Saturday fiction - 'lonely, despite a large sexual appetite...'

Baz Bamigboye in his Friday film and entertainment column reports that accomplished Award-winning actress Rachel Weisz fancies a film role as a spy. Someone who is lonely, despite a ‘large sexual appetite’.

To my mind, she would be ideal in the role of Tana Standish in The Prague Papers and its sequel The Tehran Text!

 

Rachel Weisz - Wikipedia commons

The Tana stories begin with Tana in Czechoslovakia in 1975, combatting the crushing Soviet presence. She meets again Laco, an old flame who is younger than her (she’s 38, he’s 25), rekindling a romance begun in 1968. But even in intimate moments, Tana is lonely, because she is psychic and must shut down her thought processes…

And in the exquisite throes of their lovemaking one special private part of her mind saddened, for Laco was right, so horribly right. She had known love, idealistic and physical, and she loved Laco as much as she was capable. But always her psyche must provide an impenetrable barrier between her and her lover.

Once, when she’d let an older man, Paul, talk her into letting him ‘go all the way’, she had absently spread out her prescient awareness as the man she loved entered her. Contrasts of pain and ecstasy, not too dissimilar, threshed in her body. Then she grasped hold of Paul’s thoughts, just at the pinnacle. The soaring onrush of pleasure from him accentuated her own, pushing her into multiple orgasms. But his thoughts had not been of her, nor of their lovemaking: he’d been reliving some lost love of long ago, far away, long-since dead. After that disturbing experience, she always shut down her mind’s receptors at intimate moments.

Rachel Weisz also likes the Angelina Jolie spy movie Salt, which was originally written for a man, and contains betrayal, action and blighted romance. In a similar (but different) vein, Tana is involved in plenty of action, intrigue and tragic loss as she discovers a shattering secret beneath the Sumava Mountains.  

The crowds around them seemed to be aware that something was amiss. The nearest guide was forcefully shepherding her tourists out of the way, towards the Holy Rood Chapel in the southeast corner of the courtyard. Behind them Tana glimpsed a khaki uniform, the soldier wearing a blue hat banded with cerise: presidential guard from the main entrance, with a rifle, the only weapon in sight, which was a blessing, she supposed.

Grishin hurried ahead of the others. Doubtless the fool was anxious for the glory. His weedy face twisted into an evil grimace as he grabbed Demek’s arm.

Demek swore and ineffectually tried jerking free.

Tana’s swift side-kick sank into Grishin’s back just over his kidneys and the force of the blow broke his grip on Demek and sent Grishin cannoning into the fountain.

One of the secret police shouted.

She grasped Grishin’s arm and heaved him round in the path of his oncoming comrades. The weight of the man and the sharp quick movement tore the dressing Laco had placed over her arm’s bullet-burn and she winced with the sudden pain.

“Get out!” she snarled at Demek. “I’ll hold them off. Go on!”

For all his rebellious nature, Demek’s instinctive hesitation was only a second. He scurried across the courtyard and through into the Third, heading for the back of the Cathedral and Golden Lane, to lose himself amidst the numerous stalls along the laneway.

Grishin’s flailing body bundled into the leading StB agent, unbalancing him.

Tana sidestepped them and sank a lightning-fast instep in the other agent’s solar plexus. He doubled-up in time to receive the rigid knife-edge of her hand on his neck. Her bandaged arm was already throbbing as she gritted her teeth and grabbed the man and swung him at the ceremonial sentry. As the two collided, the sentry dropped the rifle he’d been raising.

Grishin, half-supporting himself on the courtyard’s stone flags, called to the onlookers to apprehend Tana, explaining she had escaped from an asylum. But she met no resistance. The bystanders, having no love for the secret police, backed off and Tana raced past them, through the courtyards and out into the square.

Shallow steps, some two hundred of them, fringed the Castle on the town side. She descended them at a jog-trot, conscious of many eyes on her.

At the foot, she caught her breath and turned right by the Red Cross building, and came to a small slope.

