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Correspondence
Dear Kind Sir:
You might remember me as the man
who once lived across the street from you. We didn’t talk much (or at all) as I
worked the day shift while you took the night. Nor did we have occasion to
bridge the gap with a well-placed cup of sugar. I grew roses; you cultivated
carnations. I often thought of leaving a few of my roses in the hope of receiving
your carnations in return. But I could never decide on the ratio. One to one,
you must admit, is unfair since roses are generally conceded to be the more
valuable flowers. However, any other ratio would have been an insult to our
friendship, one which I valued highly. I decided to do nothing as this, I’ve
learned through years of inactivity, is the best way to keep things stable, to
keep things from sliding into entropic decay.
For several years, I’ve been
disturbed by the distinct lack of communication between us when we had the
chance. Did we nod when we passed on the street? I suppose not, as we couldn’t
recognize each other as the two people living opposite. Perhaps I saw you every
day and thought nothing of it. A word would have done wonders. A series of words? Not: "Fine weather for the time of
year, isn’t it?" But rather: "Where are the blackbirds when the sky
is blue?" Something that would keep both of us thinking till the next time
we met. Not: "Seems like rain." But: "Busy re-painting their
wings." Do you regret never having known me well enough to have said this?
And other highly-disguised secrets of the soul? Now
that I’m an old man, I tend to regret everything, whether real or fancied, done
or not.
Your work. Was it similar to mine? In my youth,
because of my discriminating eyesight, I inspected caramels – diligently
removing the imperfect ones before they could sully a customer’s enjoyment.
Later, I graduated to actually making the caramels, firing them out of a
rat-tat-tat machine. It gave a meaning to life outside my house, you
understand. Your life, I suppose, had equal but separate meaning. I fancied you
as the anti-subversive type. Perhaps the man who, first thing
in the morning, ringed our factory with traps and poison. You kept us
safe from the wild things with large fangs, the red-eyed carriers of plague. I
admired you immensely but always had a dread of watching the sun rise and so
could never accept such a job. You do understand?
I now realize – too late – our work
need not have kept us apart. There is an apparatus, I’ve learned, for
preserving the voice – a tape recorder. (Before going to bed at night, I could
have said something of value into the machine and then deposited the tape at
your doorstep. You would then have simply had to buy a machine of your own –
many are left at pawn shops and on street corners – and played my voice at your
convenience. You could have responded to what I said or else have begun your
own conversation. We could have used the same tape till it no longer functioned
or else – and this strikes me as being more thoughtful – could have collected
the tapes into a library. We would then have had an infallible record of the
past on which to draw in times of argument. Of course, rules would have been
required, such as no erasing of tapes or splicing together or the use of
abusive language.) It would have been such a splendid idea.
Yes. I nearly forgot. Something I
was meaning to ask you. What was the purpose of the barbed-wire fence you later
put around your house? And the "No Trespassing"
signs? I only mention it because someone impaled himself on it one
evening. I thought it might be a trespasser, but it was only a small child
trying to retrieve his ball. Was it meant for him? I don’t believe in impaling
children on principle, but there are exceptions.
The day that I discovered you had
moved away was most traumatic. It’s true that, being at work, I never saw you
leave but your absence was felt immediately. The man who moved in is an
insensitive brute. He has taken down the fence and signs, allowing the children
to trample everything. He’s also decided to grow roses. I, therefore, cultivate
carnations. I’ve asked to be transferred to the night shift since he works days. On several occasions, he has made me angry by
knocking at my door without the slightest warning, empty sugar cup in hand. He
even leaves perfumed notes on my doorstep but I throw them away without reading
them. I’ve put in an order for a barbed-wire fence and am making up huge signs
to remind him of the dangers of false intimacy.
But enough of my
problems. What I propose
is something quite radical. I’d like to re-open the channel of our
communications. With that in mind, I hope you’ll allow me the pleasure of
hearing from you. Whoever and wherever you may be.
Sincerely yours,
A Friend In
Silence
Michael Mirolla is a novelist and short story writer
currently residing in Toronto. His most recent publication is Berlin:
A Novel (available for purchase online at
http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-1650.html). A collection of short
stories — The Formal Logic of Emotion — was published by Nuage in 1992.
One of the stories from the collection, "A Theory of Discontinuous Existence,"
was also selected for that year’s The Journey Prize Anthology,
awarded for the best short fiction published in literary magazines in Canada
during the previous year. He has had short stories published in numerous journals
in Canada, the U.S. and Britain, including several anthologies such as Event’s
Peace & War Anthology, Telling Differences: New English Fiction from Quebec,
Tesseracts 2: Canadian Science Fiction, the Collection of Italian-Canadian
Fiction,
and New Wave of Speculative Fiction Book 1.
Email: Michael Mirolla
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