Chapter 12
“AUNTY DO, A BLACK pebble has appeared in the lake.” He was panting under the burden of this exciting announcement only to notice that the solitary carer at the Home was unmoved. “Aunty Do!”
The woman slowly took her eyes off the ancient washing machine that spat the children’s clothing dirtier if not unravelled. “What again?’ Her voice was muffled by the noise coming from the inside the Home where the children had poured soapy water onto the bare cement floor and were now sliding amid screams and jostles.
Aunty Do or as she was officially known as Aunty Dobreva looked miserable and exhausted. Someone had snitched the cylinder of the spare washing machine. Men used those cylinders to brew highly intoxicating rakiin them so they generated a tempting price.
Feeling sorry for her, Rob pulled a pillow case with puke stains from a laundry pile and wrapped it around her neck. Bursting in anger the heavy woman grasped the pillow case off her shoulders and aiming it at Rob not unlike kung fu nunchuck.
Too quick to be caught by surprise Rob jumped aside which left Aunty Do with the only option to press the pillow against her sweated forehead as her body shook with sobs.
“Give me five!” Rob came back to her again desperately wanting to cheer her up.
Aunty Do raised her hand spraying her chunky fingers as his clawed hand met hers. Aunty Do opened her palm only to see a shiny black pebble nesting in it.
“You can’t eat it,” said Aunty Do and dropped the pebble.
Rob picked it up. Perhaps Lala would be more interested if I tell her about this pebble, he thought and left in search of the red-haired girl.
Inside the children were all dripping wet. The sliding on the muddy cement floor had put them in a good mood and to forget hunger they started to sing as Aunty Dobreva had taught them.
The tallest boy Gosho the Poet began first because every day he thought up new words for the simple tune they all knew:
An ant crawls
On the ear of the Earth,
Crawls crawls and sings.
The children joined in raising squeaky voices:
An ant crawls
On the ear of the Earth,
Crawls and sings:
Here everyone burst screaming:
Tickle, tickle, tickle....!
The choir broke up. The children began to chase, push and tickle each other. Only Fatzy Dembo, who until now had drummed on his bloated cheeks, blowing air out in a slow hiss, went away as he preferred to tickle himself on his own. He tickled himself on his armpits and behind the ears with a floor brush or with the help of a twig from a spiny gooseberry bush, or with the cord which Aunty Dobreva tied the windows together so that an unexpected storm wouldn’t further damage the crumbling building. Fatzy Dembo liked this friction, sending electric waves through his body, so much so that the cord started to fray and on the first stronger puff of wind the windows smashed sending glass pieces everywhere in ambush for the barefooted children. Soon all the floor was stained in blood, Gosho the Poet flared his nostrils to breathe in its pungent smell since it inspired him more than sniffing glue. He fell into an even deeper trance and began to chant another song:
If not a drunk
Who spent all his dough on whore
My father’d have bought me the Earth
To play soccer and surf.
Soon the children gathered around him chanting at the top of their voices: To play soccer and surf.
Later in the only dormitory of the Home all children were with their legs and hands tied to their bunk beds. That was the only way for their only carer Aunty Dobreva to secure herself a peaceful sleep once a week.
“O-o-o-oh,” Sali the Gypsy fidgeted in his bed, “my body’s itchy, damned fucking lice, damned fucking fleas.” His snot ran freely down along his dirty cheek.
“I want to pee, I want to pee!” Rob writhed on the upper bed pressing his Teddy Bear to his face. It was a miracle that the mangled soft toy was still around, mainly due to common fear of Rob’s undiscriminating fists.
On his left Gosho the Poet, who had at that time already drunk the bleach, held a pencil in his mouth and was writing on cardboard, fixed on the bed frame:
My father said: Look at the fucking moon,
A burning cigarette leaving a hole in my soul
Fatzy Dembo on the bunk bed below him seemed to feel good, he had outshone himself by tying a fork on a long string to the upper bed; he was now blowing at the string so that the fork moved over his naked body and “scratched” him right where the fleas bit him fiercely.
Rob couldn’t restrain himself any longer and peed in his bed. The thin mattress under him quickly soaked up and the piss leaked onto Sali who insisted his father taught him they were a pure breed Gypsies and not bloody made-up Roma. “The most famous woman in the world Carmen was a Gypsy”, stated Sali’s father prously, although no one knew what he was talking about.
The trickling piss was welcome because it relieved Sali’s itching.
They all fell asleep.
Chapter 13
AT MELITA’S CAFÉ EVERYBODY was talking about the disappearance of Nicos. The town had woken to a day without their favourite chicken and mushrooms pies and many flocked to the café in the hope to learn something about this devastating episode in their otherwise uneventful life.
With the arrival of officer Boyd sporting dark circles under his eyes and in an urgent need of triple espresso they all surrounded him but there was nothing he could say besides asking them to remain calm and to think of any possible piece of evidence in regard of this mysterious disappearance. Conspiracy theories quickly emerged one of which pointed to a hijacking so Nicos could make his pies somewhere else.
At the far corner of the café a strikingly beautiful young woman was sitting by herself over a cappuccino. Oblivious of the agitated people she was checking her phone and looked what she really was: a random tourist strayed from the nearby big town with flourishing tourism thanks to an ancient Roman amphitheatre used for musical performances.
The young woman was dressed in ripped jeans and shapeless shirt but her wild hair the colour of sun and honey, and her skin smooth like the first cream the women beat from cows’ milk were so eye-catching that at certain moment most of the people stopped pretending they weren’t openly gawking at her.
Officer Boyd also gave her an all over but only because he was supposed to know everything happening in his little town. Besides the disappearance of Nicos there was another problem emerging: more and more of the locals were in favour of a petition for the Home of the Chernobyl children to be transferred to another place so that tourists no longer avoided their clean little town and of course the lake.
Mayor Damien was behind it. He would say: Well, tourists come to the lake and what they see, they see an old dilapidated building like a chicken coup perching there and the poor souls running around making everyone feel guilty, although we are miles away from the bloody Chernobyl, even in another country although the Soviets ruled us with tyranny like theirs. We are sympathetic and we took them, but we also have to look after ourselves with all the unemployment and young people leaving for good.
Some old women were even swearing by their ritual onion readings indicating that because of those outcast children the town was doomed to calamity. The disappearance of Nicos a fact as sad as it was provided support to their foreseeing or at least that was what they said.
Officer Boyd’s thumb rule