Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo Jethro Soutar (Translator)

Author:Ernesto Mallo, Jethro Soutar (Translator)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Perseus
Published: 2010-06-30T04:00:00+00:00

13

She didn’t hear him leave. When she opens the venetian blinds, a beautiful Thursday pours into the room and makes her feel full of life. The clock tells her she’s been asleep for twelve hours straight. Her body is grateful. She thinks of Lascano, his sadness, his not knowing how to handle her, what to do with this replica of his lover, who has appeared before him, who he looks after as if somehow protecting his dead wife. The guy’s old enough to be her father. But he’s not her father and Eva’s always been attracted to older men. In secondary school, when her friends were busy whispering about the boys in the fifth form, she was fantasizing about the other girls’ fathers. She found smile lines at the corner of a man’s eyes more seductive than the affected posturing of an adolescent, always trying to leave boyhood behind, always trying to appear manlier than he was. Eva was more drawn to the mature man, well-groomed, whose inner child expressed itself freely and willingly rather than betrayed him when least expected.

Wrapped in a flowery headscarf that puts ten years on her, and pulling a shopping trolley, Eva leaves the flat. She goes to a market which every Thursday shuts a nearby street off from the roaring traffic. Free market imports overflow at the colourful fruit stalls: mangoes, plums, pears, papayas and melons, all readily available in the depths of winter. Greengrocers stand on their little platforms shouting out offers, butchers flatter the women with compliments, distracting them while they fiddle the scales. It’s all a world apart, a half-day reprieve from the mad city, an oasis of mandarin oranges that lets the little servant girls stock up on fruit and veg. Look what lovely eggs, an impish country voice calls out as Eva passes by. And the eggs really do look lovely. Big, brown, smooth. Come on, madam, take some home with you, they’re double yokes.

She spends the afternoon in the kitchen. Working from memory, something her grandma once showed her, Eva puts an eye round of beef in the oven, stuffed with bacon, garlic, parsley and carrots, surrounded by potatoes. Ten minutes in the oven on a high heat until golden, then an hour at medium temperature and it’s ready to eat. Something simple and tasty as a treat for her protector. Why? Because he looks after her, and because he’ll be her safe conduct out of the nightmare the country has become, about which she wishes to think no more, and also just because. She wants to head far away and imagines herself on a beach with her daughter enjoying the sunset, loving her little girl and somehow being able to explain to her that she’ll not have to go through what her mother went through. And what if it’s a boy? Things become complicated because Eva can’t picture herself with a boy. How do you talk to a little man? About what? And so for the purpose of her dreams she decides it’ll be a girl, and if it turns out to be a boy then so be it.

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