Haunted by the Past: The Love of Singular Men by Victor Heringer translated by James Young

​Growing up in the outer suburbs of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, Camilo is barely aware of the poverty around him and the repression of dissenting voices under the military dictatorship. He has problems enough with his crippled leg and delicate skin that blisters in the savage sun.

When his father brings Cosme, a teenage orphan, to live with them, both Camilo and his mother sulk. But soon a friendship develops between the two boys that crystallises into love. Yet tragedy is looming from which Camilo never completely recovers. In his fifties, providing a refuge for a ten-year-old stray is an attempt to repair the past.
 
The singular style of this first-person account made me fall in love with the book at the start. But when the story didn’t develop the way I’d hoped, I was disappointed. I suppose I wanted to feel more engaged with the human and political issues flagged in the blurb.
 
Thanks to publishers Peirene Press for my advance proof copy.

I haven’t done much new writing myself lately, although I have two novel-length projects in mind. I’m also editing, with helpful feedback from my critique group, a short novel I began in 2018. That, along with The Love of Singular Men has informed my response to this week’s flash fiction challenge to write a 99-word story about a message from a feather.

Vive la Resistance
 
Sauntering into the station, Pierre adopted a nonchalant air. But, beneath his fake uniform, his heart thundered in his chest. He scanned the crowd for his contact: a woman, he’d been told, with a parrot feather in her hat. Pierre knew nothing of parrots, but presumed their plumage would be brighter than the birds on the family farm.
 
There: a vibrant green with a turquoise eye. The woman didn’t blink as he slipped the papers into her pocket. Mission accomplished, almost free, a revolver stabbed his back. “That’s a peacock feather,” said the Nazi. “Don’t you know your birds?”