Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

Catherine McNamara

moving towards them, his steps awkward in city shoes. The young man tried to half- jog but his feet caught in the snow, at times perforating the surface and plunging as far as his shins. They watched him struggling. His wife beside him began a gruff crying. ‘What if they never find her?’ she said. ‘We were all there . What was the child thinking? Who could have taken her?’ ‘No one has taken her,’ he said. ‘Then why, why would a child wander into the woods? Just tell me that. Into the cold with all of this fresh snow?’ His daughter had taken Luna to see many doctors. It had been suggested that there was a slowness, a slight disability. She scarcely spoke, her mouth was so clipped and small.

behind, one man who turned around with a radio in hand. His son-in-law stood alone on the snow as the line of men shrank and their red jackets disappeared one by one into the dark strip beneath the trees. His daughter went over to a bench by the wall. He and his old wife stood there. ‘How has it come to this,’ she said. ‘How can such a thing happen here in this expensive place?’ He looked at the woman he had married, her breasts above her middle and her crisp curls. A pair of carabinieri stepped outside onto the terrace with the hotel manager, who indicated his daughter. The old people were ignored. One officer took out a notebook. His daughter ’s husband turned around and began

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