazis had a system of symbols to identify the various categories of prisoners. Let me check what category it is…

Greg switched on his computer and after a short Internet search he could give an answer to Daniel.

- Green triangle… “Common law criminals”. Well, that doesn’t give us much information. Let’s see the code on the back… Um… K… A… P… O… Kapo.

- What is that?

- Bad news, if that means your father was one of them. You see, the kapos were prisoners usually recruited among the common criminals, the green triangles then, and the political prisoners, red triangles. There were assigned the low tasks such as leading the prisoners to the gas chambers. Most of them were particularly sadistic and violent towards other prisoners and several of them were sentenced to death when the camps were liberated.

Hearing that, Daniel felt like the whole sky was falling upon his head. Was his father a former kapo? He had been a criminal for sure, as shown by the green triangle, but did he abuse prisoners and participate in sending hundreds, thousands of people to a horrible death? Greg saw the expression of despair on his neighbor’s face but could not find any word to comfort him. Finally Daniel left Greg’s apartment silently, walking slowly and bent like he was carrying all the misery of the world on his shoulders. Once back in his living room, sat on the couch, a glass of whisky next to him, he watched the two pictures over and over again. Now he started to understand a little of his father’s so well hidden secrets. But he was feeling like he was walking all alone in a frozen desert, surrounded by a dark mist that grew thicker as he was moving forward. He feared to be swallowed in this boundless gloomy ocean. After the bottle of whisky went empty, he calmed down as the alcohol started to take possession of his brain. In a flash, he thought the mysterious mailman would maybe come a third time that night. He decided then to stay awake all night long until he could catch him or her in the act.

The clock hanging on the wall was displaying 3 o’clock AM when Daniel heard the almost silent noise of a piece of paper slipping on the floor. While he was on the edge of sleep, this tiny sound had the same effect on him as the loudest alarm clock in the world. He jumped of the couch, ran to the door and opened it in a sharp movement. In the low-lit hallway, he saw an aged woman heading to the elevator. He ran after her and caught her arm. The lady turned back and revealed an elegant face yet showing tired trait and an unfathomable sadness in her eyes. She was dressed in a simple but classy black ensemble and a bunch of grey hair was falling smartly on her shoulders. Daniel, who had imagined dozens of possible facial composite of his stalker during his wait, stayed dumfounded for a few seconds before finally stammering:

- Who… Who are you?

The lady severely stared at him for a while, and in a calm voice said:

- You caught me and I guess you solved the puzzles. It’s high time you knew the truth…

She moved her head pointing at Daniel’s apartment still opened door. They would be more comfortable for the long conversation they were about to have. They both went into the living room and the lady sat on the couch while Daniel stayed up, almost incapable to even bend his knees. Daniel asked again:

- Who are you? What do you want? How… How do you know me and my father?

- My name is Julia Ohbendorf. I suppose I’m your sister, or your half-sister to be accurate.

- My sister? Do you mean my father had been married before he met my mother?

- Your father… Well, our father, Matthew Lieuz, or Helmut Waitze as he was called back then, was a German robber who lived in Poland in the late 1930s when the country was invaded by the Nazis. He was well known for several bloody bank robberies, so when the SS caught him in late 1943, he was directly sent to Auschwitz.

- If I understand your messages, he became a kapo there, didn’t he?

- Yes, he did. The SS appreciated his selfishness and sense of sadism towards other prisoners, especially the Jews and the homosexual. He was responsible for several cold hand murders, as my mother told me on her death bed…

Daniel stayed silent, completely overwhelmed by what Ms. Ohbendorf had just told him. At first, he was unable to utter the question stuck on his very lips, but finally managed to ask, in a hesitating voice:

- You said your mother was aware of what your father… I mean our father did as a kapo. So I guess, given your name, that she probably was a prisoner and you…

- That’s right. My mother was a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz and one night of December 1944, he raped her. One month later, the camp was liberated by the Red army. My mother was pregnant but it was too early to be seen, and Waitze managed to hide among the survivors, hiding the fact he was a kapo. Later he fled Europe to the United States and became the respectable Matthew Lieuz, an anagram of Helmut Waitze. I think you know how the story goes on from that point.

