So many babies were born; the earth was a factory for them. When she was still a child, her mother, unable to leave her at the farm alone, had sometimes taken her along to births. Through doorways she had glimpsed woman after woman, working through their pain in the closeted warmth of saunas, each one of them riven by the gluttony of life as it begat itself over and over again. Their infants were born in gushes of flesh, protesting as the air filled their lungs, as they felt the weight of themselves for the first time.
Then there were those who emerged silent as fish.
She imagines her child, spilling into her abdomen four months into term, asphyxiating in the hostile atmosphere of her body. She had a double uterus, she told her mother some weeks later on the phone. She was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet of her apartment near the university in Moscow. She had not told her mother that she was pregnant; she had not wanted to admit that she had ended up in such a common bind. Her mother was alone in the farmhouse. Her father had died years previously, and the animals were gone. There was silence, and then her mother replied: ‘Niin kuin yksi isäsi porsaista.’
Like one of your father’s pigs.
The wall across the floor from her bed becomes one with the hazy whiteness of the room. Her body is a distant memory. She closes her eyes, hoping for a dreamless sleep, like the one she had under anaesthetic, when she had been set adrift from her pain, released into the ether until there was nothing of her left.
It is only towards the end that her body returns and, with it, a dream. She is pushing at the sides of a box, which are strangely soft. It is a struggle to wake. The white walls of her sleeping compartment appear and disappear like the white walls of the coffin in her dream. When she finally surfaces, she is lying on her back in the confinement of the cubicle. The room is dim, the ceilings and walls the uniform colour of plaster. The door to the luminous space of the control room is discretely closed. Her compartment has a clear finitude, unlike the space in her dream. It is, she realises, because of the obscene weight of the void outside.
She catches the eye of the lens embedded in the low ceiling. She knows that she should get out of bed. She is supposed to follow diurnal rituals, regardless of the fact that there are no longer days and nights, no longer time, except for that time buried in her terrestrial body, in the bodies of every creature borne of the earth.
She wipes the dried spit from the corners of her mouth. Her body feels calm and slow, like when she awoke in hospital after the surgery all those years ago, but there is something else lurking inside. She does not understand why it has not been removed. It is best to keep still.
Perhaps she has woken from the sedative too soon. She remembers once seeing a bear emerge early from its winter sleep. It was in the forest behind her childhood home, the world there still blotted by snow. It was standing behind a frozen pine, lost like a sleepwalker.
She listens to the electric sound of the ventilation system and takes in the battery taste of the recycled air. She thinks of the vast emptiness just outside the membrane of the walls, of her remoteness from the earth. Her chest grows heavy, and tension mounts in her throat once more. She crosses her arms over her abdomen. It is her body, she realises. It is trying to betray her.
She remembers the dogs, on her last night on earth; how they tried to lure her into doubt. She had been quarantined at a complex at the launch site in the snow-strewn Kazakh steppe. Lying in an old steel-spring bed in a windowless room, she had listened to the staccato bursts of fireworks, erupting in the icy sky. The world had been celebrating her impending escape, but the dogs had begun lamenting. They had started straightaway, with the first explosions, though their howls had continued long afterwards, as if, once the fluorescent arcs had drawn their attention to the night sky, they could not forgive what hung over them.
She recalls the granite statue of the dog she had seen in the lobby of the complex when she arrived. A stray captured in the streets of Moscow, it had been the first living creature blasted away from the earth. It had died alone in its capsule, surrounded by a titanic blackness, before the vehicle crash-landed back on earth.
She observes her reflection in the fathomless surface of the lens above. Laid out on her white bunk, in her grey bodysuit, she looks like a corpse in a mortuary. She is not dead. There is something stuck in her throat, pressing to get out.
She opens her mouth.
The squealing is so high-pitched that her ears ache at the alien sound. Then the snorting and grunting come, beginning in spasms in her abdomen, before squeezing through the cavities of her nose and mouth.
The camera transports her body back to the earth.
About the Authors
GINA APOSTOL
Gina Apostol’s last novel, Gun Dealers’ Daughter (W.W. Norton & Company, 2012), won the 2013 PEN/Open Book Award and was shortlisted for the 2014 William Saroyan International Prize. Her first two novels, Bibliolepsy (University of the Philippines Press) and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata (Anvil Publishing, Inc.), both won the Juan Laya Prize for the Novel (Philippine National Book Award). She is working on William McKinley’s World, a novel set in Balangiga and Tacloban in 1901, during the Philippine-American War. She was Writer in Residence at Phillips Exeter Academy and a fellow at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy, among other fellowships. Her essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, The Gettysburg Review, The Massachusetts Review, and others. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts and grew up in Tacloban, the Philippines. She teaches at the Fieldston School in New York City.
KEVIN BARRY
Kevin Barry is the author of Beatlebone (Canongate, 2015), City of Bohane (Jonathan Cape, 2011), and the story collections Dark Lies the Island (Jonathan Cape, 2012) and There Are Little Kingdoms (Stinging Fly Press, 2007). His awards include the IMPAC Dublin City Literary Award, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize and the European Union Prize for Literature. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, the Stinging Fly, and many other journals. He also writes screenplays, stage plays and radio plays. He lives in County Sligo.
