What Will It Take For Me To Leave (2019, tr: Kat Storace, 2021) by Loranne Vella is one of the first offerings from Maltese specialists Praspar Press. It’s a set of short stories dealing with daily rhythms, the unseen thoughts and troubles hidden in the people we meet each day. Most stories are fragmentary pieces that dip into the minds of unnamed everyday people and their massively small concerns.
From the opening poem (Everyday Verbs) questioning the daily routine, there’s a sense that the past is snapping at the present’s heels, be that unfinished business or preserved memories threatened with modern truths, such as Cup of Coffee where an emigre due to meet an old fancy for a coffee decides to preserve memories of more innocent times rather than face the truth of a person changed by time and experience as he himself has changed.
Stories also emerge from objects – a jigsaw, a comb – and these connect people to their parents and the repetitive tasks they leave behind, dead or alive. The story that gives the collection this English title (Disappearing Act) imagines the courage to leave the sort of everyday cycle that other stories depict but seems ultimately to chime with Beckett’s line from The Unnamable (“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”).
It all adds up to a sort of quotidian horror, where anxieties buzzing through a person’s head each day – about their lives; their bodies; their place in the world – are amplified within the perspectives shown. In bed, one person has downtime to overthink their day (Night), while others wake to sweat-wet sheets after a night of unsettled dreams. Others worry about the availability of time. One woman (in Layer by Layer) psyches herself up to face the day by applying layers of make-up and perfume like armour though it’s ultimately just a mask.
The final vignette (Crossing the Threshold) brings a surprising end to the collection, effectively delivering an epiphany that ties all that’s gone before. It’s almost as if Vella herself, stepping out of her stories, has found a way out of the mundane, recognising that deep down, we’re all inescapably lonely and that pushing on, in spite of everything, is to be celebrated.