Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Breathing into Marble

Ilya’s clothes in their place. From this, the glass eye of the house, the fruit trees in the garden looked like splashes of blood and amber seen through the red and yellow honeycomb shaped window- panes. Ilya would glue himself to the sun-lit glass and disap- pear; he would not reply if he was called or gently shaken. It seemed that, after that long season in the twilight, the colours mesmerized him. ‘They take over him,’ Gailius declared. ‘Just be happy that he finds something that excites him,’ Isabel replied. ‘So what? Before you said Ilya was closed in his own little world, but now he’s just created a new, more colourful one. If he carries on like this, he’ll kill himself with all those colours one day.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ Isabel snapped. But two month later Ilya was still a stranger to Gailius. Having taken possession of the veranda, Ilya began to use its door to get outside, reducing still further the possibility of him bumping into other members of the family. Isabel felt Ilya was silently grateful for having been offered a place in the free world, but that was all he needed – nothing more. He had no need of help, or attention, or of warmth as would be typical of a child his age. Liudas was content to leave him alone, while Isabel could not settle for this. This small, wild

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