SARA BAUME
Sara Baume studied Fine Art at Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design before completing a Master’s in Creative Writing at Trinity College, Dublin. Her short fiction has been published in journals and newspapers. In 2014 she won the Davy Byrnes Award and was named Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year at the 44th annual awards in Dublin. Her debut novel Spill Simmer Falter Wither (Tramp Press, 2015) has been long-listed for the 2015 Warwick Prize for Writing, and will be published by William Heinemann in the UK and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the USA in 2016. It is also due to be translated into Spanish, Dutch, French and German. She lives in Cork with her two dogs.
MARK DOTEN
Mark Doten’s first novel, The Infernal, was published in 2015 by Graywolf Press. He wrote the libretto for The Source, an opera about Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks that premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2014 and appeared on the New York Times list of best classical vocal performances of the year. He is senior editor at Soho Press, and co-host with author Adam Wilson of the literary podcast The Consolation Prize. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University and is a recipient of fellowships from Columbia and The MacDowell Colony. He can be found at markdoten.com.
NIVEN GOVINDEN
Niven Govinden is the author of four novels, We Are the New Romantics (Bloomsbury, 2004), Graffiti My Soul (Canongate, 2007), Black Bread White Beer (HarperCollins, 2013) most recently All the Days and Nights (The Friday Project, 2014), which was longlisted for the 2015 Folio Prize. He has been twice-shortlisted for the Green Carnation Prize, and was a winner of the Fiction Uncovered Prize in 2013.
DAVID HAYDEN
David Hayden’s short stories have appeared in The Dublin Review, The Warwick Review, gorse, The Moth, the Stinging Fly, Numéro Cinq, Lighthouse and Spolia, and poetry in PN Review. He was shortlisted for the 25th RTÉ Fr
ancis MacManus Short Story prize.
POROCHISTA KHAKPOUR
Porochista Khakpour is a novelist, essayist, journalist, and professor. She is the author of the forthcoming memoir SICK (HarperPerennial, 2017), and the novels The Last Illusion (Bloomsbury, 2014) – a 2014 ‘Best Book of the Year’ according to NPR, Kirkus, Buzzfeed, Popmatters, Electric Literature, and more – and Sons and Other Flammable Objects (Grove, 2007) – the 2007 California Book Award winner in ‘First Fiction,’ one of the Chicago Tribune’s ‘Fall’s Best,’ and a New York Times ‘Editor’s Choice.’ She has had fellowships from the NEA, Yaddo, Ucross, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Northwestern University, the University of Leipzig, and many others. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming in Harper’s, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera America, Slate, Salon, Spin, the Daily Beast, Elle, and many other publications around the world. She is currently Contributing Editor at The Offing, a channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Writer in Residence at Bard College. Born in Tehran and raised in Los Angeles, she lives in New York City.
SAM LIPSYTE
Sam Lipsyte is the author of the story collections Venus Drive and The Fun Parts and three novels: The Ask, a New York Times Notable Book, The Subject Steve and Home Land, which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the first annual Believer Book Award. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.
BELINDA McKEON
Belinda McKeon is the author of Solace (Picador, 2011), which won the Geoffrey Faber Prize, the Sunday Independent Best Newcomer Award at the Irish Book Awards and was also voted Irish Book of the Year 2011, and Tender (Picador, 2015). McKeon’s essays and non-fiction have been published in The New York Times, the Guardian, the Paris Review and the Irish Times, as well as in a number of anthologies. As a playwright, she has had work produced in Dublin and New York. She lives in Brooklyn and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Rutgers University.
FRANCESCA MARCIANO
Francesca Marciano is the author of three novels, Rules of the Wild, a New York Times Notable Book, Casa Rossa, The End of Manners, and The Other Language, a collection of short stories which was shortlisted for the Story Prize in 2014. She was Writer in Residence at the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos and at the M Literary Residency in Sangam House in India. She has written several film scripts, mostly for the Italian cinema. She uses both Italian and English in her writing, although English is the language she uses when writing fiction. She has lived in the US and Kenya and now lives in Rome.
ÉILÍS NÍ DHUIBHNE
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne was born in Dublin in 1954. She has written novels, collections of short stories, several books for children, plays and non-fiction works. She writes in both Irish and English. Her short story collections include Blood and Water, Eating Women is Not Recommended, Midwife to the Fairies, The Inland Ice, The Pale Gold of Alaska and The Shelter of Neighbours. Among her literary awards are The Bisto Book of the Year Award, the Readers’ Association of Ireland Award, the Stewart Parker Award for Drama, the Butler Award for Prose from the Irish American Cultural Institute and several Oireachtas awards for novels and plays in Irish. She received the Irish Pen Award for an Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature in 2015. The novel The Dancers Dancing (Blackstaff Press, 2000) was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her stories are widely anthologised and translated. Her next novel for young people, Aisling, will be published in autumn 2015. Éilís worked for many years as an assistant keeper in the National Library of Ireland. She is now Writer Fellow in UCD (University College, Dublin) where she teaches on the MA in Creative Writing. She is a member of Aosdána.
