Day: July 13, 2025

Jazz with Ella

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Excerpt

“Wow!” She applauded wildly when he finished. But he didn’t stop. Ernesto left for a few moments then reappeared quietly with an enormous, half-empty box of chocolates wrapped in brown paper which he offered to her. They were old, mottled with discolouration, probably kept for his infrequent visitors, but she took one and thanked him. He left again hurriedly and this time returned with a saxophone. She settled back to listen again, a Duke Ellington number that she recognized as “C Jam Blues.” Ernesto stepped in for a few riffs on the sax then put the instrument down to take up a chair beside Jennifer and listen to Volodya play. Although he appeared to be studying the keys as he played, she felt him look up every so often, gauging her reaction. Was that simply a performer who loved an audience? Or something deeper, more demanding? She wasn’t sure and felt a slight shiver.
“Are you cold?” Ernesto leaned over to her and offered another chocolate. “Even in summer this room is cool.” Volodya ignored them and continued to play.
“No, thank you. It’s a wonderful room. It was once so elegant, I think.”
“It was the formal dining room for the house when the bourgeoisie lived here. You see how this wall cuts off the rest of the room? When it was whole, the dining room took up 30 square meters of floor space—all for one wealthy family.”
“And was the piano here then, too?” she asked. “It looks old.” Now, she noticed how the black lustre had worn down to a scuff in many places, how the legs were chipped. “You must be the one who keeps it in tune?”
“Yes, I take care of it. It’s also pre-revolutionary.” Here, Ernesto smiled with pride. He might dismiss the ostentatious living quarters of the wealthy, but he obviously cherished their toys. “It’s why I can’t leave the apartment. I won’t leave without it and we can’t fit it through this door.” He laughed out loud and Volodya glanced up and smiled.
“So it sat here all during the revolution and the siege of Leningrad and everything?” she asked. “I’m surprised someone didn’t burn it for firewood during those terrible winters.”
“Someone loved this piano—dearly,” Ernesto replied, then he added sheepishly, “and you know I only let those play who also love the piano. Vlad is a flashy scoundrel, but he loves to play.”

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

Water in the Wilderness

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Excerpt

Rachael didn’t know whether to be happy or sad. She had been excited to come here today when Uncle Morley and Auntie Tyne had brought them. But now she wished she could be back in the bedroom on the farm, the one she had shared with Bobby.
She lay in bed, staring at the light reflected on the ceiling from the street lamp on the corner of the avenue where Auntie Ruby lived. The soft snores of her two cousins kept her wakeful, but that was better than having them fight over who would sleep on which side of the lumpy mattress, and playfully, or so she hoped, try to push her out of bed.
Rachael had never shared a bed with anyone before, not even when she lived at Auntie Tyne’s house. Now she had to sleep with two squirmy girls who seemed no happier to share their bed with her than she was with them. Six-year-old Lark had not been so mean, but her older sister, Lyssa, had been especially nasty.
Rachael didn’t know what she had done to make Lyssa mad. When they used to visit each other’s homes, they had usually got along. Did Lyssa think her cousin was going to take something that didn’t belong to her? Rachael would never do such a thing – her mom had taught her and Bobby never to touch anyone else’s property.
Well, she hadn’t, and she wouldn’t, and she hoped Lyssa would be nicer tomorrow. Rachael thought of her new clothes that she had so…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/192676319X

Nikos Engonopoulos – Poems

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Trap of the Castaways
I don’t know what happens in the wild high mountains
at night or in the middle of the day. However, I know
all about the mysterious ghosts that live alone on peaks
of deserted hills. I know their habits well and that they
don’t distance themselves from the high places they
have chosen as their residence. How the wanderer who
passes close by or from afar, noon hour or evening,
discerns them, sees them, sometimes fluttering like war
banners, other times taking strange shapes of four pieces
of wood under the cover of a thick layer of dry cypress
branches, like the tents Albanian shepherds put together
like the echo of a flute. Other times they travel on faraway
unexplored seas, on board ancient oil tanks, yet always,
under the Hellenic flag, certainly in memory of the god
Pan. Thus, the simple, natural, logical, and even psychological

result is to leave the factory lights on during the night
and the huge piles of garbage and empty cans in the fields.
Everything in the name of Pan. Yet, the electrical lights
Prove to be useless and only sometimes, here and there,
light wind-stricken seashores, wooden abandoned shacks,
seaweed and petrified bones of the flood animals and
marble busts of emperors and poets.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763734