Читать книгу The Brother - Rein Raud - Страница 17

“I don’t understand,” Brother said. “I don’t understand how you’ve allowed the world to step on you like this.”

“Because I hoped it would step over me,” Laila replied.

“Even so.”

“But did I really have a choice?” Laila asked. “I wanted, I really wanted to have a friend, too. But none of them saw me. Do you think that when they looked at me, they saw a scrawny girl with pale, thin lips and potato-colored locks, hiding her hands behind her back? No. They saw a tall, blue marble staircase; arching, golden thatched roofs; and a white stretch limousine parked outside—so what that it’d been a long while since anyone could drive anywhere in it. They saw my grandfather’s surname and all of his ancestors since time immemorial peering over his shoulder. And when the mirage faded—and that happened as soon as they really heard anything I said—then they fled, helter-skelter; some didn’t even say goodbye. You know, when that whole degrading process was over and they’d tricked me out of everything we once had, and I ended up here, penniless, unable to do anything about it and with only a bunch of memories breathing down my neck, then at first, I really wanted to scream and cry, but afterward, I realized that I was actually glad. Glad that it’s all over now. That I’m free. That I’m myself. And that from then on, things would go both as well and badly for me as they might, but that it’d only be my own doing.

She gulped.

“It’s hard for me even now,” she continued, “when someone greets me out of habit, as if I’m still the way I was then. I don’t know what to say to them in return, but they still do it—my old tutor Mrs. Salt or Mrs. Cymbal or the twin boys Hendrik and Hindrek—or, well, they’re not quite boys anymore—whose mother used to be the Villa chef, or else Gabriel, you know—the bachelor photographer, with whom I was in love for a while in high school, against my will but all the more hopelessly. How can’t they see that I’m not the one they knew?”

“I understand,” Brother said.

“No, you don’t,” Laila sighed. “You still think that I’m just like you are. Strong. Someone who can handle anything.”

“No,” Brother replied. “What I think of you isn’t something I don’t see, because that’s just the way I love you. But it seems like you’ve let yourself be bent the other direction. Maybe it’s easier, but it’s definitely not right, and blaming the world for it is even worse. You can stay hungry even while walking between tables heaped with delicacies if you never reach out your hand.”

“I want nothing from them. Nothing at all.”

“That’s what I just said.”