“Thy thunder, conscious of the new command, 

 Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house” - Hyperion; John Keats 

He endowed people with descriptive titles, much as kings and queens of old were named for characteristics that had settled in the popular conscious – the Fair, the Lion, the Lame. My mother’s elder sister, “the Moron”, by definition, had been named before my birth, and had borne the title for so long that he’d forgotten her name. Pappou thought of her as silly rather than dull. 

 “The sister,” he said once (which was the kindest, though appropriately distant term he resorted to in relation to me), “reminds me of those statues of the three monkeys everyone seems to find amusing; what are they supposed to represent?” As if he didn’t know. 

 “Hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil, I returned, keen to see where he was going to take his observation. ”She has one in a cabinet in her living room - a bronze replica.” 

 “If only she’d dust in there once in a while and have a think while she’s about it,” he retorted, “she kept your grandmother on the phone for an hour, peddling gossip from what I heard emanating from the ear piece ... still hasn’t realised that Yiayia’s grasp of the English language is, shall we say, basic at best and non-existent at worst. At least she spared my very pious wife from preparing an inordinately a long confession, and salvaged the priest’s sanity into the bargain,” he chortled. 

 Typical of Pappou – mercurial in his judgements, seldom trapped, always able to twist a bungled analogy to suit his purpose. My grandfather had not favoured the union between her sister and his son, both of whom existed as a biological imprint on photographic paper in my conscious. He’d dubbed my parents “Peter the Fool”, and “Margaret the Mindless”. Granted, his take was unholy in the extreme. He was not a man to sugar-coat his opinion of any particular day and the brutality with which he expressed himself on the deficiencies of two people taken in their prime upset Yiayia every time he referred to them in this manner. 

 Usually, he’d wave a dismissive hand when she admonished him for deriding them in front of me. Now and again, he’d provoke. His efforts culminated in banishment to the sofa in his study exacerbated by a stony-faced, immoveable silence. 

 *** 

 “But, Pappou, Little Flower’s two words; you have to choose one.” 

 He put his finger on his temple, creased his brow, and my six-year-old self, giggled at the comical face he pulled. 

 “What would you like Pappou to christen you, agape mou?” “Sibylla the Swan.” 

 The ballet bug had bitten. He proposed ‘Sibylla the Faerie’. I shook mine in turn, disappointed. The title sounded generic, even though my unformed mind had no idea why the suggestions he’d proposed seemed wrong. 

 “I think Pappou has stumbled upon the perfect name,” he announced after a minute. “My granddaughter will henceforth be known as ‘Sibylla the Graceful’.” 

 I smiled, satisfied that he'd chosen a quality I'd sought to acquire, rather than a persona. 

 “What’s Yiayia?!” It dawned on me that he had never referred to Yiayia as anything other than Eleni, or Wife, when they disagreed. 

 “Hmm... ‘the Contentious’!” he exclaimed. 

 “What’s con...ten...something?” 

 “Someone who likes to fight over everything.” 

 I gasped in horror. Pappou would be banished to the discomfort of the sofa forever. I warned him, a somber note in my tone, that he daren’t name Yiayia ‘the Con...ten...Something’. He cackled, and a soft, whimsical expression took hold of his face. 

 “There is only one thing Yiayia could possibly be, and that is Eleni the Good.” 

 “And Pappou? Has anyone christened Pappou?” 

“I’m sure there are many unpleasant titles that Pappou has been the brunt of through the years but they are unimportant ... you will have the privilege of giving your grandfather something noble and grand,” he replied, a twinkle in his eye. 

 Only one name stood out in my perception because I admired the fearless, confident manner in which he expressed himself, even if, a lot of the time, I failed to grasp a quarter of what he’d been saying. 

 “Dimitri, the Wise. Does Pappou approve?” 

 “Pappou prefers Dimitri, the Clever. I suggest ...” 

 I perceived that the lauded academic teased me. His face always assumed a solemn expression when he’d wanted to test my reaction. 

He paused for a second, and continued: “...that Pappou be the first to be given a title with two words, being as I am, both clever and wise - what do you say, agape mou?” 

 I shook my head. 

 “Yiayia says there’s good clever and bad clever, like the two women who fought over the baby and brought it to King Solomon. If the king hadn’t been wise, the baby would have been killed. I think Pappou should choose to be wise?" 

