July 2020

Fiction

July 2020

Fiction

June 2020

Fiction

June 2020

Professor Lock-up straightens behind his security screens as I push my detergent cart into the lobby The drop in temperature shocks me The lobby is like a refrigerator ‘Good evening’ Professor Lock-up inclines his head ‘How is The Great Dr Clean-up today?’ ‘I am well, thank you’ We ask after each other’s wives and children and, throughout the exchange, his gaze roams beyond me and down over his screens ‘God is good,’ I say ‘Regrettably, I must hurry tonight’ I cannot waste another minute here with him; I am no longer looking for a security man’s stories, ordinary tales such as: Professor Li has flown home already The heat was too much for him His ankles swelled red and he shuffled about his lab in ordinary slippers The next week, he did not sign in at all His replacement will come on Tuesday or: You have probably heard, but Dr Huang is flying his parents out for this ‘New Year’ celebration they do Imagine ‘We will talk soon’ I fish my pass from my bag ‘Another time’ Professor Lock-up squints at his screens His screens are divided into grids that show every empty corridor and laboratory in the Loop’s vast campus He straightens, looks back to the glass doors and rubs his thick neck ‘I don’t know if you have – ’ ‘Oh, I have heard’ Truly, the thrill of Professor Lock-up’s ability to translate the scientists’ abrupt language has faded; more so now that I am learning to understand it for myself To hear one of their stories is to hear them all I no longer collect tales of decorated professors, of technicians and student researchers returning to Beijing I have wrung the last juice from rumours of small families and thin wives who wait indoors, afraid of how the sun might greet their skin These stories are everywhere My children – even little Kofi, whose mouth is always open, who clings to his sisters’ legs to stand – are no longer satisfied by them My little ones have realised the scientists are, under their differences, like us No children want to hear tales about people like their parents ‘I will clean Conference Suite Three

Prize Entry

May 2020

This all happened in Barcelona, in the spring of 2017 I haven’t spoken to him ever since, we never got back in touch for some reason, and plus after I went back to Buenos Aires I met Agustín and soon we got together and I believe we were happy for a while, so I forgot about him and my brother and Barcelona and all of that And yet sometimes I still think about him, I don’t know why I remember I used to look at him, my head on the pillow, trying to make out his body moving through the semidarkness of the room, picking some clothes and then gradually coming into view at the foot of the bed, where he would sit and get dressed I remember I used to watch him walking out onto the balcony for the first cigarette of the day (stiza or stizza, that’s how he used to call it in Italian) and then stepping back in and leaving the windows and the white shutters ajar so that the sounds and the smells and the light of the city might pour into the room once the sun rose, once the city rose, because before that, as I quietly, almost secretly watched him getting ready for work, I would often find myself under the impression that he was the only human being alive in the whole of Barcelona, that I was spying on him, that I shouldn’t have been there, in his flat, in the flat of a man I barely knew, and in fact I never got used to that impression, to Cesare’s silent figure groping his way through the obscurity in the early minutes of the day, go on yes please don’t stop and this is the more surprising the more I consider that on the other hand I did get used, during those twelve days we spent together in Barcelona, in the spring of 2017, to the basic rhythms and patterns of his routine I