Selected Works from Young Writers for Democratic Action

Volume 28

Oct 23

Letter from the Editor

Friday, October 11, 2024
Revised from a letter written on July 29, 2024

Corruption in Venezuela & Beyond: A Sunrise or A Sunset On Democracy?

“Hasta aca se escuchan los disparos,” posts my thirteen year old cousin from Caracas at 9:05 on a Monday night in late July.
From here you can hear the gunshots.

This summer, in the wake of ten days of unprecedented political action in the US, Americans were left wondering about the state of democracy. From shots fired in Butler, PA, on July 13; cult-like symbols of bandages worn on the ears of MAGA Republicans at the Republican National Convention six days later; Former President Trump nominating JD Vance as his running mate; President Biden suspending his reelection campaign, nominating Vice President Harris to run in his place; to Kamala’s “Brat summer” and the mobilization of Gen Z and Millennial voters, America’s attention turned to the whirlwind of those eight days. Across the Caribbean Sea, tornadoes touched down.

It’s hard, in the wake of such political disparity and natural destruction, to look across the world and see hope fizzling out elsewhere. The haze of American politics and disaster blind us. Three hurricanes in two weeks, debates, court cases in the news. But in the spirit of truth, a running theme for our own contested election cycle, I have been thinking of my motherland.

Ballot boxes began filling in Venezuela as early as Saturday, July 27 in the election that succeeded years of protest against twelve-year incumbent dictator Nicolas Maduro. Maduro’s presidency began after the death of Hugo Chavez, the populist military officer who took office following his imprisonment for a failed coup against the previous president post-Caracazo. What you must know about Maduro is that, much like Trump, what he represents is not so much an individual’s beliefs, but a faction of extremist ideology that supersedes the candidate themselves. What I mean to say is that this is also an issue of extremism and party lines. Think of it like a dynasty.

After years of division between opposition forces, former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia received unified support to challenge Maduro this year. On July 29th, fewer than 80% of the votes were counted before the National Electoral Council (loyal to Maduro/the Chavistas) announced a third six-year term for Maduro by an alleged margin of 51% to González’s 49% (NBC). But James “Boz” Bosworth, political analyst and author of the Latin America Risk Report, argued in a memo on the 30th that these statistics are inaccurate:

“The totals (rounded) are 6.3 million votes for Edmundo Gonzalez and 2.8 million for Nicolas Maduro. The opposition won in every state. They won in precincts that previously voted heavily in favor of the Chavistas. It is a mathematical impossibility for Maduro to have won the election given that data.”

So what’s the truth, and what comes next? We don’t know. International governments called for transparency in the weeks following the announcement, but even if that happens, the fact remains that the election was never meant to be fair. From military forces blocking protestors to allegedly grounding flights carrying Latin American dignitaries due to be observing the elections, every step of the process was a violation of the rights of Venezuelans, and the effects are immediate.

Journalist Jasmina Kelemen believes these protests to be different from past ones:

“I think the government and its forces were genuinely surprised by the display of spontaneous protests that occurred throughout the country yesterday. This is the first time that you’re seeing such widespread popular actions that are not explicitly organized by the opposition. That is a huge difference from before and genuinely more dangerous for Maduro…This stolen election sort of rips back the curtain and exposes the dictatorship for what it really is.”

Venezuelan media analyst and attorney Yael Marciano says, “Venezuelans are highly educated, [and] at one point it was the largest group with high level education.” They know what they’re doing here. Citizens across the country can all agree on one thing: at least for the next few days, eyes are on Venezuela. While media coverage labels these protests to be a cry for help, many believe they’re just the opposite.

Edmundo Gonzalez reported in September that he was forced to sign a letter stating he lost the election. Now October, my writing follows Gonzalez’s recent exile in Spain, where he is seeking safety from Venezuelan authorities. The letter was allegedly meant to be private, but was presented during a nationally televised press conference by Jorge Rodríguez, head of the National Assembly of Venezuela. Rodriguez claimed this letter was signed of Gonzalez’s own volition, despite Gonzalez’s own claims the letter was signed under duress and under the threat of blackmail. In the letter, Gonzalez stated that he respected the court’s decision. Later, in a video message to the Venezuelan people, he referred to himself as “elected president of millions and millions of Venezuelans” and promised to “fulfill their mandate.”

This is where I use the dreaded phrase “unprecedented times.” This is where I say, months after writing the first edition of this letter, that I still don’t know what comes next. I can point out the parallels between Venezuela’s election and our own. I can talk about objective truth in a time of performance. I can do all of these things and at the end of the day still have no idea what will happen on November 5th. I have no clue what happens the sixth, the seventh, or any day after that. I can only know that the day will come.

