Writing for Mikhail- final 2015

this book is dedicated

to my family, who believe me to be a much better writer than I am,kala ramesh, who made me the writer I am today,srividya tadepalli, who makes me want to be a better writer

to taarika chandy and kavya ramanan, for showing me my first magical story

to my writing class: I am my story, and I am yours, always

and to all those who cannot live without books.

*

this book would not have been possible without

the department of communication studies, mount carmel college

and

the rain, the full moon, and the shadow of the wind soundtrack

*

for comprising this story,special thanks to

james joyceerin morgensternthomas hardyjerry spinellisharon creech

because there are so many kinds of magic

and

carlos ruiz zafon, oscar wilde, and virginia woolf

for showing me need, and giving me beauty, love, and insanity – I owe you too much.

Writing for Mikhail

Prologue

Sojano is a large but ordinary town. It has a neighbourhood of penthouses and the largest slum in the west. It holds the most elaborate cocktail parties, and the homeless people make poverty look like an art. It has quiet streets with banks and bakeries and loud streets with parks and pubs; a train station, a cemetery, a soup kitchen, a town hall – and a new book shop, Sirtis Cover to Cover.

My name is Nicholas. I live in Sojano. In an alley next to the soup kitchen, right across the street from Sirtis Cover to Cover, to be precise. I deal in white dragon, golden dragon, devil’s dandruff…probably better known to you as coke, LSD, ecstasy; you name it, I have it. I used to live with my roommate, Thalia, till she died. She didn’t like my job much. She was a hooker to the outside. On the inside, well, your guess is as good as mine.

But she is my best friend, and I had to find out what happened to her. Even if it meant haunting Sirtis Cover to Cover long after its owner had left my town for good. Reading, rereading those damned letters they all exchanged. Everything Sirtis had ever written to her. Everything from her that he’d stored away. Turning every last book on his shelves inside out. Following her follow him follow all the rest of them. Scraps of her diary that I found under that damn street light she could never keep her eyes off of as she watched and waited.

Even if it meant becoming a ghost like him, living in those stories, obsessed with people I had never met. Going everywhere he’d been, everywhere he’d left his mark. Finding out what exactly he’d done. How he did it. Becoming his shadow, his ghost. As fucked up as him, and like him, eventually able to see my city only at night.

People who knew him were the only people that mattered to me after that. They all said, where I found them, dying like Thalia, that he had looked into their eyes and just known them. They said he saw people inside out – he would take in their passions, their fears and their desires before their physical appearances. Mikhail Sirtis, owner of Sirtis Cover to Cover, made a living out of reading people like he reads books. He read what was missing in Thalia’s life – what I was never able to give her – and then gave it to her with those stories. He was known as the best bookseller in the country. The best stock, they said. He’s read everything, they said. He prescribed the best books, they said.

Prescribed. As though books are medicine.

But for Thalia, they were. He realized that, I didn’t. That’s why Thalia loved him. That’s why all his victims loved him. Thalia saw him everywhere. Across the street, on the park bench, in her fucking dreams. Under that damned street light. She would see him, and get excited, or scared, and then panic. Or she would write. That part I really couldn’t get. And she would not stop watching for him for days on end.

Poison. There is no other way to tell you what happened to Thalia. I know what poison is. I’m a drug dealer. Sort of like he was. I give the right poison to the right clients. Do you know what constitutes poison? Once you get a taste of it there is no forcing it back out of your system. It seeps inside you and then simmers there, slowly working its

magic. Thalia’s immune system was weak. I don’t think she didn’t know; I think she didn’t care. The more time she spent with him, talking about her writing, with the books he kept sending, with the letters he kept writing, the less she lectured me on my needle marks.

Sirtis made her understand what need is. I couldn’t stop. Neither could she.

And now she’s gone.

The best chairs face away from the windowsSo that the sun can approach over your shoulder,kiss your cheek,and spill open onto your dog eared story.

- Mikhail Sirtis

I see him more nowand clearerI see his beautiful smileand his reader’s handsgently caressing the pagesI can see him looking at people inside outbecause that is what writers door lingering under street lights to readbecause he couldn’t pay the electricity billIt excites me, panics me,yet it calms me – watching for him

Loving himHow he picks pennies out of the fountainto read peoples’ wishesHow he is left handed and loves Virginia WoolfHow he loves me, because I love stories.

