Read here my flash fiction piece from Print anthology!

Read here...My flash story from the Print and ebook anthology To be or not to be a Writer

The Stranger of Gdansk…Nick Gerrard

You saw him early morning most days. Black trilby, black mid-length woollen coat, scuffed brogues and thread-bare baggy suit trousers; he always had that suit on under the coat. Always the same red tie and smudged collar cream shirts.

The stranger we called him. No one knew his name or where he came from. I said good day to him and he half-smiled back. He passed my art stall outside the café Gunter Grass on his way to the bakers over the bridge, at the back of the waterfront. On his way back he passed under the archway and watched the busking cellists; especially if they played his favourite Bella Ciao. Then with his bag of rolls or poppy-seed cakes he took a table outside Schulz’s café. He drank his coffee short and smoked his cigarettes long; both strong and black. He passed me and turned into Krzywe street, typed in his key to the iron gate and went inside and climbed the stairs to the small attic room, Mrs Brzozowa had told us he inhabited.

Same every day; the stranger. He interested us, the waiters, the painters, the storekeepers. Maybe because he was a criminal? An escapee? We didn’t know and so he interested us, and he kept himself to himself and was civil so that was about all we could expect.

I say this happened most days, but sometimes he would not appear or disappear for a couple of weeks. Then we would spot him again, during his morning routine or on his afternoon one. He was a creature of habit, this we knew.

About 2 pm every day he went to the market and picked up apples or cherries and sometimes French beans and walnuts. 2 pm was a good time to go to the market, the morning buyers, always in a rush and ready to spend money on bad produce had gone; and the people who shopped in the afternoon could pick the best bits.

We wondered if he cooked but thought perhaps that he didn’t. He stopped off at the delicatessen for a salami and a nice fresh cheese, sometimes some sausage or a jar of duck confit.

Every three days or so or so, we thought when he had run out of sausage and, he went down the fisherman’s wharf, to the fisherman’s café. For a fresh fish, whatever was in season and a carafe of red wine, never white, always red, never mind the fish.

His routine only changed in winter in the café in the early morning and the fish café in the early evening by him getting a table in the corner inside and putting up the collar of his woollen coat and pulling his hat down slightly on his walk home.

We wondered about this man and felt sorry for him. He was alone, we worried that he was lonely; we wondered if we could help him somehow. How? We weren’t sure.

One thing we knew was that he liked words! I mean, he loved to read. He always had newspapers, what looked like foreign ones too; which he sometimes huffed at. And if not newspapers always a tatty paperback, which he sometimes chuckled at.

And he wrote; what we knew not. But he scribbled as if it was a race. In school kid notebooks. All of a sudden he would take one out of his inside pocket urgently and scribble frantically, sometimes for 30 minutes without looking up. Then he would stop, look, grin and put it back inside.

The only other thing the stranger did was walk the shoreline, inspecting the ships newly in, with his hands behind his back. And then would converse with a ship hand, in a variety of languages. My friends would report to me.

-Today he was down the docks, speaking Italian like a native!

Or.

-Yeah Russian or something like that!

Even

-As sure as I am standing here I swear he was rabbiting on in Arabic, full spittle!

And then he was gone.

Mrs Brzozowa said he paid a month’s rent and packed his few things in a tatty brown case and bid her farewell.

Just like that. No reason given. No explanation offered. No goodbyes or see-you-agains. Gone.

And we forgot about him. What was there to remember him for really?

And then it appeared, almost a year since his leaving.

It was for sale in the bookshops.

‘The Gawpers of Gdansk.’

A short book, but we were all in there.

‘The man at the art shop, always saying hello, but wanting more.’

‘The waitress in the café wanting to know what I had been up to.’

‘The old men by the docks, keeping an eye on me, watching who I talked to.’

‘They thought I didn’t know that they traded information of my daily routine. The vegetable salesman reported to the landlady, who reported to the artist, who reported to the waiters; and so on.’

‘No one offered me real friendship, they only offered their ears to gossip.’

‘A neighbourhood of nosey parkers, busybodies and Kibitzers!’

And people bought the book, and our neighbours laughed when we passed and tourists started to look for us, and we stood fake grinning as families posed with us for selfies. All these strangers!