Venezuelan poet and editor Nidia Hernandez has a message of hope::

“Although the dictatorship mocked, as always, the majority and its desire to get rid of the dictatorship with votes, lied to the country and the world and proclaimed itself the winner (because they are scoundrels), today people are in the streets, protesting the impunity and corruption, because those who hold power in Venezuela today have always been cynical, evil, criminals, I ask God that no more Venezuelans die, that democracy prevails, which with all its faces is one of the best civic inventions of man.”

As I edit this letter in my dorm room in Michigan, I think about the candidates whose hands I have shaken and those whose hands I will not shake. I remember watching the news show people in the street bang pots and pans and wave flags. I know now as I did then that the future of my country is uncertain. In the backyard, my dog who has never known the soil of my homeland chases birds under an orange sky. A part of me still can’t help but wonder if the sun is setting on corruption or if the sun is just setting. A part of me still can’t help but obsess over truth. The weight the word carries. A part of me still can’t help but wonder if truth will be victorious in November, and in the days that follow.

Selected below are works from Young Writers for Democratic Action’s anthology on the theme of Truth. In what ways do we seek it, avoid it? Who owns the truth? Who tells our stories? With the committee, I selected five pieces that seek to answer these questions and more. Because the youth branch works to connect writers through generations and to uplift voices of young writers in an action-focused space, this anthology showcases the work of writers from ranging generations, experiences, and backgrounds. We hope these will give a taste of what’s to come. The full anthology will be released on Y-WDA’s website at bit.ly/youngwritersfordemocraticaction on November 6th 2024.

Signed,

Bella Rotker

Youth Lieutenant Governor of Michigan 2023-24
Young Writers for Democratic Action Founder & Chair
Writers for Democratic Action National Steering Committee

Truth
Lois Anne

Sunridge Apartments
Youjaye Daniels

1
sits crooked on a small hilltop
smelling of marijuana and sun
burnt dreams from homes with
busted windows without panes
but rows of black crowbars
resembling the skid marks of homies
raided by cops against pavements
leading up to their mama’s dingy
back porch–the screen door riddled
with bullet holes hidden by curtains–
without enough government
assistance to pay for a maintenance
man to replace it, or succulents, or
decadent flower pots or window shades
to soak in the sunlight outshined by
beams seen only at the tip of a gun
better known as a glizzy around these
parts, a neighborHOOD where Glocks
gulp youngblood from black bodies more
than any institutional system could ever chug;
while wounded carcasses chilling on their
own porches, lighting up a blunt, sipping
40’s ask the sidewalks, Am I my
brother’s keeper, as the voices of their
partna’s dried blood cries to them
from the ground and up to God to
at least send rain so they’d bloom into
roses on the concrete like the rest of the kids.

2
where unemployed, grieving mamas’
with new hairdos, the freshest kicks,
and bubblegum pink polished nails
chill inside their apartments on comfy
couches too big for their living rooms,
the armrest right beside the rickety dining
room table used to play spades and poker,
smudged with oily fingerprints from eating
heavily fried and seasoned fast food just a
couple of blocks away; though the kitchen
is only two strides from the table with
appliances rusted mocha brown with hues
of crimson red and burnt orange and three
bedrooms and one bathroom right down
the hall, enough square footage for all of us
to crowd around our neighborHOOD mama’s,
their perfectly manicured fingers rubbing and
drawing circles on our backs, coiling our bouncy,
black curls, slouching while swimming in smoke
from weed, Newports, and the plum scented
incense burning in the cracks of the walls
around the living room where we puff and
pass and rotate taking sips of the sweet,
violet lean–the sons they have left—made
before sundown “cause we all gotta die someday.”

