TE23 Double Feature

Loranne Vella

Rocket

hanged, without even knowing for which crime. The second lieutenant however – he had rightly guessed his rank, as he heard another marine watch guard calling him so – kept walking outside the naval army quarters, towards the staircase that led to the ship. At this point, he stopped, handed him the stamped document and made a gesture for him to proceed up the stairs. Now that he had obtained the permit to board the ship, Petrel felt a moment of uncertainty. It didn’t last long though. He set his foot on the first step, looked up towards the diagonal line of the stairs, and sensed the high-ranking official walking away. In that moment of absolute freedom, he started climbing the stairs with a smile on his face. He didn’t even know how, but he had managed to board the ship that was heading to Malta. He had managed to make the first step towards a future about which he knew nothing except for the fact that it was an unknown one.

***

The image of Malta that Rika had described to Petrel along the years had vanished, and had been replaced by the image of a broken island. While they were having a cup of tea, Xandru explained to Petrel that, apparently, someone had marked - with a pencil and a ruler - vertical and horizontal lines on the map, and had decided that, where these representative lines had happened to be marked, sturdy and high walls were to be erected corresponding to the same geographic coordinates of the country. The spaces between the horizontal and vertical lines were being called sectors. “Call them what you may, ghettos, communities, districts, but keep in mind that the small size of the island grew even smaller,” Xandru continued to explain. “In the same manner in which the island was isolated from the rest 47

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