Story: Palma (part one)

Palma

(part one)

Basically, you met some people. And because I know you, I won’t believe you feel wounded that a famous man gave you a book. Why not learn Hidtha? I might have a job for you if you can. Vonnie seems to have been kind, allowing you to keep a ring she lost in your room. She would rather not pursue intimacy with you. Which is fair enough, Anton.

Palma wrote in resolute black, and drew arrows; her comments were in the margins, punctuated sentences and apropos. Anton’s lines were all in green, colored ink he imagined to be code. Theirs, between them.

POORLY DO YOU KNOW HIM,

BURIED IN A MASS GRAVE;

SOME RECORD-KEEPER MUST AT LEAST

PUT A FALSE NAME ON A PLAQUE.

He could set down volumes of complaint, mad complaint. He could post her a faithful stream in verse, address her on the envelope as Palma Frederick…

Because he did not know Frederick’s last name.

Because he was jealous, and wanted to marry her to a man he could not name correctly. Because if she were married, he could count his chances past, and his suffering inconsolable. Because Anton’s mind was molelike, each grievance expressed at some fathom of depth a great nuisance to decipher. He could be mishandled…of course, and more responsibility than a rational person would take on. But he was the inheritance of her rational life, when she’d been a woman in a teetering nation, reporting truth.

She wanted truth from Anton. If his need was to believe in a strong leader, she would cure him. Mission. He had not come to understand it.

No—she wrote it—you ought to have taken your pride from obeying orders and having faith in me. I can only hem you round with mechanisms. The mechanisms work for my other employees.

And when the G.R.A. had decided Anton was harmless to them, unstable, unready to be meshed into a workplace, he would be released. Mrs. Leonhardt would take him to her bosom…she wanted only the return of a son.

Frederick came in at her back, the sound she knew him by, his grenade belt and rifle slung over his shoulder. The G.R.A. had never taken anyone’s guns, finding it handier, more demoralizing during this truce, to make the resisters police their own neighborhoods. They could be starved for supplies, encircled, blamed and agitated against, while the line between prosperity and poverty grew more distinct. They would fail one day, and the G.R.A. would rescue them.

1

Tourmaline

Tourmaline (part two)

(2016, Stephanie Foster)