Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

astragal

‘We were sitting there,’ his wife went on. ‘The three of us. If Stefano had just put away his phone for a moment. If Frieda hadn’t been talking all along to that woman with the fur coat. We would have seen her walking away. We would have seen what happened to her before our very eyes.’ He poured an entire sachet of sugar into the cold coffee, felt it pool within him. Magda wiped her face. His granddaughter’s hands were fledgling pink birds that liked to pluck the long hairs on his arm, brush over his cheeks and cup his eyes in a panel of darkness. What do you see, Grandfather darling? Tell me the colours that you see. He had held her when she had been hours old, with her bug-like unreeling and

the throbbing apricot in her chest. Then they had taken the bundle away and he’d felt a holiness removed from him. Luna and her gust of love had come after his daughter’s long years of singlehood. Frieda had been left by a handful of men and she’d met Stefano on a holiday to Tanzania. She had returned to Milan wearing noisy earrings carved out of stained teak. She had told them she was engaged to be married. They watched Stefano reach the timber steps, sweating and his glasses fogged. The young man stood there breathing in white shreds. He saw that Magda wished to go to him. He saw the very instant Magda’s thoughts devolved in her limbs. His wife was never wordless for long. ‘Did they see anything? Do

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