Otto&Ana anA&ottO

by Jim Ralley 2008

My name is Otto. Otto is a palindrome which means you can spell it the same backwards as forwards. Ana is also a palindrome and the girl I love. I met her at school, soon after her father had died. Her mother and my father became lovers, and later boy and girlfriends, and they called Ana and me brother and sister. But we weren't, we became lovers too. A Nazi pilot in WWII jumped from his plane and his parachute got stuck in a tree. My grandfather cut him down, then they shared their last cigarette. The pilot was Otto, my namesake. Many years later my mother died and I tried to kill myself by sledging off a cliff. But it didn't work so I decided to leave and eventually became a pilot, like my namesake. Ana and I didn't speak any more. I was a long distance aeroplane messenger, and I delivered things to/from the Polar Circle in Finland. Ana decided to move away to the Polar Circle too (we'd talked about it a lot as children) and her mother now had a boyfriend who had a father who had a cabin there. She went to Finland and met her mother's boyfriend's father, who's name was Otto and was the Nazi and my namesake. I found her with my plane and jumped out over the cabin with my parachute. But, like my namesake I got stuck in a tree and was cut down by a Fin: but he had no cigarettes. Ana had heard about my plane crashing and went to see old-Otto. She was crossing the road when a bus hit her. I arrived just in time to see the light fade from her eyes. Her name was Ana and my name is Otto. Otto is my name and her name was Ana. They are both palindromes which means you can spell it the same forwards as backwards. There is a month when the Sun never sets within the Polar Circle.