- Thalia Jankoski

From Thalia to Mikhail9th April

Dear Mikhail,Is it alright if I call you that?

Dear Mm. Sirtis,I had a feeling I’d meet you at some point

Dear Mm. Sirtis,I feel like I’ve been seeing you for weeks

Dear Mm. Sirtis,I’m sorry I was staring so rudely when I came in this morning to find out about your offer. You look so uncannily like a man I’ve been seeing every night for the past few weeks

Dear Mm. Sirtis,I am so sure I’ve seen you before. When did you come to town? A few weeks ago a man walked under a street light near where I live and looked at me in a way I will never

Dear Mm. Sirtis,I am so grateful for a new book shop in town. I was beginning to tire of the library. And now your book shop is even better because it’s just across the street! I’m looking forward to

Dear Mm. Sirtis,I love books. I really do. Sometimes I find one and I look at it and I just know I have to read it because it’ll be important to me. I want to come spend a day going through your bookshelves. I have a feeling I’ll find a book I really have to

Dear Mm. Sirtis,

Thank you for your letter. I would like to subscribe to your weekly reading lists. Attached is my form.

Sincerely,

Thalia Jankoski

From Zara to Mikhail9th April

Dear Mm. Sirtis,

Thank you for your invitation to subscribe to your weekly reading lists, but I’m not interested. I cannot afford to make weekly trips to your shop to be a part of some reading group full of people I am obligated to interact with. Please do not continue to send me subscription requests.

Thank you,

Zara Matei

From Kariyna to Mikahil9th April

Dear Mm. Sirtis,

Thank you for your offer. I don’t usually get early follow ups from the people I do business with, so this is a pleasant surprise. It was quite flattering to see I had been offered an exclusive opportunity to get recommendations from an expert. I’m not sure how that happened – getting a call for help in redesigning your bookshelves would have been more believable.

I think doing some reading from your collection is a good idea. I’m ashamed to say I’m quite poorly versed in the classics! I’m no longer in the habit of running through books by the week, so perhaps you could make an exception with me and we could correspond on a monthly basis? I am overseeing another project and I can’t read on site because there’s too much dust around. But I must admit when I walked into your shop I was almost tempted to sit in one of those cushions against the glass wall at the back (velvet is my favourite) and take a break and do some reading. I have not been able to read enough.

I will be coming near the bookshop quite frequently because my project is on the landfill two blocks from your shop, where the statue of our first mayor used to be. I’m supposed to design a scale model of Town Hall, complete with historical references. For people like you, I presume. It’s only just started so I’ll have to be there for a while; if you are yet to explore our lovely town, you’re welcome to join me one day – company would be a pleasant change. I usually take my afternoon break near the park across the road. The statue at the very front corner is the favourite spot of the man in sole possession of the best ice cream in town.

So I will be seeing you soon to finalise your registration, collect my first book and take you on a tour of Sojano. I look forward to it.

Regards,

Kariyna Faria


Dear Mm. Sirtis,

The prospect of coming in to your shop for books which you are also offering to dozens of middle-aged women who only read to give themselves something to do was unbearable. But getting weekly deliveries for free because I’m an exclusive customer – what on earth makes me exclusive I’ve no idea, should I be wary? – is not so bad. I wasn’t paying attention to how long this offer lasts but I should make use of it. It’s really a coincidence that you sent me Jerry Spinelli because I recently heard about him and was considering trying him.

I’ll be done by the end of the week.

Zara Matei

From Kariyna to Mikhail11th April

Dear Mm. Sirtis,

I was watching your bookshop from across the street today and thinking how beautiful a terrace would be. Rooftops are so therapeutic! It would be the perfect spot to read when the shop is closed for lunch. I have always wanted to design a terrace, but my clients want other things. When I sit on the terrace I always feel so much closer to the people next door. You are so lucky to work next to Ms. Susannah’s tea shop. Fortea just gives me good vibes. The whole structure seems to pull everything around it into a warm tea-soaked hug. I read most of the book you sent me sitting in there. Strawberry tea is my favourite, Ms. Susannah makes it so well.

There were no descriptions of tea shops or anything of the sort in the book you sent me, I noticed! At times James Joyce got difficult to follow; I couldn’t see where he was. But his words are powerful and I felt like while reading him I was balancing out the world – on a strong solid cane chair with a hot cup of tea on one side, and hurrying to keep up with the inside of a person’s mind on the other side.

Isn’t that a brilliant idea for a design?

