Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper

Author:Emma Hooper [Hooper, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Etta,

We’ve stopped. The marching, the jeeps, the singing, stopped. We’re in a ___ just outside ___ where the buildings are mostly stone and old and damp and cold. We’re camped in a crumbling old house. I don’t know who normally lives here or where they are, but they’ve left all their things. Jackets and trousers still in the closets. Not my size. We’re all in buildings like this around town, __ men here, __ men there, all tucked up inside these places like locals. The jeeps are parked _________, so when we’re all inside you’d never know we were here. We wear this town as camouflage.

We are here, they say, to hold the town. I like the idea of that. Like a kite.

There are a few residents still around, but not many. They seem to be overwhelmingly old and quiet. They pass us in the streets with eyes round and staring. Last time ___ and I were in ___ I bought some candy for any children we might come across, but there don’t seem to be any here, anywhere.

___________________ ____ ___ ____________ if I see her. I am hoping.

Yours sincerely,

Otto.

This was when Otto’s letters started to come with windows. Little rectangles cut out so that Etta could see her fingers underneath, holding the paper. People, places, and numbers, mostly, had been extracted, carefully cut and kept somewhere else. An office, Etta imagined, in England, stuffed full of these people and places and numbers on their original little rectangles of paper. Passers-by could pay five pence each to stick a hand into the letter slot, rustle about, and pull out

Helsinki

or

Mozambique

or

Sgt. Andrews

or

Carla

or

Seven

or

Five thousand, nine hundred and twelve.

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