Ian Hocking - Flashback

‘There was a documentary on the television a week ago,’ Saskia said. ‘It included footage of a city in China—can’t remember the name—from the 1950s. The Maoist government had decided that birds were eating too much corn, so they devised a plan to kill all of them. For one twenty-four hour period, every person in the city was told to go outside and beat drums, blow whistles, and scream. The birds were startled into the air and too scared to land again. Eventually, they died of exhaustion and fell in great drifts. The documentary showed laughing people sweeping the birds into piles.’

Jem shook her head. ‘What’s that got to do with the wormhole? With us?’

‘Help me.’

‘Is this why you wanted me to come? So I could hang around in the waiting room this time?’

The drawing room had been given an amber cast by the storm lanterns in each corner. Saskia walked around the sheeted furniture to the far wall and pulled the cover from a pier glass. Jem joined her. The rational part of Saskia’s mind knew that this was not the apartment in which she had stood, in much the same posture, talking to Jem about her shortened hair those weeks before. This mirror ran from floor to ceiling and a set of bathroom scales lay at its foot. The sheets made simple shapes of a sofa, a card table, and an upright piano. Saskia looked at Jem and the younger woman’s expression told her that this was the end and both of them knew it.

‘Undress me,’ Saskia said.

Jem put her lamp on the table and began to unbutton Saskia’s shirt. She eased it over Saskia’s shoulders and laid it next to the lamp. Then she began to remove the rest of her clothes. T-shirt, bra, jeans, knickers. With each item, Jem’s fingers trembled.

‘No,’ said Saskia, as Jem touched the bracelet on her elbow. ‘Leave that.’

There were tears in Jem’s eyes and she looked betrayed. Saskia turned to face the mirror and considered herself through those younger eyes. The starvation had subtracted the curves of her body to leave something adolescent. Her breasts had been hollowed out. The sides of her rib cage were visible. Meat had vanished from her shoulders and thighs too. Her biceps were flat and tight. The twin bones of her forearms were highlighted by a running dent between them.

‘Why haven’t you been eating?’

‘I have,’ said Saskia. ‘Salmon, occasionally. With water and coffee.’

‘Stop what you’re doing,’ Jem said quietly. ‘Don’t go. I need to tell you something. It’s about Wolfgang.’

‘ Shhh . Help me.’

Jem took Saskia by the elbow and kept her balance as Saskia stepped onto the scales.

‘Come with me, honey,’ Jennifer had said. ‘I can take you back. The band is calibrated to 48.98 kilograms. How much do you weigh, exactly?’

She looked down. 49.17 kilograms.

‘Take this,’ Saskia said, removing the jade ring from her finger.

Jem took it.

48.99 kilograms.

Jem’s expression questioned her. Saskia touched the bracelet in the sequence she recalled, perfectly, from her encounter with Jennifer. Something happened to the surface of the mirror. It was the merest movement, as though the mirror itself had shuddered. Then a low sound filled the room. A ship leaving port. Saskia moved to face the mirror. Her image became grainy.

‘Goodbye,’ said Jem. The word was slurred, childlike.

Saskia was already turning to a dream of the future that held a forest, a golden enfilade, a splendid soldier performing tricks on a horse, and a little muddy village far from anywhere. One thread wove through it all: that of the witch, Baba Yaga, who moved through eastern minds. Baga Yaga: the witch who travelled in a mortar with a pestle rudder that scored the forest floor. A silver birch to sweep her track, dismiss the fallen sparrows, erase all but a sense that something had been and gone.

‘Goodbye, Jem.’

She stepped through.

Afterwards, Jem backed away from the mirror. She was crying aloud now. Her breaths were moans and she stuttered as she inhaled. She looked at herself in the mirror and found the woman there pathetic. She walked up to the mirror and kicked it hard. She was still wearing her boots and the pointed toe flexed into the glass with a resistance she found satisfying. She kicked it again and again.

Jem walked to the veranda. The wind was northerly and unkind. She stopped at the rail and folded her arms and lowered her head. Here she cried again looking down at the muddy snow on the edge of the lake and then up at the lights of Bad Saarow.

At midnight, she found Saskia’s wardrobe and put on two of her jumpers. Both smelled of that particular perfume from the south of France. She went into the kitchen and put some coffee on. At least the gas still worked. As Jem sipped the coffee, she decided to walk to Bad Saarow. She swallowed the last of it and walked along the hallway to the front door and looked for her coat.

It was not there.

She held her breath. Her grief was suspended beside a greater fear: Was there someone else in the house? Had Saskia come back? Slowly, she held up her lamp. The hallway was empty.

When she turned back to the hat stand, she saw that her coat had been folded neatly on the wooden floor. There was a parcel underneath it. On top was a note that read:

Jem, I listened at the church door and heard you speak to Wolfgang. I know why you chose to ask me for help that day in the café. I don’t care. I never did.

P.S. Despite our—whatever you might call it—I like the look of the Italian football team, don’t you?

There were no more tears. Jem was physically out of them. She folded the paper and placed it in her pocket. The parcel comprised a piece of folded cardboard. It had been sent to a post-office box in Bad Saarow. Jem ripped it open. Inside was a book called Resources and Parsing . Jem smiled. She removed its bookmark and said, ‘Hello, shorty.’

‘Hello, Jem,’ said Ego.

From: twentyfourcaratbitch@hotmail.com

To: d.shaw@frobischer-ewing.co.uk

Subject: Your friend and mine

Danny,

She’s gone, babe. I got a call yesterday and she sounded bad, so I came right back to Berlin… despite everything. She wanted to go back. You know what I mean? Don’t ask me where she is now. I saw clouds, I think, and a lake. She wanted it to be the future—I hope it is.

I don’t blame you for anything. How could I?

By the way, get Mum to remortgage the house and put it all on Italy to win the World Cup—if you want to cop a metric assload of loot, that is.

I’m coming home too. Brace yourself.

End of.

It is the night of September 5th, 1907, and the Moscow train is approaching St Petersburg. Traveling first class appears to be a young Russian princess and her fiancé. They are impostors. In the luggage carriage are the spoils of the Yerevan Square Expropriation, the greatest bank heist in history. The money is intended for Finland, and the hands of a man known to the Tsarist authorities as The Mountain Eagle—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

I’m an independent author and I work without an agent or publisher. If you would like to help others find Flashback, please consider leaving a review on the Kindle store.

Do you want to know when my next book will be published? Email me at ihocking@gmail.comand I’ll let you know. You will also find me on Twitter: ian_hocking.