Kerry Literary Awards acknowledgements

We would like to thank all those who supported us donating money, materials and work, warmly welcoming these new prizes. Here’s to you all:

Dingle Bookshop, West Kerry Live, NEKD, Adams Bar, Dingle Artworks, The Little Cheese Shop, Dingle Benner’s Hotel, The Weaver’s Shop, TigMaya, The Wren’s Nest Café, Griffin’s Gift Shop, The Dolphin Shop, John Benny’s Pub, The Dingle Pottery, Sweet Pea, Dingle Surf, Graceful Things, Killarney’s Today’s News, Sleeping Giant Studio, Walsh’s Pharmacy, CH Chemists Tralee, An Lár Ionad Oideachais, Killarney Bookshop, Mary Garvey, The Coach House, Feargal O’Domhnaill Opticians, Teemu Kannisto, the Kerry Library and Feile na Bealtaina.

KERRY LITERARY AWARDS 2015 FOR SHORT STORIES – also in the short list (I)

Room for an Easel

by Faye Boland

Annie shivered as she opened her dining room door. She had turned off the radiator some years ago – she couldn’t remember exactly when. She zipped up her body-warmer and squeezed through several cardboard tower blocks. The damp room made her nose itch. She found an armchair in the distant corner cushioned with dusty black binbags. She piled them in the space in front of her, leaving just enough room for her feet. Stacked cardboard boxes blocked the windows and overshadowed the artificial light, obscuring the veneer of dust that coated everything. Annie sighed as she unknotted the uppermost plastic bag and identified a bundle of tracksuits and jeans that once belonged to Michael. They ranged from age 8 to 12 and came in the usual favourite colours of a young boy, grey, black and navy. She re-knotted the bag. One down, five hundred to go. The earthy must of stored worn clothing wafted around her and stuck to her hands. She lifted another binbag from the small coal-like mound in front of her. Its rustle was amplified by the room’s silence. She teased it open and examined the baby clothes inside. They belonged to Julia, pink babygrows and lots of gingham. The little red dress her mother had bought hooked her attention. She pulled it out and stroked its rose-petal softness. Mam would never have tolerated this degree of chaos. Always orderly, she believed that everything had a place and that there should be a place for everything. The dress had been bought for a cousin’s wedding. Annie thought of herself back then, when she still had a personality, before it had been sucked out of her by years of sacrificing her needs for her family. She thought of her secret nest egg that Mam had left her and smiled as she contemplated her mother’s capacity to organise, even in her last years. Annie tied up the bag and warmed her hands in her armpits. Her jaw tightened as she continued inspecting the contents of the other binbags. The cityscape that stretched before her seemed ungovernable. She dropped her head into her palms.

Annie jolted as Michael’s feet crashed like thunder on the floorboards above her head. Her heart sank into the pit of her stomach. She pushed him out of her mind and resumed reclaiming her dining room. Her mousy brown hair was soon thick with the weight of dust. As she dragged the first half dozen binbags through the kitchen to the hall door she was welcomed by a blast of heat. The telephone rang.

‘Hello’.

‘Hi Annie, it’s Rosemary.’

A smile pushed Annie’s taut cheeks into the shape of apples.

‘Listen, there’s an art class starting in the Adult Education Centre on Tuesday mornings. I’m wondering if you’d like to go. It’s only 40 euros for six weeks.’

‘Aren’t you very good to think of me. I’m up to my eyeballs today but I’ll get back to you tomorrow with a definite answer.’

‘Fantastic. But make it in the afternoon. I have my creative writing group in the morning.’

‘OK. I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Bye for now.’

Annie was still smiling as she put down the phone. A visual treat with her bold floating dresses and jangling beads, Rosemary had drifted into town in a campervan that contained all her belongings a year before. Recently divorced, she had two very well-mannered children. She had made it her business to become acquainted with all her neighbours, most of whom were warmed by her vibrancy. Tom of course, was one of the exceptions. He had no time for ‘women with itchy feet.’ ‘Who knows what kind of shenanigans had driven her husband to divorcing her’, he remarked. Annie had attended a coffee morning in her rented house a few weeks ago and hadn’t laughed so much in years. There wasn’t much shenanigans going on there; just a bunch of local women with various interests beside family life. Annie found the scene a little intimidating at first but as Rosemary steered the conversation towards her, wrapping her in it like a gift, she gradually relaxed. She cracked up as she heard of the school principal’s run-in with a local busy-body who complained about the miniscule school uniform skirts that teenage girls were parading around town in.

