Excerpt
But their expectation could be wrong. When their mother is
happy with the light, she takes the oil lamp by its metal chain and
places it back on its hook on the wall. Light floods the area close to
that wall, their eastern wall where the oil lamp always hangs from
the same hook, creating a circle of golden light a couple of meters in
radius, leaving the rest of the house as dark as the dark night outside
where the rain still talks of something none of the three understand
but all accept as a natural sound no one has any reason to question.
In the quietness of the room where sounds come only from the
gaps around the frames of the door and the lone window, the boys
are in their bed and their mother in hers. They will spend the night
along with all other living beings, including the nocturnal ones that
go from corner to corner and along the walls, animals unseen by
human eyes yet alive and hungry like all others inside this house and
outside of it. These are the rough days and nights after the Second
World War and the civil war that followed which together have ravaged
their motherland for almost seven years.
There are also times when the boys go to the sea with their father
on those special days when he takes them with him to the shore, to
the expansive sandy beach that reaches all the way to Chania, which
they can see from a higher vantage point almost every summer day
under the guidance of the brilliant sunshine. On those days Eteocles
and Nicolas are two happy boys ready for their share of running
along the hot sand which sometimes burns their soles and makes
them run in a jumpy way like crags on fire as they like to say. Nicolas
is the stronger of the two and knows how to swim on his own while
Eteocles relies on the strong back of his father to take him out and
far away from the shore into the expanse of light blue water. He holds
on as tight as he can while trying not to make his grip uncomfortable
for his father who laughs every time Eteocles tightens his hold and
tells him to relax and enjoy the beautiful water. At these times their
father acts like a child too, playful and full of jokes, focused especially
on Eteocles and his fear of being far out in the sea, there where the
light blue of the water and the light blue of the sky are equally inviting
Libros Libertad 