Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

The Combinations

I stared at her uncomprehendingly. ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ I woke up to the situation, trying to guess what I was expected to do or say. ‘Doesn’t anyone live there now?’ ‘Not since Tomáš passed and that dreadful thing hap- pened.’ People, I supposed, were probably a little squeamish about moving into a place like that, tainted by unnatu- ral death. That’s what they’d think. As if anything that happened in this city could be called natural. The old lady waved at me impatiently so I stood up and went to get the keys—they were hanging, on a hook beside the stove just as she said they would, on a ring with the un- mysterious letters T.H. monographed on a black leather disc. I felt the cold weight of the keys in my hand and shuddered slightly, as if I were holding the mystery and banality of other people’s lives in some kind of balance. Something moved behind me and I swung around in alarm to find the green parrot stretching its neck out towards me from the top of the pantry, hissing. ‘Gawaine!’ the old woman snapped over her shoulder. The parrot fixed me with one of its black eyes and didn’t move. Evil thing. I edged away from it towards the door. Its eye followed me. How old was it, I wondered, think-

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