- Why… Why are you telling me all that? And why now?

Julia lowered her head. The sadness in her eyes became more intense. She gasped with difficulty and went on.

- I had to wait until my mother passed away fifteen years ago to know the truth about my father and my birth. Since then, I was restless about finding him. I moved to Los Angeles and spent hours and hours reading the archives at the Simon Wiesenthal center. It was almost a miracle I could find the trace of Waitze and understand he had changed his name to Matthew Lieuz. I was able to find him in New York but unfortunately, I arrived just too late to confront him. I had discovered he was married and had a son. So I decided to reveal the whole truth to you. But I knew how painful it was so I wanted to make sure you were ready to hear it.

- Hence the code, I presume.

- Exactly. You had the courage to find the key to decrypt it though you didn’t know where it would lead you...

- There’s something I don’t get… Why did you want so bad to tell me the truth while it looks so painful to you?

- Well, I thought you had the right to know. And to be honest, I wanted to know what the son of the monster could look like.

- So you got your answer…

- Yes… I did.

- So, what does the son of the monster look like?

- Just like the monster: like any other man. Like the ordinary man you can see in the street, neither smarter nor uglier than any other person; like the man you can easily picture cuddling his wife and playing with his kids, like a man who does not have his hands stained with the blood of so many innocents…

At these words, Daniel felt a chill of terror running down his spine. Julia stood up silently and without saying a word or even looking at him left the apartment. For a while, Daniel stayed completely immobile, unable to move. Finally, in a desperate effort, he headed to the liquor dresser, grabbed a bottle of Pinot noir and poured himself a glass of wine. Tears started to flow down his cheeks as he stared at the carmine liquor pouring into the glass.

(c)2008

Candy

The whole story began on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Hidden Park. Jordan, a six-year-old boy at the time, was playing joyfully on the grass. He liked coming here on beautiful week-ends when his father, a successful and very busy businessman, would postpone some of his meetings to spend quality time with his only child. Jordan would always make the most of these moments, even more so as they were so rare. His mother was a lecturer and, as such, had also very little time. Little Jordan was then used to spending more time with his nurse, the young and dynamic Cathy, than with his parents.

Cathy would also eventually take him to the park around the corner, and play with him for hours. She was one of his best friends, but deep inside he wished he had a good friend of his age whom he could play with. For Jordan often felt lonely. He had some good friends at school, but they lived outside the city and he could not see them at week-ends. And at home, he had no one to play with, except his friend Poppy, the teddy bear. But that day in the park, something changed.

Jordan was playing with Poppy on the grass, talking to him. His father sat on a bank a bit further away, reading the newspaper. Had he taken a look at his child at this precise moment, he would have noticed that Jordan was no longer playing alone. He seemed to have a lot a fun with a new friend, even smaller than Jordan was. His friend had dark skin and dark eyes and was full of energy and joy. Both were playing with Jordan’s favorite red ball, and it seemed they could play like this for hours.

As the father called his son to go home, his friend was already gone and only Jordan had seen him. During the next summer weeks, Jordan would ask Cathy more and more often to go to the park, to meet this friend again and play with him. And Cathy, too happy the poor boy had finally found a good friend to talk to, would go with him.

One evening, coming back from Hidden Park, Jordan told his mother about his good friend. He said he was really happy because they could play together and he could tell him everything and he would listen, and they would play again and have fun together. He called him Candy, because he liked Jordan’s candies. What Jordan said next, however, was quite unexpected: “Mommy, Candy is not happy where he lives. He did not tell me, but I know it... Mommy, could Candy come and live here? Please?”. Mrs Johnson looked at her son with eyes full of love and amusement. She smiled and, with a very careful voice, explained to her child that it was not possible, because Candy surely had a family and they could not take him away from them and she and his father had never seen his friend. “He has no family, I know it and if you come with me, I will show you!”, Jordan replied.

