A Postage Stamp for the Missing Country

How it begins

Vera engraved the country from memory because possessing its map was now an offense.

The coastline was easy. She had cut it into steel for twenty-seven years, through four ministers, two currencies and a drought that made everybody write home more often.

The northern border was harder.

Her hand kept drawing the line as it had been before the treaty.

She let it.

Outside the workshop, a truck collected the old postal signs. Men carried them facedown, as though a country could be embarrassed on its way out.

Vera bent over the plate.

She had been ordered to destroy the obsolete stock. Instead, she printed one sheet.

Twelve stamps.

Enough for a small act of foolishness, she told herself. Not enough for a revolution.

She wrote to her sister at the address where they had last lived together. The village had been renamed twice and evacuated once. Every previous letter had returned.

Vera affixed a stamp, pressed its corners carefully and dropped the envelope into the station box.

Three days later, a reply arrived.

The handwriting shook.

I thought you had forgotten me.

Vera sat on the workshop floor.

She read the letter until the words ceased to look possible.

At noon, a railway sorter knocked on her door. His uniform belonged to the new administration, but the badge on his cap had been turned inward.

"Pavel Orm," he said. "I need to ask about some postage."

She covered the engraving plate with a cloth.

He placed her original envelope on the bench.

"How did this travel?"

"By post."

"Through a sorting office that closed nineteen years ago."

Vera looked at him.

He opened his bag.

Inside lay eleven more envelopes, each addressed to somebody the authorities had declared impossible to locate.

None had stamps.

"The office is waiting," he said.

Outside, the truck returned for the workshop sign.

Vera lifted the cloth from the plate.

"Then we'd better not keep it waiting too long."