Over to You by Roald Dahl

Author:Roald Dahl [Dahl, Roald]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780141962061
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2011-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

Yesterday was Beautiful

He bent down and rubbed his ankle where it had been sprained with the walking so that he couldn’t see the ankle bone. Then he straightened up and looked around him. He felt in his pocket for a packet of cigarettes, took one out and lit it. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and he stood in the middle of the street looking around him.

‘Dammit, there must be someone here,’ he said aloud, and he felt better when he heard the sound of his voice.

He walked on, limping, walking on the toe of his injured foot, and when he turned the next corner he saw the sea and the way the road curved around between the ruined houses and went on down the hill to the edge of the water. The sea was calm and black. He could clearly make out the line of hills on the mainland in the distance and he estimated that it was about eight miles away. He bent down again to rub his ankle. ‘God dammit,’ he said. ‘There must be some of them still alive.’ But there was no noise anywhere, and there was a stillness about the buildings and about the whole village which made it seem as though the place had been dead for a thousand years.

Suddenly he heard a little noise as though someone had moved his feet on the gravel and when he looked around he saw the old man. He was sitting in the shade on a stone beside a water trough, and it seemed strange that he hadn’t seen him before.

‘Health to you,’ said the pilot. ‘Ghia sou.’

He had learned Greek from the people up around Larissa and Yanina.

The old man looked up slowly, turning his head but not moving his shoulders. He had a greyish-white beard. He had a cloth cap on his head and he wore a shirt which had no collar. It was a grey shirt with thin black stripes. He looked at the pilot and he was like a blind man who looks towards something but does not see.

‘Old man, I am glad to see you. Are there no other people in the village?’

There was no answer.

The pilot sat down on the edge of the water trough to rest his ankle.

‘I am Inglese,’ he said. ‘I am an aviator who has been shot down and jumped out by the parachute. I am Inglese.’

The old man moved his head slowly up and down. ‘Inglesus,’ he said quietly. ‘You are Inglesus.’

‘Yes, I am looking for someone who has a boat. I wish to go back to the mainland.

There was a pause, and when he spoke, the old man seemed to be talking in his sleep. ‘They come over all the time,’ he said. ‘The Germanoi they come over all the time.’ The voice had no expression. He looked up into the sky, then he turned and looked behind him in the sky. ‘They will come again today, Inglese.

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