Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,85

to drag his suitcase a few more feet towards Mrs. Milling.

He was going with her; she would feed him sweets for dinner and teach him to read, once and for all.

“Excuse me,” Mrs. Milling said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

The egg-shaped man lifted Pepik’s suitcase. He put it under one arm and lifted Pepik up under the other, gripping him firmly so his little legs were sticking out sideways and his face was looking down at the ground. Pepik’s stomach lurched. He craned his neck, looking for Mrs. Milling. Where had she gone?

“Mamenka!” he shouted.

The man kept walking, carrying Pepik like a bundle of wood. He climbed some stairs up to a tram and set Pepik down in the seat beside him. The man didn’t speak to Pepik for the next forty minutes.

They arrived at a house and a woman came out to greet them and usher them in. She was older and greyer than Mrs. Milling. A face like a slice of bloody roast beef.

“So here you are.”

“Jsem hladový,” Pepik said. He sat down on the floor cross-legged.

The egg man shrugged at the woman. “Blimey.” It was the first word Pepik had heard from his mouth.

The woman bent down and inspected Pepik as if he were a cabbage at the grocer’s, picking through his hair, looking behind his ears for dirt. The procedure continued for several minutes; she seemed to be finding him deficient. Her voice was kind though, and for a moment the little songbird stirred inside Pepik’s chest, the one that had sung for Mrs. Milling. But the woman stood back up and crossed over to the kitchen. There was a black line of soot running up the wall from the stove to the ceiling. She took a cloth and rubbed at it vigorously. Then she looked back at the round man, as though surprised to still find him there. “Go on,” she said.

She motioned with her chin in the direction of a set of stairs. The man picked up the suitcase in one arm and Pepik in the other as though he were a pile of lumber. Pepik went limp and submitted.

The room at the top of the stairs had wallpaper that was dotted with red and blue sailboats. The floorboards were blue, like the sea. Two beds that smelled of mothballs were pushed up against opposite walls: Pepik would sleep by the window. The man plopped his suitcase down and looked at the second bed, uncertain. There was someone in it, someone so small that he barely made a bump beneath the covers. Pepik tiptoed over and peered into the other boy’s face. He had pale sandy hair and a light dusting of freckles across his nose. Clear, almost translucent skin. As though the little stove inside him that kept him alive was having trouble reaching all the way up to the surface.

“Artoor?”

The boy was still as stone.

“Haló?”

The boy gave a low moan. If this was Arthur, then the people downstairs were the Millings. It was Arthur’s noise of pain that welcomed Pepik, that told him he’d reached his new home.

Several hours later Mrs. Milling—the real Mrs. Milling—came upstairs. She opened the gold clasps on Pepik’s red suitcase. “Pro boha, co je tohle?” he said.

He had not seen its contents since leaving Prague; it was like a box of trinkets or magical charms, each one possessing a secret power.

The beautiful diamond watch could transport him back in time. And the little galoshes were for walking on water. He would cross the ocean on foot if he had to.

But he would not have to. His family would come and meet him. Nanny Marta had promised.

Mrs. Milling dug through the suitcase. She lifted the newly sewn little dress pants. “Well, aren’t you the posh one,” she said. “You come from money? Do you?”

She held up his nightshirt, which she changed him into quickly and efficiently, despite the fact that he was a big boy and able to do this by himself. Pepik realized he was not going to be made to brush his teeth. The sheets looked smooth but were rough to the touch, and he felt very high off the ground after sleeping for months in the bottom bunk in Prague. Mrs. Milling tucked him in tightly, so he could barely move his limbs. He felt like a letter sealed into an envelope.

“Chci napsat dopis,” he said. “Pani. Potřebuji pero. Můžeš mi podat pero, prosím?”

Mrs. Milling looked at Pepik. Her face was a blank sheet of