Regards,

Kariyna Faria


Dear Mm. Sirtis,

I think we’ll be great friends! How did you manage to pick our just the right stories for me? It’s as though you know what has been going through my mind and have given me a story that simply puts it down clearly. I am never able to do that with my writing, turn the thoughts into writing in just the right way. It is so tiring, thinking so much about so many things all at once, like how much of my life I would miss if I lost everything, or how people who are in a rush eat at French restaurants, or how much a person is trying to hide when I look them in the eye and whether they are trying to read me like I am trying to read them. People are interesting to read and sometimes I want to be read too. Or rather, I want to be worth reading. Do we classify people as worth reading the same way we classify books as worth reading?

I loved the collection of short stories you sent me. I love Oscar Wilde, I wish I had discovered him sooner. I think he understood people. Me, at least. Like that story about the woman without a secret…I feel her pain completely, a woman who wished with all her heart that she had some mystery about her. It makes people notice you, remember you, maybe even think twice about you. I suppose then that my problem is that I am an open book. Nobody takes open books very seriously, do they? It is hard to realize you have nothing worth hiding.

So I give you full permission to read me cover to cover, Mm. Sirtis. I have no secrets, only much curiosity.

Love,

Thalia


Dear Mm. Sirtis,

I feel like Stephen Dedalus’s mind is filled with the same gears and levers as Sojano’s Town Hall – but put together so intricately that I cannot seem to find my way through it. I can find my way through Town Hall easily (even though I didn’t design it). The layout is symmetrical and predictable. The East Wing is an exact mirror image of the West Wing. At the foot of the north stairs is the dining hall and a bathroom; at the foot of the south stairs is the kitchen and a bathroom. Stephen Dedalus’s mind is full of disappearing doors and staircases that move and rooms that exchange places and corridors that lead to everywhere and nowhere. Saints, sinners, artists, are they all the same thing? Perhaps this is how everyone’s minds are designed. Perhaps I would be foolish to try and design my own – and even more foolish to try and draw a map for yours.

Regards,

Kariyna


Dear Mm. Sirtis,

I continue to enjoy the collection you posted me. I could not stop talking about that fisherman to my roommate all of yesterday, it was funny because as I talked I became more aware of what I thought and felt, as though it didn’t really matter that I was talking to someone else, I was learning something myself, I think that is the interesting thing about books don’t you, they force you to think hard about who you are if you are to enjoy them. I wish I could have met that fisherman, Mm. Sirtis. I could have warned him. (But then there would have been no story for me, would there? – How selfish we readers can be.) Well then, I wish I could have met that mermaid. I wonder if I would have been able to resist. I suppose I would have, because I don’t believe in love at first sight, but I wish I did and I would like to have not been able to resist, the way I cannot resist you. I think you would have made a beautiful mermaid, Mm. Sirtis. If there is one person who can get a man to sell his soul, it’s you.

I can’t wait to read your next book. I don’t even want to read my own anymore; you know just what to recommend!

Love,

Thalia


Dear Mm. Sirtis,

I’m amused to hear that you like to read at our godforsaken train station as you watch the trains come and leave while you remain chained to this town. You’re naïve to be seeing only life and colour in railway stations. The excitement is not for yours or any other reader’s or writer’s entertainment. You said you thought yourself observant? Observant people notice things that happen to people, which remain just under the surface, but when there are too many people moving too fast, these things get lost in a crowd. Do you notice the child’s distressed face as his book falls onto the tracks by mistake, or the red finger marks on the woman’s face and throat? Or the sore needle marks on the homeless man’s arms? There is no beauty in such a place unless you have your fairy tale stories with you to read. Which reminds me, I finished. I’m ready for your next one. (I’ll go sit at the station and read if you like.)

Zara Matei


Dear Mm. Sirtis,

I finished the book! I took it with me to the Sojano East Railway Station last night, because waiting for clients can be lonely and it gets cold by midnight. You would know, wouldn’t you? I’ve seen you walking past Fortea when I stay up late writing. Are you sleepless too, Mm. Sirtis? You should visit Sojano East. Sometimes I find it comforting. I share a love-hate relationship with train stations. They are filthy and loud and incredibly tiresome and they worsen my headaches badly; but they are so full, so saturated, so beckoning – they are brimming with things my eyes are drawn to from every corner. The men spilling body odour, the women in odd monkey caps that do not fit, the tiny children wandering around with luggage larger than them; the garbage spilling out of the garbage cans and the rude street vendors with overpriced sodas, the brightly coloured cheap scratchy wool sweaters and women with blackened teeth roughly handling their wild and free spirited children. The stench of sweat, trash and overripe fruit is incredibly unappealing and yet so completely unforgettable that I know there is magic in it. In the filth, the noise, the way the rich fade to the background, upstaged by the charm of the poor. It is the kind of place that tires me out endlessly and yet nowhere else do I have such a strong urge to write, hurriedly before a dozen other things catch my eye. The kind of place I know I don’t appreciate enough while in it, but which I know I will miss most terribly were I to ever leave.