3
iswhereIstayedwithmyoldersisterwho
peddledhopesofindependencefromour
parentswhotookloansandpaidtheprice
forsomethingmorecalled“thesuburbs”
exceptweonlywonderedifthestench
sometimesbotheredthem–ifourfriends
intheneighborhoodcouldtellwedidn’t
belongwhentheirparentsrodepassour
two-storyhousedecoratedinyellowforeclosure
notices,howsheneverworriedaboutabillor
foodinSunridge,stampsmeantanapprovalto
bejoyful,carelessblackkidsalloveragain,
butformetobeirresponsiblewithno
consequencestobeateen–amistake—matching
onthebasketballcourtwithothermistakes,
thelinesfadedasamI,andalltheotherteens
dancingonthepuffycloudsweexhaledasif
wewerebackonthefieldbutthistime
itseemedweownedtheland–theterritory
wasourstodecoratewithbudsandredsolocups
offourlokofromthegasstationcalled“TheBP”
thespottogetthebackwoodsandthegastofill
yourlungs,togivebacktothehomelessbylistening
totheneighborHOODcrackheadbetterknownasUnc
seasonedinage,tellingtalesofthecrimeshe
witnessedovertheyears,thebloodymurders
committedrightwherewestood,hischarcoaleyes
dilatedlikeasolareclipse,arejectstillreporting
tothestreetsofSUNridgeApartmentsforafreefix,
currencygivenjusttobuyandconsumeanexperience,
tobeblindedbytherealhardshipsoflife,tobeasloth
throughoutthedayunderneaththeSun’sdisappointed
gaze,skippinguparidgetoblackonblackdiseased
crime,addictedtorottinginthehoodlikeagrapeinthe
sun,ourraisinedskinlovingSunridgeApartments
thoughitdriesusup,we’vewatcheditkill,butit’sthe
onlyplacewecouldbeburninginflamesandblame
ourselvesforthepainbutnotthefireandatthe
sametime,knowwebelongedsomewhere–toeach
other–whereelsewouldwegoforcommunity–that’ll
neverholdusaccountabletobesomethingmore–than
whattheyalreadyexpectustobe–exactly.

When Clay Speaks
Robin Davidson

They’ve begun to appear on the streets of St. Petersburg, Moscow,
these tiny human figures made of clay, like ghosts,
or the bodies of children lost.

And the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
so that he became a living creature.

Who’s formed the red body of a man, arms raised above his head,
holding the sign, don’t be silent ?

Who’s formed the green body of a woman, her arms invisible
behind the sign, no war ?

Who’s formed the bodies of a man and a woman, arms raised,
each holding a half flag, one blue, one yellow?

In Mariupol a woman lies on a stretcher in the ruins of a maternity hospital.
The child she carries is stillborn. She too is still, her body left
to her husband, to be spared a mass grave.

And the Lord God took the breathing man and placed him in a garden
through which a river runs in the land of Havilah. And
he was pleased at what he saw and called it good.

They appear among flowers and books, playgrounds and cemeteries,
these tiny human figures made of clay. Anonymously
they speak and the dead translate.

Who’s formed the red body of a woman kneeling naked, her arms stretched
wide above her head, holding a sign, white, blank?

Who’s formed the blue body of a man, holding a sign, don’t step on me!
above the God-sized monument’s stone foot?

Who’s formed the blue and yellow body of a man, legs dangling among
white tulips and the sign, no war.

Along the Romanian bridge over the Tilsa River between villages,
the border guards leave soft stuffed animals for
the children who must cross.

Along the concrete wall in snow, an old man bends to feed cats
abandoned in Kyiv’s bombardment. From shelter
cages in Lviv, a cacophony of cries and howls.

And so from the earth He formed all the wild animals, and
the birds of the air, and brought them to the man
to see what he would call them.

In his shop a man bakes hundreds of loaves a day. Bread for his city.
An actress leaves the stage, delivers tourniquets, bandages.
She fears the sky will rain down fire.

In the Palats Ukrayina station a woman and her son place two ripe apples
beside golden portraits, the Holy Mother, the crucified Christ,
in a subway car where they live during the shelling.

I too am in this poem, safe in my American house, to read this news.
But I too am witness. Their God is my God,
and I light this poem, my votive candle, and ask,

My God, Our God, where are you?

Note: Based on the Instagram images of Malenkiy_piket1.

The Blouse
Jonathan Levi

It was a late October evening, after the typhoons. An eager exchange student from the University of Virginia or Vermont was telling Victor about the documentary she was filming on Japanese relay races. Victor thought, “I’ve been running in Tokyo for a month and haven’t had a decent conversation with a Japanese person yet.” Without apology, Victor turned to his right and asked the Japanese girl tying her laces if she was free for lunch the next day.

Michiko worked as a sales assistant at Magari, a boutique on Maisen-dori that specialized in Italian clothes for women. Victor hadn’t seen her before, or at least hadn’t recognized her from the Wednesday night practices at the Yoyogi Track. But then he was Hungarian, and Tokyo was impenetrable. He hadn’t found a way to separate detail from background. The shops and cafés on Maisen-dori, the men and women, all were as flat and unintelligible as black-and-white characters on a scroll. So it wasn’t until he’d walked past the sign for Magari, that the shock of red, like an overripe pomegranate or the open throat of a scream, stopped Victor dead.

It was a red blouse—although it took him a moment to register that it was a blouse at all. Everything about it was loose, as if blown in a single breath from a molten ball of silk. The blouse wasn’t displayed up front in the window, but far back in the depths of the boutique. Nevertheless, the moment Victor passed the store, the blouse drew his focus. It floated on the frontier of perception, not on a hanger but in the air, a piece of red, not recognizably Italian or Japanese, infinitely adaptable, waiting for a soul.

