Short Fiction
Markus Sailer
Violet Beach John sat on the beach. It had rained and though he looked for a dry spot he felt that his trousers got wet slowly. He did not not do anything about it. His eyes fixed a point in the grey of the harbour. The border between the heaven and the water was unclear in the mist. In his shaking hands John held the letter which changed everything, the letter which made him go to the beach instead of his work. `I’m free now,´ it said, Ì’ll arrive on the 30st of October, there is so much to say, but I don’t want to do it in this letter, it is better we talk when I’m there.´ John’s knees where shaking when he recognized his father in a skinny figure with grey hair and bony hands, ascending the steps of the bus. His mother burst into tears. It has been almost three years now. John had been a little boy when they took him. Innocent. In that very night he got much elder. He had to work every day after school, his childhood was over all in a sudden. Still they had not enough money for much more than tapioca. But his mother wanted it like this. She spent all the money on sending him and his little sisters to school. She didn’t want it to spoil their future. They went to a restaurant to celebrate the reunification of their family. The father stroked the hair of his son, he took one of his daughters on his knees. He asked a lot of questions about their family busines which mother and children somehow had maintained during his time in jail. He told funny episodes about his fellow-prisoners. He smiled and laughed a lot. Only once a black shadow hushed over his face. When the mother asked him if he was tortured. `No,´ he said `of course not.´ After a few hours they ran out of things to speak about. They brought the girls to bed. John proposed to got to the beach. The sun was setting and colouring the clouds in an unreal violet. They sat there. United. At last. Why had it taken so long? (This story won honourable mention in the October-November 2011 Short Story Writing competition of SH College Writers’ Forum)
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