Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Bridge of Dreams and Predators: Two Short Novels
    The Bridge of Dreams and Predators: Two Short Novels
    The Bridge of Dreams and Predators: Two Short Novels
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    The Bridge of Dreams and Predators: Two Short Novels

    By Alex Shishin

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Two cities, Paris and Osaka and two short novels about desperate lives.

    Predators: A Tale of Paris
    Residing in Passy, Paris, Greek-American journalist Rick and African-French Martiniquean Yolanda, author and ex-model, lead a socially active and domestically quiet life. Unexpectedly they are asked by the wealthy and powerful Ogawa family, through Rick’s old editor in Tokyo, to let their daughter, Masami, homestay with them. This changes their lives. Their acne-ravaged and troubled Japanese guest idolizes Yolanda and likened herself to an abandoned cat perpetually searching for a home. After Masami starts giving Yolanda expensive gifts wrapped in exquisite Japanese paper, the couple soon wonder whether Masami is shoplifting, when does not have to, to demonstrate affection in some twisted way. The mystery deepens with the appearance boyfriend Brian, a secretive person and a seemingly talented poet. Without quite understanding why, he arouses Rick’s “cynical” journalistic suspicions. Then when Masami is about the leave, the Ogawas beg Rick and Yolanda to let Masami stay longer for a reason that will prove crucial to understanding the outcome of the strange mix of relationships in this tale.

    The Bridge of Dreams: A Tale of Modern Japan
    Homeless and disabled, Motoshima Saburo, 58, sells The Big Issue on Osaka’s colorful Ebisu Bridge, a short pedestrian thoroughfare filled with tourists, lovers, artists and hustlers of every stripe. Constantly struggling with both destitution and loneliness, which he compares to a jail where one is both prisoner and warden, Saburo falls into a moral battle with Ken, an aging toy boy and “dating club” tout, for the soul of “The Waif,” a tranquilizer addicted 17-year-old runaway, whom Ken has used for a haywire robbery. Saburo assumes the role of father and lover, though he cannot be either to the confused girl who will not tell him or anyone else her name. The story is set in 2009, in the midst of the Great Recession, which adds to the desperation that the three main characters face and casts an ominous shadow over the daily buoyancy on Ebisu Bridge.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlex Shishin
    Release dateMay 15, 2010
    ISBN9781452389790
    The Bridge of Dreams and Predators: Two Short Novels
    Author

    Alex Shishin

    Alex Shishin has published fiction, non-fiction and photography in Japan, North America, and Europe in print and online. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Shishin is a permanent resident of Japan. Shishin is the author “Nippon 2357:A Utopian Ecological Tale,” and five other ebooks published exclusively by Smashwords and available for free. He is co-author with Stephan F. Politzer of “Four Parallel Lives of Eight Notable Individuals,” also published by Smashwords. Shishin's short story "Mr. Eggplant Goes Home," first published in “Prairie Schooner” received an O. Henry Award Honorable Mention and was anthologized in “Student Body: Stories About Students and Professors” (University of Wisconsin Press). His short story "Shades," originally published in “Sunday Afternoon” (Kobe) was anthologized in The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan (Stone Bridge Press) and reprinted by invitation in “The East” (Tokyo).  Shishin’s book “Rossiya: Voices from the Brezhnev Era” (a Russian-American memoir of a train odyssey through the Soviet Union and Poland) was published by iUniverse. It is available as a print-on-demand book and an ebook. Shishin has also published a collection of photographs entitled “Ordinary Strangeness” with Viovio in conjunction with his joint exhibition at the Twenty-first Century Museum of Art, Kanazawa, Japan. It is available from the publisher online. Alex Shishin holds degrees in English from the University of California, Berkeley (BA, Phi Beta Kappa) the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (MFA) and the Union Institute and University (PhD).

    Read more from Alex Shishin

    Related to The Bridge of Dreams and Predators

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Life In The past Lane

      Aug 27, 2021

      Life In The past Lane
      5 min read

    • Article

      Women In 60s Soho: ‘In Soho, You Were Less Judged. You Could Do What You Wanted’

      Oct 24, 2021

      In her cosy sitting room, overlooking one of Soho’s busier streets, Jean Jones (not her real name) begins to peel off an imaginary skirt. “Someone made it for me,” she says. “It was red, and it had loads of panels. I used to take each panel off one a

      11 min read

    • Article

      Four Of A Kind

      May 3, 2023

      Four Of A Kind
      4 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      Men I Hate: The Stasi Men

