Christopher Linforth

Short Fiction

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I discovered a letter from my ex-lover in the shredder. My new lover said he’d tried to run it through, but the thick paper stock had caught on the teeth. The letter now sat stuck, half-shredded, the poor handwriting of my ex-lover revealing a dirty weekend away in Western Massachusetts. But that was years ago and I barely remembered the details. It unsettled me to think about that time in my life. I had worked as a translator—Norwegian to English and vice versa—and picked up jobs where I could. Most of them came from colleges in Boston, where I lived in a studio apartment, and from professors who had little knowledge of the language and needed some assistance for a grant or fellowship in one of the Nordic countries. I had completed my master’s in Oslo and had considered for a while whether to stay on and get my PhD. I returned to Boston, though, missing my friends in Cambridge and my old lovers in Somerville. One, let’s say K, was an art history adjunct at Tufts, and he called me once he discovered I was back. K was excited and charming and hard to dissuade. We met for coffee and sat in a cushioned window seat together. I caught the heavy scent of vetiver that he had doused all over his body. He questioned me about men I had dated in Oslo. I told K about a kiss with another master’s student but skirted around the married man I had slept with on a research trip to Vinje. I had ideas about translating the poetry of Tarjei Vesaas and a vision I would be the first to do so. I spent the week in the village exploring the churches and secretly drinking akvavit, then hiking through the hills with this man, who did not seem to care if his wife found out. In the café, I told K none of this. He caressed my leg and proposed a weekend away. He said there would be an art museum, some antique shops, and a choice of good restaurants. Now I only remember the damp bed & breakfast run by a louche old lady. She had bad teeth and smoked as she told us about the evening curfew and that breakfast was just cereal. She stubbed out her cigarette in a red clay pot in the hallway and said there was no guest smoking allowed. K and I broke up soon after that weekend, if we were ever really back together, I don’t know. His letter arrived in the post a few weeks later and mentioned someone new, a scholar of Byzantine history, someone with the capacity for love. I stuck the letter in between some notes on Tarjei Vesaas and forgot about it. Now the letter lay trapped and I considered saving the extant half. But for what purpose? I was no longer a translator or lived in Massachusetts or knew anything about K’s current life, where he was, what he was doing. It was not important anymore, if it ever was. My new lover stood behind me and complained the shredder was old and that I needed a new one anyway. I took the shredder outside, where I stood beside the trash can. I read the remains of the letter once more, laughing about the events surrounding that weekend. Then I held the shredder in midair, angling the strips of the letter, trying to decipher the rest.

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Christopher Linforth’s latest book is The Distortions.

Photo Credit: Claudia Santos (@claudiaexcaret) is a Mexican English Major, poet, interpreter, translator, and cultural gestor. She has been published in the digital magazine Fleas on the Dog, the printed anthology Boundless 2022, the Spanish magazines Punto de partida, Blog Libropolis, Letralia, La poesía Alcanza, etc. She focuses on promoting literature through her podcast Libros y otras cosas fuera del transporte and her youtube channel La secta de los libros.