Complete Novellas by Anthony DeMarco: Churchsteeple text
                                                                  Kerens-h-tein
Novella-in-Progress by Anthony DeMarco:  Into a Pinyin Sunrise

The following are excerpts. Complete novellas can be found at www.anthony-demarco.net

Churchsteeple text
Sometimes when I look at that church I can sense another time, another place. It might be many things other than what it actually is. There is one like it on Amsterdam and 96th. And perhaps another on 3rd and 126th, but that is not more important than there having been one just like it at some other point in time. Or that it itself might have been right there at some other moment. Oh, that it could fold me into its pillared spires and let me observe what it has for so long! All the more so if it might be and have been at that place and that time. For I could then try and find him, who has escaped my imagination for so many years. He who set me on that journey toward Amsterdam. What did he do at eight in the morning? Where did he look for his daily lot and why did he not despair upon never finding it? Bread, sugar, cigarettes. The next game of chance to be had for so little and with the promise of so much gain. Listening to the sounds that shaped his sensibility at any given time, any given place and trying to make sense of it all so courageously...  Jim sat looking at the pavement. He would like to have gone to spend some time at that breakfast place on Serrano but could not bear the thought of having to let on that he, too, had been caught up in the language school scam. Vergonzoso is what the newspapers said. Learning should be a worthy exercise, one to be shielded from those who would have it yield so easily to whim. Jim could not help but recall that even the tritest of ventures had been required to bear the seal. Those in the East Village displaying that nod of approval proudly for which they had toiled so long and hard. Years of poring over the tools and disciplines which might send one off either happily or scurrying hurriedly past the eatery windows toward some nearest refuge within which to redefine oneself. All the while bemoaning some lack of sound formation which had caught them unwittingly. For a much needed requirement it was. And if upon riding the Lexington Avenue northbound and past one's destination to almost Amsterdam, one might hail a crosstown and come round full circle to the place of their endowment. His own endowment. Sitting for hours and listening to the dearest voices. A time gone by and still being, flutes and rapturous voice rising slowly into one's own consciousness. Jim would sit staring at the clock on the library wall just above the librarian's mantel. Stark and unforgiving as its second hand ticked off the spending moments of his youth. Such was the one to take hold of, to listen to the maestros and make them his, strings and voices beneath a thunderous ovation of quiet desperation. The jaded class would become his to change or fashion as he saw fit. A right bequeathed him by they who had crossed on while looking back at the darkness, following some perfect pitch across the divide between what we should be now and what we were then.  

Kerens-h-tein
Sharon Kerenstein must have stood for forty minutes or more contemplating some flagrant misdeed perpetuated by one misspoken office clerk. In someone else's dream they had become entwined unwillingly. Mistaken for another and uttered forth unknowingly ultimately harked back to her own modest undertaking, some carried insignificance to all but she who might take the time to stop and consider. Stop and ponder some ruder awakening, blinder omission of one faded character brought over so hopefully and with no rancor held toward those who had forced upon, involuntary untruth resounding well into the better part of this once unfulfilled sea of burgeoning promise alluring. Still blinder flirtations would have always entranced this slighter furtherest generation - Kerens-h-tein - and still further removed toward anything else she might have hoped to become. Some widening silk pulled higher until Sharon could withhold no more. One's own mind heading back and around to that point which brought her on to this ever increasing oceanic embrace would still this mighty point of reason from which some new world undertaking had departed. Unnecessary trappings of a time gone so soothingly, time obscured through the advancement of one not-so-foolish undertaking and out of some sea of translucent blue wet and wetter still until emerging in sleeker desire and object lesson to all that one's own tired mind could produce inevitably. Back to that one faded character would continue to beckon Sharon Kerenstein to all but that most indelible of scholarship remaining. Hours and hours of poring over one sharpened page after another, modernized reprinting of older versions, documents drawn up and out of some archive long revered might have provided some island sitting in deference to the grand lady reaping out a shadow of hope over the tired many, and still lost amidst piles of yellowed records defining the stench over which beckoned some brightest new endeavor. Kerens-h-tein forgotten. Kerens-h-tein begotten and sub-rendered. And so Sharon would continue with her noble undertaking, ne'er hesitating until one well thought-out time displacement might soon have its way with her. Pushing back against some finer notion of what it should have promised to be at the heart of one's own all encompassing civilization, and brought back to a time and place so distant that one could only gasp in harrowed anticipation of what it might promise to lay down before some figure awaitingly... Sharon would persist in drawing upon some good nature ne’er looked down upon. Circumstance irregardless had always extolled her in some finer fashion, untold elegance towering out and over even in the most difficult of situations. Some professional grace more finely written with each passing day, Sharon Kerenstein certainly did pertain to that highest of callings and higher still... "And where have you been, Ms. Kerenstein?" Peggy Dooley would have surely been the first to confront Sharon regarding some better-natured misdeed, unintended concessions unpardoned, some purely accidental misuse of time. As it were precisely she whose general manner most went lacking, drawn out and up over some working regale within which her blessed parents had long been struggling. Then, the Saint Mary’s School had long held some certain permanence within this working class section in the borough of Queens, New York. Some fainter redistricting, postal code and decidedly irish upbringing would have characterized this once unimposing piece of shoreline. From some vaster lot they had appeared, years after that of Sharon’s own but still much sooner than the Dooleys could have intended and all at once rising daily under some starker realization that this new world had presented its own variety of loftier endeavor. Ne’er quite being able to make ends meet had exhausted until one’s own expectant loins might have given in to some pleasanter distraction. Peggy Dooley had thus appeared within some midst unset upon, unsought and completely without any means for some sounder fruition. Hardly knowing and never being made aware of some purest chance which had somewhat cruelly obliged her to look forwards, ne’er unquestioning and would provoke all who taught her to retreat beneath some finer familiar rapport and tolerantly. Poor Peggy this and poor Peggy that would have hardly sufficed but underlie even some tiniest bit of unbridled concern. "I was just on the boardwalk. I guess I kinda’ lost track of the time." "Jill’s been tryin’ to tell us that there’re only tildes on the first ’n’ third persons for this verb." "This one? Pedir?" "Yes." "She’s absolutely correct… Come on, group. You should all know that!" Jill McInerney returned to her seat feeling well-vindicated and wondering if there might have been some other matter for which Peggy had been secretly harboring ill will towards her on that day. After all, clutching at grammatical straws would never suit Peggy Dooley, even if tilde had always seemed such a pleasant word to say, reluctant scholar and all she would be able to do in graduating with enough merit to take over in running the family store...