The Bone Fire by György Dragomán

Author:György Dragomán
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780544527218
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

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That night, the sky clouds over; there’s thunder, but no rain falls. Grandmother takes her trench coat and gets her umbrella; she says she can feel in her bones that there is going to be a big storm, but she still has to go out. She tells me that if she’s not back within half an hour, it means that she’ll be back very late, I shouldn’t wait up for her, I should have my dinner and go to sleep by myself.

I’m lying on my stomach on my bed, reading. I wait for the time to go by. I wait for three-quarters of an hour; in the meantime, the wind rises, it’s making the windows rattle, and I can see even from my bed that the sky has grown completely dark gray.

When I go into the garden, the sky is nearly black. It’s quiet, the wind isn’t blowing now, but you can feel in the air that the rain will come any moment.

I head straight for the snail-collecting bucket. The ants are still in there, climbing and clambering, going around and around slowly in the bottom of the bucket. I take the bucket over to the walnut tree, hanging it on my arm; I try to climb up, but because of the bucket, I can’t really pull myself up along the branches properly.

I put the bucket at the base of the tree and crouch beside it. I pull down my T-shirt, fold it in half, twist it once; the fabric flaps down like a rabbit’s ear, it’s a small pocket now, precisely the right size for my fist. I take one of the rubber bands from the end of my braid, gather up the twist in the fabric with it, then I pick up the ants from the bucket, lower them down into this pocket, and fold the fabric over them carefully, and with the second rubber band that I’ve taken from my hair, I gather up the small bundle.

Now it’s easy for me to climb up the tree. My stomach is exposed as I pull myself up the branches, my navel is touching the trunk of the tree, the bark is scraping it and it hurts, but I try not to think about it. I head upward, I want to go up to the part of the tree overhanging the wall, by the branch’s third fork, where there’s a cavity in the stump of a sawed-off branch. As I get to the second fork in the branches, the sky rumbles; I hear a large boom of thunder coming in my direction, then the wind picks up, blowing wildly; the tree is groaning and cracking, the branch moves with me on it. I clasp it tightly with my thighs, pull myself quickly upward.

I’m nearly at the fork when the sky flashes sharp and white and then rumbles so loudly I can hear the clattering in my chest; the rain begins to pour down, wildly beating the leaves above me, and dry bits of wood and leaves swirl all around me as the wind shakes the walnut tree.

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