 “Ha! You are the wise one – the title belongs to you! We should change yours immediately!” 

 I replied, shyly: “No, I’d rather be graceful than wise.” 

 And he took hold of my small frame and held me tightly, his body undulating in silent mirth. 

 Copyright 2025 - Natasha Lima

 Donato di Mazi’s mind slips into the void that leaves the living and welcomes the dead. He feels himself ebb, as if he were afloat on silence. 

 And then he hears them - a gabble of voices closed in on him, which he takes to be the angels or perhaps, the saints. The heat, like the viscous, larvae-ridden water someone douses him with, traps his airways. He gags; the retching sound is caught up in the shudder of anti-Papal chants thundering above him. 

He perceives the feel of flesh, and fear rises, blurring his vision. An unsteady gaze fixes upon the expanse of a round, ruddy countenance. A woman. The suddenness in the down sweep of her face, causes him to raise his elbows in fear, as he had done in the ominous shadow of the gaoler, sent to disturb his dreamless exhaustion at frequent intervals during the long nights. She lifts his head gently, holds it to her bosom, lisping an incoherent prayer. 

His body aches, his heart beats to the disjointed rhythm of the blow his head suffered with the fall. 

He cannot find his hands for a second, and in desperation, he scrapes his heels on the trachyte, trying to find purchase in order to raise himself. 

 ‘Be still, child’, she murmurs, ‘for their souls have found true mercy – the angels have come down to gather them, led by S’Marco himself, I say, truly as true is.’ 

 ‘Desist!’ A gruff voice commands her to unhand the youth, fallen in a dazed heap, having borne witness to the executions. ‘Be on your way, citizeness, along with your band of baying mules!’ 

 The soldier taunts the onlookers, whinnies between bouts of rough laughter, prods — the invisible barrier between the sharp point and flesh keeps them from swamping him. ‘For what is a man,’ barks the aggressor, ‘that faints like a girl at a drop of blood – is he deserving of the soothing clucking of an old hen?!’ 

 The crowd falls silent at the sight of the savage Papal soldier, his weapon teasing. He bends, his eyes still firmly fixed on the sea of humanity gathered before him, and tosses the pail with which he doused the young man, headlong into their midst. 

 ‘Ser,’ the woman fawns, cowering and afraid to look at the helmeted agent, swung to her, halberd poised, ‘pardon me to offer the boy comfort, surely, it will do no harm…Ser?’ 

 *** 

 The Cardinale, seated upon a gilded chair, drowsily watching the bustling of the populani from above, starts at the sound of sudden silence, and leans forward, his ear cocked. Silence means trouble in Venice. He gestures to a hooded priest standing close. 

 ‘Why is it that they quieten?!’ The priest edges toward the balustrade, his eyes scanning the crowd from left to right. 

 ‘Fear not, Eminence, it seems a boy has fainted and a guard scolds a woman attending him.’

 The Cardinale, piqued, rises and sails hastily, his black simar flares behind the gaunt figure. His eyes settle on where the priest points. 

 ‘I am not mistaken in thinking that the boy lying on the ground is the di Mazi – the released prisoner, Josephus?’ Josephus cranes his neck. 

The priest had caught a glimpse of the boy, from a distance a few days prior and thus, cannot be relied upon to affirm the observation. 

 ‘I…I cannot say whether it is he, Eminence…but, now the soldier has moved from view and the youth is seated, facing this way, His Beatitude might identify him with certainty?’ 

 Cardinale Guccio raises a lace handkerchief to his nose, and from behind its folds, cackles hoarsely. ‘Hah! The lamb is come to look upon the slaughter unobserved, and with the stroke of the axe upon the necks of his dearest, reveals himself!’ 

 Josephus stares down at the unknowing victim, as a hunter upon a doe, careful to keep his glee from overpowering that of the Papal nuncio. He will intercept the innocent before anybody else has the time. The Cardinale has positively identified the boy. 

 ‘How are we to proceed, Beatitude?’ The priest asks, in a hushed tone, eyes downcast. 

The Cardinale answers anxiously, repelled by a few angry faces raised toward the balcony, their fists raised: ‘Issue the captain of the guard to allow the boy care, at my order. Watch how the people become agitated anew, and to provoke is unwise.’ 

