Читать книгу Kin - Dror Burstein - Страница 7

[ ] AND [ ]

They were sixteen. Both of them. And their parents, all four of them, like a clenched fist with only a stump left of its thumb, aged overnight. One said, “No, no.” One said, “What’s this? What’s this?” The third said, “Out of the question. Not as long as I have any say in the matter.” And the fourth spat on the floor and then bit his finger. They didn’t want to hear anything. Or see anything either. So the two of them ran away to Jaffa a few weeks before the date. The journey north on the bus in her ninth month, alone, she would never forget. How she threw up next to the Ramon Crater out in the desert and all the passengers in the bus stared at her. How the driver got out and stood behind her with a glass bottle of water in his hand and asked, “Should I pour a little water on your head?” and turned to look back at his passengers with a long look. Now he really saw them. Window after window he surveyed them. Window after window. Window after window they looked back at him. Closed faces. Squashed against the windowpanes. Glinting glass. All the seats were taken except for one.

They looked again at the crumpled note, from which the sound of waves rose as from a shell. Tomorrow they were going to meet the father.