He had forgotten what Michiko looked like, or more exactly, he had never seen her in her sales outfit and never seen her outside the yellow light of the track. Waiting for him just inside the door, she looked expectant, her curiosity framed by an expensive haircut. He realized that she must be ten years older than he’d thought at the track, over thirty, maybe even his age. Her smile was full of misguided canines that Victor hoped would be up for pork tonkatsu, or at least a Freshness Burger. But she linked her arm in his and led him across the street to Mr. Farmer.

“I’m in training.”

“Of course,” Victor said.

Of course. It was a phrase he used regularly since coming to Tokyo to mask his daily incomprehension.

Michiko ordered their salads. Victor took an empty carafe to the three water dispensers. Brain, Intestine, Wake Up. He read the labels in English. Purple, orange, brown leaves floated without meaning. Of course.

Victor did most of the talking. He had come to Japan to write a book about a Japanese filmmaker. “One night,” he told Michiko, “I was hosting a film festival—in honor of the Hungarian director Béla Tarr—when someone in the audience asked me about a Japanese guy.” Victor wasn’t a particular fan of Tarr. Tarr was a depressive, and Victor thought of himself as a happy person. Politics in Hungary sucked, but his life with Agnes and her six-year old daughter and his Dalmatian was more than decent. His column was popular. And whenever either politics or domesticity got to be too much, there were invitations to film festivals in Toronto or Cuernavaca or Sodankylä, a thousand kilometers north of Helsinki. Tarr’s view of life as a slow-motion descent into the mud was not Victor’s. And while he appreciated the art and the extra income from hosting festivals, he had no interest in watching Sátántangó once a year, as Susan Sontag said she did, or ever again in this lifetime.

“One woman in the audience said that the Japanese director Mansaku Mori had just won the Shozo Award. She read aloud something from the Jury statement, a quote from an interview with Béla Tarr. In the beginning, there was Mori.”

Victor had never heard of Mori. But he’d been feeling the itch of motion for a few weeks. He finessed a plane ticket out of his editor. Living in Tokyo, being inside Japan, would give him an easy link to Mori, a way to talk about Béla Tarr, and an article connecting the sunset of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the Land of the Rising Sun.

“Mori hasn’t answered my phone calls or my emails,” Victor told Michiko. “But I rented a VHS machine. In the last month, I’ve watched all twelve of Mori’s films. Imagine, twelve films, from the Fifties, from the Sixties, each one at least two hours long, some of them five. Some made in Tokyo, some in the countryside. But each one is filmed in only a single shot. Sometimes, not even the camera moves. Can you imagine?”

Michiko nodded, her lips pressed motionless together. Victor saw her gaze drift over his shoulder.

“Every day in the shop,” she said, “standing, waiting for customers. I see one shot. Eight hours. There it is, always. In front of me, behind me, in the back of the store. Red, floating. Always floating.”

Victor turned and followed her gaze, through the window of Mr. Farmer to Magari, across the street.”

The blouse.

“I’m sorry, Victor.” Michiko’s eyes dropped to her lap and he heard the click of her purse. “I have to get back to work.”

“Put away your money,” Victor said. “I’ll have a coffee and take care of the check.”

“Please.” Michiko held some bills out to Victor in the palms of both hands. “In Japan,” she said, “there is something called giri. Maybe you say obligation. Too much giri is a bad thing.”

“Buying you a salad is too much giri?” Victor laughed.

Michiko thought for a moment, then put the bills back in her purse. She took out a toothpick of a pen and a small notebook with a sunflower on the cover. “Please, Victor. Write the names. The directors. Hungarian. Japanese. Maybe I can help.”

“Mansaku Mori,” Victor wrote, “Béla Tarr. Only in Hungary, we reverse the names—Tarr Béla.”

“Mori Mansaku,” Michiko said. “In Japan, we reverse, too.”

The next Wednesday, Victor looked for Michiko at the track. There were over fifty other runners. The Brits and New Zealanders who dominated the club—the ex-collegiate track stars as well as the overfit bankers and IT guys—were as foreign to him as the local office ladies he suspected saw these Wednesday nights as a way of running away from Japan. Most of them ran five-minute kilometers—some of the semi-pros closer to three. Victor spent his high-school summers at his uncle’s farm and ran, whenever he needed escape from cows and beer, along the shores of Lake Balatón. But even twenty years earlier, Victor had never broken four and a half, not for any serious distance. Now he was approaching forty. Running in Tokyo wasn’t so much a physical challenge as an escape from the solitude of a country and a language as impenetrable as his own.