 The priest grips the strap of a leather satchel slung across his body, and of the same hue as his hessian cassock. A vicious grin remains spread on the Cardinale’s thin, sinewy face, still hidden behind the handkerchief. 

He croaks: ‘For the innocent down there, priest, has a worse fate in store than suffering the spectacle of death.’ 

 ‘There is further accusation against him, Eminence?’ enquires Josephus of the great man. 

The Cardinale glances at him with the kind of suspicion he reserves for curious subordinates. ‘See to it,’ comes the dry command, ‘that my coffers are packed and transported to the vessel, and Josephus ... be ready, in my quarter at the ninth hour to attend me once the business at hand has been officiated.’

 © 2025 Natasha Lima

“His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might, 

 And be among her cloudy trophies hung”Ode to Melancholy, John Keats 

 He’d served fifteen years, unbeknownst to me. He’d simply disappeared, as sometime lovers do. I’d thought about him from time to time, wondered what had become of him, as one does. He hadn’t written; he hadn’t tried to contact me through official channels, nor had he attempted to find me after he’d been set free. The case had received quite a bit of publicity at the time, she ventured, half questioning, half incredulous. 

I’m sorry, I replied, I seldom read the news, and I don’t watch it on T.V. Well, she responded in an official voice, this sort of thing is not uncommon, statistically speaking. 

 My hand traced a figure eight back and forth, a magnet poised between fingertips, collecting a scattered pile of paper clips, listening to details from a life story he had never shared. Too little, too late. Not that it would have made a difference at the time, if truth be told. Do you know something of his history? A little, I answered. I suppose it won’t matter now. 

 He spent time in juvenile detention, the voice droned, from nineteen seventy-five to nineteen seventy-seven. What did he do, I asked. He assaulted his father ... uh, charged with grievous bodily harm. Why? According to the reports and witness testimonies, the father was possessed of a violent streak, and the court ruled that Michael had acted in an indefensible manner, considering the nature of the injuries incurred. The fact that his father had suffered with a lifelong heart condition stood against his self-defense plea. The father died about six months after the incident. From heart failure? Uh…no, she said. I could hear the shuffle of papers in the background. From cirrhosis of the liver. 

 He’d struggled to adapt to the facility and had gained a reputation as un-cooperative and difficult to manage, according to yet another report the woman seemed to have in her keep. It appears that the mother had testified against her son and had cut off all relations with him after the incident. He’d notched up a number of petty criminal offenses between the ages of eighteen and twenty, the most serious of which was related to car theft. He’d failed to appear in court on the last charge and disappeared off the radar. He claimed to have worked on a variety of different trawlers until he got a job on a cruise liner. He’d used a false identity to procure the work. 

 I remember the day he told me that he’d secured the job and that he’d be leaving. It was the same day he told me he loved me and he knew that the same could not be said of me, but that was okay, he said. At least, he’d gotten it off his chest. 

 While moving up the East Coast of Africa toward the Med, a girl went missing, presumed murdered and thrown overboard. He’d been a friend of hers. She’d had a fall-out with her boyfriend. Michael testified that she’d confided in him and sought his advice. By the time he’d put her to bed, she’d been quite drunk. He left to start his shift. When she failed to pitch for the evening performance, the crew went looking for her. Earlier that day, she’d reported a couple of things missing from her cabin, including cash. He claimed to have been unaware of her complaint, more so, the panic around her disappearance. He’d been down in the stock room taking inventory for the chef. When the vessel docked, the local police deported a group that they’d identified as the prime suspects in the case. He was unable to account for his whereabouts for a few hours. He’d been alone in the stockroom. A co-worker had been taken up in the sick bay. 

 The State gave him fifteen years for manslaughter in connection with her disappearance. A term had been added for identity theft, added to which was two more years, bringing the backlog up to date. I assume his sentence had fallen short of the grand total. The prosecution put its swiftest foot forward, citing criminal tendencies and a history of violence as the motive behind the crime to plump the charge. The positive testimonies he received from fellow staff members and those in authority, did little to influence the case. 