Before Annie left, she complimented Rosemary on her soft furnishings, the way she threw bold colours together, how the unexpected worked. Annie blushed as Rosemary admired the matching lace trim on her skirt and collar and complimented her attention to detail.

The sound of Michael thumping down the stairs interrupted her reverie. Annie’s smile died. Her heart began to thud.

‘Are there any sausages cooked?’.

Michael’s lanky frame hovered over her. His eyes were wide and glassy his eyebrows pointed at one another like daggers.

‘No. Dad didn’t want any this morning.’

‘Fuck sake.’

Michael stomped into the kitchen. Annie flinched at the sound of dishes crashing and cupboards banging. How had she raised him to be such a monster, a lazy lump who expected her to do everything for him?.

Annie abandoned the binbags in the hall and retreated past Michael’s hostile form into the solace of the cold dining room. She tried to blank out the black shadow of Michael’s presence in the kitchen next door. There were endless boxes waiting to be unstacked and inspected. This afternoon, she would deliver all the worn clothing to the charity shop, a quaint little shop in the town centre that smelled of patchouli oil. She often picked up a bargain there on her solitary shopping trips. She would love to have Julia with her on these outings but Julia, now settled in Australia, was as far away as it was possible to go. She hadn’t been home in 18 months.

‘Is my black hoodie washed yet?’ Michael bellowed from the kitchen.

‘It’s in the hot press.’

Another door slammed. Annie pressed the living room door closed and began to sort through the cardboard boxes. When she heard the front door bang behind Michael she lugged them into the hallway. Soon she had reclaimed a noticeable fraction of her dining room. She stretched her aching back; her arthritis was flaring up, from stress she was sure. She visualized Rosemary sipping coffee in here. She had already created enough space for an easel. She looked at her watch: 12.30. Tom would be in any minute. As she slipped into the kitchen she heard the front door close and Tom’s grunts as he took off his boots. She removed a dish of pre-cooked lasagne from the fridge and placed it in the microwave while Tom washed his hands at the sink. A hulk of a man, he had long ago given up on his appearance. He face had jowls and his thin hair looked like the layers of cobwebs that clung to the corners of Annie’s unused dining room.

Tom sat down, his mood like a dark cloud blighting the bright cold day. Annie counted down the seconds to the microwave’s bing as he sat fingering his knife and fork.

‘You’ve the hall wrecked with rubbish’ he muttered between mouthfuls of lasagne.

‘Clothes for the charity shop.’

‘Crooks. That’s what most of them charity shops are. The people they’re collecting for don’t see the half of what they make.’

Annie knew better than to answer him back. Tom was immoveable once he took a position on something. She sat next to him and slowly ate her lasagne. Silence descended between them and solidified into an impenetrable wall. When he had finished she washed up, heard the front door close behind him. She saw him outside in the yard, filling the coal bucket for the fire that she would light that evening. She waited until he had driven off before she loaded the boot of her car with boxes and binbags. The trill of birdsong darted from tree to tree and the cornflower blue sky arched above her. The air was fresh with the promise of spring. She looked down at the daffodils nudging through the soil, pushing for change. She could feel it coming, lightening the weight in her heart, fluttering in her stomach. There were many changes on the way, of that she was sure, even if she couldn’t identify precisely what those changes would be.

Kerry Literary Awards 2015 for short stories – Dingle Bookshop Prize

Cathi Weldon after
receiving her prize

Tongues

by Cathy Weldon

She hides her eyes under her eyelids always looking at the ground, past her slightly protruding down-turned lip, past her flopped hands, seeing only her feet idling beneath her. Some subtle movement of air calls her to glance anxiously about her, to press the back of one hand into the palm of the other, to let her chubby child-fingers begin to twist and writhe into a seemingly incessant search for comfort. Eyes return to the ground seeking permission to abandon her dreary shoes – dusty and scuffed and slightly too large for her feet. But no, she mustn’t dare wish to be rid of them. Only a momentary flicker of possibility flutters across her eyelids and then flops to the ground like a flightless bird.

Her loose cotton dress of flowered pattern hangs limp. A half look-up at other children playing nearby invites a breeze to billow under the flaccid skirt, to almost catch it in a whirl, to almost allow her the tip-toed twirl of the girl from the other house. She has heard that house talk. It is a house of tongues, of laughter, of song. But she must not listen. She must not go beyond the mutter of her mother, the heavy grunting of her elderly father. They are the cloud that she lives in, that she belongs to. Breeze beneath the skirt is pain. Song is unbearable.