“Victor.” Michiko was waiting for him outside the changing room. She led him away from the track, past the package store where the other runners were buying beers, and into a 7-11 that smelled of fried tofu and refrigeration. “I have something to show you.” She held her phone up to his face. The screen was full of Japanese writing. “Mori,” she said. “Mori Mansaku.”

“You found him?” Victor pulled the screen to his face in the hope that the Japanese might make more sense close up. “Our giri is even.”

“He’s dead.”

Over curry rice and beer, Michiko translated for Victor. It was an email from a friend of hers, a cameraman for an advertising agency. He had forwarded Michiko’s message to his circle of friends. A few answers came back, with a single message: the director was dead. He had died sometime in the past six months, the cameraman wrote, in an onsen on the shores of Lake Kawaguchi, at the base of Mt. Fuji. There was speculation. Some thought Mori had committed suicide, others that he had drowned in the thermal baths. Too much whisky—he was in his mid-80s after all. Or maybe someone held him underwater.

“Drowned him?” Victor asked Michiko. “He was the first Japanese to make a film about the mafia. Just after the war. Do you think?”

Michiko shook her head. “Yakuza cannot enter onsen. Tattoos are forbidden.”

“Of course,” Victor said, although he couldn’t understand why mafiosi who sold drugs and girls and cut off their little fingers and committed all kinds of other forbidden acts would let a sign prohibiting tattoos keep them from entering a thermal bath at the base of Mt. Fuji and drowning a forgotten film director.

Victor walked Michiko back to the subway. They waited at the level crossing while the old Odakyu Line train inched down from Shinjuku.

“One other thing,” Michiko said. “In two weeks, there is a marathon around Lake Kawaguchi.” She looked down at the tracks of the tram. “The momiji will be beautiful, the maples. Red, like the blouse.”

Their room at the Hotel Fuji View smelled of pine, a veil of spruce between their terrace window and the lake. The Fuji Marathon was more popular than Victor had suspected. The coach from Shinjuku to the lake was full of other runners. Their taxi to the hotel had to inch through the crowds, like the bottleneck at the start of the race itself, until they were clear to drive by the shore. Michiko had made all the arrangements, down to booking the last room left at the Fuji View—a large, Japanese-style room of twenty-four tatami mats, with opaque sliding doors opening onto a glassed-in terrace. Michiko didn’t seem shy about sharing the room, but he thought that maybe the terrace was his bedroom. The onsen opened on one side onto the lake and on the other directly onto Mount Fuji. It was at the Hotel Fuji View that Mori’s body was found in the baths.

Victor changed into his yukata in the bathroom. When he came out, Michiko was waiting for him by the door. His obi was dark blue, hers light. He turned left to the men’s baths, she turned right.

After he’d soaped in the washroom and rinsed himself with a wooden pail, Victor walked naked into the evening air. The Hotel Fuji View alternated baths every day for the men and the women. Tonight, the men had an outdoor bath on the roof of the hotel, a simple pine tub facing the mountain. Three businessmen were submerged to their chins at one corner, steel glasses on their noses, washcloths on their heads. Victor bowed to them. They grunted in return. He doubted that they were running the marathon the next day, but then he wondered whether anyone thought of him as a marathon runner. Looking down, his belly seemed flat. But he knew that mirrors had different perspectives. He was a Hungarian, after all, nearer forty than thirty. If he hadn’t been a critic, he might have played an unemployed tractor mechanic in a Béla Tarr film.

In the clear of the evening, the snow at the peak of Mt. Fuji drew the focus of all the bathers. The heat of the water and the cool of the air floated Victor into the weightlessness he’d always felt in the cinema, the velveteen seats, the dusty projection, the anonymous dark. Was this how Mori felt on the evening of his death? Was this his final view of Fujiyama?

One of the men floated away from the others, to the corner closest to the mountain. He grunted. The others moved forward. One of them turned towards Victor and jerked his chin upwards.

“Look,” he said in English.

Were these Mori’s last companions? It was too dark to see whether the businessmen had tattoos, but were all yakuza painted on the outside? He hadn’t come to Lake Kawaguchi to find answers. But now the movie was running, he wanted to see how it ended.

Victor pushed off from the edge, his body submerged against the cold of the evening. He followed the gaze of the businessmen. Off the right side of Mt. Fuji, the moon had burst and was bleeding into the snowline, as if its throat had been slit, a red ghost at the back of a deserted cinema.

When Victor got back to the room, he found Michiko kneeling on a cushion on the terrace, her legs tucked under her yukata, her feet tucked even deeper.

