Paddy Zimmerman
The Absence of Walnuts and Pears
Back in Mangalia my father was an actor though no-one would dare admit it. Howling at the Black Sea till ten in the evening pacified the authorities, was his take on it, and we should all be humble in appreciation. In Cluj the geese were starving but father had a full house every night. Coriolanus, Volpone, even a solo rendering of ‘The Rhinoceros’ all brought tumultuous plaudits right to the stitches of his hemp wellingtons.
Father didn’t mind being soaked to the skin and neither did mother. With 50 Bani a show we were soon able to purchase the niftiest hair dryer in town, opal translucent with a tone calibration set in a Major Seventh. Father’s return was awaited with slaverish anticipation. Round midnight as he fell in the stable we would launch ourselves hungrily on his satin Army jodhpurs retrieving the salt flecks that might be lodging there; the loose change of his ever loyal and abiding public.
Ionesco once wrote a tribute to the Black Sea for its unwavering support of the theatre in malodorous times. Father meanwhile returned to shoemaking, his first love, shortly afterwards, when Vaudeville became the flavour and the sow ate all of his pinstripe in the absence of walnuts and pears.
Paddy Zimmermann was born in Sommerset in 1960. His work has previously appeared in Pyschopoetica 46. He is a member of a UK charity writing to prisoners on USA’s death row.
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