The Prison

by Stefano Pastor

  How long could she last like that? Wasn’t that a suffering even for her?

  “Can you go, Mrs. Martha, go back home. She’s under my custody now.”

  He showed the way to the door to her, then he went in his office and started drinking.

  It was one of his habits, even more often lately.

  That’s not the life he would have desired, not all those diseases, that suffering, that dissolution. He didn’t want to stay alone.

  He decided not to go to the cemetery, it would only had made him feel worse. Some scenarios were way too sad, even for him. Poor girl, how much anger and pain. Who wonders who the man she was talking about was. Her father? What was he making her do, what was her life?

  He poured something to drink, and again and again.

  That crow. That poor crow.

  Knock. Knock.

  Someone was knocking at the door. Firm hits, soft, like a walking rod.

  Edgar wobbled, on his way to open the door. He didn’t want to see no one, he wanted to be left alone, but Virginia needed some rest and those knocks would have awakened her.

  “Who’s there?” screamed with a hoarse voice, opening.

  He almost had to fall to the ground to avoid being struck by the door, something broke in his house, with a big noise of wings, and Edgar got struck by an ice-cold wind.

  An almost out of focus image got him for a fraction of a second, black as the night, then it disappeared, while the noise made by that decomposed flight was fainting in the distance.

  The ice-cold breeze kept on coming in from the outside so much that Edgar was forced to close the door.

  A bird? A bird got in his house? What bird? It was nowhere around to be found.

  He got back in the office cautiously. The glass with the booze was still on the desk and it was calling him. He looked around, trying to figure out any movements.

  Something over the shelf, between the bronze faces of the greatest from the past, crooked.

  The crow was there. A crow. It couldn’t be that crow, it was impossible. But it was a crow, another crow.

  To him it was the same.

  “Go! Go! Go away! Out of here!”

  The crow crooked. Nevermore.

  He had to lay over another armchair to avoid falling. His sight went immediately to the half full glass and he grabbed it, drinking the inside in just a gulp.

  Then he poured some more liquor.

  It couldn’t be, no. He couldn’t believe it. It was a coincidence, just that.

  The crow was still, like a statue. Just its eyes would have followed him everywhere, wells of darkness.

  What was he supposed to do? Open the window, take a broom, try to make it flew away? Who knocked at the door? Was that the crow with its beak? He felt imprisoned in one of the gruesome stories he used to create, without a way out.

  Carefully he went around the animal and opened the window. The night freeze gave him the energy he needed.

  “Away! Away! Go back to where you came from! Go away!” he repeated, swirling his arms.

  The crow stumbled and crooked. Nevermore.

  “What do you want from me? Why are you here?”

  No answers, nor he hoped to receive any.

  Those weren’t the right questions.

  The crow had one and one only answer to give.

  He drank some more; his hands were shaking. The crow was staring at him.

  Was he guilty? To which extent? Why does everything around him was crumbling, why everything was going wrong? What was his guilt?

  He asked. “Will Virginia heal? My sweet loving bride will heal from this disease?”

  The crow crooked. Nevermore.

  Edgar closed his eyes and the shaking increased. What was he doing? Was that madness?

  “Sarah…Sarah left me, she married another man. Am I ever going to meet her again? Is there still hope for us two?”

  The crow crooked. Nevermore.

  The need was obsessive. “Elena! Elena buried in a coffin! Elena that doesn’t exist anymore! Are we going to meet in the afterlife, are we still going to be together?”

  The crow crooked. Nevermore.

  “Is there life after death? Is there a hope of redemption, of blessing?”

  The crow crooked. Nevermore.

  Now his hands were visibly shaking, he couldn’t even pour liquor in the glass and fell all over the desk.

  What was he doing? That was insane, that crow wasn’t talking, those weren’t answers, that wasn’t the truth!

  Then why couldn’t he stop himself?

  “Am I going to find peace? Is there going to be a single moment without suffering?”

  The crow crooked. Nevermore.

  “No!”, screamed. “Not alone! I don’t want to be alone I don’t want to end up like this! It can’t be, it’s not right!”

  The crow stayed quiet.

  Edgar reached the furniture, he started screening the animal, tall above him. It seemed like a statue, a fake, an image of some gods.

  “Who are you? The creator? My god?”

  Still and silent.

  “Does God exist? He truly exists? Am I ever going to meet him? Does he take care of me?”

  The crow gave one only answer to all these questions.

  Nevermore.

  Edgar closed his eyes, while fury was pervading him, the same anger that possessed the little girl.

  “No!” shouted ferociously, and grabbed the closet doors, shaking them.

  So much was his force that he teared it off the wall and everything that was inside fell onto him, falling to the floor making a messy noise.

  The crow began to fly.

  “No!” shouted even louder, and started following it.

  He grabbed a walking rod trying to hit the flying being. The crow jumped form a furniture to the other, without trying to escape by the open window.

  Pushed by anger and suffering, blinded by the pain, Edgar tried to hit it, destroying everything that was around. The crow kept on crooking, almost as a joke. Nevermore.

