Write along with Elliot Perlman
Author Elliot Perlman has penned the beginning of a short story. It’s now up to you to write the end of the story and be in the running to win a great prize. Click here for details.
A SOLITARY banana rested on the bottom of the glass fruit bowl on the kitchen table. He sat looking at it. All was quiet in the kitchen except for the hum of the fluorescent ceiling light.
The banana was turning black. Indeed, so parlous was its condition that it was possible somebody noticing would gently advert to a need for fresh fruit. It was possible but it was not likely, for Nachmann Sinek had lived alone in the apartment since the death of his wife, Fela, four years earlier.
The next person, currently the only person, scheduled to visit Nachmann Sinek was his son, David, and Nachmann knew that David was, sooner or later, going to turn the conversation in the same direction he had tried to turn other recent conversations.
David would want to discuss his father, Nachmann, leaving the apartment he had lived in with Fela for 34 years; selling it and moving into an aged care facility with a lot of people Nachmann described as completely famishte alter kackers. But what was he, he asked himself as he sat waiting for David to ring the doorbell, the banana in the fruit bowl glowering at him?
There had been a time when the fruit bowl had overflowed with the bounty that was so plentiful in the country Nachmann had adopted after the war. But that had not been the case since before Fela had got sick.
She had been the keeper of the fruit bowl. She had been the keeper of him. He had met her after the war in a displaced persons camp in Germany. It was her strength, her courage, her single-minded dynamism that had enabled him to build a new life in a new country with its strange customs and new language. He was numb when he had met her, but she had brought him back to life.
Now their son, David, wanted him to leave the place they had shared. Do they let you bring your own fruit bowl, he wondered? Then the question evaporated as the doorbell rang.
“Hello Zaida,” said his 17-year-old granddaughter, Zoe.
“Zoe!” he said kissing her before closing the door after her. “Where’s your father?”
“He’s looking for a park.”
“It’s so busy in the street?”
“Yeah, we couldn’t find a park.”
Nachmann looked at his granddaughter in her singlet top. How developed she had become. It was probably a good thing she was becoming a woman but a little embarrassing for her to be dressed so revealingly. But nothing embarrassed young people anymore, nothing but old people.
“When did the street get so busy?” he quietly asked himself as they made their way inside.
“Sorry we’re late. Everything’s been a little crazy.”
“Crazy?”
“Yeah, Mum was supposed to pick up Jason from his bar mitzvah lesson and then pick up Skye from the psychologist―”
“The psychologist?”
“Yeah, but when she got to the bar mitzvah teacher, Jason wasn’t there.”
“Where was he?”
“We don’t know yet. Mum called Dad and he said she should look for him and if she still hasn’t found him by the time we got to you, we’d look for him too.”
“Have they called the police? Maybe they should call the police.”
“No, don’t worry. I know where he is.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s gone to the city to buy something he’s had his eye on for a while, something Mum and Dad won’t let him get. He probably reckons he can get back in time for Mum to pick him up without anybody knowing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. He thinks he deserves it for having to put up with bar mitzvah lessons. He hates bar mitzvah lessons.”
Nachmann took his granddaughter into the kitchen and they sat down. She looked at her watch. Why was it taking her father so long to park? What was she going to talk about with her grandfather?
“You want something to eat?” Nachmann asked Zoe, with nothing to give her but not knowing what else to say. It’s what Fela would have said under the circumstances. Maybe he should call the police and tell them about his missing grandson? Why did the other one go to a psychologist? How long had this been going on?
Under the fluorescent strip light something in the room sparkled and the sparkle hit his eye. What was sparkling, he wondered. Was this a new problem with his eyes? What illness produced a sparkling sensation?
If it wasn’t an eye problem, it had to be something new in the room since it had never happened before. But nothing had changed in the kitchen for a long time. The only thing new there was Zoe’s presence.
On realising this he looked more carefully at his granddaughter. There on her face was the source of the sparkle. She had a tiny piece of shiny metal embedded above one nostril. Why? Who did something like this?
Before saying anything about it he looked at her face carefully to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. Zoe didn’t notice her face being so closely scrutinised by her grandfather. She was, for perhaps the first time ever, temporarily immersed in her grandfather’s life.
Confined in the one small kitchen, but separated by the depredations of time, were these two people. He was examining the silver stud in her nose while she was staring at the solitary black banana in the fruit bowl.
To be continued by a lucky AJN reader …
All entries must be sent to sjwf@shalom.edu.au by noon on Monday, August 13. Entries must be no more than 800 words long. Click here for full terms and conditions
For more information about the Sydney Jewish Writers Festival, visit www.sjwf.org.au.
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