Gaining her second wind, she hurried down Kamecka Street, turned left at the end, to find herself in a square virtually divided in two by the imposing church of Saint Nicholas and its adjacent buildings. Franz Kafka was born near here, though the actual house was demolished. He’d have been unsurprised at the schizoid nature of the Soviet mind, she mused, stopping for a moment to ease her pulse.

Well, most authors dream of bringing their stories to the screen.

After all, we’re dreamers.

Dreamers who transpose those images from mind to the page.

 
The Prague Papers

 
Amazon UK here

Amazon COM here

'Missing person'

Spanish Eye contains 22 cases from Leon Cazador, half-English, half-Spanish private eye.  It was released on 29 November, from Crooked Cat Publishing.

The vast majority of these cases are based on true events…  The short story ‘Gone Missing’ was first published in magazine format in 2011: here is a very brief excerpt:

Gone Missing

Pavel’s best defence was extreme halitosis…

 

Miguel García Hernandez had been missing a week by the time his wife, Beatriz, got in touch with me. He’d walked out of his apartment in Edificio Donna Ximena, saying that, on his way to work, he was going to drop into the loteria shop to claim his euro reintegro from La Primitiva.

José on the lotto desk knew Miguel as a regular and was adamant that he had not come in that day. Miguel was supposed to go to the La Mata villa of Señor Rafael Morales, to fit a wooden carport in his drive. A three-day job, he’d estimated, but he never arrived.

Beatriz feared something terrible had happened to her dear Miguel and it showed in her sleep-deprived, dark brown eyes and unkempt dyed-black hair. She was in her mid-forties, but seemed older since the clear complexion of her chubby cheeks was mottled after she had dried too many tears.

She’d been quite a catch. Her family had worked in the salt industry since the 1820s. Salt was another word for money in Torrevieja. Beatriz thought that Miguel was the salt of the earth, and she should know. In the middle of last century, Torrevieja was a small fishing village on the southeast coast of Spain that also thrived on “white gold”, salt production. Today, Torrevieja exports a million tonnes annually. Twenty years ago, its population was about 20,000. Now it’s a sizeable city with in excess of 100,000 residents, over half non-Spanish.

*

There is a glossary explaining terms such as 'reintegro' and La Primitiva'...

As can be seen in this clipping from The Coastrider dated July 2007, Torrevieja town has grown over the years – the fastest growing town in Spain, in fact. The numbers have fluctuated since then, but even taking into account the financial crisis of 2008, which meant many hundreds of expats returned to their native countries, the numbers have still increased – in 2012 there were 107,009. Estimates may vary, but when the tourists are added to the number, there are never less than 320,000 inhabitants.

 

Spanish Eye paperback may be purchased post-free worldwide from here

Kindle UK here

Kindle Amazon com here

 

Wishing you a happy and peaceful Christmas!

Dateline Friday, December 14 – Town Hall square, Torrevieja, Costa Blanca, Spain


This was the tenth annual Christmas Carols in the Square event.

My wife Jennifer and I, along with many members of her choir, Cantabile (above), joined other choirs and citizens from the area to sing thirteen carols in front of the floodlit church and next to the splendid Belen diorama. Included were two Spanish carols, ‘Campana Sobre Campana’ and ‘Fum, fum, fum’. The music was provided by The Phoenix Concert Band.

Lots of Christmas hats and antlers were in evidence! A census wasn’t taken, but we reckon there were Spanish, English, Welsh, Scottish, Belgian, German, Dutch, Ukranian, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian in attendance to celebrate the nativity. Also present, representatives from the town hall and the Salt Queen and her Dama, Nuria Zaragoza and Elsa Martinez respectively (below).

The collection amassed €985 for the local charity Alimentos Solidarios, which provides meals for those in need.


There was no religious message, save that implicit in the nativity; Mass followed for those who wished to attend.

The international community of Torrevieja and environs is a beacon for co-existence among all peoples. Yet again it was wonderful to be a part of this event. The world is a better place than we sometimes wonder when we learn about the horrors and destruction, natural and man-made.