 He’d told me once that he hadn’t had much good in his life worth remembering but hadn’t embellished, and I hadn’t cared to ask. In the time (just short of a year) of our acquaintance, the tattered sinews of his heart became whole. I knew that he’d tear them apart for good in the aftermath of heartbreak. Michael’s demise came as no shock if I’m honest, nor the manner in which he chose to end his life. Alone; he hung himself. 

 ‘They struggle on the outside,’ the woman concluded. ‘They struggle to adapt,’ she added. ‘And the situation becomes hopeless in spite of our efforts to ease them into a normal existence.’ Did you know him, I asked. She’d had an in-depth knowledge of the case and the circumstances around it, she said. She oversees reintegration into society. 

 Hope is like an accomplished defense lawyer that draws a jury from condemnation to uncertainty. The strategy aims to humanize through logic and eloquence, to appeal to that thread that connects all men, to appear benevolent. We are courted into approving second chances. The act of freeing, immaterial of culpability, liberates the gaoler. The freedom he offers his prisoner gives rise to a silent killer, hope. I said none of this. After all, how could she have prevented the inevitable. 

 I have an ode written in a book. I estimate I must have been around sixteen when I wrote it for a guy I call my first real boyfriend. Then, it seemed so significant to the untested heart. The depth of delusion shocks me, and the morbid, agonised manner in which I expressed myself is quite comical. ‘‘I keep you in a place removed from the norm and the flow of life.’’ 

 My youthful hand had penned a hollow message prettily, illustrated by broken hearts peppered around the standalone line. The rest harks back to a poetic phase added on a year later, as if the line had developed a darker meaning. I don’t recall having had a significant other at the time, except a burning ambition to blaze a trail to stardom. ‘’In a place where the keeper of memories compels the unresolved heart to turn its face from the world and gaze upon its untimely passing - a warped, impoverished aspect, to be sure.’ Winning him wasn’t hard. He appeared and I grasped at a diversion that soothed a raw kind of insular dedication to ambition, like an icy thirst quencher on a blistering day. 

 He lives quietly and in my keep - with respect to his wishes. 

Copyright 2025 -Natasha Lima

‘You haven’t mentioned your name.’ 

 ‘No, I haven’t,’ she replies, veering from the plan. She’d visualised herself behaving in an enticingly mysterious manner, not an evasively maudlin one. 

 He stands behind the bar counter, polishing a row of glasses with a cloth, lifting them up to the light every now and again. She’d sauntered in at around four that afternoon, a satchel on her back, a tog bag held in her hand. Her face wore the flush of exertion. Wisps of hair lay plastered to her temples. She let both bags drop, and made her way round the bar, stopped at a fridge, reached in and pulled a can of soda water. He watched her sip slowly, but deliberately, eyes raised. She had not looked at him, nor had she acknowledged his presence. Instead, walked back round slunk the satchel onto her back once more, and lifted the tog bag, along with the can she’d placed temporarily on the counter. 

He says: 

 ‘We met briefly…at your home?’ 

 She turns to look at him, an enquiring look on her face. 

 ‘Oh?’ 

 ‘I’m that easily forgotten, am I?’ 

 She contemplates a reply, and decides to act her age, rather than morph into the image she must appear to project. Bloody stupid to make A-level students wear a uniform. She still hasn’t forgiven her mother for making her do the extra year.

 ‘I reckon you made pretty sure you’d be remembered.’ 

 Her answer startles him, certain that he’d offended her in some way, enough to have her behave disdainfully, as if he’d acted out a badly written script. 

 ‘You’re referencing the incident with the Pradier,’ he chuckled. 

 ‘What else?’ 

 ‘I’m Serge, by the way.’ 

 ‘Michaela.’

Michaela makes her way to Ray’s office, upstairs. His newest bartender pops his head in at the door about an hour later. ‘I’m on the search for Ray.’ 

 ‘He’s not here, should be back in an hour.’ 

Serge enquires politely whether she minds if he puts through a phone call to one of the suppliers, from the office. He could just as easily have done it from the storeroom. He’d been trying to find a plausible excuse to go in there. He wants to talk to her. She lays her pen on the page and sits staring at his back turned toward her. He’d jotted down the number he’d had to call, laid the piece of paper on the desk once he’d dialled it, careful to make the act seem as natural as possible. She takes up her pen once more when the call reaches its end and lowers her eyes, fixates on the page. 

