TheBanyanTree: introduction

[Jakob Straub]

Hello everyone,
I'm new to the list. My name is Jake. I came across the Banyan Tree
mailing list before and might have been a subscriber for a brief time,
albeit only a lurking one. I like the format of a mailing list for
reading other people's writing and sharing my own.

Dave (who is also a member here) and I used to run the show at
espresso-fiction until, sadly, after many years and server migrations it
caved in on itself at the beginning of this year. I've encouraged the
remaining active members to seek new homes such as The Banyan Tree. I
hope new subscribers are in the best interest of the list. :)

I hail from Berlin, Germany, and write poetry and all sorts of fiction
(short, long, flash, etc.) in both English and German. I try to enter as
many contests as possible, but honestly, so far I've never been
published in print.

The following was a submission to this year's Writers Ink. Daniil
Pashkoff Prize for creative writing in English by a non-native speaker
(oi, what a lengthy title -
http://www.writers-ink.de/html/pashkoff.html). The limit was 1,200
words. The deadline has since passed, but comments and feedback are of
course welcome nonetheless!

Thanks for having me,
Best wishes & keep writing!
Jake




IF YOU LEAVE IT ALONE

"Leave it alone," my newfound friend had told me repeatedly over the 
course of the day when I had questioned him about the tattoo, but now,
with his right arm slung around me for support and keeping me from 
falling into the water, the sleeve of his t-shirt slid upwards on his
broad upper arm and revealed the seaman's tattoo again. The moment being
a bit precarious yet as good as any, I thought to ask once more just
when I was about to heave and hurl again; clear gin impregnated with
yellow bile shot out of my mouth and into the canal.
Thus relieved I was able to stand on my own, the fingers of my left
hand clawed into a chicken wire fence, sucking in the night air so much
sweeter against the backdrop of acidic bile residue itching in the back
of my throat. My friend in gin was holding his silver plastic saxophone
that looked ridiculously small in his giant hands. He'd picked up the
battery powered toy at this afternoon's flea market, and never minding
the unearthly, piercing nasal tone, tried to teach himself Killing Me
Softly on it for about just as long as I had been nursing my bottle of gin.
Letting myself drift through the city in a foul mood, I had spotted the
sailor when I and my bottle unwittingly got caught in the snapshot of a
couple of girls. They were having their picture taken at a stand selling
nothing but chocolate penises, posing with a couple of specimen in the
upper size range. Though touching the merchandise compelled you to
purchase, the vendor let it slide on behalf of the girls acting out for
his amusement.
Standing with his arms folded across his chest, the sailor couldn't
help but let out a chuckle. A packet of cigarettes was tucked in his
right sleeve, rolled up just far enough to allow for a clear view of a
boy playing a piano burst in flames done up in black ink.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Leave it alone," he replied, and I began my quest to find out what was
behind the picture, alternating my courtship between offers of gin,
insults, pleas and promises. With no interest in what entertainment the
main avenues and the other tourist places offered, we had silently
agreed to pass the day together.
To ward off the advances of the whores working the day-time, we'd
clasped each other's hand tightly and I had shouted, "We're eloping!" in
excitement mocking gay, swinging our hands back and forth between us.
Whether I countered folly with gin or gin with folly, past a certain
inebriation it didn't matter.
Now that I was more than halfway through the bottle and he seemingly
stuck somewhere in the middle of the tune, I used the bottleneck to
point at his tattoo and asked again, "What is the story behind that?"
He took a break and sighed, "It's the reason I went to sea."
"Is it a long story?" I inquired.
"About the length of a walk home," he said, offering me his arm, and in
taking it, I replied, "Then allow me to tell it." We walked close to the
canal as the whores watched us in silence from their red lit windows.
"The boy," I started out, "is not yet fifteen. The old junkie has given
him piano lessons, and every evening they push the piano across the room
together and heave it on stage. The old man overdoses before the boy has
mastered his third tune, so he plays the two he knows in drawn-out
variations, lingering on forgiving passages and working in rests
wherever he can. The woman on the other hand takes off her clothes a
little more timely, until together they've worked out a routine to the
point yet withholding and teasing enough. Usually she sings along, I'm
glowing, I'm on fire, but the boy can't watch from behind the piano,
even though he's propped himself up on two cushions. Every night a
discarded piece of clothing lands on his piano with her smell clinging
to it, enveloping him until he's finished out the second piece, the
curtain falls and hasty set alterations force him offstage."
I squinted in estimation of how much gin was left in the bottle.
"Upstairs in his room he's flat on his stomach, peering through a crack
in the floor. He can see her, sprawled across the closed piano lid. She
wraps her legs around the neck of the Chinese midget who is using the
same stool and cushions to bury his face between her thighs. She's
cramming her pipe with black, tar-like opium the Chinese has brought,
lights up and though silent, seems more on fire than during her
performance. After the midget has left he can hear her laboring up the
stairs, drugged and woozy, and he posts himself at the door so that in
passing, she takes note of him and sends a smile in his direction. When
he's at the piano keys again, lingering in her scent, he's thinking of
her teeth."
We paused on a bridge. I was breathing heavily, resting on the arm of
my companion.
"When one night she denies the midget, the boy ventures downstairs to
find her passed out on the piano. He clambers up the stool the way he's
seen the Chinese do, but try as he might he can't uncross her legs heavy
with opium. Her lips part easily, though, and his probing finger reveals
her teeth, long white ones and short black stumps. As he plays with
them, on them, working them like the piano keyboard, a snore escapes her
lips, and sinking deeper into sleep, she stirs, upturning her still
smoldering pipe. The boy withdraws his hand, his eyes fixed on where the
spilled glow rekindled slowly eats away at her clothes. Having never
really witnesses just how her clothes come off, the boy stills his hands
and instead watches her catch fire, watches the flames consume woman and
piano."
Outside my hostel, my friend struggled with that one note again which
he couldn't seem to get right, and to help him across I shouted,
"telling my whole life," rising so it echoed between the buildings,
"with his song!"
"Did I hit anywhere close to home with my story?" I asked, the mocking
finding its way into my drunken slur again.
"Leave it alone," he replied, and then spread his arms wide in
apologetic shrugging gesture so all the spit he'd accumulated over the
day shook in the plastic casing of the saxophone. He added, "It will get
sweeter and simpler the longer you do so."
The night wouldn't stop spinning as I was clinging to my cot. The notes
of his tune carried across the canal, but just as I was about to drop
off to sleep, one of the electronic components, transistor, capacitor
wallowed in spit had deteriorated enough to finally give out. Instrument
and tune died in a haunting squeal, and I let go.


-- 
If you read, you'll judge; If you write, you'll invent.