School, she is told, must begin. She is brought by the hand by a mother as shy as herself, in through an old blue doorway. She feels a force well up within her that howls from her throat. Is this her song? This song tells stories that frighten the other children. They draw back to the walls, draw close to each other, sit into seats. The adults prise her hands out from her mother’s and take her the remaining drag-of-feet, to a desk assigned to her, a desk where she is firmly sat while her feet wriggle inches above the floor. Nobody likes her howling song. Her eyes, which grew fierce at the newness of being here, which raged against this assault on her senses, are cast down again as her howl cowers to a sob and her plump fingers delve beneath sticky nose and teary cheeks into the moistness of her mouth. She sucks eagerly seeking solace as snorts and snivels settle to a rhythm.

It’s all strange outside her skin. She wishes it could be dark, damp and cave-like here with a quietness sat upon only by her ancient father’s laboured breaths and broken only by her mother’s mumblings. How can she dull these sharp lively tongues which fly close by her on the air, piercing her ears and her heart? She would like a coat, a blanket, over her head. Waves of hushed whispers mingle with battles of bladed voices. If tongues would only swim on the floor maybe she would be able to follow them. But no. They swim and dart in and out of people’s mouths, high in the air.

In this huge draughty room, broad hands come and cover her hands to guide them in the laying of small metallic circles in parallel lines. This happens for a long time making it soothing and mesmerising for her. She slips away to another world.

But they waken her with their jagged tongues and immense hands. Violently they sweep her metallic circles from the desktop into a great cardboard box. Now her hand is hauled about a thick crayon and her fist is jerked and pushed up and down on paper while tongues find short screeching noises to eject into her ears. She shies away from the noise. When left alone, she stretches her toes down, hides under her desk, dashes to a corner and crouches there. But there is no safe place. They come and take her. Days pass. One morning the tongues fill her ears with quick uneasy noises. She sits stock still filled with a nauseous sensation. Something is to happen. A change in plan. Something dreadfully new in the air. Then it comes. A swift hand holds her chin rigid while another draws her cheeks in. Eyes try to pry into hers. She writhes. Tries to move her mouth. Bites into flesh. The tongues screech and squeal, lots of tongues and spiky sounds. Feet advance in haste across the floor, lots of feet. She is held in strong clasp by resolute hands, her shoulders pinned against the back of her seat, her upper arms braced, her wrists, legs, feet, all anchored. Her resistance tires and soon she yields to her containment. Looking down at her desk she sees a sea of dark wood-grain. Tracing the individual grains uneven-ness with her eyes she calms degree by degree. But while her breathing settles she listens to the rushed whisperings of tongues coming and going in waves, and her eyes return to alert expecting a new flurry of footsteps to announce doom.

The coldness of change edges its way into her high vigilance. There is a slow release of the tight clasping hands. The feet below back off whisking away with them all the whispers and swishes of cloth, all the creaks from old benches and boxes. She remains motionless, petrified, wary of what might linger on the fringe of her world barely out of view. She watches beyond her desk scanning the old dusty floorboards. What is to happen now? It seems for an age that nothing stirs. She dares to raise her head a little, her shoulders. Her eyes take in more of the floor. Nothing moves.

She waits. She rubs her desk with her finger, back and forth, left to right, feeling the grainy old wood’s resistance. Over and over, she soothes the desk in this way. Calmer in herself she wakes once more to her surroundings. No further change. She looks up in front of her. Nobody. That large black window bearing its chalky web is without an adult scraping it to life. No children anymore, anywhere. No sound. Her eyes roam while her upper body remains rigid and her legs dangle. She takes in what she can of this immense wilderness of a room, its ceiling a patterned grey sky, the old door left gaping open. She rubs her thighs with her two hands and rocks. Peace. Yes. Peace at last.

A new sound winds its way to her ears. It is light. So light. Airy. Dulcet. Barely audible. Slowly approaching. Then there it is. Filling this doorway. A sound as soft as music filling this dark doorway. A soft woman stands in behind the soft sound. She is round and her clothes cling gently to her – pink cardigan, beige skirt, suede beige shoes. She walks in. No click-clack of feet, only softness. And as she approaches, the child’s eyes fall to the floor to scramble there, bringing breaths down her nose, noisy rushing breaths. The feet stop in front of her desk. The softness falls down about them. The girl is looking at pink softness and silky golden hair. The softness has a long metal tongue with holes in it that doesn’t have to dart in and out of the mouth but rests on slow moving fingers and pipes out silvery tones. The girl does not react or protest, just listens, allowing her heavy breathing to subside. Sweet melody swims through her ears swelling her heart and filling her soul. Her down-turned mouth moves gently into an almost-smile. The sweetness stops and the metal tongue is placed on the girl’s desk with a clunk. No hand holds it, no longer any sound from it.