The next Saturday, Mrs Johnson went to the park with his son, to meet Candy. As she saw him for the first time, she reacted violently. Without any explanation, she took her son with her and went home. Jordan was crying, he could not understand what had just happened. His mom had not even talked to Candy. He was afraid he had done something wrong, and her mom was sad because of him, and Candy would not live with him. But he knew Candy was nice and he was his only friend.
That night, Mrs Johnson told her son he was no longer allowed to go to the park to see Candy.

A few days later, as Mrs and Mister Johnson went home, they could not find Jordan anywhere in the house. Cathy told them he was playing in the garden. But they could not find him there either. Mrs Johnson started panicking, imagining everything that could have happened to her beloved son. Jordan would never have left home like this, he was so small! He had been kidnapped, for sure! But why? Mister Johnson was already calling the police. A policeman came a couple of minutes later. He asked the couple and Cathy the usual questions, trying to understand what could have happened. And when he asked Mrs Johnson about the behavior of her son during the past few weeks, she suddenly knew where he was: “Hidden Park!”. Neither the policeman nor his husband had had time to add anything. Mrs Johnson was already outside, running towards the park.

And there he was, playing the ball with Candy, laughing and having fun. He smiled when he saw his mom. She seemed to feel bad, but he did not understand why. She ran towards him and took him passionately in her arms, kissing him. She was crying.

- “Mommy, what is happening?”

- “Jordan, please don’t you ever do that again!”

- “I was just playing with Candy! I wanted to see him, I was too sad!”

- “Oh sweetie! Promise me you won’t leave home again without Cathy! Mommy got so scared for you!”
Looking at her son, she added:

-  “Oh honey! You miss having brothers and sisters, don’t you?”

- “A little. I’m always alone.”

In the meantime, Mister Johnson, Cathy and the policeman had arrived. Mrs Johnson looked at her husband, asking him a silent question. Mister Johnson nodded, showing his agreement.

- “Jordan, honey? Your father and I took a decision. We’re going home with Candy!”

The face of the little boy suddenly lit up. He fell in her mother’s arms! Then, talking to Candy:

- “You hear this Candy? You’re going home with us! Are you happy?”

Candy was jumping for joy and was obviously happy, but something in his eyes showed he could not quite understand everything. And he never answered. But Jordan had known for a long time that dogs couldn’t speak.

(c)2008

The Stone Listener

"Archangel" sculpture (c) DMS Studios.

Padre Antonio would always remember this odd vision he had on this cold night of February 1613 when he entered his church. He was used to praying at night, alone with god as he liked to say, surrounded by the wintry frozen air. The night had calmly began but around one o’clock in the morning, a frightening storm exploded in the sky, he went downstairs, he crossed the central square of the village and silently pushed the heavy gates of the church. The lightning was casting distorted shadows on the pillars; the church seemed to be alive, trying to uproot from the earth. The central alley and its pews looked like a laughing mouth whose black teeth giggled.

Once the door closed, he did not felt the usual peace he liked to find. He first thought it was due to the storm but there was something else. In one of the side chapels, the only one that remained in the dark, a candle was lit. A man was standing in front of a statue of Mary. He was caressing the white stone of the Virgin’s knees. The priest first thought it was indecent but he did not intervene as he remarked that this gesture had nothing to do with a blasphemy, the gesture was full of innocence. When he approached, he realized the “man” was only twelve or thirteen years old; the boy was staring at Mary’s eyes, admiring her features, and his lips were silently whispering. No sound came out of his mouth, but he seemed to be conversing with her. His fingers were still feeling the stone when Padre Antonio laid his hand on the boy’s hand. The young hand was as cold and polished as the stone.

Padre Antonio welcomed Mauro into his home. Mauro never spoke about how and why he had arrived in this church that night. The priest took care of the boy and gave him an education. He quickly noticed that Mauro was not like other children. His entire body looked like an artistic battlefield where two opposite masters had struggled to achieve their own masterpieces. Mauro did not have the chubby face of the children of his age. He was thinner, as if life had stretched his body. He had harsh features that gave him a severe look but he had the most delicate black eyes the priest had ever seen. They were jailed in a body that did not match with them, shiny black marbles with white sparkles expressing their will to escape from this prison.

