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Toņa runs her fingers over his jutting ribs:
– Bunny asks Piggy, where’d the bones go? Buried in the
battlefield, below!
Jukums giggles, Toņa goes quiet. The night and groaning
ice freeze in her gaze. She pretends to fall asleep, she wants
to be distant and alone.
Toņa used to be soft as down. She dreamed of becoming a
hairdresser. Wanted to go to the city, find a job. There
weren’t many men left after the war, but there had to be
someone who needed a shave.
Toņa's heart was like down, until the hero incident in the
last autumn of the war, on the recent battleground. Ludvigs
was tilling a fallow, Pēterītis was leading the horse by the
reins. The horse was just like Pēteris – young and green,
dishevelled, gangly, couldn’t stay within the furrows.
Ludvigs had a smart horse before, but it had been driven off
by the Germans, set loose, so they had to till with a horse
that had all but rolled off the back of a Red Army cart.
Toņa was nearby, scything away and daydreaming.
Throwing twigs at her brother each time he, their father
and the horse emerged from the bushes.