The tips of the girl’s fingers slowly reach to touch and turn the metal tongue to bring it to lie parallel with her universe of wood-grain lines. The golden hair shakes and flows. The soft face rests its chin on the edge of the desk. It has eyes. The girl’s eyes engage with the eyes of softness, pools of green dancing light. The desk is dulled. Her eyes wish only to rest on pink and gold and green. Yes, abandon the dull desk, her eyes decide. Wandering over this round softness they draw her hands with them to stroke and comb. The desk bars the way. She stretches down with her big dusty shoes and curls her heavy feet out and around the iron leg of her desk, to push her knees into a welcoming lap that cradles her as she strokes and combs, strokes and combs.

Kerry Literary Awards 2015 for short stories – Women’s International Café Prize

Emer Fallon reading 

her story after receiving her prize

Saltwater

by Emer Fallon

Seagulls sun sand sandy tiny bits of grit and dirt and dogshit and flies and hopping things and water and waves and clouds and sky and sand and people and people and warmth and water and waves

‘No dog! Get away. Feck off with yourself . . . stinking bag of fur and bones.’

That’s right. Go on away now and leave me alone. Just leave me sit here in peace for a while.

Skittering all over the place like a bloody pup. Still as playful as the day Big Jim brought you to me and not an ounce of anger in you ever, god bless your stupid soul. Eight years old and you still haven’t copped you don’t stand a chance in hell of catching one of those things. Seagulls have wings, you eejit. Dogs don’t.

Would you look at the size of the little titch over there with her bucket and spade, and the small lad next to her, all arms and legs.

Jesus that little one’s small. So new – so easy to hurt or break. Hurts my head to see them there, the pair of them, without a thought for all the things in the world that could do damage.

Damaged. Done damage. The damage is done. The damage is done.

‘Did I not say leave me alone! Get away from me now you filthy hound and stop

slobbering all over me! That’s right. Go on away with yourself. Go catch a seagull. Feck off.’

Jesus what a day. Days like this we used have some fun on the site. All us Irish out there together under the sky and Big Jim always with some story or ballhop going on, and our hands black with grime and our bodies wiry from work and the laughter just waiting for something to start it, and then out it comes loud as someone hammering on a locked door.

A chipped green wooden door, rows of beds behind.

‘Get away from me dog! Get away, I say!’

That’s right. Go sit over there.

Stop staring at me like that – like you’re sorry for me. Like you know me.

You don’t know me you bloody fool. You don’t know what I done. None of them lads

back then knew what I done to get me sent to that place.

Not even Jim.

He always had some ballhop going on, Jim did.

One time we put blue marking ink in the new lad’s hard hat. D’ya hear me dog?

‘Stick that on ya,’ Jim says. ‘See how it fits.’ Too big – o’course it was – so yerman takes it off and there he is, standing there with these big blue ears and all the lads are trying not to break their hearts laughing and I’m in the middle of all those lads, right there in the middle of them all, and once we start I swear I laughed so much I near cried, laughing like a fool I was, tears running down my face and shaking all over, can’t stop, and then Jim says what the hell’s up with you, and I tell him I can’t stop and he says what d’ya mean you can’t stop and I tell him I don’t know, just lately I can’t stop thinking about when we were young lads, living in that place, sleeping in that place, day in day out, and out here on the site everything feels so big and Jim says he knows what I mean, and I tell him I haven’t been sleeping so well and my head is all messed up and he says why don’t we drop into Mikey Sullivan’s uncle’s place in Kilburn on the way home? Why don’t we just do that, drop into Doctor Sullivan’s place?

You weren’t with me back then, fool dog. The good doctor sent me to St Luke’s over in Camden that time. All green and grey and cool in there, it was, not like the other place had been, just voices, soft voices talking amongst themselves. Damaged damage done no relatives to send him to no family in England just this James Dunleavy says he’ll look after him met in an institution when they were children.

Just children. Jim and me me and Jim.

It was him gave you to me, dog. Right after he went and got me that job with Clarke’s Construction. Always been good to me, he has, big Jim. And them days with Clarkes weren’t the worst by any means. Hard work, that’s what it was, dog, pure and simple. Blessed hard work. Enough to make a person tired right to the bones, then the few pints afterwards and back to that cupboard of a place in Kilburn – no time to think. Just work and sleep. Work and work and sleep and a few drinks every now and again and money piling up in that oul’ suitcase under the bed, no-one to give it to, no-one to spend it on.

Look at you, you drooling fool – You’d swear you were listening to every bloody word.

