isabell serafin krause

writer/development editor. BOOKS. FILM.

Praise for OSTRACA

‘MARVELOUS. Seldom have I read a text that captured me as much as Isabell Serafin Krause’s novel. The last book I can remember being so similarly fascinating was John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.‘ Beate Wedekind, former editor of German ELLE

‘Luminous. Beautifully unmoored.‘ David Rocklin, author of The Night Language and The Luminist

‘Having been given the privilege of reading most of the stories in OSTRACA prior to its official release was such an unforgettable experience. Beautifully crafted stories in intriguing prose…Ms. Serafin Krause’s exquisite presence in these pages exudes magic. She does not disappoint.‘ David Claessen, film producer, cinematographer, ‘Diary of a Mad Black  Woman,’ and ‘The Rosa Parks Story’

‘This story will stick with me and have me remembering Isabell Serafin Krause’s name as one to look for in Tables of Contents from now on.‘ Dan Wickett, Emerging Writers Network

‘A collection of shifting, heartfelt vignettes.‘ Douglas A. Martin, author of Outline of My Lover and Branwell: A Novel of the Bronte Brother

‘Enormously accomplished. Smooth, beautifully crafted.‘ New York Times best-selling author, Marcy Dermansky, author of Very Nice and The Red Car

Book Excerpts. Sample Chapters.

THE BEGINNING

Every good person deserves a biographer. I never imagined I’d take on that task. When I think of Sophie, I think of lots of things. I have a whole host of memories, all of them good, some of them brilliant. Overwhelmingly, when I think of her, I think about the strange ways that people come together in this world. There are those who enter our lives like asteroids. Some meetings are like planetary collisions – heat, fire, lava, and damage left in the wake. These are the things I think about when I think of Sophie but please don’t misread this. I’m not likening Sophie to an asteroid, nor am I suggesting she ever did me harm. I’m thinking about the shake-ups, the chaos that life inevitably brings, how there are those of us born to surmount that damage, and, others of us, (less lucky), who never do.

About a year after Sophie died, I began going through her letters and the emails she’d printed and obsessively filed. I started going through her old journals and pictures. She was a collector and lover of scrapbooks. She was drawn to their ability to showcase memories. I read the short story snippets and poetry she’d scripted. All of them were autobiographical and some were intimate, many of them grafted from people who were, at one time or another, important to her.

As you make your way through this book, you’ll see that the segments I’ve assembled aren’t in chronological order. Memories don’t arrive in a straight line. I put this together as a tribute to Sophie. For the most part, you will have to assemble her story as if pieces from a puzzle. I’ve done my best to provide documentation that I trust gives a fairly accurate depiction. The journal entries which host some of Sophie’s most poetic memories comprise a collection of shifting, heartfelt vignettes. Her therapist, Dr. Fiona Haldane, who graciously contributed to this book, initially encouraged these pieces, some of which were published in various literary journals.

When I was twenty-seven years old, I walked up to a girl in a park. There was something melancholy about her. She had these enormous eyes, sylph-like arms and legs, and a wise but innocent face. When I told her I was an artist and asked if she might sit for a portrait, she agreed. The banter between us was easy. That San Francisco summer day was typical of the ones described by Mark Twain. Overcast with a fleeting sun, it was grey and a bit cold but undeterred we walked around talking until night fell.That afternoon launched a chapter that has come to an end. Sophie was my confidante for sixteen years. At the risk of sounding cliché, I know my life will never be the same without her.

DECEMBER IN KRAKOW

This story, the beginning, at least, could not have taken place, taken root, in another city. Krakow, the cobblestone streets, ice-laden in winter, the women who sold amber jewels in the marketplace alongside icons of the Virgin Mary. This story of love might only have found its roots there. Unless one has been there, seen what I have seen, one may deem this an assertion of naiveté. They say what of Rome? What about Paris? What of all the dramatic loves which have taken place in the City of Light? But I say Krakow. I will say Krakow forever and I will say it as a mantra.

It was in Krakow where I discovered myself. It was in this city where the sentence of love was pronounced, the death sentence. It was in Krakow, in a hotel where the carpet, blood-red, wound like a vein through the body, where the love unfolded. It was in this city of candle-lit bars and *nalesnicki z serem, where the love sprang fresh, like the first heads of grass at the crest of spring, the spring which followed the bitter winter, the winter which obliterated optimism. Poland, a country of love and despair, it laid upon me like the memory of him, the one who walked up to me in a medieval-themed restaurant, the one who made love to me on the fourth night after a gold cascade of champagne.He was in Krakow on business. Perhaps I have not written the date. It was the 8th day of November. The winter moon appeared at three-thirty in the afternoon, suspended in a near pitch-black darkness. As the bright moon lingered, I taught English courses to eager groups of Poles. After class neighborhood children would throw snowballs in the grand, regal square, teenagers sidled up alongside one another to talk about American pop music while the adult male students offered to treat the female teachers to beer in bars. On late nights after class, I adopted the habit: I made the short journey home by taxi. I did this because I was sometimes followed by men in cars who rolled down their windows and called out aniol, angel. Alessandro watched me from the dining room of his hotel restaurant. He watched me stand on the street corner, waiting in the cold, the snow, the darkness for the taxi to arrive. I remember that during those days, I dressed in a mode which I believed quite Parisian: I wore a black pea coat, a red scarf. I wore tights, always black. I wore a pair of stylish, industrial-looking, lace-up boots, also black which shielded my legs from the winter air. I ambled into shops and often picked up trendy bits of clothing. I was an independent innocent then. I had a modest income. I had a good life in a good central European city. I had escaped the farmlands of the American south. I had escaped the factories. I possessed a few euphoric ideas about love. I was therefore not worn out by the idea nor was I worn out by the event.

*Nalesniki z serum, Polish pancakes with sweet cheese. 

ANTIQUITIES

Memory festers like a platoon of rotting flowers. The fatigued blossoms molder in a transitory bedroom. The maid cuts her eyes at me as I beg of her to leave them dying. When I slip her something to abate her trouble, her eyes surrender the knife. She gracefully exits, an Asian ghost. Back to the flowers, the petals, cornflower blue, are shaped like the ears of mice. In the pink hours, I pull them from their water. Their roots rest against my palms. Nose poised above skeletal tentacles, I study them. These flowers bloom in spring. They are so much like Alessandro; their scent is overpowering. The hotel room where they rest is like the hotel rooms we once knew. There is the same heavy frame furniture, a wallpaper of blanched yellows and field greens. Once upon a time, like archeologists on a mission for antiquities, we excavated one another.