Tag: memory

Day #31

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Aves: The class of Vertebrata that includes the birds

Frogs bit: Frogbit, flowering lilypad

Overwrought: Wrought upon excessively overworked

—–

The smiling faces of my family trickle towards me, one after another. Overwrought grins, pearly white like bathroom tiles, bloom brightly for a moment then sour like milk when they think I’m not looking.

‘How are you Grandad, are you well?’

The voice belongs to a young man who I don’t recognise, but he seems to know me, so I just smile and nod. He rolls his eyes as he turns towards another conversation, seemingly annoyed at something. I hope it isn’t something I’ve done. I don’t like to upset strangers, it isn’t polite.

There are people all around me and I suddenly feel claustrophobic, like a gorse seed tangled in sheep’s wool. I sit silently, hoping that they won’t notice me if I shrink into a corner. I try to take in my surroundings, assessing my situation, trying to spot an escape route. I’ve had to do this before, so I know what to look out for. It was the German’s last time, but everyone here is speaking English, which confuses me. I don’t remember the camps being so shiny and bright either, so maybe I’m not in Germany anymore.

There are photos on the walls and I try to match the faces with the people in the room. Some seem to match up, but they look different, tired like pages in an old book. I can’t recall the last book that I read – I find it hard to keep track of the stories these days, the words blend together and fly away as the pages turn, spreading like a bird’s wings.

‘Aves,’ I mutter to myself. A man nearby looks at me strangely. I tell him it means birds, but he doesn’t seem too interested. I learnt it at school and it feels somehow important, but I’m not sure why. Perhaps this man nearby knows, but when I ask him he smiles, nods and walks away without answering. I wonder if he is going to ask someone else what it means. He doesn’t need to as I can tell him the definition. He merges into a group of people and then he’s gone.

I examine my hands, enjoying how the light falls on my wrinkles, shadows just like puppets. There once was a man who used to hit a lady with a bat to get some sausages, he should have bought her flowers to apologise. When I was a boy, Alfie and I snuck into Mrs Pickens’ garden to steal Frogs bit from her pond. We were courting two sisters and their favourite flowers were the fluffy fuchsia ones that sat on the lilypads like colourful frogs.

A woman, one of those from the wall, approaches me with a plate in her hand. It’s got a piece of cake on it, like a frog on a porcelain lilypad.

‘Sarah and Alice wanted the pink frogs from the middle of the pond,’ I tell her, ‘otherwise they wouldn’t come to the pictures.’

‘That’s nice Dad,’ says my daughter, smiling.

Her teeth look just like pearly white bathroom tiles, but her grin sours like milk when she thinks I’m not looking.

Day #29

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Zymose: An enzyme, occurring in yeast and in the digestive juices of animals, that causes the inversion of cane sugar into invert sugar.

First: Preceding all others of a series or kind the ordinal of one earliest as the first day of a month the first year of a reign

Lapp: Also called Laplander – a member of a Finnic people of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and adjacent regions.

—–

‘Steady now son, hold that position, follow him with a firm eye, caress the gun, cradle it, not too tight but not too loose. When you’re sure…take the shot.’

The whip-crack of the gun ripples across the snow, humming as the pellets inscribe a full stop at the end of the caribou’s life. The boy lowers the weapon, his shoulder hurting from where the butt had jerked backwards. His fingers tremble and any joy he should be feeling is hollow as a rifle’s chamber, as though an emptiness had suddenly been awakened inside of him.

Looking up at his father, he sees the crease lines of a smile beneath the man’s frost-covered stubble.

‘You did good lad,’ says the man, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Your first caribou… Wait ‘til your mother hears of this!’

‘Dad, no, it’s fine, honestly,’ says the boy, embarrassed, ‘can’t we just say you killed it?’

His father looks at him curiously, a mixture of anger and sad resignation etched into the crease lines of his forehead, four short, horizontal lines you could compose upon. His ruddy cheeks flush rosy as holly bush berries, letting out a huff of dissatisfaction swept away by the wind.

‘Ok Hurman, we won’t tell your mother.’

‘Promise?’

‘On my honour as a Lapp!’ grins Hurman’s father, ‘besides, I wouldn’t be much of a Lapp if I didn’t try to claim as many caribou kills as possible, would I?’