Love,

Thalia


Dear Mm. Sirits,

How did you know I write? Thank you for offering to look through my pages. I have lost track of how long I have been writing this story for, and something always seems to be missing. Sometimes I feel that what was missing was your shop.

Can I meet you at my wishing fountain tonight and show you? It’s my favourite place to write and I want to show it to you.

Love,

Thalia

From Zara to Mikhail22nd April

Dear Mm. Sirtis,

You were teasing me when you sent me The Library Card, weren’t you? Do you think I am one of those teenagers who doesn’t value her life enough and needs to be saved by books? I am just starting to think of us as friends, Mm. Sirtis; don’t ruin it by assuming you know me.

I love Jerry Spinelli. I love the girl who keeps seeing the library card glaring at her every time she plans to cut class and hang out at the mall. I don’t find it cheesy or preachy. I love how people who don’t care, care about books. I finished your book (ready for the next one, by the way) and I thought it was excellent. But if you were trying to teach me something with it, it didn’t work.

Zara

From Thalia to Mikhail23rd April

Dear Mm. Sirtis,

I wish I could have found someone like Joe and his farm. I want to write about the countryside, Mm. Sirtis. I want to be able to appreciate homemade wine and the memories it is supposed to hold. I want to know how to garden and where to collect the magic herbs that Joe and Jay always have. But all I know is this city, and as beloved as it is to me, I need to see something new, I need to see beyond the colourful markets that gleam with mirrors that catch the light of night and day, or the streetlights that flicker and find only the shadows of faces, the roads, wide and narrow, that have holes you have to jump over as you hurry across to beat the traffic that won’t stop for you even if it kills you, the huge houses and the drivers that holler abuses more colourful than my beads, and rapid glimpses of money flashing between two hands because that is where everything comes from in the city; money. And the sidewalks that fall apart and the longlasting battle between cement and seeds and the people whose faces disappear in crowds or as the bus goes by.

But I know nothing of quiet, of nature’s aromas or familiar faces at cafes or of cobblestone streets, of long walks and plants and seasons and travelling and gypsies. I don’t have secret methods of keeping plants alive during the rainy season. I can’t smell the past in a bottle of wine, hear it whispering to me. I want to write about what I have never seen, what I will never be able to tire of. And that is why I need your stories.

Love,

Thalia


Dear Mm. Sirtis,

I cannot tell you how you are opening my eyes! A circus built on illusions? That is the most beautiful blueprint idea that has ever entered my mind! I wish I had thought of it first. A circus may be just what Sojano needs. Or perhaps not, which would give me even greater reason to design one. I am aching to see a plot layout of the circus as it was set up in Boston.

The idea of constructing and draughting with enchantments is so intoxicating. They call themselves illusionists and magicians and magicians’ assistants, but what they really are is architects. We need architects that can make us feel close to our spaces, Mm. Sirtis. Celia and Marco make me feel close to the circus they way they are close to it. I don’t know if I have made people of Sojano feel close to the city, or whether I am close to it anymore. This book has shown me that rooms should make one laugh and cry and remember. They should allow one to make wishes and get lost over and over again and find a new corner every time. That is not what I do.

I want a new space to work with, Mm. Sirtis, something sharper and darker and more full of dreams and less of bricks. These walls are irritating me. Did I design this? They are all so close together, there is no space and I cannot breathe.

