Hemingway / Kafka

 The clock is in the cage with me and though it is the only furniture I have I do not recognize its ticking. The straws are yellow and thin and many, but I never touch them but only sit on them. On days when things went well I would stare into the sky and count how many colors I saw in it. These days things are not going well. There are not as many people as there used to be before and I see more colors in the sky.

            I remember the children when they came and stayed longer than any adult. They held hands with each other with mouths open and eyes wide looking at me as if I were a goat. But children meant that things were going well and after they have gone I felt very good.

            Things are unsuccessful now. I do not know how many days I have been fasting for no one is keeping count. I myself have given up counting. One day I was lying on the straws thinking about the children when the manager came to me and said, “Are you still fasting?”
            “Forgive me,” I told him.

            “Of course.”

            “I always wanted you to admire my fasting.”

            “Certainly we admire it.”

            “But you shouldn’t.”

            “All right, we don’t admire it. But why shouldn’t we?”

            “I can’t help it. I have to fast.”

            “Why can’t you help it?”

            “Because. I couldn’t find the food I liked.”

I saw in the manager the same look the children always had. And then I closed my eyes and he went away but the clock still ticked and the straw felt hard. 

This is my rendering of Kafka's "A Hunger Artist" in Hemingway' s monotony and surface simplicity. I actually like it. I wonder what Kafka or Hemingway might say when they read it. I wonder whether they'll recognize their works imbued in mine. 

The Road "Un-scene"

And afterwards he would dream about the library or what remained of it and in those dreams the books were always wet and ashen. When it rained they dripped of black ink, like some sacred ablution. There remained nothing inside the books for there was nothing left to leave behind. Empty pages. He thought of her books stacked on the piano. Books by authors whose names were long forgotten and meaningless to recall. She wrote in them, he could not read her dense writing but he knew it was profound. In another dream the boy was with him in the dank library. As they walked the pages rustled beneath their feet. There was no floor. Only ripped chapters of a bygone world. The man looked for food and shoes. He did not know why but in a dream there is an otherwise. She will come back from the dark. She will spare the third bullet. The boy bent down and lifted a book. A tome. The smell of burnt candles. He knew what it was but dared not touch it. Only the boy had the sanctity to hold it. What is it? the boy said. He could not say. That it was the beginning and you are holding it. It began to rain and the man woke up. The boy was next to him.

            Did you dream a good dream Papa?

            Almost. 

A scene from McCarthy's The Road that I imagine could have happened. I wanted to write about "the charred ruins of a library where blackened books lay in pools of water." I wanted to write like McCarthy, in his voice and timbre.