The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [5]
Then she saw that the woman had something in her hand. The shiny wrapper glittered in the sunshine, and Mikas had hauled himself halfway up the fence with eagerness and desire. Chocolate.
Sigita was taken aback by the heat of her anger. In ten or twelve very long paces, she was at the fence herself. She grabbed Mikas a little too harshly, and he gave her an offended look. He already had chocolate smears on his face.
“What are you giving him!”
The unfamiliar woman looked at her in surprise.
“It’s just a little chocolate. . . .”
She had a slight accent, Russian, perhaps, and this did not lessen Sigita’s rancor.
“My son is not allowed to take candy from strangers,” she said.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that . . . he’s such a sweet boy.”
“Was it you yesterday? And the other day, before that?” There had been traces of chocolate on Mikas’s jersey, and Sigita had had a nasty argument with the staff about it. They had steadfastly denied giving the children any sweets. Once a month, that was the agreed policy, and they wouldn’t dream of diverging from it, they had said. Now it appeared it was true.
“I pass by here quite often. I live over there,” said the woman, indicating one of the concrete apartment blocks surrounding the playground. “I bring the children sweets all the time.”
“Why?”
The woman in the pale coat looked at Mikas for a long moment. She seemed nervous now, as though she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t.
“I don’t have any of my own,” she finally said.
A pang of sympathy caught Sigita amidst her anger.
“That’ll come soon enough,” she heard herself say. “You’re still young.”
The woman shook her head.
“Thirty-six,” she said, as though the figure itself were a tragedy.
It wasn’t until now that Sigita really noticed the careful makeup designed to eradicate the slight signs of aging around her eyes and her mouth. Automatically, she clutched her son a little tighter. At least I have Mikas, she told herself. At least I have that.
“Please don’t do it again,” she said, less strictly than she had meant to. “It’s not good for him.”
The woman’s eyes flickered.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It won’t happen again.” Then she spun suddenly and walked away with rapid steps.
Poor woman, thought Sigita. I guess I’m not the only one whose life turned out quite different from expected.
SHE WIPED AWAY the chocolate smears with a moistened handkerchief. Mikas wriggled like a worm and was unhappy.
“Morechoclate,” he said. “More!”
“No,” said Sigita. “There is no more.”
She could see that he was considering a tantrum, and looked around quickly for a diversion.
“Hey,” she said, grabbing the red bucket. “Why don’t you and I build a castle?”
She played with him until he was caught up in the game again, the endless fascination of water and sand and sticks and the things one could do with them. The coffee had gone cold, but she drank it anyway. Sharp little grains of sand dug into her skin beneath the edge of her bra, and she tried discretely to dislodge them. Leafy shadows from the birches shimmered across the gray sand, and Mikas crawled about on all fours with his truck clutched in one hand, making quite realistic engine noises.
Afterwards, that was the last thing she remembered.
A SEAGULL, THOUGHT JAN. A damned seagull!
He should have been back home in Denmark more than an hour ago. Instead he sat on what should have been the 7:45 to Copenhagen Airport, frying inside an overheated aluminum tube along with 122 other unfortunates. No matter how many cooling drinks he was offered by the flight attendants, nothing could ease his desperation.
The plane had arrived on schedule from Copenhagen. But boarding had been postponed, first by fifteen minutes, then by another fifteen minutes, and finally by an additional half hour. Jan had begun to sweat. He was on a tight