Tales From Another Country

The Reader Berlin

presents

TALES FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY

Edited by Victoria Gosling

Published by The Reader Berlin in association with Another Country bookshop.

Text copyright © individual authors 2014

published by: epubli GmbH, Berlin, www.epubli.de

ISBN 978-3-7375-0601-4

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.thereaderberlin.com

Designed by The Curved House

CONTENTS

Foreword by Victoria Gosling FOREWORD Victoria Gosling, The Reader Berlin Welcome to Tales from Another Country, an extension of that strange realm, the Another Country Bookshop. Showcased here are the winners of The Reader Berlin’s 2012 Short Story Competition. From Neil Bristow’s “The Inheritance”, which went on to win the competition and be published in The EXBERLINER, to the marvellous tales dreamt up by Ambika Thompson, Johanna da Rocha Abreu, Brittani Sonnenberg, Pippa Anais Gaubert and Marcus Speh, it has been a pleasure and a privilege to discover the work of such talented writers. This project has been in the pipeline for some time now – time moves more slowly in Another Country – and since then The Reader Berlin has hosted all kinds of workshops and events in the creative writing sphere. It’s wonderful to see that Berlin continues to foster and attract authors from all over the world. Some of our courses take place in the bookshop and I never come through the doors without experiencing a thrill of pleasure that such a place exists. It is, after all, the kind of bookshop one finds in books: ramshackle, pungent, full of odd finds. The librarian is herself a magical creature – part sphinx, part oracle. She of the roast bird-in-a-bird and dazzling non-sequiturs. You can eat, drink, smoke even, and there is a gratifying lack of signs telling you not to touch something. On a pile of books, papal purple, clasped tight as a rosebud, is a cabbage intended for Friday’s supper. Someone is having a nap by the radiator downstairs. Sophie busies herself creating questions for the quiz as customers recline in armchairs or roam the shelves. Once upon a time there seemed to be more of these places, small kingdoms run according to the owner’s passionate enthusiasms, that you couldn’t imagine making a profit and yet which seemed to be there year after year. There is something magic about them, and these days we are less comfortable with magic – perhaps it reminds us too much of what we have lost – which is perhaps why they grow scarcer. I would like to thank Sophie personally, not only for her support for The Reader Berlin, but on behalf of all of those who have over the years found in the bookshop, not only a source of reading matter (or, at the other end of the scale, sexual partners) but welcome, haven and society. She once told me with cheerful acceptance that not everyone who comes through her doors – for a book, or a workshop, or a Friday night feast – becomes a bookshop person, but I would like to imagine that they do, that that is the spell Another Country casts, and that no matter where they go and what they do, her customers will remain bookshop people, and I hope that this particular book will help them remember that.

The Cellar Quiz by Sophie Raphaeline THE CELLAR QUIZ Sophia Raphaeline Where questions, tossed like thistle spears, prick the attempt, the gasp of secret knowledge, leavening the slow outbreath that fills a room unanswered by the word. A cornucopia of knowing, a wine of truth, flush cheeks out with the fill and rush of it, as Circe’s pets, puffed up, bay out the law of sweet sophistry from the basement’s maw. A knocking at the gate; the intention of visitation raising such questions that tempt, that lead me to a different part, another play and played upon… Come, court me now, with scents and smokes and seals, with dusty hands and heels, call me to accounts – Where? Who? What? When? Conjure my beating heart again.

The Inheritance by Neil Bristow

Train by Pippa Anais Gaubert

May 1st by Johanna da Rocha Abreu

A Guide to Shoplifting in Berlin by Brittani Sonnenberg

The Preparation by Marcus Speh

A Sexually Provocative Short Story by Ambika Thompson

Another Country – Some Short Histories by Sophie Raphaeline

The Dream of a Library by Victoria Gosling

Tuesday in the Basement by Bronwyn Carter

Editors

Contributors

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is very much a team effort. It would not exist without Kenny Macleod, Sharmaine Lovegrove, Jennifer Hewson, Sophie Raphaeline, Anna Marijn Koppen, Jane Flett and Annabel Brady-Brown.

With special thanks to epubli and The Curved House.

Where questions, tossed like thistle spears,

prick the attempt, the gasp of secret knowledge, leavening

the slow outbreath that fills a room unanswered by the word.

A cornucopia of knowing, a wine of truth,

flush cheeks out with the fill and rush of it,

as Circe’s pets, puffed up, bay out the law

of sweet sophistry from the basement’s maw.

A knocking at the gate; the intention

of visitation raising such questions that tempt,

that lead me to a different part, another play

and played upon… Come, court me now,

with scents and smokes and seals, with dusty hands and heels,

call me to accounts – Where? Who? What? When?

Conjure my beating heart again.

Welcome to Tales from Another Country, an extension of that strange realm, the Another Country Bookshop. Showcased here are the winners of The Reader Berlin’s 2012 Short Story Competition. From Neil Bristow’s “The Inheritance”, which went on to win the competition and be published in The EXBERLINER, to the marvellous tales dreamt up by Ambika Thompson, Johanna da Rocha Abreu, Brittani Sonnenberg, Pippa Anais Gaubert and Marcus Speh, it has been a pleasure and a privilege to discover the work of such talented writers.

This project has been in the pipeline for some time now – time moves more slowly in Another Country – and since then The Reader Berlin has hosted all kinds of workshops and events in the creative writing sphere. It’s wonderful to see that Berlin continues to foster and attract authors from all over the world.

Some of our courses take place in the bookshop and I never come through the doors without experiencing a thrill of pleasure that such a place exists. It is, after all, the kind of bookshop one finds in books: ramshackle, pungent, full of odd finds. The librarian is herself a magical creature – part sphinx, part oracle. She of the roast bird-in-a-bird and dazzling non-sequiturs. You can eat, drink, smoke even, and there is a gratifying lack of signs telling you not to touch something. On a pile of books, papal purple, clasped tight as a rosebud, is a cabbage intended for Friday’s supper. Someone is having a nap by the radiator downstairs. Sophie busies herself creating questions for the quiz as customers recline in armchairs or roam the shelves.

Once upon a time there seemed to be more of these places, small kingdoms run according to the owner’s passionate enthusiasms, that you couldn’t imagine making a profit and yet which seemed to be there year after year. There is something magic about them, and these days we are less comfortable with magic – perhaps it reminds us too much of what we have lost – which is perhaps why they grow scarcer.