Watching the Watchers
In ‘Man with Golden Helmet’, feature author Renée Sarojini Saklikar follows a thread of memory that spans many landscapes. She weaves a literary tapestry that even picks up a few ghosts along the way.
As Renée tells us, “Place, location, time, dates, names: these are obsessions that come up repeatedly in my writing. And so too, are ghosts.“
What began as a writing exercise with her students in SFU’s writing program became an evocative story all its own.
From Pulp Literature Issue 28, Autumn 2020, here is an excerpt from ‘Man with Golden Helmet’, part ghost story, part mystery, part memoir — all enchanting.
Man with Golden Helmet
by Renée Sarojini Saklikar
August on a Sunday at the art gallery in the year 2009: the Dutch Masters arrive to this Pacific Northwest place. Outside the gallery façade, huge banners hang, imprinted with colour: the brown and red and gold of Bruges, of Antwerp and Amsterdam. The gallery sits in a city built by lumber and railway barons not even two hundred years ago. Back then, we knew some of those men; but right now we are watching a woman with brown glossy skin. She carries a canvas bag slung over one shoulder.
Our woman stands waiting to see the Dutch and stares at a muscled security guard: his skin is brown, just like hers. And together he and our woman are the only brown people at the gallery, at least down in the area where one finds the Dutch. The security guard takes our woman’s ticket. He folds and detaches a stub, hands it back, and when he does so, the security guard asks our woman for her canvas shoulder bag. He gives the bag a quick pat, and she’s in.
We follow at a safe distance. We often attend art galleries, auction halls, estate sales and many other such places. So many currents of emotion, embalmed inside the objects people buy, sell, inherit. So many vibrations: settlement, dispossession, affluence, nostalgia. Right now we are tapping into the energy of our woman and her canvas bag as she walks, step by step, to visit the Dutch Masters.
Find out what happens next, Issue 28, Autumn 2020, ON SALE now until October 31st!
Poets, for your chance to appear in the magazine — and win $300! — enter the Kingfisher Poetry Prize, open until November 15th!
Renée Sarojini Saklikar (Surrey Poet Laureate, 2015–2018) is the author of four books and six chapbooks. Renée’s sci-fi epic in verse, Bramah and the Beggar Boy, was published in 2021. And her latest book in the series, Bramah’s Quest, is available now. Renée’s work has been adapted for opera and visual art. She teaches creative writing and has judged our Magpie Award for Poetry. Her short story ‘Told under the Linden Tree’, which weaves poetry and prose to tell a new tale from her epic saga THOT J BAP, appears in Pulp Literature, Issue 37. Visit Renée on Twitter.
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