Breathless Read Free Page A

had taken a step back he continued his monotonous firefighting. Mama shouted a warning to him, but he took no notice. She managed to shove him away from the flames, but he went straight back. She grabbed hold of him tighter and screamed something at him in the voice she always had when she was afraid. When she hit him, he didn’t react, just pulled away and carried on. She took hold again and shook him, as if she were trying to wake him out of a spell. He broke loose again, but his strength was gone and he sank down onto the charred grass as if all the energy had emptied out of him in an instant.
    From mania to inertia in seconds. Black from his hair down to his gym shoes. I had never seen a dead person, but he didn’t look alive. Smoke could poison you, I knew—during the last autumn storm Mama and I had helped Papa’s father clean up in the arboretum after the wind had been through it like a tornado, and when we burned the branches the smoke made me sick and I threw up half the night.
    Papa’s father led Mama away through the crowd. I went closer to the unknown boy to see if he was breathing. His chest inside the sooty T-shirt seemed to be gently rising and falling, but for safety’s sake I sat a little away from him. If he stopped breathing I would call Papa, who’d once breathed life into a child who had died—a girl caught in the weir next to the factory. Papa said that he had seen my face in hers as he gave her the kiss of life. Mama’s sisters said that certainly my papa had brought
that
girl back to life, but once long ago he hadn’t been able to save the one whose name we couldn’t mention in case Mama’s mother heard it, the youngest, the one who fell through the ice. Even so, Papa was the only person I knew who could wake the dead.
    â€”
    After a very long time the stranger opened his eyes and with difficulty he sat up. I should have left, but when he looked at me I couldn’t. Papa had given me a carton of milk that was good if you had inhaled smoke. I took a couple of sips and gave the rest to him and he accepted it without a word and downed it in one.
    When I asked him which of the people there were his family, he said that there was no one. I couldn’t think of a single person in the village who was missing; all of them had come out of their houses to help.
    â€œDon’t you live here?” I said. He nodded and indicated toward the lake. There was no house there. He was just pointing over an empty field. I stood and screwed up my eyes in the sun. Had there been a house there that had burned down?
    â€œCan’t you see it?” he asked. I sneaked a look at him to see if he was pulling my leg. Strained my eyes, stared at the place he had pointed to, but there was nothing there.
    â€”
    If that was where he lived, why had he tried to fight the fire here and not from his own side? It was as if he had tried to put out the fire in the wrong place altogether. I explained which people in the crowd were my family—all except for Mama, not wanting him to know that she and I were related. I had never seen Mama like that before, never seen her hit anyone, except for once when she was alone in the cold-storage room with someone—I didn’t manage to see who, probably Papa—the incident so bewildering that I all but forgot it.
    His eyes widened at each mention of the twelve I identified as my kin.
    â€œWhat about you? Do you live on your own?” I asked.
    â€œNo, of course I don’t live on my own,” he said, not looking at me. “I’m only thirteen.” He spat into the grass, black and red.
    But I didn’t think that was so.
    â€”
    He gazed out over the field, as if he wondered himself where his house had gone, but he seemed to be in no hurry to rush home and make sure that his family was okay.
    â€œWhat about you, then?” he asked. I’m sure it was obvious, but I still couldn’t tell the truth.