Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,84
It was warm and smelled like soap. Pepik wondered if the man’s soap came with the same pictures of steam engines as theirs did at home.
Home.
Sunlight knifed through the window and made him squint and close his eyes. He would stay here with this man. Sleep in the big bed and eat the fluffy white bread, and Nanny and Mamenka would come to meet him.
Today would be the day.
The man with the briefcase had gone back behind the desk and was rustling his papers again. Every now and then he would peer over at Pepik and speak to him with the funny words. Pepik let them wash over him like bubbles in a bath. He let himself drift. A feeling of moistness was gathering in him, rising up from his toes, through his legs, a gush of heat that rushed through his stomach to his throat and his mouth.
He turned and threw up onto the floor.
The man looked up sharply from his folders. He sighed heavily and let his chin fall to his chest. When he looked up, there was an expression on his face that Pepik recognized, one he had seen on the faces of adults so frequently over the past months. Disapproval? Disappointment. Something to do with water on his forehead. The thing he had accepted that had ended in his being sent away. What was it? He couldn’t quite remember.
But he knew it was his own fault that he was here.
The sun piercing the windowpane had sharpened to a point, all its heat focused on Pepik’s head. He was a little bug under a magnifying glass, about to catch fire. He wriggled, trying to move away from the glare, but his body was too heavy. The man came over to pick him up and he went limp at the adult touch. He felt soft, like chocolate left out in the sun. But he would be safe here. This man would love him and keep him.
When he opened his eyes next, though, he was back on a train.
There was a woman waiting on the platform, and Pepik loved her at first sight. Her eyes were soft and warm like melted caramel. She crouched down in front of him—he could see the glint of hairpins in her hair. This was Mrs. Milling, this beautiful woman the same age as Nanny who would take him home and help him fight the Germans.
“Jsem hladový,” Pepik said. He clung to her with his eyes.
The woman put a hand over her heart, as though taking an oath. “Look at you,” she said. “Precious thing. I wonder what you’re saying.”
Pepik leaned his head on her shoulder. The woman laughed. “What’s this?” She pointed to his chest.
Pepik looked down and saw a number pinned there. From upside down he could make out a two and two fives.
“Jsem hladový,” he repeated. Something in him was reaching up towards her—not his arms but something in his chest. Something small in the very centre of him was straining up towards her. Mrs. Milling’s eyes were full of tears.
“Who do you belong to, I wonder? What’s that language you speak?”
She smelled of talcum and of roses left to dry in the sun. Pepik waited for Mrs. Milling to pick him up, but she didn’t. The porter had placed Pepik’s red suitcase on the platform and he tried to drag it towards her so she could take him home. He was tired and hungry; he wanted a bowl of kashi sprinkled with chocolate, the way Nanny made it. His suitcase made an awful sound, like a prison door scraping open. It reminded him of something that he pushed to the bottom of his mind. Of a night he did not want to remember. Why was Mrs. Milling just sitting there? Perhaps he hadn’t been polite enough. Hadn’t Tata taught him to introduce himself properly? “Pepik,” he said, and extended his small hand. But someone gripped his shoulder from behind, and he turned to see a round man shaped very much like an egg, with skinny limbs sticking out from his body. The man’s arms and legs made Pepik think of Tata’s pipe cleaners.
Mrs. Milling stood up from her crouch. A blond wave had fallen from her hairpin; she tucked it behind her ear. “Is this your son?” she asked. “What a darling little—” But the man had a task to accomplish. He spoke to Pepik in the funny language and tried to pick him up. Pepik squirmed away and managed