Regards,

Kariyna


Dear Mm. Sirtis,

Your last recommendation is simply torturing me. Beauty can do that to people, don’t you think? Beauty scares me. I think perhaps that’s why I want to create it so badly. I want to scare them, unnerve them, make them uncomfortable and confused like you do to me. It’s a beautiful feeling, really…like being afraid of looking too hard in case it all disappears…and then tiptoeing around it, thrilled that it is even letting me exist in the same space as it, like I am doing something dangerous. I want to create that feeling. I want to put people on edge, thrill them, choke them. This circus chokes me, Mm. Sirtis. The black and white, the human statues, the labyrinth…whether they all choose to call it enchantment or manipulation or illusion, it is all magical. I want that, I want magic in the form of a cursed travelling circus to come take me away, choke me, paralyse me. And I want to do the same to the world – create a cursed travelling circus that will invade their dreams. It is a circus of dreams, is it not? I want to be a part of peoples’ dreams. Peoples’ nightmares. If I had spellbooks I would write all of yours myself. I want people to really know me; I want their secrets and I want to show them the strange and fascinating and frightening…so I write.

They are all so magical in their own ways, enchantments or no enchantments, are they not? They allow themselves to live in a world where there is no line between fiction

and reality. They drink, they watch their wine glasses refill themselves. They dance, they forget, they remember, they forget again; they do not do not look twice at fabric of shifting colours, or notice people without shadows. I think that is such a breathtakingly glorious state of being – there is no magical, no strange, no rational. There just is. I want to be a part of such a state of being, such a state of creating.

I cannot stop thinking about this book.

Love,

Thalia


Mm. Sirtis,

I have never seen anyone describe how cruel people can be quite so cheerfully as Jerry Spinelli. Don’t worry, I didn’t find the book at all cheerful, but the child’s voice is refreshing. I was afraid when you said you were going to send me a book about peer pressure it would be clawy and sentimental. It’s ridiculous when authors get sentimental and whine about the cruelties of society as though they expected, or were promised, any different. (That is probably the one useful thing my father ever taught me.)

The “it’s okay to be different” moral is tired and overused, but sometimes I wonder why there are no such “different” people in this hell town.

Zara


Dear Mm. Sirtis,

Thank you for the walk earlier this evening. It was lovely. It’s the first time I’ve relaxed on the streets in a long time. I go out a lot, but I often see people and things that make me uncomfortable, and I get stressed, and my roommate and best friend, Nicholas, he’s always looking out for me and he thinks I shouldn’t be out alone because he says the things I see aren’t good for me, but when I was with you I didn’t notice any of that. Because our conversation was too interesting!

Sometimes I think you’re right, that my characters respond to me if I give them that space. I have always loved my characters very much, but I never considered the fact that they might love me too, if I gave them that chance.

Love,

Thalia


Dear Mm. Sirtis,

I was at the Sojano West Railway Station today and I was so busy thinking about Miquel standing with his hands in his pockets watching Julian’s train speed off, knowing he would never find Penelope in Paris, that I didn’t even notice they’d built a new platform. I wonder why I didn’t know about this already, or perhaps I forgot.

It’s a well-designed platform. It’s the only one that’s outdoors; I’ve been meaning to propose that idea to the mayor ever since I read about your travelling circus and their enchanted train. I haven’t suggested anything to the mayor in a long time. I’m not sure who put forth this idea – probably whoever they hired after firing me – but you should go see it next time you’re at the station. I could almost see you sitting on the bench in the silence, just reading. Or perhaps watching us read. Almost like you…arranged for us to be here. It was very unsettling.

Kariyna


Mm. Sirtis,

Your books are very time consuming. I know you’ve been telling me I have to get into the story and all that, but this is annoying. It’s a good thing I have nowhere else to be this week than the sunny snow-capped hills of Switzerland. I focus best on distractions, and I can’t read a single page of this story without getting distracted. It’s not that the story is boring. It’s not. But there are so many sights and sounds in every line which I could imagine forever if I had that kind of time (or maybe I do). The words Guthrie and Dinny make up are so funny yet so accurate that I feel like I know what they mean before she explains them. I’ll suddenly remember a time I was looking for just the right word and as usual couldn’t find it. And then I’ll realize that this word, Guthrie’s word or Dinny’s word, is it. It’s like Sharon Creech knew, in a way. She makes things clear.

This is what I hate about stories. They make me an unpleasant person. They remind me of how little I know. They fill me with rage and jealousy and something else and it makes me very ugly. I’ve always known I’m not enough, but I only regret that when I meet people like Dinny. It’s nice to not have to be answerable to anybody – but I can’t help but feel answerable to the people you are introducing me to.

