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allowed to take one out of the freezer in the basement (if I
dared to go down there alone). The fact that they had
bright green woodruff-flavoured ice cream in the freezer
even before I knew this was my favourite flavour was proof
that some answers exist before their questions. It was the
same thing with Fergus and my father.
After Paul and Fergus met on the day of my birth, there was
an unspoken closeness between them, yes, almost intimacy,
nourished by Fergus’ instinct to help more than was
actually humanly possible and by Paul’s impulse to consider
him, from the first pat on the shoulder, as a natural part of
his, of our lives. Fergus had been there in the right place at
the right time, as they say, and we couldn’t help but hold
him in our hearts, in Paul’s which, so empty, so hollow, was
suddenly beating, and in mine which, although no bigger
than a butterfly, had space for a whole world.
Apart from the Turkish kiosk owner who constantly forced
chocolate on them, hoping to dispel the bitterness of what
happened, and who constantly threw his hands
heavenwards, thanking God for his help, Fergus was the
only person who’d witnessed Paul at the point of
disintegration. My father, shaken by all the possible
consequences, kept imagining me plummeting down five
floors. What if Fergus hadn’t been there … and how could
Aza … why, just why? On that fresh, rain-scented summer
evening Paul sat shattered and in tears on a soft-drinks
crate under the flickering neon of the hospital kiosk, riding