YOKO OGAWA
Yoko Ogawa has published more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Diving Pool, Hotel Iris, Revenge and The Housekeeper and the Professor, which was adapted into a film, The Professor’s Beloved Equation. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, and Zoetrope. She has won every major Japanese literary award.
KRISTÍN ÓMARSDÓTTIR
Kristín Ómarsdóttir is the author of four novels, three short story collections, seven books of poetry, and seven staged plays. Her work has been published in Swedish and French. Ómarsdóttir has been nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize and the Nordic Council’s Drama Prize. She has also received the DV Cultural Award for Literature, and the ‘Griman,’ the Icelandic prize for best playwright of the year. She lives in Reykjavik and is currently at work on her new novel.
E. C. OSONDU
E.C. Osondu was born in Nigeria, where he worked for many years as an advertising copywriter. He won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2009. He is the author of the book of short stories Voice of America (HarperPerennial, 2011) and the novel This House Is Not for Sale (Harper, 2015). His short stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Guernica, AGNI, and many other magazines. With William Pierce, he coedited The AGNI Portfolio of African Fiction. His AGNI story ‘A Letter from Home’ was named one of the Top Ten Online Stories of 2006 by storySouth, and his AGNI story ‘Jimmy Carter’s Eyes’ was a finalist for the Caine Prize. He was interviewed in the World Books podcast for Public Radio International’s The World. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where he was a Syracuse University Fellow. He is Associate Professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island. His writing has been translated into German, Italian, French, German, and Belarussian.
ELSKE RAHILL
Elske Rahill grew up in Dublin and was educated at Trinity College. Her short stories have appeared in various literary journals and anthologies. Her first novel, Between Dog and Wolf (2013) is published by the Lilliput Press and a collection of her short stories is scheduled for publication this year. She lives in Burgundy with her partner and their three sons. She would like to thank Dr Joseph Roche for his generous assistance with her research for ‘Terraforming’.
ROSS RAISIN
Ross Raisin’s second novel, Waterline, was published in July 2011 (Viking, Penguin). His first novel, God’s Own Country (Viking, Penguin), came out in the UK in 2008. The book won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2009, the Guildford First Novel Prize, a Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for six others, including the Guardian First Book Award and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In 2013 he was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. He has written short stories for Prospect, Granta, Esquire, Dazed & Confused, the Sunday Times, and BBC Radio Three and Four, and done journalistic feature work, mainly for the Guardian.
SUZANNE SCANLON
Suzanne Scanlon is the author of two novels, Promising Young Women (Dorothy, A Publishing Project, 2012) and Her 37th Year, An Index (Noemi Press, 2015). She lives in Chicago, where she writes about theater for Time Out and the Chicago Reader. She teaches Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago, Roosevelt University and in the University of Iowa’s Summer Writing Festival.
MARIA TAKOLANDER
Maria Takolander is the author of a book of short stories, The Double (Text 2013); three collections of poetry, The End of the World (Giramondo, 2014), Ghostly Subjects (Salt, 2009) and Narcissism (Whitmore Press, 2005); and a work of literary criticism, Catching Butterflies: Bringing Magical Realism to Ground (Peter Lang, 2007). She is currently writing a novel, Transit, for Text Publishing. She is an Associate Professor in Creative Writing and Literary Studies at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia.
Copyright
First published 2015 by
Tramp Press
Dublin
www.tramppress.com
A Kind of Compass: Stories on Distance Copyright © Belinda McKeon 2015
‘Terraforming’ by Elske Rahill Copyright © Elske Rahill 2015
‘The Naturals’ by Sam Lipsyte Copyright © Sam Lipsyte 2015. First published in The New Yorker, 2014
‘Six Days in Glorious Vienna’ by Yoko Ogawa.
Copyright © 2006 by Yoko Ogawa. English translation copyright © 2015 by Stephen Snyder. Originally published as ‘Kaze Kaoru Vienna no Tabi Muikakan’ in UMI by Shinchosha Company Ltd., Tokyo, 2006.
‘Extremadura/Until Night Falls’ by Kevin Barry Copyright © Kevin Barry 2015
‘Big Island, Small Island’ by Francesca Marciano Copyright © Francesca Marciano 2015. First published in the author’s collection The Other Language, Pantheon, 2014
‘Animal Heart’ by Niven Govinden Copyright © Niven Govinden 2015
‘New Zealand Flax’ by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne Copyright © Éilís Ní Dhuibhne 2015
‘The Rape Essay (or Mutilated Pages)’ by Suzanne Scanlon. Quotation from ‘This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life’ by David Foster Wallace, commencement speech at Kenyon College 21 May, 2005. Copyright © Suzanne Scanlon 2015
‘Finishing Lines’ by Sara Baume Copyright © Sara Baume 2015
‘The Place for Me’ by E.C. Osondu Copyright © E.C. Osondu 2015
‘Palomino’ by Mark Doten Copyright © Mark Doten 2015
‘City Inside’ by Porochista Khakpour Copyright © Porochista Khakpour 2015
A Kind of Compass Page 23
