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Flash Friday · Fiction in Translation
Jonathan Vidgop · translated by Leo Shtutin
In Jonathan Vidgop’s Time of Passage, translated by Leo Shtutin, an ordinary bus journey slips out of the known world.
No one can say when it sets off.
You climb aboard the bus that hauls you workward daily, doleful and reluctant. Passengers scramble for seats. Slam goes the door and with a sick-dog wheeze the metal box moves off. The window-view is tedious, familiar scenes kaleidoscoping past. You close your eyes. The old bus drags itself onward.
Lulled by the rhythms of the road, you nestle into your seat and doze off—only to be jolted awake. You jerk your head up, startled, disoriented, and scan your surroundings. The scape beyond the grimed window—you recognize it not at all. Buffeted by a sudden rush of fear, you turn your head this way and that, trying to shake off the last of your sleep. It’s like you’ve surfaced from a river’s sluggish depths.
Your fellow passengers sleep on, sunk in their dreams. You really must leap to your feet, shout to the driver. You glimpse his back through the partition. But then you hesitate. Would he even know? You try to shake awake your seatmate, but sense at once that it’s no use. You shrink into your chair. Where are we?! The cry falters in your throat.
The bus slows to a crawl, then halts altogether. Full stop. End of. You hop off the footplate, glance around—and realise no one’s alighted but you. This scape is unfamiliar. The bus stands frozen to the spot. Its passengers, your erstwhile seatmates, sleep an endless sleep. Asleep, too, is the driver. In their dreams they see an unfamiliar scape. They see you hop off the footplate and into the unknown.
No one can say when it sets off.
Translation note
Time of Passage is translated by Leo Shtutin.
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Litro’s Flash Friday selections gather short fiction, microfiction and compressed literary work from new and established writers.
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