Short Love Stories | Nels Schifano | Three Letters 4

Short Love Stories | Nels Schifano | Three Letters 4


Three Letters
by: Nels Schifano

<4>



She put the tin on the table. Inside lay a medal from the Polish Airforce; a commemorative coin; a pebble taken from Ilfracomb beach in 1978 (could she really remember the heavy heat of that day or did she need the proof of the pebble to tell her she had been there); a present bought but never given; and inside a neatly folded bag, three envelopes. She glanced around the room, from somewhere inside a wall a pipe clanked - the house clearing its throat - and took out the top envelope.

An antelope leapt across a colourful stamp. It looked startled as antelopes often do caught in the sights of the black postmark. The paper inside was thick and cream-coloured, it had a blue letterhead and the date in the top right hand corner was July 2000. As she let her eyes wander over the page she noticed it was just a little crumpled, stiff in places, as if it had been wetted then dried.

*

This must be something of a surprise. If, that is, this letter gets to you. I remembered your address, of course, but then it suddenly struck me that maybe you had moved and I didn't know and anyway the post round here isn't exactly reliable. So perhaps I am only writing a letter to myself.

Really now that I've started I can't think what it was I wanted to say. I think it was just the act of writing that was important, just to feel as if I was still in contact with things, although I guess a blank piece of paper in an envelope would have seemed a little strange.

I've really no need to ask how things are with you. It all seems to have worked out pretty much as you planned. But still I hope you are both healthy and happy.

I am afraid I've done nothing very exciting to tell you about. Here is just an endless succession of long boring tasks, and then there's the heat and the clouds of flies that rise from the river and make everything twice as hard. But this evening as I washed and dried my clothes suddenly there was this feeling of satisfaction. Strange, five months of toil and worry then calm descends as welcome and unexpected as an ice-cream van clattering through the bush.


1 2 3 4 5 6 7