Jesus Christ – is anyone watching that child there at all? Just look at her up there! And her drowsy tramp of a mother burning herself to a crisp with her little one about to be swept out to sea! Does she not know the things that can happen to a child? Does she not know –

‘WOULD YOU LOOK AT HER!’

That’s right little man – go on over there and fetch your sister. Good lad. Great little lad. You’re doing a better job than yer mam, that’s for sure.

Leave them be now. Leave them be. Can’t you see the girl’s alright? And isn’t the boy keeping an eye on her anyway? That’s right. Close your eyes.

No. Those days with Clarkes weren’t the worst by any means, dog. Maybe I’d still be there if it wasn’t for that little tramp. . . . . Ah Jesus. What am I saying? There’s no need for that kind of talk. Just a girl – that’s all she was. What made me bring her back anyway? Only had to get her under the light and I knew. Bold as brass, cigarette hanging out of her mouth and her chest all squeezed up to make her look like she had tits.

What age are you I says to her. What age are you at all?

Fifteen she says. Fifteen? Ah Jesus – To think a child would do that to herself – make herself out to be something she wasn’t. Christ that makes me mad. Stone mad, so it does.

Stop licking me dog. Stop it – dya hear?

That’s right – she found out what the back of my hand felt like too. Hurts, doesn’t it? Now stop hawing all over me and feck off.

And you over there with your pipe-cleaner arms and legs, watch your sister and don’t be looking at me like I have two heads. Jesus Christ – can a man not even be allowed to sit and think in peace without some wretched bloody dog and some skinny kid sticking their bloody noses into his business? Can he not?

Sure what would a fifty-nine year old eejit like me be wanting with a girl like that? Then she starts whining about the police. No. No sirree. No more locked doors for me. So I pack up my bags and get outta that place. I know what I’ll do, I says, I’ll come back home for myself. That’s it. Get a little place by the sea, go fishing off the pier.

And here we are dog. And I’m no more at home here than I was back in Kilburn.

Ah for god’s sakes – what’s the little one up to now? If she’s not up on the rocks she’s running into the water.

Are you watching her at all? Look at her, would you, for god’s sakes!

‘Watch your child!’

That’s right. Go on. Sit up. Now go and get her out of there!

Honest to god – does she not know the things that can happen to a child? Does she not know about the dangers all around?

I need to have a word with that little lad.

I need to show him what I have – make him understand.

But he’s so small. I don’t know. I don’t know that he’ll understand.

Let go of my sleeve you stupid brute. What are you playing at you fool? Let go of me for christ’s sake. Let me talk to the boy.

‘You there! Come over here to me. That’s right – no need to look so scared. Tell me now – does your Mam look after you? Feeds you proper, does she? And keeps you clean? Good – that’s good. I seen you helping your sister there. Strong little man, aren’t you? I’ll tell you something, we could have done with the likes of you on the sites. Hefting blocks and bags of cement in all weather – what do you think you would’ve made of that, huh? Listen to me now, I have a job that needs doing, and I’m thinking you might be the man for it. It’s a big job, mind. An important job. It involves a life.’

‘So now . . . What do you have to say about that?’

‘Answer me boy, for christ’s sake, and stop gawking at me like a halfwit. Did you hear what I said? I’m talking about a life.’

‘You hit the dog.’

‘What’s that? Speak up. I can’t hear you.’

‘You hit the dog.’

‘Hit the dog, did you say? That’s right. I did. Come here fella – come over here now and say hello. Like him, do ya? Well it’s him I want to talk to you about. I want you to take him home and feed him and give him somewhere warm and dry to sleep. And I want you to walk him and talk to him and throw him a ball every now and again. But you’re never to raise a hand to him – d’you hear? Never a hand.’

‘Here’s his lead. It’s a bit worn, mind, but it does the job. You’ll need that to take him off the beach when you’re going home. And don’t forget he likes to be walked – at least once a day, sometimes twice if he’s fidgety. ‘

‘Now then – Take a look at what I’ve got for you in here. Go on boy, will you! Take a look at what’s inside.’

‘That’s right son. Money. Lots of the stuff – enough to buy yourself and your sister a dozen buckets and spades – and yer Mam a new dress or a pair of shoes or whatever she fancies. But you need to keep some over to buy food and a bed for the dog. Understand?’

‘Yes mister.’

‘There now. I’ll just close it up for you. Think you can manage it? That’s it. Didn’t I say you would have been a great little man to have on the sites? Slip it over there behind those rocks. You can show it to yer Mam once I’m gone. That’s it. Good lad. And keep an eye on your sister, won’t you? That’s right. Go on back over there now and play.’