Zara


Dear Mm. Sirtis,

I have made a new friend. I know you told me to keep my soul to myself, but I couldn’t help myself. There are these boys who come to the soup kitchen every now and then and today I saw one of them holding a Thomas Hardy and I ran up to him and launched into my theory of how Alec d’Urberville is redeemed and he looked a little surprised at first but then I could see him start to listen more carefully and then I realized that his was exactly what you said was sharing too much of myself so I quickly stopped talking and covered my mouth so I wouldn’t say anymore and while he looked at me I quickly walked away.

But it did look like he agreed with me. I am starting to think that that is what friends are, people who feel the same way about the same books.

Love,

Thalia


Dear Mm. Sirtis,

Your books are finishing quickly. Is that why you call yourself Cover to Cover? I see the second cover far too soon. It’s so uncomfortable. Summer is so uncomfortable. The cement becomes too hot and the sweat on peoples’ foreheads is just too visible and everyone’s gazes last too long and everything is just too real. It’s as though when I turn your pages I get a nice pre-rain breeze that breaks through this summer.

Please send two books at a time starting from my next delivery.

Zara


Mm Sirtis

I am on my way back from a client’s house, maybe you know him, I see his daughter here sometimes, thank goodness your shop is on the way I had to come ask you if you can hear the bells too, they keep chiming and the chimes sound like the Big Ben but I know that it’s really someone calling to Septimus Warren Smith and I can’t find him and the chimes are getting urgent and I wonder if they are actually for me? – no I can hear his mind in mine and he can hear the bells too and I wonder why his wife thought he was crazy! I don’t have a doctor thank goodness, because he would never

understand me the way Nicholas does, he would keep saying strange things like manic and depressive and bipolar like the lady at the soup kitchen does when she thinks I can’t hear, but what do they even mean, I think Virginia Woolf and Septimus Warren Smith know much more than the doctor or the wife, I want to be able to live like them, to just live, the way they live with themselves and the people inside them, knowing those people and denying the rest. I will live with Apoorva until she kills me because I love her and she loves me, you told me she’d love me if I gave her that chance, I must listen to her and not the doctor or the lady at the soup kitchen. And I must listen to you because you are inside me too, I will know you and live with you and keep seeing you under that first street light reading and pulling your coat tight around your shoulders against the rain even though Sojano’s rains are its most glorious pride and joy. Oh I can still hear the chimes of the clock! I will go follow them now

Thalia


Mm. Sirtis,

Children’s novels make me less uncomfortable (though children are a different story altogether). It is good to make the reader less uncomfortable. Have you told that to the slut who is always hanging around your bookshop, leaving notes and spying on you from across the street, asking you for writing tips? It is good to make the reader less uncomfortable, and show them people who they can like and not hate, and make them forget their terrible adult lives and terrible adult families. Instead, I see everything a little fuzzy and a little prettier. I think you planned this well for me, the children’s novels, the ones that are good at making me believe I had a childhood too. Send me more authors from this genre?

Zara


Dear Mm. Sirtis,

You should congratulate yourself! You are managing feats I would not have thought possible of anyone! Do you know that I was the mayor’s most valuable architect? That I have seen every blueprint that went into this city? That I designed practically every change Sojano has seen this generation? I know the streets in my sleep! Do you have anything you know in your sleep? You could say me, and the stories you send me. I was reading Joyce’s short stories while walking to work and got so absorbed in it, when I looked up I could not place where I was! It’s so funny, making an architect get lost in her own city! But of course that is the kind of thing you do! It’s quite fun, getting lost, oh yes, it’s exciting and thrilling to look up and realize you cannot make

sense of anything you have created! I wonder if one day your readers will do this to you! I hope so!

Kariyna

From Zara to Mikhail1st May

Mm. Sirtis,

Why are you taking so long to send my books? I haven’t heard from you since yesterday! I even came by the shop but the note said you were off making a delivery again. You are never in the same place as me anymore. I am in the waiting place; you like me here and you stay elsewhere. I don’t want to be in the waiting place. But I’m waiting because it is the children’s novels which make this dump less real. Sojano is not real, I tell myself. Only children are real, and magic tricks and boarding schools. But Sojano is becoming real again. I need to go to a different place, but if not your bookshop, then where?

