TE19 Iberian Adventure

Gabi Csutak

knew them by heart.

By the time we got to Hurrah Square, the people there were pressed up against each other. More and morewere coming up from behind all the time, and I was pushed further and further into the thickening mass. On the top of the stand a man was shouting out short sentences and the crowd was obediently repeating what he said. Someone shouted so loudly in my ear that for a while after all I could hear was a strange whistling. Then, all of a sudden, everyone went quiet, because, for a minute, we had been asked to think about the victims of the revolution. It was then that I noticed that there were papers raining down onto the square from the windows of the Giant Robot, pages torn from the Leader’s books. That was the only sound, the flapping of the shiny paper pages. When I looked away, trying to take my mind off the tears that were pushing at my throat, I suddenly saw Grandma. She was also watching the sheets of paper falling through the air and was holding herself in an odd, stiff way, as if she had, in memory of those victims, sworn never to move again. When that very long minute came to an end, the bundles of paper came pouring even more thickly from the Giant Robot’s windows, then the whole building gave a shake as if it wanted to rid itself of everything inside it. It lifted out of the ground, crumpling the surrounding paving stones underneath as if they too were no more than paper. Then, on the display placed between its teeth, the countdown 236