Excerpts from
Kilroy Kilroy
By Ib Michael
His life begins in a blinding flash and with that flash has lasted for as long as the universe ...
They find him drifting out beyond the reef. Burned senseless, lifeless and entangled in the parachute that buoys him up on bladders of opalescent yellow fabric and shines so far out to sea.
All around them dead fish float to the surface. They are strangely pale, as if all colour has been seared off them.
They grab one of the lines and haul him in. The charred clothing flakes off him. A leather pouch comes adrift and disintegrates. A little string of tags inscribed with his name dances off on the waves along with some photographs and a handful of banknotes.
Carefully they lift him free of the harness and up into the boat. Burnmarks flare on his naked body. They peel the last remnants of fabric from his sodden flesh and dig out fragments of a chain that has become embedded near his collarbone. They revive the man whom death has kissed with such fire and blow breath back into his lungs. They remove a plank from the bottom of the boat; lay him in the pool thus formed to allow the water to wash in over the eruptions on his body. And while all this is going on the parachute bobs off in a yellow aureole of light and the sun sinks into the sea.
Translated by Barbara Haveland
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