The favourite activity of Mauro was to stroll in the church at night, touching and admiring the artworks for hours, with the secret permission of the priest who was praying not far from there. He always proceeded the same way, firstly staring at the work, then touching it, following the curves and the shadows, always silently speaking with the work. Then, later at night, he reproduced them with a piece of charcoal. Padre Antonio was so proud and so astonished by the sensibility of such a young boy. Being the last child of a rich family of merchants, Padre Antonio had some acquaintances in Tuscany, so he decided to take Mauro to Florence to make him the apprentice of a local master, friend of this family. He wanted Mauro to have a chance to express his art. 

So for the next two years, Mauro was the apprentice of Don Luca Baroni. His master instantaneously understood that Mauro would be the most talented and promising artist in Florence, so he considered the boy as his own child and he taught him everything he knew about arts. They could speak for long hours about everything. With his master, Mauro discovered Florence, they met local artists, they visited all the palaces of the aristocratic society and, everywhere, there were thousands of artworks to analyze. Don Luca liked the uncommon sense Mauro had to admire little details but, for every artwork they discovered together, the apprentice wanted to correct something. He was never totally satisfied. Even when he remembered the first time he saw Mary’s knee in the church, the beauty of the scene could not prevent him from deeply desiring to change something. The statue itself asked him but he was too shy to dare and did not have the skills.

Even if his master was an infinite source of knowledge, Mauro wanted to feel art his own way, by admiring, touching, and conversing with the artworks, in order to understand why there were imperfect. But he thought his master would never let him behave so strangely and disrespectfully. After one year and a half at his service, Don Luca fell ill and became blind. Luca Baroni, whose fame was great in Florence, made Mauro promise to be “his hands” and so Mauro started to finish his master’s works. Don Luca sat next to him, explained what he intended to represent, and Mauro always managed to do it. The boy was a brilliant apprentice, gifted for painting but it was in sculpture that all his genius blossomed as nobody else’s before. He had an intimate relation, almost erotic, with the stone. The fact he was replacing his master was soon known and the perfection of his works made him famous.

The next winter, Mauro discovered an unfinished bust that represented his master. He wanted his master to be proud of him, so for the first time, he worked alone, with his own intuition as guidelines; he sculpted all night long. His master was not there, but the stone was speaking to him, he could hear his master’s voice, telling him stories about his life, giving him advice to sculpt properly the feelings on the stone face. He answered silently and, carried away in an artistic trance, the conversation was transformed into a sculpting ballet. The chisel was dancing on the stone, the curves were appearing, changing, alive. Early in the morning, the stone became mute, Mauro had finished, he was so satisfied that he ran upstairs to wake his master. He knocked on the door, nobody answered. He silently opened the door, pulled the curtains and found his master lying in his bed, dead.

When Don Luca died, the apprentice had outshined his master. He had a lot of commissions, landscapes and portraits but, as a rule he had set himself, he never listened anymore to what the stone or the paintings said to him. He heard them very well, but he did not follow their advice anymore. He was too scared to be responsible of a tragedy again. And so he quickly lost his pleasure to work. He still felt he had betrayed his master.

His talent was so tremendous that people wanted to get immortalized by him, but the pain was so strong that he decided to leave Florence for a few months, to see what his master had himself seen years before. He wanted to find peace where artworks were not speaking to him, where their beauty was not overwhelmed by their voices, where he could find a contemplating silence.

He started with Rome where he discovered the wonders of Michelangelo, then he went to Milan, and Venice. He had wished to find in these cities perfect artworks but this disturbing feeling of dissatisfaction went on, despite all these magnificent masterpieces he admired. Everywhere he went, it was an absolute and terrible delight he felt as never before; he touched marble statues of unexpected colours, he admired such moving paintings, such splendid churches. He had fled the thousands of rumours he could hear springing out from walls, palaces, paintings, and sculptures of Florence and now, in Rome, Milan and Venice, rumours were more numerous and Mauro took care to listen to each voice one by one. He had needed it so much, he could feel art again.

