Chernobyl. Ilinda Markova
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her for Rob, gave her underwater kicks; although weak they kept her helpless as she swallowed water and choked.
Slowly the teacher managed to get on her feet and helped the two coughing and spitting water boys out of the lake and to where the crowd of agitated women mottled with freaking children was shouting threats in which no one believed.
There was a look of disgust on Rob’s face when he saw that the children were huddled around their teachers, whimpering but protected.
A small cry was heard and all heads turned to the direction it came from. In the shallows Victor, a thin willowy boy, was stuck, not knowing which way to go. His protruding shoulder blades were like a music stand. Victor, a wunderkind violinist, had already won an international award at a competition for young talents.
Notoriously short-sighted, Victor was now in trouble, having lost his lenses, not knowing how to get to the shore, where he could be safe among the others. Rob’s green predatory eyes sparkled with excitement. He sliced the water toward his new victim.
The only one to stand against Rob was Dacho, his courage coming from his muscular body and belligerent spirit, both inherited from generations of African warriors. Dacho, the son of a Nigerian medicine student and the bartender Melita, was however too young to know that victory in battle comes not to he who is stronger, but to the fierce and wicked one.
Hatred was lethal. Rob didn’t even need to resort to his other weapon: the spring folding knife.
Rob waited calmly for Dacho to throw fists, then slipped between them quick as a flash, finding a chink in his defences and clung to Dacho’s body, gigantic compared to his. Dacho screamed forgetting to deliver blows, possessed by the sole thought of getting away from Rob in a shameful but safe defeat. He began to whirl around to shake Rob off stepping out of the water. He then fell to the ground with a thud and rolled in an attempt to crush out Rob’s resistance by his weight. Rob, his teeth stuck deep in Dacho’s chin, was scratching Dacho’s face with his awl-like nails. Knees, as sharp as needles, were painfully stabbing at Dacho’s groin. All this happening in seconds as teachers trying to separate them looked more like useless referees. Finally Rob let go, got to his feet and leapt away keeping a provocative stance with his legs apart, his left shoulder thrust forwards, as he spat Dacho’s blood at his feet.
Still helpless and disoriented Victor was treading the water toward him. Now there was nothing to prevent Rob playing the drowning game. He jumped back to meet him and exercised an armlock; without facing resistance he dragged the powerless boy into the deep.
At reaching the sand bottom, towing Victor by the hair, Rob suddenly noticed a small but curiously smooth black pebble playing hide-and-seek with a sun ray. Gawking in awe he let go of Victor. The young violinist paddled back to the shore and was received with a round of applauses by those who wrongly thought he had successfully fought back.
Far off along the shore an elderly woman with her arms on her large hips, was watching hidden in the bushes, waiting for everybody to disappear. Old Sue had work to do and waited. The lake was her laundry.
Chapter 8
IT WAS RAINING. THE rain splattered on the skin of the lake and lulled the fish, lurking between the stems of reeds. Birds huddled in the crowns of greening trees. The boats, pulled onto the shore, were half full of rain and looked like miniature lakes in which frogs, tadpoles; mosquitoes had found shelter along with dragon flies, whose delicate turquoise bodies sought protection against the beaks of the birds. Today there was no one around and Rob shed his threadbare T-shirt and mangy short and dived naked into the depths of the lake. He reached the bottom. The black pebble was there. Rob pushed himself up to the surface and swam doggie-paddle for a while. Then he lay on his back and stretched his arms toward the rain. He opened his mouth and drank some. Back on the shore he put on his soaked clothes. The whole world seemed to be made of water. It was then when he overheard the sky and the lake talk to each other.
“Hey, you down there,” said the sky, “who fancies yourself as a small piece of sky, who thinks that clouds fly in you as they fly in me; who are you?”
“I am the lake, I am the water, I am the blue,” answered the lake.
“I am the blue!” snapped the sky.
“You are not! You study your reflection in me.”
“I can’t do that, you are so small; whereas I am so big that I cover the entire world.”
“You’re so big but you reflect in me, who am so small; what is this riddle?”
“There is no riddle.”
“Fish swim in me.” bragged the lake.
“Birds swim in me,” bragged the sky.
Listening to them Rob curved his lips for a smile as his eyes rested on the shabby dilapidated building with a yard full of junk. That was the Home. His home. The Home for children born after the monstrous radioactive explosion. Sometimes the Home reminded him of the pictures of castles in the torn book about the princess and the hero, from which Aunty Dobreva used to selflessly read to them.
“Why do you always read the fairy tale in a different way?” Lala asked.
“Because a fairy tale is a fairy tale to be told in a different way each time,” Aunty Dobreva answered.
“How can it change in the same book?” Lala was suspicious. Being the most educated among them, she insisted taking the book and reading from it.
“No!” Aunty Dobreva grew stubborn. “I won’t give it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you might stain it.”
The book was already so stained and torn that it seemed that nothing more could happen to it; and still Aunty Dobreva wouldn’t give it to her but lock it away in the highest drawer of a huge cupboard some charitable organization had donated to them to keep their toys in. They had no toys and Child Harold, the old tolerant cat, used it as a hideout when the children went wild squeezing him.
Except for the book there was a pram wheel which they used to roll or turn into a flying weapon; also a leg of a plastic doll, which the girls swaddled like a baby calling it Thumbelina; several particularly colourful pebbles with which the boys played a game they’d made up themselves and called “take your pebble before I smack you” and the enormous magically beautiful dartboard. Sali had stolen it from somewhere and carried it to the Home met by the exited crowd always ready for a happy occasion.
Everyone gathered around as he explained how to aim and throw the darts, and this was the only thing that all the girls and boys did for days. They would stand silent in a circle and throw again and again at the target and sometimes, in fact very often, miss it. Even Sassi waited for his turn and aimed the darts with his undeveloped arms, which resembled bird beaks, and everyone shouted “Well done!” even if the darts flew far off and they had to collect them from the pots in which Aunty Dobreva boiled their meals of bones and whatever. The whatever was provided by the children and they prided in bringing in half washed potties full of berries and acorns. Most of the times it was nettle. Fatzy Dembo was declared the king of the nettle as he brought heaps of it scratching his violently reddened skin on his arms and legs.
The darts-throwing fun soon came to an end. The darts mysteriously began to loose feathers. One by one, one by one, until it was discovered Fatzy Dembo was chewing on them. Aunty Dobreva locked the game up in the cupboard to the utter annoyance of Child Harold and never took it out again. That was before they discovered that Aunty Dobreva couldn’t read. She would open the book and begin to retell it to them, yes, that was exactly the word because when a council official appeared with some documents and handed them to her she said that she had misplaced her eyeglasses and couldn’t go through the papers she was supposed to sign.
“But you read the book to us without glasses, don’t you?!” Lala called out.
Lala got a smack; Aunty Dobreva was exposed; but instead of mocking her for her cunning ways they somehow loved her more after that; she had