Читать книгу Remain Silent - Susie Steiner - Страница 10

Twelve hours in the darkness of an industrial chicken shed made him forget himself. The stink, the noise, being scratched, being exhausted. Perhaps Lukas is best off out of it.

In the van back to the house, his head lolls against the seat rest and he dozes a blank sleep. When they are disgorged from the van, he looks at the house, sees the prospect of being alone with his thoughts, and starts to shake. He grasps Dimitri’s arm.

‘I can’t go in. I feel sick,’ he says.

‘OK. We’ll get a drink.’

He can see Dimitri is exhausted and would rather lie on his mattress, boots off. He is grateful to him for his companionship.

As they walk down the street, a car pulls up outside their house. Two men, both in dark suits, get out and go to the front door. Some kind of officialdom, Matis guesses. The communist regime had loved officialdom, Lukas’s father told him. Matis admired Lukas’s father enormously. Jűri was a thoughtful, gentle man, in contrast to Matis’s own father. Jűri described languorous men in uniform, standing about pointlessly, feeling important. ‘Puffed up on their petty bureaucracies. Four suited guys to take your ticket at the museum. Welcome to full employment!’

Matis and Dimitri take their bottle of vodka and drink it in the park. The air is soft, the temperature mild.

‘Why don’t you tell the police what you saw?’ Dimitri asks. ‘Let them take care of it?’

‘Seriously,’ Matis says. ‘You trust the police?’

‘It is different here.’

‘Sure it is.’

Suspicion of authority is only a fraction of the reason why Matis won’t talk.

‘You must not say anything to the police,’ Matis tells Dimitri. ‘Promise me.’

Matis wakes to find himself laid out on the tarmac path, where he has fallen asleep. It is nearly dark. Someone has thrown coins at him. They have landed on the ground in front of his stomach. This kindness makes him cry.