“I made tea,” she said. “Or are you hungry? I told them that we are running the marathon. We can go to dinner early.”

“Wait,” Victor said, slipping off his sandals and stepping up from the genkan into the room.

He had stopped at Magari the evening before, when he knew that Michiko would be at her home preparing for their trip. He had asked the salesgirl to pack the blouse in anonymous rice paper. Now, as he lifted the package from between the two shirts he had brought for himself—one for dinner that night, one for dinner after the marathon the next day—he felt how weightless the blouse undoubtedly was. Not insubstantial, but something positively, optimistically weightless.

“Just something small,” he said, “to thank you. For Mori. The hotel. Everything.”

Michiko was sitting back on her heels, hands folded in her lap. Victor knelt. He held out the package and bowed. Or at least he thought he bowed. He had learned balance from Michiko. A present to balance all she had done. To cancel the giri. He felt Michiko take the package. When he looked up, one of her canines was showing over her lower lip, the beginning of a smile. Of pleasure, Victor hoped. Of course.

Victor opened his eyes just before six. The sliding screen that separated the room from the enclosed terrace let the morning haze seep through a crack in the center. Maybe the maid hadn’t closed it completely when she set out their futons while they were at dinner. Or maybe Michiko had run away in the middle of the night to privacy and discomfort. But in the gloom, he could see the back of Michiko’s head on the futon across the room, the duvet smooth as if ignorant of the past.

Victor dressed in the bathroom—bikini underpants and thermal tights, a wickable woolen t-shirt, twin-skin socks—and then a cheap sweatshirt he had bought on sale just outside the Aoyama subway station that he could throw away when he’d warmed up. He took his pre-race breakfast out onto the terrace—a banana, an onigiri wrapped in dried seaweed with a preserved plum in the center of the rice ball, a soft roll. There were still three hours until the race. And though Victor had only run a marathon once before and the mystery of action was ahead of him, he was intimately familiar with the need to fill the empty spaces of his body.

He chewed as the gray began to lighten the mist on Lake Kawaguchi. The tempo of the rising mist, the rhythm of Victor’s tongue and teeth as he chewed, brought to his waking memory the opening shot of Tarr’s Sátántangó. Another hazy morning. Cows walk out of a dilapidated barn into a pasture of mud and puddles. One cow tries to hump another. A moo. Another. One cow detaches herself from the herd and approaches the camera. The camera pans once, the camera pans twice. The camera begins to move, following the cows. Wind, fog, music, something like tubular bells, but very faint, very distant. The cows walk through a village of crumbling brick and plaster, some houses with numbers scrawled in graffiti, broken windows. Chickens, more mud in shades of gray and white—a feeling that this was once a place inhabited by humans but now something else. And then the cows disappear behind a building and that’s the end. Seven and a half minutes that first shot. Seven more hours to go.

At eight o’clock, Victor began to make noise. Michiko lifted her head, a brief, snaggle-toothed smile in place of open eyes.

“One hour till race time,” Victor said. “Can I get you anything? Tea? Onigiri?”

Michiko’s mouth opened into a wider smile. A single hand emerged from beneath the futon to cover her mouth. She shook her head. Victor picked up his running shoes and opened the door.

For the first five kilometers, Victor ran on Michiko’s left. It was easy, easier than he’d expected, although that had a lot to do with the slow pace of the crowd at the starting line, the fear less of tripping than of tripping someone else. In addition to the thousand or so marathoners, there were teams of ekiden runners—relay racers, like the ones the young American girl at the running club was documenting. Each ekiden runner only had to put in five kilometers instead of the full forty-two of the marathon, so naturally they were chugging along faster than the rest. But the first part of the course threaded through the blind labyrinth of town—right at a convenience store, left at a soba restaurant. It was impossible to say how far Victor and Michiko were behind the leaders. At the 5k mark, the stream of runners began to thin. The route passed over the causeway at the eastern end of the lake to the open northern shore. For the first time, Victor could see Mt. Fuji, off his left shoulder. The snow caught the sun in a clean, moonless embrace, with no sign of last night’s bloodshed.

The view gave a boost of confidence to Victor, one that he knew he should suspect with thirty-five kilometers still to run. But he wanted to encourage Michiko—younger, fresher, faster—to set her own pace, to charge ahead as her own energy dictated, not be held back by Japanese giri and a Hungarian raised on goulash and slow-paced movies. He turned back to Michiko, looking for the snaggle-toothed smile, but she was no longer at his right shoulder, no longer running next to him. He gazed ahead, ten meters, then twenty. In the distance, at the point when the causeway ended and the runners turned along the far side of the lake, a flash of red caught his eye, floating like a beacon. He hadn’t remembered her wearing red. But then, by the time she’d descended that morning and they’d begun to jog, his mind was more focused on just making it to the starting line on time.