‘No. Leave me alone dog. Stay with the boy, do ya hear me? Do you want to feel the back of my hand again? Is that it?’

That’s right. Feck off.

Back to the kids. Just leave me walk now, walk in peace a while.

Sand on my feet in my toes on my skin sand hoppers sand hoppers that is their name

sand on my feet voices growing faint and fainter and faint

sand on my feet wet sand on the strand wind on my face

water lap lapping at my feet on my skin water wet water

and pain in my chest in my mouth in my eyes

and water in my eyes. Saltwater.

Kerry Literary Awards 2015 for Short Stories – Winning story

Diana Muller reading

her story after receiving her prize

The Erasers

by Diana Muller

“Pouvez-vous parler aux autochtones?” I asked the boy, hoping it was him.

I’d spent the better part of a week trying to locate him. It seemed no one wanted to acknowledge him. He was local, but had grown up too close to the edge of the jungle to be considered trustworthy. Eventually I found him working on a palm plantation.

He was small for his age, but then, why wouldn’t he be? Most Congolese children looked younger than they were. At fourteen he looked ten. The machete he used to cut at the palm trunks was half his height. Still he wielded it without trouble, one armed, his other having been amputated at the shoulder. I walked over and called his name, “Claude Baptise!”

He lowered the machete and turned to me. I introduced myself. I called myself a doctor and asked if he was the boy who could speak Aka. He nodded and said nothing. I asked if he would take fifty American dollars to be my translator and he nodded again, dropped his machete and followed me. He didn’t stop to tell anyone or collect his belongings, just walked off the plantation without looking back.

He was silent much of the time. After hiking for a day through the jungle he asked me what we were looking for. I told him we were seeking a legend.

Sinafasi didn’t trust him of course. When we met the old man at the edge of his territory he raised his bow and shouted something.

Claude turned to me, “He says I have to stay away,” he said in French.

“Tell him you’re my translator,” I replied. Claude rattled off something in Aka, but Sinafasi wouldn’t give an inch.

“I am Lendu,” Claude said. “He will not deal with me.”

“Tell him I could not find any other way to communicate with him,” I said.

He then spoke again to Sinafasi at some length. Sinafasi replied, loudly, enraged, he gestured widely as he shouted at the boy. Claude became visibly upset at this. He replied quietly, staring at his feet. After a long pause, the old man finally approached us, looking daggers at Claude the whole time.

“What did you tell him?” I whispered.

“I told him I had no weapons.” Claude said, holding out his good arm so that Sinafasi could inspect him. Seemingly satisfied, Sinafasi then turned to me and spoke.

“He said he will lead you because you have paid, and you are a friend, but that I must walk behind him and must not sleep near him, or speak to him, unless it is to translate.”

I nodded, and the old man turned and  began to walk into the rain forest.

After following him in silence for some hours Claude asked his second question. It was the same as the first.

“Ce que vous cherchez?”

“Un lac,” I told him.

“Pourquoi?”

I hesitated, wondering if I should risk frightening him and losing his services. Still, I thought, what’s the harm in telling him? He has nowhere else to go.

So I told him the story as I had been told. That somewhere in the jungle was a lake, a small lake, more like a pool really, and that it was guarded by ghosts.

“Les fantômes?” He snorted derisively, but there was a tremor in his voice.

“Yes.” I told him that the ghosts that guarded the lake looked like people but behaved as though they were moving through the world without seeing it at all. I told him that the waters of the lake were said to have magical powers and that if you bathed in it, it would make you immortal. He wanted a definition for “Immortal”. I told him that it meant you live forever.

“No need to eat or drink?” He asked.

“I suppose not,” I said.

“So what do you live for?” He asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied, smiling, “Maybe you just live.”

We walked on in silence through the wet vines. After a while he spoke again.

“Would you still get hungry?” He asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t suppose you would, but that’s not the point Claude. I don’t believe that the waters have magical powers, but sometimes there is a grain of truth in these stories. These forests have many plants in them that can be used as medicine, and very few doctors have been able to study them. Maybe there is a lake, and some trees grow near it with certain chemicals in their roots or something like that? If I can get a sample of the water we may find that it can cure all kinds of diseases.”

“AIDS?”

“Maybe.”

He shrugged and walked on.

The night fell suddenly. In minutes the forest grew loud, every beast and bird under the canopy waking up to forage and hunt. We made a fire. Claude and I sat on a plastic tarp. With one last sour look Sinafasi disappeared into the trees to find a place to sleep, somewhere far away from Claude.

