I originally posted this story in November of 2022, when I only had 63 total Subscribers. That was back in the day before we had Notes, I believe; before we had Followers. That was when you posted your story and it went up on the leaderboard (I guess that’s what they call that scroll bar on the top of your homepage? I don’t know, even after all this time, I don’t know what that’s called. Not that it matters.) Anyway, this is the first story I ever published. It went up in a literary Magazine out of Toronto, and they didn’t pay. I didn’t care. I was just happy to get published.
It was modelled after reading a story I’d read, by Conrad. I liked the “framing” of it, for one thing. A story being told by one person, related to him by another person, telling him about something he’d witnessed. A three-fold narrative, I guess. I fell in love with the structure of it at the time.
It takes place in Manchuria, during the Japanese invasion way back in the ‘30’s. It’s the story of a Saint, as told to a photo-journalist, by an old junkie who is actually related to Randolf and Lady Julia from my story: CINDERELLA AND HER SISTERS, which I’m putting up on STORIES, AFTER EIGHT, every Sunday. I wanted to tie it in together, on the loosely based collection of TALES OF THE VIENNA WOODS. Another story in that cycle is THE BASHFUL COURTESAN. One day I’ll collect them all up (it’s can be like wrangling cats, sometimes) and put them into a book and see what we have.
In the meantime, I’m putting up this one…
