Notes on “To His Coy Mistress” and “Suo”

For several years now, NPR’s All Things Considered has been running a short, short story contest called Three-Minute Fiction. The idea is simple: people send in stories that can be read over the radio within three minutes – that is, stories of 600 words or less – and an author-judge selects from among the entrées what he or she considers the best of the lot. To make things even more interesting, the judge will toss in a challenge: stories must include certain words, for example, or start and end with specific lines. The contest has generated a lot of enthusiasm, with thousands of submissions each competition round, from professional and aspiring writers alike. After all, anyone can tell a story of a few hundred words – and at that length, a novice or amateur has a chance of coming up with a gem of a tale as well as the most polished of writers. So, therefore, many try.

A regular NPR listener, I had been aware of the contest and listened to some of the winners read aloud on the program. (There are small prizes awarded – signed copies of the author-judges’ books, usually – but the real reward is the exposure your story gets from being read on air and posted on the NPR website). But the thought of joining the game myself never crossed my mind – at least, not until I was driving around the Haight in San Francisco one evening earlier this year in January, heard on the radio that another round of the contest was coming up, and was suddenly determined to submit something of my own. What gave rise to my resolve at that particular point in time is a tale in itself – one that would take considerably more than 600 words – and maybe someday I’ll tell it, when I’m feeling a little more rash and a lot more self-revealing.

In any event, that particular round required a story (of 600 words or less, of course) that had one character making a joke and one character weeping. What came up for me was the first story in this blog, “To His Coy Mistress.” I’m quite fond and proud of it, since, well, I wrote it. Also, it’s the first piece of creative writing I had done in a long, long time that was longer than a haiku or short verse, so its service as an icebreaker endears it to me all the more.

Many months later, the next round came up, and the challenge this time was to have a character come to town (or village, city, whatever) and another one leave. “Suo” was my first response to that challenge, one that I did not submit since it’s pretty bleak (among other reasons), and yet one I also hold in much affection (see reason stated in previous paragraph). I came up with another story that I did submit, which I will post at a later time.

Anyway, that’s how these first two stories came about.

Suo

His name was Suo. Once as a child gathering grass seeds in the brush outside his village, he found beneath the stalks a field mouse, prone and torn. Maybe it had wrenched itself free from a hawk’s claws and fallen from the sky – but shredded and bloodied as it was, it was still, barely, unimaginably alive. There was not enough flesh on its bones to make more than a morsel – not worth taking home for supper – but every night Suo’s mother had sang to him the words of Merciful Tual, and heeding those words, he stooped to the ground for a rock with which to put to an end its suffering.

As he knelt by the mouse and raised the rock, he saw its eyes looking to him. Caught by those dark, silent beads, Suo’s arm was stayed. He knew then that as he held the rock over the creature’s head, a rock in another hand was raised above his. Suo was still for the space of three breaths – then swung down his arm.

Now Suo is a man turning the last bend on the path before his village gate, enduring his brother’s pleas. His brother asks over and over if he truly was willing to let his nephews and nieces starve. Suo had just visited his brother’s farm with a sack of bean meal and had to refuse his brother’s implorations for another, having barely enough food to put in his own children’s mouths. His brother had walked out, to stand on his parched field, and Suo, taking leave of his brother’s wife, had left. Halfway home, his brother had caught up with him. Now, just in sight of the village gate, his brother becomes silent at last. Now his brother’s hand digs into his leather pouch and comes out with a flint knife.

Now Suo is white-haired, and staggering in the dark, in lightly drifting snow. He no longer feels the coarse, sweat- and pus-drenched cloak about him. The harvest had been meager, the winter harsh. In the middle of a long night, a stranger had come to the village, squeezed through the village walls between two logs, and died in a barn under a cow’s udders. Boys who came to steal a few mouthfuls of milk stole his shirt, and soon boils were budding in their hands, soon sprouting in villagers’ skins. In time Suo, too, felt ripe little lumps growing in his armpits. He hid in his little hut for days as his flesh was slowly devoured. In the end he did not wait for the headman’s men to come and beat him with their long sticks and drive him out the village gate. Wanting to spare his sons and grandsons the duty of standing by him and being beaten themselves, he stole into the black night, into the desolate plain.

Now Suo is running through the wavering, searing air of his burning village, pitchfork in hand. The headman in desperate rage had ordered torches to be put to the granary, to deny the raiders their prize, and the flying cinders had started the nearby thatch roofs to smoldering. Suo had rushed his wife, heavy with their first child, to the footpath behind the village, there to join the women, children, and half the village men fleeing into the hills. Now he is running to the walls, to take his place on the wooden ramparts with the men who stayed; now he is gazing at the dust cloud in the plain, growing ever larger.

(September 2011)

To His Coy Mistress

He climbed the red, dim-lit stairwell to her loft for the last time as anxious as the first. But whereas then he had been filled with trepidation and excitement, now he was simply fearful at still not having found the words with which to say goodbye.

She opened the door in her dark blue negligee, smiled, and let him in. He looked around the candle-lit room, at the poster bed with lace sheets – at her.

She had become unpretentious and more beautiful over the years. When they first met, her face had been fuller, her demeanor distant and haughty. She had described herself as “fully independent” in her online ad and later made clear that she looked down on the girls who were managed. Youthful flesh had gone and left her face sculpted, exquisite, and she had become kinder, more forgiving, though still proud that she was her own woman.

There was a flash of movement on the floor. She stooped down and came up with a ball of ginger fur. “A friend’s cat had kittens, and she gave me this one,” she said.

“What’s – his? her? – name?” he asked.

“Him. I haven’t named him yet. I want to know who he is first,” she replied, putting it down.

They moved in for their usual first long, lingering kiss. He thought to himself, How could she not know? Even if I’ve been too much of a coward to tell her about meeting Clara, surely she must know by how cold I’ve become?

They undressed, went to bed, and made love, then lay in each other arms, quietly breathing. It was sweet, and it was release. But where before it had also been a desperate longing, now it was just that: sweetness, release.

As he started dressing, the kitten jumped on the bed and she took it in her arms. As she stroked its fur, she said, trying to make her tone light, “You know, there’s a farmer’s market in the park on Sunday. I was thinking of getting some artisan bread and cheese for a picnic.”

He froze. Now? he thought. Now you hint that you might see me outside of this room? For years he had begged to take her out to dinner, for coffee, for a walk – to spend time with her off the clock. Not once had she agreed, or given him more than the barest glimpse of what her real life was like. She had never even given him her real name. He felt strange calling her by her handle, “La Courtesan,” so he had taken to calling her “Ell.” “Boundaries,” she kept repeating, whenever he pushed.

His will hardened as he finished buttoning his shirt. He had Clara now, and he was anxious to get on with real life, with her. And the words were there at last. He smiled as he went to her and scratched the kitten’s ear. “I know what you can name him,” he said in a bantering tone. “Call him ‘Pimp.’ So when people ask you his name, you can say, ‘He’s my Pimp.’”

He frowned as her face fell. “Sorry,” he said, “Bad joke.”

He left the envelope on her dresser, the same amount as always, even as she had raised her rates on her other clients. “Goodnight, Ell,” he said as he walked to the door. She had sat down on the bed and did not follow him, did not kiss him goodbye as had been her custom, merely kept stroking her kitten. He gave her one last look, then left. Inside the room, she began to weep.

(January 2011)