Alert! As you might recall, two South African short stories – from Damon Galgut and Alistair Morgan – pushed The Paris Review into the finals of the US National Magazine Awards, in the fiction category, earlier this year.
The Review ultimately lost out to The New Yorker – no shame in that – but, to signal that it backs it’s own, has now released Morgan’s story, “Departure”, from behind the internet’s Great Paid Content Wall.
For South Africans, then, this is essentially new short fiction from Morgan. Read “Departure”:
The man was walking in the middle of the road. He stumbled, fell to his knees, and then stood up again, swaying slightly as he found his balance.
“Careful,” Anna said to Miles, who had already changed down a gear. She and Miles were looking for a wedding venue. They had driven three hours out of Cape Town in a rented Polo to visit a lavender farm. The farm’s distance from Cape Town was compensated for by the charm of the old stone farmhouse and stables, which had been converted into rooms. It was the first venue that they had both liked. This oasis of mutual agreement was a relief to Anna. For a time it had seemed as if she and Miles would never agree on anything. Apart from the car and the man the road was empty. Dusk was fast approaching and the shadows of eucalyptus trees were cast diagonally across the tarmac. Set back from the road, on the other side of a ditch and slightly obscured by the trees, was a row of five farm laborers’ houses. They were simple, flat-roofed structures, each with windows on either side of a single door. All the windows were dark, although gray tails of smoke rose from two chimneys. Beyond the houses the landscape was flat, rising up only near the horizon where mountains finally broke the monotony, their peaks as blue as oxygen-starved lips. The nearest town was almost thirty miles away.
The man had his back to Anna and Miles. He was barefoot and walking with a pronounced limp. If the tarmac was hot he did not seem to feel it. He appeared not to have heard or seen their car. Anna gripped the handle of the armrest as Miles applied more pressure to the brakes.
“What’s he doing?” she said.
“He’s probably drunk.”
“Shouldn’t we stop? Maybe he’s hurt.”
“It’s not our problem.”
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