He crossed the sea, from Venice to Greece, the Parthenon, temples, amphitheatres, columns, speaking and speaking again. Once more he crossed the sea. In Egypt, his trip became mystical, voices from other ages, odd and speaking old languages he had never learnt, but that he perfectly understood. No rest, no peace, no silence, every place he travelled was a frightening and dantesque scene, the same marvellous landscape stabbed by hundreds of incessant rumours. One day, staring at a granite sphinx, he thought that if all the artworks were willing to speak to him, he had to listen to them. He was born with this gift; it was his duty to listen and to make art.

Fourteen months later, Mauro had finally returned to Florence. He had inherited everything Don Luca had possessed, which represented a big amount of money, and a little palace with a studio. The first time Mauro entered the house, he realized that for the fourteen past months, he had never had a look at his own face and he was quite surprised when he discovered it again. He had changed. He thought he looked older, which was normal, but the transformation had happened deeper in him. A few wrinkles had appeared, his cheeks were more emaciated and his eyes were sharper than ever, they could have cleft the stone even before the hammer could have hit the stone.

His return did not remain unknown for a long time. After only one week, the entire city knew he was back. Aristocrats, merchants, and the clergy were quarrelling to get their transient existences immortalized by the young prodigy. They all wanted to be represented in a state of glory. In this struggle for eternal magnificence, merchants became painted aristocrats, aristocrats became marble emperors, and bishops, if not God himself, wanted to be saints. Mauro had the secret desire to represent all this petty hypocrisy by a monumental bestiary, but he had in mind something more ambitious…

He was chosen to be the sculptor of the twelve statues that would decorate a square in the city. Each statue stood for a month of the calendar, embodied by a human allegory. Even the poor citizens were charmed by the beauty of his masterpieces. And Mauro became a phenomenon in town. He thought it was time for him to listen to the stone again.

Mauro chose to answer an old merchant’s personal request. The latter had in his palace a great room created by his ancestors. The room was dedicated to Greek mythology, the walls were covered with paintings, statues, and there were some pillars he had bought during a journey in Greece. His request was to sculpt a great statue of him represented as Ulysses using his bow. The merchant also supplied him with a huge block of white marble coming from Crete. Mauro was enthusiastic, he remembered all the advice he had been told by the statues in Greece, he spent the next three days drawing sketches of the merchant, staring at him for long moments. When he faced again the huge block of white marble, he felt he could not control his behaviour anymore. He got closer to the block, he pressed his right ear to the surface and with his left hand he tenderly caressed the roughness. A lot of voices were whispering, he searched among them the old merchant’s one, and once he had found it, he listened to it carefully. His right hand was pressed on his heart, clutching the chisel. He made a step back and suddenly, the hammer collapsed loudly onto the chisel, breaking the immaculate rock for the first time. A few weeks after, the body was almost finished. The muscular arm was holding a strong marble bow that would have impressed every man standing in front of it. He started to shape the head. It was his favourite part. The voice became clearer and clearer, deeper and stronger, as the curves became more and more precise. He was about to complete his work. Three meticulous carvings latter, the voice kept silent.

A few months later, the new piece he was sculpting was a statue of the Prince of Florence, who wanted to appear as Cesar in a toga, with bay leaves on his head. Mauro waited two months for the monumental block of marble to arrive. He had never worked on such a great statue, but the block was quite ridiculous compared to what he had seen in Egypt. Three months later the statue was finally finished, he had interrupted his work several times to complete other smaller commissions. Working on this statue was very pleasant because he learnt a lot of things about the Prince, stories that citizens did not know. But the time of silence had finally come. The Cesar of Florence as it was called took place in the courtyard of the Prince’s palace.

