The Story of the Year of 1912 in the Village of Elza Darzins by Thea Welsh

Author:Thea Welsh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ligature Pty Ltd
Published: 2021-11-10T11:10:37+00:00

7

The flat I shared with Louise was very quiet. There was a note on the kitchen table from Louise saying she’d be away for a few days and leaving instructions about callers—but the phone never rang and nobody knocked. I am certain of that because I heard every creak and whisper in the old building …

I was deep in shock. For some hours I just sat on the sofa in the living room with a rug folded over my knees. Towards the afternoon I cried myself to sleep. I woke up halfway through the night and stayed awake deciding what I would do.

My plan was to go to work and finish the draft of my translation for Stuart Cullen as quickly as possible. As soon as that was done, over the next day or so, I’d ring Ava from the flat to say the draft was on my desk ready for typing. And afterwards, quite simply, I wouldn’t appear and I would never go back.

They would be relieved to see the last of me. But I would have my vengeance when they hired another Latvian translator and discovered I’d been right all along. There was something very wrong with Elza’s Story. I could see Stuart Cullen and Vince standing together with the next translator, shaking their heads and saying, ‘That’s what the previous translator said, but we thought that perhaps she couldn’t understand it. You see, she hadn’t had any professional experience: she only spoke Latvian because it was her mother’s language …’

That Monday at the Film Board offices it was as though I’d become the occupier of an even more silent, empty place than the flat. I had wanted to arrive very early and be in my office out of sight before Stuart Cullen and Vince appeared. But once I was at my desk I couldn’t concentrate. I tensed each time I heard a noise. I stared at the pages of work fixedly, as if I were mesmerised. Again, every noise in the building seemed magnified.

Consequently I swung around as if I’d heard a rifle shot when suddenly there was an ostentatious cough in my doorway. It wasn’t Vince. It was Kevin.

‘It’s here,’ he said. ‘For the first time ever in history, it’s arrived when it was supposed to. With no hassles. I was so surprised when they brought it in I nearly fell off my chair.’

And with this he turned back and disappeared down the corridor towards the theatrette.

I, too, nearly fell off my chair. As I hastily rose to catch up with Kevin I stumbled and lurched forward. I could have laughed out loud at the sheer irony of it.

This was the first time the film had ever arrived without trouble. Every other screening of Elza’s Story had involved a crisis of some sort, except this—the last, unnecessary, time. I began to think of this last screening as the perfect refuge. Three hours alone in the screening-room with Elza Darzins. Perfect. I’d be safe. Nobody would walk in and find me crying.

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