To celebrate the release of his new short story collection, A Fancy Dress Party at a Russian Lunatic Asylum, Neil Randall has made one of the stand-out stories - The Mirijevksi Venac Affair - available to read for free of writing website Wattpad.
An absurdist tale of three secret agents deployed to a Belgrade suburb without any operational instructions, the story draws heavily from Paul Auster and will be of interest to any fans of the late, great author of The New York Trilogy.
Here are the opening pages of the story:
Due to the unpredictable
situation on the ground, Gray faced a long wait before receiving full
operational instructions. Until that time, he was told to keep a low profile,
and only leave the apartment to exercise and purchase basic provisions. Not in
any circumstances should he do or say anything that might bring unwanted
attention to himself.
As instructed, he bought a SIM card at one
of the many kiosks situated on different street corners, and made brief contact
with his superiors.
“Nothing to report. I await your orders.”
Nobody responded; a brief silence ensued
before the call was terminated. After that, he only turned the untraceable
disposal cell phone on at prearranged times of the day to check his inbox, and
had no further contact with the outside world.
Every morning just before first light, Gray
performed a set routine of vigorous stretching exercises, meditation, and yoga,
before embarking on a ten-kilometre run along the city streets. During the run,
he familiarised himself with the local area. Traffic was always heavy at this
time of day. If he had to suddenly vacate the apartment during a rush-hour
period, it would pay to know his way around the back streets and rat runs which
might enable him to disappear as quickly and stealthily as possible.
On the main bulevar, he encountered a
dull parade of faces, the poor and destitute, gypsies, beggars, and drunks sprawled
on benches surrounded by mangy street dogs. The people had a beaten, weary
quality about them. On occasion he was harassed for money by dirty-faced street
urchins. But he didn’t lose his composure and curse in his own language; he
simply moved on without saying a word.
After returning to the apartment, he
showered, dressed, ate a light breakfast, made some coffee, and then sat on the
small terrace overlooking a children’s play area. With no television, literature,
or portable devices, boredom set in quickly and was hard to overcome. The only
concession had been a basic book of grammar to help him pick up the language
faster. But after completing a few exercises, the difficulty level increased
significantly, and he found it almost impossible to assimilate the necessary information
to proceed to the next module. Rather than waste time, he jotted down words from
the glossary and married them up to different objects and pieces of furniture
in the apartment: window, chair, table, cup, cooker, and so on. But despite
repeating those words many times over, it only diverted his attention for a
further hour or so before he lost interest.
To break up the day, he performed sets of
one hundred press-ups and one hundred sit-ups at regular intervals.
As he’d been instructed to remain
observant at all times, he returned to the terrace and surveilled the main
street, locally known as the Mirijevski Venac, studying the patrons who
occupied the outside seating section of a nearby café, and those who walked or
exercised their dogs in the adjoining park. With a notebook and pencil meant
solely for his language assimilation endeavours, he made detailed records of
all potentially suspicious persons. Undoubtedly, other nations hostile to their
geopolitical goals would’ve deployed operatives with similar mission
objectives.
One man in particular soon caught his
attention. Early to mid-thirties, with a tanned, muscular physique, he used the
exercise equipment situated next to the play area at the same time every
morning – a time which corresponded with Gray sitting down on the terrace and
drinking his morning coffee. Like Gray himself, he performed a set routine of
stretching exercises, sat cross-legged on the grass in a classic meditative
pose, and then clambered upon the cross-trainers for a vigorous high-octane
cardio session. After a brief rest period and a few sips of water from a nearby
fountain, he approached a high metal bar and did fifty impressive chin-ups,
slow and methodical. He then mounted an exercise bike, and pedalled at a steady
rate for forty-five minutes. Tellingly, he listened to no music nor
interrogated the rucksack he brought along with him for a phone or portable
device – something considered almost compulsory in today’s technological world,
and something which heightened Gray’s suspicions. Was he an enemy operative
hiding in plain sight? Was the fact he exercised in front of Gray’s apartment
significant? Neither of which Gray could answer with any certainty at this
early stage of the operation. All he could do was continue to monitor the
subject’s activities.
For the time being, he became more
interested in the snippets of conversation that he overheard through the
paper-thin apartment walls. These ranged from blazing arguments, young mothers’
comforting babies, the odd drunken gathering complete with boozy, bawdy singing
into the early hours of the morning, to a gravelly voiced old man conducting
long meandering telephone calls from the terrace directly above Gray’s own.
In this manner, he slipped into a dull, repetitive
routine. At the supermarket each day, he made only standard purchases: bread,
milk, eggs – and prepared basic meals which left him satiated for the rest of the
evening. He ran every morning, tried to assimilate as many new words from the
language book as he possibly could, before settling down on the terrace, and observing
the now familiar comings and goings on the Mirijevski Venac.
If you've liked what you've read so far, you can read the whole story here.
And if you'd like to get your hands on the full short story collection click here.
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