His throaty guffaw echoed like another gunshot, short, sharp and loud. The white blur of a hare ducks into the overgrowth, probably saw what happened to the caribou.

Hurman and his father slowly approach the caribou. It lies silently, stewing in a pool of dark, steaming blood that had dyed the snow around it a vibrant strawberry pink. The creature was dead, bled out by a single bullet. Most impressive declares Hurman’s father, but Hurman doesn’t think so.
The pair work quickly, draining the blood and gutting the internal organs. They keep the tasty ones – the slippery bean-shaped kidney, the grey disc of the liver – still juicy, still warm. The rest they toss to one side in a slobbering heap, let the wolves have theirs, says Hurman’s father.

Still feeling queasy and with his knife deep inside the caribou’s belly, Hurman nicks the creature’s stomach and a flood of partially digested berries, seeds and vegetation spill out all over his hands. The stomach acid, rich with corrupting zymoses, stings Hurman’s skin and he yelps in pain, a sickly sweet smell filling his nostrils.

‘Put your hands in the snow!’ yells his father, sharply.

Hurman pushes both hands deep into an envelope of snow and screams loudly as the acid is slowly and painfully neutralised.

Pulling them out, Hurman’s hands are covered in dark purple scars, like the reflection of lightning rippling on the surface of water. The pain flares like a lit match, even the unscarred skin isn’t left untouched, stinging badly, the agony throbbing in time with the pulsing of his heart. The agony drip dropping like the tears of happiness on his cheeks. He’ll never hold another gun again.

Day #10

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Dotard: One whose mind is impaired by age

Overprize: To prize excessively to overvalue

Dugway: A way or road dug through a hill or sunk below the surface of the land

—

Let me tell you about my strangest memory.

I keep it hidden away under lock and key somewhere in the back of my mind. Sometimes I close my eyes and watch it play on the curtain of my eyelids, hazy and noir, flickering like an old fashioned movie. I’ve only ever shared it with a handful of people…and now you.

***

The playground of my childhood school was a tarmac savannah, wrinkly like skin that’s been in the bath for too long and scribbled with the sun-bleached Nazca lines that denoted symbolic football pitches. Down the far end, under a large tree whose awning provided respite from the sun, were the badlands – a small scrubby patch of grass and dirt bordered by a wooden fence. Etched into this boundary was a permanently locked gate that led to our sports fields, but as we were a small, poor school, these fields were just public parks that we invaded once a year for sports day, tiny legs pumping whilst carrying eggs on spoons. A humpty-dumpy dystopia.

Anyway, somewhere between the ages of seven and ten my friends and I became fascinated with digging. Not just digging for the sake of slinging dirt, but real open cast excavations – our hands carving out deep holes and dugways amongst the tiny patch of dirt tacked onto our playground. Myself, Will, Tom and probably others who I can’t quite remember now, presided over our feats of engineering like Pharaohs watching the assembly of pyramids.

Looking back, perhaps we overprized our accomplishments. One time the council came and filled in a crater we had carved under some public stairs, as though it were a crème egg with a concrete center. We wore this like a badge of honor. But I digress…

Eventually, we decided to move on and excavate a new area, somewhere different in the myriad of playgrounds we had at our disposal. To test ourselves we chose a hedgerow in the middle playground. The thick, tangled roots seemed a suitable challenge for experienced diggers such as ourselves, finger nails crusty with dirt, rocks scraping as though we had discovered the very first tools.

One afternoon however something strange happened. Among the roots we unearthed a small black box. Then another. And another. And so on, until we had a stack of these small black boxes, each the shape and size of something a necklace may be displayed in. We couldn’t open them. Then our teacher appeared and she was angry with us. Then the men dressed in black came and took all our boxes away.

***

The memory fades toward the end, tapering off like a stuttering candle. I’ve managed to cling to the key points, to treasure them, as I know what happened to us was very significant, but I don’t know why. All I know is, we never dug another hole again.

Like I said, I’ve only ever told this to a handful of people…and I’m too scared to ask whether those involved remember or not, for fear of what it means for me if they don’t. I’m scared that I will begin to question my memories, fearing that I’m just another adult dotard, imagining things just to seem more interesting.

So, I think I’ll just keep it under lock and key for now.