The boy lay upright against a large rock, unwilling to lay his head where insects might crawl into his ears while he slept. He watched Sinafasi’s retreating back with a frown.

“Why does he hate you so much?” I asked him. “You are clearly no threat to him.”

“La guerre,” he replied again. “The Lendu, my tribe, killed his people, many of them… Most of them, he told me. He said that Les Effaceurs chased his family through the jungle and killed them.” He swallowed thickly. “He said that they killed them, chopped them up and – ate them.”

With the war still fresh, an open wound across the face of the country, a conversation like this in any part of the Congo was a minefield. I had heard rumours of “Les Effaceurs”, The Erasers, clearing land for palm oil plantations and mining operations.

The Pigmy tribes had never been treated well. They were used as slaves in Claude’s village, a favorite target of ethnic cleansing. The Congolese didn’t trust them, thought they could perform magic, that they were evil. They were forever caught in the crossfire of other’s skirmishes, bearing the brunt of an anger they did not deserve or understand.

I had thought, foolishly, that there was nothing that could shock me anymore.

I stared into the darkness above, alert to the constant movement high up in the canopy, the forest as busy and populous as city. A shrill howl cut into me and I heard Claude inhale sharply. Little luminous eyes glittered down at us all night.

It was Sinafasi who made peace, eventually. His anger seemed to decrease slightly. Maybe It was the fact that Claude walked dutifully behind and obeyed his instructions.

Whatever it was, it manifested on the third day when we stopped at a stream. We had to cross the remains of an old Biakka bridge. The water below was deep and brown. Sinafasi crosses nimbly, in seconds, and I followed, less surefooted, but I had experienced these bridges before. Claude, however, would not cross.

He stood on the bank and stared at the rickety vine bridge in horror. He shook his head. “Je ne peux pas!”

“Of course you can!” I shouted back. “Just climb it like a ladder!” I realised then that without both arms crossing the bridge would be nearly impossible.

“Can you swim?” He shook his head, obviously terrified. Of course he can’t.

I was at a loss. He had to cross the bridge. He had no way back and he certainly couldn’t stay where he was.

“Claude! Just try it!” I cajoled, guiltily.

“I’m afraid,” he called back to me, shaking his head, his eyes wide. “I won’t do it.”

I was about to shout again, but Sinafasi spoke first, calling out to the boy, gesturing at his own right arm. Claude nodded and replied, shame faced.

Sinafasi walked back across the bridge, Claude took a step backward, but Sinafasi reached out his hands, speaking softly. Claude hesitated for a long moment, then closed his eyes and reached for the old man’s hands with his one. Sinafasi grabbed Claude’s wrist and walked backward across the bridge.

I let out a breath of relief when they reached the bank. Claude stood shaking, his knees knocking together. The old man said something to him and he opened his eyes and took a deep breath. Sinafasi touched the scarred stump at the boys shoulder and muttered something. Claude stared at him, then said one word. Sinafasi nodded, as though it confirmed something for him. He turned and continued on into the Jungle, Claude and I followed slowly.

“What did he ask you?”

“What? When?”

“Just then. He asked you something, it was a question. I could tell.”

“He asked me about my arm,” Claude replied, then picked up his pace and

walked ahead of me.

That night Sinafasi sat with us around the fire. He seemed comfortable now, sitting beside Claude on a log, singing an old song.

Claude asked him something. The little man looked up into the canopy and thought for a moment before replying. Claude then turned to me.

“He has seen the ghosts, the ones that guard the lake. Once, when he was young.”

“What are they like?” I asked him.

Sinafasi spoke in a whisper, almost chanting, glancing this way and that, as though afraid that ghosts were listening.

“He says that they look just like people, but they are not, that they are blind and deaf, that they cannot feel pain and that they have no memory. He says that they are lost, but they do not know that they are lost. They have forgotten that they exist.” Claude asked him something, then turned to me with a smirk.

“He says that they do not get hungry or need to eat.”

On the fifth day Sinafasi suddenly stopped walking, he cocked his head to one side and smiled, he hushed us and beckoned us to his side. There was a noise, crunching, footsteps? He parted the leaves, exposing a small clearing.

A tribe of gorillas sat in the undergrowth grazing on leaves.

Sinafasi crouched down low in the bushes and motioned to us to do the same. He began to whisper, then sing under his breath.

“He says that when his people die they are born a second time here, as gorillas. He says that these are his ancestors,” Claude whispered in my ear. “He’s singing their names.”

The old man began to cry as he sang.

I woke that night to silence. I looked up and saw a human figure standing in the moonlight near our camp, facing away from us. I reached out carefully and shook Sinafasi awake. The old man cast and eye at Claude, sleeping against a tree. The boy continued to sleep as we rose and crept slowly towards the man. We approached and he didn’t move until we were only a few yards away.