      Mar 2, 2021

      Men I Hate: The Stasi Men
      12 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading Subtitles: Rabeah Ghaffari

      Dec 20, 2021

      By the end of 2020, it was clear that I would be living in Mexico. And thus began my odyssey of binge watching mostly Spanish language telenovelas to accelerate my language skills. The post A Year in Reading Subtitles: Rabeah Ghaffari appeared first

      5 min read

    • Article

      Have Pen, WILL TRAVEL

      Jun 15, 2020

      Have Pen, WILL TRAVEL
      6 min read

    • Article

      Conversations with My Nanny

      Jan 10, 2019

      Conversations with My Nanny
      3 min read

    • Article

      Excerpts From The Works Of The 2024 Whiting Award Winners

      Apr 10, 2024

      The 2024 Whiting Award winners were announced Wednesday night. Below are excerpts from their work.

      19 min read

    • Article

      Share Your News

      Jan 6, 2022

      To feature in subscribers’ news contact: tjackson@warnersgroup.co.uk ‘I’ve loved writing ever since I was a child,’ writes subscriber Glenda Young. ‘I live in the north-east and my novels are set in the coalmining village of Ryhope where I was born a

      5 min read

    • Article

      Ben Okri

      Apr 25, 2022

      Ben Okri
      5 min read

    • Article

      Mortal Peril

      Oct 25, 2020

      In that country known as the past, as recently as the 1970s, young people with little money, restless feet and rebellious souls used to hitchhike. This seems impossible to comprehend now: the idea of young people, especially young women, willingly ge

      4 min read

    • Article

      Kerre, Quite Contrary

      Jul 3, 2022

      Kerre, Quite Contrary
      7 min read

    • Article

      Typewriter

      Aug 2, 2021

      Chère Madame. Vous ne vous rappelleriez pas de moi, mais de ma part… Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap… She flicks the return bar – PING – and her fingers fall back into rhythm. Catherine’s French comes as naturally as the movement of her

      5 min read

    • Article

      Nugrybauti

      Apr 24, 2019

      Nugrybauti
      8 min read

    • Article

      Her Name Is Rio

      May 4, 2021

      Her Name Is Rio
      9 min read

    • Article

      The William Trevor Reader: “Kinkies”

      Mar 15, 2022

      There’s a lesson to be taken from “Kinkies”—as writers, we hew to professionalized tastefulness at our creative peril. The post The William Trevor Reader: “Kinkies” appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      La Otra Historia

      Jun 30, 2022

      La Otra Historia
      14 min read

    • Article

      Paul Theroux: ‘Writing Is A Blood Sport. One Does Have Differences With People’

      Oct 2, 2022

      In an ideal world – by which I mean one that lives up to my most energetic fantasies – Paul Theroux and I would be meeting in some far flung and exotic place: on an empty platform in a distant railway station, or under a date palm in a dried-up deser

      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Bridge of Dreams and Predators

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Bridge of Dreams and Predators - Alex Shishin

      The Bridge of Dreams and Predators

      Two Short Novels

      By Alex Shishin

      Published by Smashwords

      Copyright 2010, 2017 Alex Shishin

      All Rights Received

      No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner and publisher.

      Smashwords Editions License Notes

      Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

      These two novellas are works of fiction. Similarities to actual people, places (except landmarks) and events encountered in either of these novellas are entirely coincidental.

      Predators

      A Tale of Paris

      The digital calendar on my desk told me that exactly two years had passed since Masami Ogawa had come to Paris and changed Yolanda’s and my life forever. I was alone in our high-rise apartment in Passy on this abnormally cold August day--an oppressive day with a sky the color of slate, neither promising rain nor allowing a beam of sunlight to pass. I was watching my wife being interviewed live on French national television about our work against land mines. The interviewers were decent. They stuck to the topic. No questions about Miss Ogawa, or Yolanda’s first marriage, or her being married to an American white guy, or about her being an ex-super model once celebrated as The Black Venus of Martinique. Nothing, in short, like what she experienced with the American media.

      Relieved, I turned the TV off. I had a pressing book review deadline. I also had writer’s block. I tried to force myself to write; then I shut down the computer and went shopping.

      I took the Metro to Montparnasse and walked to a noisy little street filled with garish sex video joints to a small shop selling foie gras from the central Pyrenees that Yolanda especially liked. Next I wandered to Gallery Lafayette, buying an expensive wallet I didn’t need, and then to the Montparnasse cemetery.

      As I meandered past Sartre and Beauvoir, Marguérite Duras, Saint Saëns, my mood lightened--it inevitably does in Parisian cemeteries--though today death sat on my nerves.