At the 10k water station, the second group of ekiden runners were posing for photos with Mt. Fuji, arms raised, fingers in double V’s. Victor stopped for a cup of water and thought about taking a selfie with his iPhone, an author photo to go with his article. He was making good time, just over fifty minutes. If he kept up this pace, he’d finish under four hours, no problem. But he was afraid of losing the red beacon of Michiko.

The evening before, kneeling on the terrace, Michiko had peeled the tape off the rice paper with the practiced nails of a salesgirl hedging against returns. She knew what the gift was, clearly, the moment the first hint of red was revealed. But it took time for the color to rise to her face, for her lips to reveal emotion. Her hands rose before her chin did, holding the blouse by the shoulders. Or rather, Victor thought as he ran, the shoulders of the blouse lifted up Michiko’s hands, raised her from her kneeling position on the cushion on the mat of the terrace, until the light of the moon caught the red and blinded both of them to everything else.

“I thought you could wear it tonight to dinner,” Victor said. It had felt like at least seven minutes since either of them had spoken. “For good luck.”

Michiko frowned, and Victor wondered if the gift hadn’t been too much, over the top. Maybe it had confused the girl.

“At the onsen,” Michiko said, “we don’t put on Western clothes for dinner. Everyone wears yukata.”

“Of course,” Victor said, understanding nothing. “I’ll get a hanger.”

But as he stood, he saw Michiko slip the top of her yukata off her shoulders, until it hung loosely by the obi at her waist. Her back was long and firm—two ridges of muscle guarding her spine. And although Michiko was turned away from him and he could only see the suggestion of her nipples in the reflection of the terrace window, Victor thought that there was a beauty in this woman, in the lightness of the motion, that was beyond anything he had seen in festivals or in flesh. She handed him the blouse. He held the silk by the shoulders. It opened itself effortlessly onto her back. Through his palms, Victor felt the heat of her sacrifice.

“There was an older woman in the onsen,” Michiko told Victor at dinner. “I mentioned the name of your director, Mori-san. She remembered him. She met him several times here at the Fuji View.”

Victor listened. He drank the soup with tiny clams and ate the yellow radish. But louder than Michiko’s words was the red blouse, hidden beneath her yukata, a secret accommodation, an invisible warmth that only he could see.

“It was a love suicide, the woman told me. Shinju, a double suicide, very old school,” Michiko added. “Sometimes two people.” She stopped for a moment. Victor put down his chopsticks. “Sometimes the feeling between two people runs faster than giri.”

Of course. Runs faster than giri, Victor thought. He had heard about Japanese love suicides—hadn’t he seen a movie about a young couple—although the concept itself had never translated well into Hungarian. His country had been on the losing side of the last two wars. Movies might move Japanese to suicide, but his countrymen killed themselves with slower doses of goose fat and Slivovitz.

He tried to imagine Mori-san, an 85-year old man. A love suicide. Was it with his wife, suffering from Alzheimer’s like in that Austrian film? Or with a young girl? Or young boy? All he could think about was the red blouse beneath Michiko’s yukata.

“But no one ever found another body,” Michiko said. “Man or woman.”

“Then we’ll have to look,” Victor said, wondering whether Michiko could tell that he was half-joking. Michiko let the canine appear over the crest of her lip.

“Of course,” Michiko answered.

Victor ran out of the far end of the tunnel. The road opened into an avenue of maple. As Michiko had promised, the oranges and golds and deep scarlets were at their peak. He had reached the halfway point. The fastest runners were already returning on the other side of the road, passing Victor at a speed he couldn’t imagine maintaining for even a hundred meters. He’d been running for two hours. Only now, for the first time, surrounded by color, he wondered about the red beacon he’d been following. Had Michiko run in the blouse from Magari, the silk blouse that had slid so effortlessly onto her back and hidden beneath her yukata the night before?

The wondering was less powerful than the metronome of his feet, the slap of his Asics on the pavement. All those weeks of sitting alone in his apartment in Harajuku Heights, watching one Mori film after another, had done something to his sense of perception, his sense of time. The endless hours of single shots had altered his clock, made him either more or less aware of the minutes and seconds. He ran to the rhythm of those single shots—an alley in Tokyo, a needle-covered path at the base of Mount Fuji. And as he ran, the black-and-white of Mori began to take on color. Latte stands and vegan restaurants rose up along the Tokyo alley. And now, the snow on the summit of Mt. Fuji began to glow with the maples of autumn. And the color that slipped over their shoulders was the color of the beacon, just out of reach.