The figure then turned as we approached, I felt no chill up my spine, no feeling of supernatural dread. He stood there as naturally and solidly as the trees around us. He stared with the blank gaze of any animal that has never seen a human before, but without the fear, or curiosity.

I knew then what I had done in coming here. I hadn’t only been led here by my guide and interpreter. I had led them right to the place that generations of Baikka and Lendu had not approached. The dark core of their forest.

It didn’t register our presence like an animal would. It simply turned away and walked with an odd lumbering gait into the undergrowth. I called Claude and he, vigilant even in sleep, started awake. He looked around, grabbed a stick, and followed us.

The figure ambled a few steps onward and we saw the silver water of the lake. We saw them, dozens of them, standing around the edge like sentinels, their eyes reflecting the moon. They did indeed look human, but I knew that they weren’t, not anymore. Immortal, had I ever really defined that word? Claude had come close to pinpointing it: no need to eat, never being hungry, living forever, no matter what you did, no matter what happened to you.

But if there is no need to survive, what need is there for memory or identity, tribe or home? In the hollow eyes were centuries of forgetting, centuries of wandering the woods with no purpose, long years of emptiness, until they were perhaps drawn back by some instinct to the edge of the pool, their birthplace.

They have forgotten that they exist.

Claude and the old man exchanged a look. And I saw relief in their eyes as they understood, before I did, the nature of that lake.

And God help me, I tried to cry out a warning as Sinafasi closed his hand around Claude’s, but no sound came out of my mouth as they walked into the water together.

More from the presentation

Some more shots

Camilla Dinkel giving the Dingle Bookshop prize to Cathi Weldon for her story Tongues

Dingle bookshop being full, some had to stand

Kerry Literary Awards – Pádraig Ó Ciobháin’s message

Joane Ní Shuilleabhain, from the Women’s International Café, read the message that Pádraig Ó Ciobháin, chairman of the jury, sent to all those who participated in the competition:

“Comhghairdeachas le gach éinne a chuir isteach ar an gcomórtas so. Tógann sé misneach cumadóireacht a chur ar phár agus a chur os comhair dhaoine eile d’fhonn breithe a thabhairt ar an iarracht san. Sa cheird seo níl dabht ná gur taithí a dheineann máistreacht. Mar sin, coinníg oraibh ag scríobh agus is ag feabhsú a bheidh sibh. Lena chois sin ní mór an tsíorléitheoireacht a chleachtadh d’fhonn foghlaim ó scríbhneoirí atá níos faide chun cinn ar bhóthar na cumadóireachta cruthaithí.

Congratulations to everyone who entered this competition. It takes courage to put your creativity on paper and present it to be judged by others. As regards this trade there is no doubt but practice makes perfect. Therefore, keep writing and you will certainly reap the rewards. Constant reading is just as necessary, in order to learn from other writers who are further along the road of creative writing than you are.”

Finally, rejoicing time!

We had great fun an joy giving the prizes to our winners. Here are some photos of the evening.

  Mike Venner was our MC and performed brilliantly.

An aspect of the audience

Some good laughs

Mark Crickard made us dance

Meet the winners tomorrow!

Publishing the winning short stories

From next week you can find here the 7 stories in the shortlist. They will be published one by one with a short biography of the author. Come back to read them!

In the meantime you’re welcome to the presentation Saturday, May 2nd, at 6 pm at the Dingle Bookshop, Green Street, Dingle.

Ghearrliosta Ghradaim Liteartha Chiarraí

Comhghairdeachas libh go leir a sheol ghearrsceal chugainn.
Seo h-iad na scéalta a shroich an ghearrliosta.

The Erasers – Diana Muller (Buaiteoir iomlán)

Saltwater – Emer Fallon (Buaiteoir ghradam Café Idirnaisiúnta na mBan)

Tongues – Cathi Weldon (Buaiteoir ghradam The Dingle Bookshop)

Moltar na ghearrscéalta seo a leanas chomh maith

The Island – Gráinne Keegan

The Loan – Caroline Lynch

Room for an Easel – Faye Boland

A Turn in the Road – Nicholas McLachlan

Foilsíodh na gearrscéalta go léir ar an bhlag seo agus scéal an buaiteoir i West Kerry Live.
Bronnfar na duaiseanna sa Dingle Bookshop ar an 02/05/2014 ar a 6 a chlog i.n. mar chuid do Feile na Bealtaine. Failte roimh chách go dtí an ócáid.