  Eventually a hit was luckier, he clearly felt the wing break and the animal fell to the ground.

  Edgar’s wrath only grew, and started beating it with the rod, while feathers and sprouts of blood went all over the place.

  Even him repeated those words: “Never more! Never more! Never more!”

  Virginia found it some minutes later, or maybe hours, lying on the ground, fainted, drunk, that was holding over his chest that horrendous trophy.

  The sleep of the young lady got interrupted, due to the screams that came from the lower floor and the great mess. She had put on a peignoir and immediately went downstairs, even though she felt sick. She understood that Edgar was drunk again and in a way, she felt guilty.

  She had to fight to remove the bird corpse from his hands, and in the meanwhile she was crying, desperate, for how his husband had turn up to be.

  It was immediately obvious that he couldn’t had murdered it, not there, not at that time, like he explained.

  The crow was already dead by several hours, the coagulated blood and already dried out. Its skull had been broken by some stones, and the corpse was missing a wing, that was never to be found.

  They deduced that Edgar found it somewhere else, during his walk, and he didn’t disprove that.

  Nevermore.

  Was that the answer to all the questions? Edgar couldn’t decide on that, however that single word was obsessing him, it filled his dreams and every moment of his days.

  Nevermore.

  Moving to New York didn’t change anything, escape. There was no way he could have been saved, there really wasn’t.

  Nevermore.

  Writing, the only cure. To write, lay down on paper his obsession. Transform it into something unique, exorcise all his nightmares.

  He knew it wasn’t enough, that it would have been useless, that within that word was summarized what he was, his future.

  He knew that he was hopeless. That he was
alone.

  Forever.

  EDGAR ALLAN POE

  (1809-1849)

  Everything has already been said about Poe’s role as a writer. Who doesn’t know him? The man Poe however, is way more elusive, but none the less he’s not less fascinating.

  His first true love was Elena Stannard, mother of one of his classmates. Edgar fell in love with her when he was fifteen, and when Mrs. Stannard died of a premature death, he was heartbroken. Inconsolable, for several months he went every night, even with the rain, at her gravestone to cry her death.

  His second love was Sarah Elmira Royster, a mutual love, that seemed like it would have lasted forever, but it was interfered by her dad, that had a strong resentment for Edgar’s adoptive father.

  Ten years went by before Edgar got engaged. The choice went on his cousin Virginia Clemm, once thirteen. The strong age difference was cause of numerous rumors, but it’s said that they never have had a sexual encounter, and that Edgar and Virginia lived like brother and sister.

  In 1842 Virginia was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and her illness limited the usual trips of Poe. While the disease was intensifying even more, in 1845 (the year when this tale is set), the couple Poe moved to New York. There he wrote his masterpiece “The Raven.”

  Virginia died in January of 1847, making Poe go desperate. He drunk more and more and became extremely poor. The meeting with Sarah, now become a wealthy widow, and the new passion, gave Edgar a little chance for hope.

  But it was already too late. Found irrational in the streets of Baltimore in the October of 1849, died a little later in hospital, without ever coming reasonable again, and his death always stayed covered in mystery.

  March 2011

  MULE

  Translation by Cinzia Albanese

  They called him Mule.

  He was a bit dull, and he also knew that, he risked the rejection more than ones. They even called her mother to school and asked her, with diplomacy, if it wasn’t the case of transferring him to a more suitable class.

  Mule was not worth it, he found it difficult to concentrate on something, he was able to spend hours watching the flight of a butterfly o the drop of a drew falling along a stem.

  He was happy with little, and that’s why he was the laughing stock for everyone.

  She was Dora. Actually, Isadora. And the name was already a program. Born to a planned destiny, made to dance even before starting to attend school. It was fifteen years before her parents resigned that she would never have been able to emulate the Duncan.

  She didn’t need a big life, she never did anything big, of unique, but she was convinced of the opposite. She believed that her existence was special, which would be handed down, she could be an example to all.

  For this reason, at the venerable age of eighty-seven, Dora could not do anything else but to tell her life to anyone listening to her.

  But it was not easy, she didn’t have friends anymore. The few who were not yet dead made sur they didn’t go to visit her, with the excuse of the ailments of age.

  There was a granddaughter, her only one, but she had no time except when it came to get paid.

  Dora was suffering, not by solitude, but because she had the constant desire to speak and there was no one who was listening to her.

  One day they met. Mule and Dora.

  Him lost chasing crickets, trying to jump like them, she was busy in the garden talking to her roses.

  Mule’s cricket jumped on Dora’s rose, and there everything began.

  It was more fascinating than a cricket, even a butterfly, Mule was lost, his eyes fixed on Dora’s lips, always on the move. They never stopped, and he would forever be watching them move.

  He didn’t understand what the old woman was saying, he had stopped listening to it almost immediately, it was the act of speaking that fascinated him. He was better than all the masters he had had so far

  He nodded from time to time, he understood that it made her happy, but his participation stopped there.