The night before, when he’d turned off the light and rolled onto his futon, Victor hadn’t been thinking about sleeping with Michiko. He’d been with Agnes for two years, which he counted as an accomplishment not to be discounted too easily. She was back in Budapest with her six-year-old Judit and Victor’s Dalmatian. They had just signed a lease on a cabin for the summer on the shore of Lake Balatón. It was a tableau that gave all of them great pleasure.

But sometime in the middle of the night, Victor woke to a lightness. He watched the duvet rise off his body, he felt his yukata opening. He watched the way he watched a movie—not a movie by Mori or Tarr, maybe more of a B-movie, directed by an underfunded film student for an obscure festival in Ukraine or Moravia. He felt the tiny nipples he’d seen only in reflection, less a touch than an exhalation. He felt Michiko’s breath spread over him like mist, preparing him, drowning him.

Victor looked for Michiko at the finish line, hoping she might be there to cheer the mere fact of his accomplishment. He looked for her at the ramen stand, at the dais by the medals. He sent her a text, he called. At the front desk of the Fuji View, there was no message. In their room, the futons had been folded away. Her suitcase was gone. Only the blouse hung in the cupboard, as fresh as when it had come out of the rice paper.

It wasn’t until he looked out onto the lake from the onsen, the one where Michiko had sat the day before, sinking past his chin, the heat of the water loosening memory from muscle, clear of all mist and illusion, that he thought—of course. He sank lower, up to his nose, until he was finally under, floating. Of course.

Two Poems
Gonca Özmen

Translated by Neil P. Doherty

The Dead and the Mules in the Fog

The tomato that gleefully splattered the white t-shirt
Has dried.

My fear I buried. Rigid. Into Gülyazı.
I want to scratch about here.
In this granary. They call this place the world.
Where the sound of a wounded mule shuffles around.

You want to pass by like a thin fog.
Just once.

Where are you now Rosa?
Who put these corpses among us? On mules.

Somebody who lost their homeland. Now wary.
They call this place the world. These coffin like houses.
Had we seen the sea some other place?

My mother’s unravelling her heart in the next room.
Two ropes entwined. Something like emptiness.
In the next room there’s a person who can’t die thrashing about.

They call this place the world. Desperately.
This place where we sort our waste.

A twitching moment. Like a deer leaping.

I buried you. Bones and all. Your mouth’s still there?
In the fog, Rosa. The dead and the mules in the fog.

“Dying is nothing new in this world” says Yesenin.

This world is so foggy Rosa. This world is a place to die.
Until suddenly a wild bird perches on you.

One day I too will go Rosa. Pass by in the fog.
Stretched out, flat, three times to be known to be good.

This poem refers to the Roboski Massacre of December 28, 2011, when the Turkish Air Force bombed a group of Kurdish civilians near Gülyazı on the Turkey-Iraq border, killing 34.

Siste Ölüler ve Katırlar

Beyaz tişörte neşeyle sıçrayan domates
Kurudu.

Korkumu gömdüm. Kaskatı. Gülyazı’ya.
Artık burda eşelenmek istiyorum.
Bu darı ambarında. Buraya dünya diyorlar.
Yaralı bir katırın sesi dolanıyor buralarda.

İnce bir sis gibi geçip gitmek istiyor insan.
Tekrarsız.

Nerdesin şimdi Rosa?
Bu cesetleri kim koydu aramıza? Katırlarla.

Ülkesini yitirmişin biri. Tetikte.
Buraya dünya diyorlar. Bu tabuttan evlere.
Denizi görmüş müydük başka yerde?

Annem kalbini söküyor yan odada.
Birbirine dolanmış iki ip. Boşluk gibi bir şey.
Ölemeyen biri çırpınıp duruyor yan odada.

Buraya dünya diyorlar. Can havliyle.
Atıklarımızı ayrıştırdığımız bu yere.

Seğiren bir an. Sıçrayan bir geyiğe benzer.

Seni gömdüm. Kemiklerinle. Ağzın yerinde mi?
Siste Rosa. Siste ölüler ve katırlar.

“Ölmek yeni bir şey değil dünyada” diyor Yesenin.

Dünya sisli bir yer Rosa. Dünya ölünen bir yer.
Ansızın bir yabanıl kuş konuncaya kadar üstüne.

Bir gün ben de giderim Rosa. Giderim siste.
Upuzun, dümdüz, üç kere iyi bilinmeye.

Selected Works from Young Writers for Democratic Action

Letter from the Editor

Against the Stupor of Privilege: "We Must March, My Darlings"

Notes in the Kyiv Scrapbook: Third Year