With the Twelve Months, the Ulysses and the Cesar, fame was definitively back, and his talent, more exceptional than ever before, extended over Europe. A great number of figures of Florence, but also from Rome, Naples and Venice, and even from
France, England and Spain commissioned Mauro for sculpting statues of them and for the next three years, he was the most talented sculptor in the entire Europe. Mauro had finally found redemption; he was giving some rest to these voices, helping them to express their beauty in an eternal silence.

One day of 1622, he met Padre Antonio who told him he had been travelling to Palestine. They had not seen each other for years, and the humble priest was simply visiting the orphan he had welcomed. Mauro felt much honoured. Later at night, he decided to sculpt the portrait of the man who had taken care of him, the man who had let him touch the statues. Mauro immediately started to work. Mauro chose a scene of the Bible the priest used to tell him. He wanted to represent Padre Antonio as a character of the scene. He chose a simple character, and started hitting the stone. Suddenly, he heard the priest’s voice, he carefully listened to him. The voice was telling him the story of the night he had found him in his church. In one week, he had almost finished, but the last night he was working on it, something strange happened. The priest’s voice, usually calm as a murmur, spoke louder. Mauro stopped chiselling for a while and listened to the voice: “my dear Mauro, are you blind? Don’t you see the evil you’re committing? God gave you a gift to make people happy and you are using it for yourself”. Mauro did not really notice the change in the situation, he simply thought that the personal relationship he had with the priest was responsible for these words. After all, the priest was not conscious of what Mauro could hear, that was why the voice spoke about selfishness. Mauro went back to work and the voice went on: “look around you, Mauro, look at what you’ve done, your gift is an omen, you are the Reaper! Think about Ulysses and Cesar and you will see the lethal curses you are casting around you!” As the voice went mute, Mauro finished his work.

The day after, he went to his childhood village to bring the biblical scene to the priest. In front of the church, he found a monk who told him that some brigands had tried to steal some artworks in the church at night. Padre Antonio had tried to protect the statue of the Virgin and the brigands had killed him. Mauro was deeply moved, he had lost somebody he loved. Heading back to Florence, the last words of the priest’s statue sprang in his mind. Could there be a link between his statue and Padre Antonio’s death?

In Florence, he told everybody he was so sick he could not paint or sculpt for a while. He thought about the Prince, whose horse-drawn coach had been attacked last week during a riot. The young prince had been stabbed and had died of his wounds. Mauro was frightened. He invited a friend and asked him information about the old merchant. His friend came back a few hours later and told him that a few months ago, the old merchant had been accidentally killed while hunting, his chest pierced by an arrow. When his friend used the word arrow, Mauro directly thought of the massive bow the statue was firmly holding.

Mauro was really sick for the next few days. He was weak and felt so much remorse he could barely eat. He did not accept visits anymore. He was frightened of what he was used to calling “his gift”, he was afraid of himself.

Two days later, Mauro decided to challenge his fears. He knew exactly what to do, he had to sculpt his own representation. Mauro bought a great block of black marble and started working. He noticed that he was sculpting the young boy he was when he entered the church. As he advanced his work, he started feeling weaker and weaker, as if his body was becoming heavier. His gestures become slow, heavy. His head, his neck, his arms went numb. The voice got quieter. Three days had passed since he had started. He could not make anymore the difference between his own conscience and the voice of the statue. He was speaking to himself, yielding little by little to madness. He felt he was about to conclude, he raised his arm one last time, adjusted the position of the tiny chisel he was handling and gave the last blow. The voice stopped, he could not feel his legs anymore. He would have fallen on his knees, but he did not, he could not. His arms could not move anymore. He was literally petrified.

The voice started again, but in his head this time. The statue stretched his limbs and escaped. He could not do anything, he had died.

©2008

The Creative Writing blog is now officially open!

I teach Creative Writing in a large French Business School, and I created this blog to host the best stories written by my students. I am often pleasantly surprised at what some of them come up with, and this is a great course in that it is never repetitive or dull, plus I think they deserve extra praise when they write good stories as, after all, English is only their second language and this is one additional difficulty they have to overcome when writing their fictions.

This blog was created in June 2008.