Trafika Europe 4 - Armenian Rhapsody

church bells began to ring, Aza rocked me to the rhythm of the independence anthem which Emperor Dom Pedro I had once composed for her country: “... and freedom dawns on the horizon of Brazil, já raiou a liberdade no horizonte do Brasil” . Just then, her left rubber thong, now free from her toes, fell five stories down into the bushes of the narrow strip of garden skirting the hospital. It glowed like a fat flower among the dark leaves of an elderberry bush, and Aza was still holding me in outstretched arms, now weak and trembling with the effort. Starlings chirruped, somewhere a dog was barking, footsteps echoed in the street; Nurse Marianne stood in the doorway and her shriek tumbled down, down, down, sounding all the way to the street. Then my mother made her decision. I fell, following in the wake of the yellow thong. I, too, was a little yellow, around my nose. Since I had no past I couldn’t have seen my life flash before my eyes, but what I could glimpse for a second was the future: the lush green of late summer chestnut leaves fading out to become a jungle thicket, a darker, blurry, unfathomable tangle of tropical forest, and I had a whiff of orchids that smelled like elderflower as a large pair of warm hands pulled me out of the air into a wide arc, slowing me down like a pendulum and rocking me, as gently as they could, to rest. Fergus, the recently arrived rugby player from Greenwich, pressed me tight to his chest and fell to his knees. He began to tremble. That was better than any up-and-under he’d

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