 ‘Can I get you another drink?’ 

 She shakes her head. 

 ‘You’re at school, still?’ 

 Michaela sighs her answer: ‘Technically.’ 

 ‘That makes you...sixteen, seventeen? Uh…fifteen...?’ 

 ‘Add four years and a bunch of pointless A-levels I have no desire to take, less so, to conform to wearing this ridiculous uniform at this stage in my life because they don’t have an online option.’ 

 In that moment, Serge perceives her as the young woman she is. The light catches her face in a way that displays a facial structure in its prime, past the apple dumpling freshness of a teenager. Perhaps, he thinks, it might have been the way she wore her hair… 

 ‘Uh, well, A-levels are a sure way in to uni…I mean, they’ll be beneficial if you’re planning on studying abroad.’ 

 ‘I’m not.’ 

' You might want to, in the future?’ 

 ‘You sound like my mother.’ 

 ‘Okay, okay, I'll put a lid on the subject.’ 

‘That’s my way of saying please don’t try and sell me the benefits of a year wasted.’ 

 He pretends not to have grasped her meaning, persists as if the comment had floated over him: 

 ‘What do you plan on doing?’ 

 ‘Going abroad.’ 

 ‘Travel?’ 

 ‘No – there’s a prospect waiting. Come next year, the plan will materialise.’ 

 ‘Plans always get thwarted, in my experience.’ 

 She leans back in the office chair. 

 ‘Were yours?’

 ‘More like diverted...’ 

 The atmosphere has become charged which disconcerts Michaela, who feels convinced that he’d managed to read the mind that had taken him for itself. 

 ‘Lala…uh, Ray, shouldn’t be too long...’ 

He burst out laughing.

 ‘Lala? Is that what you call him?’ She shares the reason to stall him. 

 ‘When I was a toddler, he’d buy me hordes of outfits and he’d make me model each one for him. A father’s pride and joy. He’d say ‘ooh, la la’ to absolutely everything, so…I’ll leave you to work out the rest.’ 

 ‘Nothing’s changed …in the ooh la la stakes.’ He tried to make it sound casual - light-hearted. She tries to sound as if she’d found the comment distasteful. 

 ‘Frills and bows are no longer my thing...’ 

 ‘Are you dating anyone at the moment?’ 

 ‘Why?’ 

 ‘It’s just something people ask one another for the sake of keeping conversation alive.’ 

 ‘No... are you?’ 

 ‘I just got back into the country…there’s plenty time!’ 

‘There’s long-distance.’ 

 ‘I don’t see the point of long-distance.’ 

' I don’t see the point of any of it – whether near or far.’ 

 ‘Understandable, what with school and exams and all that important stuff.’ 

 ‘That’s not the important stuff, which makes me wonder if I’ve been talking to myself all this time.’ 

 ‘I guess I’m trying to remember what it was like to have school rule one’s life.’ 

 ‘What rules your life now? Bartending?' 

‘No; it’s a place filler till I decide to settle down.’ 

 ‘How old are you?’ 

 ‘Going on thirty.’ 

 ‘You’re a bit old to have the club scene rule your life.’ 

 ‘Clubs are kind of passe, like this joint – yachts, private parties, rooftops…that’s in. But, one takes what one can get.’ 

 ‘Luckily, I won’t have to. I’ll ask around on your behalf – perhaps, you won’t have to suffer working at Lalaland for too long.’ 

 ‘Thanks, but I’ll make my own plans.’ 

 ‘Until they get thwarted.’ 

 Her face pales, her lips purse. 

He purposed dropping the pursuit of her by the time he reaches the bar area. He’d prefer not to lose his job over some half girl with a superiority complex and probably, very little life experience, not to mention plagued by a whole lot of self-imposed problems that aren’t worth the angst they breed. 

 When he sees her the next day, sauntering in alongside her father, he ignores her, and sets about speaking to Ray while she passes on ahead. He is acutely aware of her movements behind the bar, hears the swish of the can followed by the sound of its contents being poured. She leaves the empty on the counter, next to the spill and marches past him, her nose in the air. 

The urge to laugh at the show of insolence, to draw her to him, is real. Still, he finds a measure of enjoyment in the game. 

His resolve wanes with each passing day.

 Copyright 2025 - Natasha Lima