Getting by in Tligolian

By Roppotucha Greenberg

The City-State of Tligol is ruled by dictators, holds monthly public executions and is haunted by a benign, fishing, giant; but by and large the inhabitants are content, and the food is amazing. The perfect place for a city break, just as long as you don't want to leave. Ever. Language has its own relationship to time. When Jennifer falls for Sam at his execution, she doesn't immediately realise that she can still find and live with him; but the city of Tligol has trains that will take her anywhere, including her own past, and future, and multiple possible variations, just as long as she doesn't leave the city. Jennifer rides the trains, loops around in time and sets an unplanned series of events in motion.
For lovers of The City and The City... and Hotel California!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arachne Press
• Release date: Nov 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781913665944

Roppotucha Greenberg

Roppotucha Greenberg is the author of a flash and micro-fiction collection 'Zglevians on the Move' (TwistiT Press, 2019) and four silly-but-wise doodle books for humans, 'Creatures Give Advice' (2019) , 'Creatures Give Advice Again and it’s warmer now' (2019) 'Creatures Set Forth' (2020) and 'Cooking with Humans' (2022) She speaks three languages fluently and has tried to learn six more. Roppotucha has lived in Russia, Israel and now Ireland. Arachne Press have published Roppotucha’s stories previously in Solstice Shorts Festival anthologies 'Noon' and 'Time and Tide'

Book preview

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First published in UK 2023 by Arachne Press Limited

100 Grierson Road, London, SE23 1NX

www.arachnepress.com

© Roppotucha Greenberg 2023

ISBNs

Print: 978-1-913665-93-7 eBook: 978-1-913665-94-4

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Except for short passages for review purposes no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of Arachne Press.

Cover design © Kevin Threlfall 2023

Thanks to Muireann Grealy for her proofreading.

Getting By In Tligolian

In memory,

Lucia (Felicia) Greenberg.

Contents

Lesson 1: The City of Tligol

Study Note 1: Past, Present, and Future

Lesson 2: How to Introduce Yourself to Strange People

Study Note: How I Feel About Sam Now

How I Felt Then

Lesson 3: I am, you are, the cupola, the verb to be

Vocabulary in Focus: Going Out and Having Fun

Study Note (History): Time-travelling Trains

Exercise: Write a Summary of Your Relationship

Culture Note: Explanation of the Existence of the Giant in Tligol

The Verb Ber

Lesson 4: How to Drink Lattes (Transport, Offices, Prisons)

The Canal Beside the Museum

Inspectors are Coming

The Citizens Speak

Regarding the Giant

On History

Study Skills

Tligolian Literature: Lady Emily F and Mr Jones

Lesson 5: Politeness and Fitting In

More Info on the Giant

Free Writing: Meat Pies, Bridges, and Kitchens

Exercise 2: Write Another Way to Explain What Happened in the End

Bad Language

Lesson 6: Saying Goodbye

Vocabulary: Directions, Religion, Footwear

Lesson 7: Making Friends

Back Then

The Evil Forest

Lesson 8: Family Life

The House by the Canal Beside the Museum

You Know

Conversation Practice (With Your Partner)

Lesson 8: Being Good

Exercise: My Winter Coat

Lesson 9: Being Bad

Ice Cream

Sorting Things Out

Fun Fact: Exit Colin

Martha’s Advice

Sam and Me

Lesson 10: Dying, Tligolian-style

What I Am Angry With

Test Your Vocabulary: Talking to a Friend

Odds and Ends

Appendix

Libraries

Grammar

Trains

Lesson 1: The City of Tligol

Soon after I’d turned twenty-one, I found myself in a city where they sold delicate almond pastries at public executions and ignored the time-warping trains. I didn’t like that, but I liked the city and didn’t want to leave, and I’d just got a nifty job in a hotel. I waited on tables, washed huge pots, and, when the Boss exploded and raged, scrubbed everything in sight.

I met Sam at the execution. When Martha told me we were going, all I could think of was that my luck was turning, that there were a few of us and we were going somewhere. And then I was jealous of her friends and angry at how Martha always spoke faster when she was around them. And then it was him being led to the block.

Sam was being led to the block, and I didn’t know his name was Sam. I barely knew it was an execution. We were at the central square, below the glass dome, and the giant columns were lit up by the sun. The Leaders’ portraits flapped in the air. The priest started a quiet chant, and the Tligolian words danced among the crowd. Then the giant puppets were brought, and I was happy for having been there. Then the bell. ‘Only one,’ Martha said. ‘There were three last time.’ The sound of the bell lasted for as long as he walked and contained the whole place, the golden columns, the waving banners, the Leaders’ faces. The prisoner knelt beside the block to say his prayers. Then he looked up, and it was like all of me, the whole of me – the fear and pain of being me rushing at me, drowning me – and then the drums.

I tasted vomit. I heard the start of a group prayer. The light flipped. Martha’s hand was on my shoulder. Water. The water was alive. My hands were like live beasts.

‘Snap out of it.’ Martha was saying something. We had to go. ‘Jenny, get up.’ We were pushed out of the square into the party area on the green. The glass dome opened to let the birds in. ‘The first time is always bad. Eat something.’

Almond pastries were served at the stall, and I studied the stripes on the candy canes, and strangers’ shoes. My thoughts flung open and raced, and in a few seconds, it seemed, I would work it all out. I needed to do something with time. It would be as simple as going out of that domed square and coming back again. It would require as much effort as conjugating irregular Tligolian verbs. I was in shock, of course, but I was also in love (though it took me a while to figure it out), and I was also right – about time that is, and how easy it was to handle in that place.

Study Note 1: Past, Present, and Future

Just before I wake up I hear voices: ‘Jenny, you hear me, get up and leave. Get out of this city, d’you hear me? Get off your butt and go.’ This is older me, talking down to me, and I’d do as she says, but there’s another voice: ‘You know it’s going to be all right, all your choices will work out in the end – except there is no end – and you will be grateful.’

And there are more: slivers of me from different futures, who can’t hear each other, but all have advice to dish out. They are not real reflections, just my sleepy mind tuning into the static and playing tricks with me. Reflections don’t warn you before they appear, and they’re past things.

I’m good at lying in bed in the mornings. The window is above my bed, and the outer wall is thin. All of the outside is also in my room, the cars, and the trams, and the trains, but they don’t know of me. If I could put my hand through the wall and bring it back in, I’d have the solution to everything.

Lesson 2: How to Introduce Yourself to Strange People

My life was different before I met Sam. I’d moved to Tligol in a hurry and settled in the hotel because of a mix up with the phone booking. What with nobody to talk to and the city being so beautiful, I convinced myself that I was in charge of the perfect expression of its beauty. I walked into bakeries to eat local food; I bumped into its secret parks that expanded and turned into forests; and I pretended I was a student.

I bought a sketchbook and some pens in the campus shop and doodled so that I would have something to do.