Zara

From Thalia to Mikhail3rd May

Dear Mm. Sirtis,

You said you would come to the corner, under the street light. Didn’t you? I wanted to see you again. Didn’t you promise? But I went there tonight and the street was empty. You seem to be showing me a lot of emptiness. There are too many empty rooms, empty eyes, empty vodka bottles. It’s strange. Today I passed a train station so empty I could hear my voice echo even though I hadn’t said anything. I feel like there is something significant about train stations that I should know about…but I can’t remember…

Thalia

From Zara to Mikhail3rd May

Mm. Sirtis,

I have the strangest feeling this isn’t where I’m supposed to be. I don’t think I’m in the right place. You’ve shown me several places, you’d know what this is not the place where I’m supposed to be. This is the wrong place. Bad things will happen here. I should be in a different place. I shouldn’t be here. But that’s strange because here is all I know. But you’ve shown me other places. I should go to another place. This place

is wrong for me. Here is never right. Elsewhere is always the place to be. Here has been too painful for too long. Here should be somewhere else, where my mother and I were not raped and my father’s favourite hooker is not a girl who’s in love with you. Here should be a place I can tolerate, a place where I can find peace. That here is elsewhere. Like in black and white striped tents where acrobats and cat tamers live, in bookshops and Victorian mansions, or boarding schools in Switzerland and Parisian cafes. This place shouldn’t be my here anymore.

Zara

From Thalia to Mikhail4th May

Where are you, Mikhail?

Thalia


Stop. Hiding. From. Me. You are always one corner ahead of me, aren’t you? You have been, ever since I first saw you, before you even opened you precious bookshop and became famous! I loved you first, you son of a bitch, I brought you here, I wrote you, I showed you the wishing fountain and everyone’s wishes, I never let you go and when I need you I can’t find you because you are playing a game with me!

I don’t have time to prance all over town like I used to I have clients to take care of and unless you want to be one of them

Stop lying to me. You told me you’d meet me at the wishing fountain. I expect you there tomorrow.

Thalia


My pages are flying away, Mikhail, all my paper and ink and soul keep flying away in the wind and they always end up at your doorstep where I have to come collect them in the morning isn’t that strange


They are not responding to me you liar you promised me my writing would respond to me, can they even hear me, can you even hear me, or are you just another character in my story, are you even real, and what does real even mean, are we real, am I real


I know what’s real, I’ll find you, my love

Epilogue

Sirtis Cover to Cover closed down seven years ago, when Sirtis disappeared. When Zara Matei, Thalia’s client’s daughter, left Sojano for good. When Kariyna Faria, our city architect, lost her job and went to live in a nuthouse. When Thalia Jankoski, my roommate, best friend, partner, and other half, died.

Mikhail Sirtis disappeared just like Zara, Kariyna and Thalia, his shop emptied overnight. There was nothing left but bits of letters, scribbled notes and leftover novels, those damned novels that obsessed them and took them away.

He came for them. He came to take them somewhere. They left. They went where he took them, and liked it better there, and stayed. He knew where they needed to be. Sometimes I think I’m the one who died, not Thalia. He chose her. He knew what she needed. He knew they needed each other.

Sometimes I think if I’d been extraordinary enough, he’d have chosen me too. But no one looks extraordinary next to Thalia. She was meant for him, for his poison, his words, his plan. His habit of making his way into peoples’ dreams.

I will never forget the day I found her. She was lying there on the ground of our alley, where she always slept – or had trouble sleeping, more like. It had been our place. We’d made it our place. Muggers, dealers, drags and hookers, they all left us alone there. But the day I found her, she didn’t look like she was in her own place. She looked like she was lost, lost trying to get somewhere else. Looking for somewhere, almost found it, far away. She was holding tight to her papers and her diary – and their ashes. She’d burnt those papers, the ones she’d never let me read, the ones she’d begged him to read. Or maybe he’d burnt them, burnt them both, Thalia and her story. They were the same thing, in a way. And that night I knew they both belonged to a stranger.

Or maybe not a stranger. But definitely not a man who cared about her the way I did. A man who came to our town with a job to do, and then disappeared. Disappeared to

the next cursed town to find the next set of insane patients that needed to be treated with poison.

But then, she didn’t need someone who cared about her the way I did.

I miss her. I think of her when I sit at her favourite fountain or see kids at the soup kitchen reading books. Sometime I think she abandoned me. But I know that we were together only by accident. What happened with Mikhail was not an accident. She did what she had to do. And now she’s gone.

Writing for Mikhail- final 2015

Documents

owner of sirtis cover

haunting sirtis cover

mikhail sirtis

reading people

homeless people

better writer

town hall

ordinary town