Issue #96

The Color in the Shadows

by Ryan Scott

Last November, at a friend's housewarming party, a guest asked where I got my ideas.

"I have a man in a box," I said.

"Good one," he replied and scanned the gathering for someone else to talk to.

I wish it were a joke, I thought. But seeing as where my life was at, and seeing as the source of my ideas was no longer a secret, I went to fetch the man.

The archive box he lived in was in my friend's spare room. Here she kept her books, a taxidermized heron and a sepia globe of the world so outdated that Australia bled into Antarctica. The room was home until I got my life back on track.

The heron faced the wall as I'd left it. Next to the couch strewn with damp creased sheets was the box.

I lifted the lid with its metal reinforced corners and peeked inside. The man looked up from his miniature desk on which sat his doll-sized typewriter.

"Has the other box arrived?" he asked.

"Not yet. Someone would like to meet you."

"Again?" he said and sighed and placed his hands under his thighs.

People gathered around us in the backyard. The man continued to sit on his hands. He looked anywhere in his box rather than at their prying eyes. Their faces glowed under the fairy lights. Jacaranda scent suffused the warm late evening.

"I don't see anyone," said the guest I'd been talking to.

"Just like at the picnic," the man in the box said.

"Give it time," I said.

I could've been speaking to the gathered crowd or my collaborator.

"Is this a performance?" asked another person.

"Get him to write something then," said the first guest. "At least we'd see that."

"There's no point," said my collaborator. "My typewriter is in Sinhala script. We need the other guy to translate it."

"So why not get a typewriter in Latin script?" said a woman in the crowd.

The guests moved so I could see her. They muttered that she could hear him. About three quarters of the guests were convinced it was a ruse.

"It belonged to his..."

My collaborator cut me off.

"My mother. It's all I've got of hers. She wrote stories, too. Though she was even less well-known than this guy. When her fingers were too crippled and bent to continue, I took over, writing what she dictated. When she was gone, I relied on memory."

The woman stared at me. I could see what she wanted to say. The couple of remaining guests asked if she really saw someone. She waved her hand to shush them without looking their way.

"His voice is so deep," she said.

"It's how he's always sounded to me."

"And his mother was...?"

"Small? Yes, by today's standards. But you wouldn't fit her in a box. That honor fell to me," the man said.

"When...?"

"About a decade back. Maybe a little longer."

"Why...?"

"Owls," he said.

"He's been worried for years. Only last month he said he saw one at a literary picnic. I think he was seeing things," I added.

"I'd rather not be reminded," he said and adjusted his glasses.

"I mean why the... shrinking?"

"Isn't it obvious? It's because my children and their children have forgotten where they come from. It afflicts me. It afflicts the machine."

"Your descendants haven't shrunk?" she said.

"Not physically," he said with a snort.

"Dad refused to take up the family trade," I said.

"And your aunts and uncles. It was their grandmother's work. My mother's."

The other guests shuffled away. They hadn't heard his yells.

"Earlier, you said it was a man. Why didn't you say grandfather?"

I wanted to tell her that when you had a working relationship you didn't think of the other as a relative. The man cut me off again.

"He wants to put distance between us."

"And you're fine as long as he uses the translator," she said to me.

"He insists. He says the translator lives in another box that he carries in this one."

My tone made it clear that I've never seen the box. My eyes stated in only a way eyes could that to me the translator was as real as the owls.

"Someone has to ensure mother's words live on," he said.

I closed the box and took him back inside. The remnants of the crowd had dispersed once I got back. The woman remained. The original guest was gone.

"You don't believe in this other guy? The translator?" she said.

"There's no other box," I said.

"Thanks for showing me, anyway," she said and swatted the fairy lights. Our shadows – red, green and blue – were brown where they overlapped.

Our host tapped her champagne flute with a spoon. The crisp note chimed and faded. She thanked me for my show-and-tell and said she had her own announcement.

Later on, I turned the heron some more. I got under a sheet and tilted open the lid. I apologized to the man for the evening. He said he'd have to get used to it. I held the lid open.

"Was there anything else?" he asked.

"I should make it up to you."

"Leave it."

"They continue to refuse to see you."

"That one woman did. Others will. Maybe. In time."

"Let me translate a story."

"You know what it means."

"Write your story," I said.

He stabbed the keys with index fingers that should've snapped with the force. He squirmed as he worked. I'd never paid attention before. The following morning I put four postage-stamp-sized pages into my wallet, bought a magnifying glass and checked out both Sinhalese-English dictionaries at the library.

My finger traced the characters down the column. With each pass, my hands got smaller. The Sinhalese word for owl is bakamuna.