      Sitting opposite Guy de Maupassant’s grave was a young blond man, probably in his late twenties, with an opened bottle of white Medoc wine. He wore blue jeans and a checkered shirt that was too thin for this chilly day. His long hair was combed severely back, revealing a pale forehead with a fading violet bruise. His face was so pale it seemed frostbitten. His lips were tight and colorless; his eyes were set in dark, weary craters. His white sneakers, which seemed freshly washed, were nearly worn through at heels.

      You’re an American, he said to me. The voice was distant but not unfriendly. I can tell by your mannerisms.

      Greek-American, I said.

      I like Americans. I like Greeks too, he said. He gave me a second look and said, You are married to Yolanda St. Cloud! I’ve seen your photographs in Le Monde. I’ve read her book.

      Yolanda had written a compassionate memoir about her difficult life with the Guatemalan director Dario Salinas, whom she had married at twenty-six. Before coming to Hollywood he had produced brilliant documentaries on working people and poverty in the Caribbean. Hollywood had co-opted him--enriching him and emasculating him as a political artist. Yolanda had written that he had loved her though he philandered. He was having problems with alcohol and cocaine when he crashed his Cessna into the San Gabriel Mountains, leaving his young widow with little else but debts as a legacy.

      You found me out, I said. Mind if I join you?

      The young man made room for me on the weathered marble. I sat down. He handed me the bottle. I drank.

      Not a bad vintage, I said.

      May I ask you something? he said, Is it remotely possible that you and Madam St. Cloud were once childhood sweethearts?

      I wish, I said. That’s a unique question, you know. No one has ever asked me a question like that. You have a story to tell. So tell it.

      Tell me yours first, he said, looking at Guy de Maupassant. It’s important to me how couples meet.

      Yes, it’s--crucial, I said, thinking of Miss Ogawa.

      Six years ago, I told him, Yolanda was on a book promotion tour of Japan. My English language newspaper had set up an interview for the day after her arrival in Tokyo. The paper’s star multi-lingual Japanese columnist was supposed to interview Yolanda, but he caught food poisoning in a Shinjuku bar the night before. I was sent in his place to the New Otani Hotel. The chief reason they sent me was that I was available and also because I spoke a little French. When I called from the lobby, Yolanda told me in impeccable English to come up to her suite. I went up and fell in love.

      It happens like that, the young man said and sighed.

      The crazy thing, I said, was that she fell in love with me! Me--a dumpy guy two inches shorter and ten years older than her! You explain it--

      He stared at Guy de Maupassant’s grave and said nothing.

      A week later we were married. So here I am, a journalist dabbler, a once a week lecturer at the Sorbonne, a de facto housewife.

      He passed me the bottle.

      I had to shut off that damn tape recorder in the middle of our interview-- Excuse me. I’m a little drunk. I’m an unreliable narrator, I said.

      People in love always are, he said. For me love has gone irrevocably bad.

      Not irrevocably--

      Yes, irrevocably! Irrevocably, irrevocably!

      Tell me--

      No, you tell me--are all happy families alike as Tolstoy says?

      These days I often feel guilty about my happiness, I said.

      I understand, he said softly, I read about your troubles. How could you let it happen to you?

      Perhaps because we were too content with each other’s company.

      The young man did not speak. He was not gazing at Guy de Maupassant but at me.

      Maybe not, I said and unburdened myself, telling him the story I tell here.

      •••••

      It started with a phone call from Tokyo on a brilliant June evening. My ex-editor from the English language daily, an American guy, was on the line with a favor to ask me.

      A major stockholder has this daughter who idolizes your wife, Rick. She’d like to home stay with you in Paris for a few months.

      A few months! We’re working stiffs, I said.

      Rick, they’re on my neck here. Really on my neck. Couldn’t you at least go through the tatamae motions of considering it?

      I’ll talk to Yolanda, I said.

      About what, darling? said Yolanda.

      We were in the kitchen cooking Beef Stroganoff after a particularly passionate afternoon lovemaking session. We were in the mood for largesse.

      Yolanda took the portable telephone from my hand. She listened. A wide smile broke out across her face. She laughed once, twice. Nodding her head. I’ll talk to him, she said.

      Putting her long fingers over the mouthpiece, she said, Rick, Masami sounds like a lovely girl. Let’s have her!

      Did he tell you how many months?

      Only about two months. Really, Rick, remember how kind your old newspaper was when we got married? And I really liked all the Japanese people I met when I visited.

      "I have other

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1