  Dora, for her part, she had never been so happy, that strange boy was happy to hear her, and she had so much to say, a whole life to count. Important things that would change his life, which would be necessary to confront the world.

  She immediately saw that he was an intelligent and educated kid, not like those of his peers. He did not run, did not shout, he almost did not speak.

  It was perfect.

  Friendship between Mule and Dora surprised everyone.

  Yet it worked, Mule was always there. As soon as the lesson finished, she sneaked out of the classroom, half-nave her buggers, and ran to Dora’s home.

  Dora was telling and telling. How she had almost become a ballerina, how she had almost recycled her as an actress, as she had been almost married to a rich prince charming. All the successes of her life, which with a careful ear would appear more like flames. But Mule attentive was not at all.

  Those lips that were so thin, wrinkled, the elegant way they were moving like the waves in the ocean, the pink tongue that caressed them whenever she spoke too much that dried them, all this fascinated Mule.

  His companions realized that if he fled, it wasn’t long until they found out where he was going. They began to wait for him to go, and laugh at him even more.

  The odious granddaughter returned. Not because she felt guilty or needed something, she had just heard that the old grandmother had related to a weird child, and she saw his inheritance in danger.

  Although she was a practical type he immediately connected the situation before getting in the house. They were on the porch, Mule and Dora, and she was serving him tea. He had a faint smile on his face, and it was clear that he did not understand a single word of what the old woman was saying to him.

  As it was not enough, the house was surrounded by a handful of criminals who mocked tea drinkers and covered them with insults. Dora seemed not to hear them and not to see them, so much she was immersed in her memories, and Mule even less than her.

  The decision was immediate: it was time to lock that old woman into a hospice.

  “I’m there in five minutes, grandmother. Hurry up.”

  Dora stayed silent, which tells you everything. In her bedroom, she could see her luggage ready. She didn’t make them.

  “There will be so many friends to who you can talk to. You will feel good there.”

  Mule would have arrived. In a few minutes, he would have arrived. There were so many things that she still had to tell him, he needed her. There were important things, they would have helped him in life, they would have saved him. She couldn’t abandon him like that.

  “You are not saying anything grandmother? Are you sure you are ok? Do you need a doctor?”

  She was so tired. Tired that everyone else disturbed her life. “Did I ever tell you about my parents, dear?”

  Thousands of times. The nephew let go a long sigh of relief, because she was back to normal.

  “But I’ve never told you how they died, did I?”

  “Of course, grandma, in an accident, I know already.”

  “Did you know it was me who caused it? That I killed them?”

  The granddaughter only lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t know what you are talking about…”

  “They ruined my life. They only wanted what they desired. I couldn’t cope anymore.”

  “But grandma…”

  “And Roberto? Have I told you about Roberto?”

  “Of course, grandma, I know how much you loved him!”

  “For him I stopped talking! He would have taken me around the world, he said. I would have become her queen, through villages and yachts.”

  A sigh. “Yes grandmother, but then he had that accident…”

  “He left me! That pig went with another woman! A younger one! I couldn’t let him do that!”

  “What are you trying to say by that?”

  She started to feel nervous.

  “And about your mum, did I tell you about her?”

>   The young woman became hysterical “You also killed my mother? Your daughter? Why?”

  The old lady looked at her in the eyes. “Because she was just like you.”

  They faced. The granddaughter tried to stay with logic. “No, I don’t believe it. You are crazy, grandma, completely crazy.”

  The old woman sighed. “Then don’t believe in it.”

  Then she took the scythe from under her cushion.

  “Did you do as I said? Did you put the broken glass in their sandwiches?”

  Mule nodded.

  The old lady smiled. “You will see they will stop bothering you.” She served him some tea and a slice of cake. Mule looked at her lips with excitement. That old woman was so smart, and she had given him great advise. She had had such an adventurous life that he would never get tired of listening to her.

  She pointed to a place in the garden. “When you’re done, you’ll help me dig a hole over there. I have to plant a tree, a beautiful big one.”

  Mule nodded away.

  November 2010

  CATS

  Translation by Wilo Guitarz

  The girl moves in her sleep, then lets out a groan and opens her eyes just barely. There’s a pair of shoes in front of her. She moans again and turns over, as if determined to keep sleeping. She opens her eyes again and the shoes are still there. She looks up at the shoes’ owner, and it’s just a boy, or at least what’s left of him.

  He’s skinny, almost skeletal, he could be ten or eleven at most, but it’s not easy to determine his age since he’s so bony. He’s sitting on the ground, his arms around his knees, and he stares at her.

  “Who are you?”, murmurs the girl. Then she stands up and whines again, as if her head is hurting. “Where am I?”

  The child keeps staring, without a word.

  The girl looks around, and her gaze at first appears confused, then suspicious, and finally afraid. “What’s this place?” Since the boy stays silent, she adds: “Is it a cellar? Where are we? Why am I here?”