Harvesting by Lisa Harding

Author:Lisa Harding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Island Books
Published: 2017-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

21

Nico

Having collected our luggage from the moving belt, Igor notices the grey-haired woman taking out her phone and pointing it in our direction.

‘Does that old bitch think she’s going to take a picture of us?’ he says to no one in particular as he strides towards her, anger in every bunched muscle.

‘Don’t draw attention to yourself.’ Magda grabs hold of him by the arm. ‘Let’s just turn our backs and walk away.’

The struggle inside Igor at that moment reminds me of watching Maria’s dad’s young colt buck and rear, being made to canter in circles, tethered, while every part of its body was crying out to gallop across the fields. Retreat, surrender, a gracious acceptance, is not Igor’s way.

‘Not in public,’ Magda whispers to him again, a refrain for the day, one which makes me wonder what will be allowed in private.

He seems to snap out of it then as he shrugs Magda’s arm off him. ‘Come on, woman … they’ll be waiting,’ as if he came to the decision himself. We join yet another long queue and Igor’s colour is high, his leg twitchy, jaw clamped, mouth moving from side to side. I imagine his teeth worn down to his gums, and feel the corners of my face move into a tight smile.

Magda whispers to me as we near the front of the line, ‘Remember, don’t say anything except to answer a question directly.’ She stops to think. ‘Actually, don’t say anything at all. Let me do the talking.’

‘What if I am taken into a room on my own?’ I ask.

‘That won’t happen.’ She smoothes her skirt down over her hips. ‘If it does, you just remember what I told you. Never tell them more than they ask.’ There’s an angry silence before she says, ‘Don’t think like that. You can make bad things happen by thinking about them.’ She makes a tiny sign of the cross: forehead, breastbone, shoulder to shoulder, making it seem as if she is brushing dust off her suit jacket. And then I wonder why she wouldn’t want us to tell these people who Igor really is.

A loud whooshing sound fills my ears, as if I’m on the airplane again, and the ground beneath me begins to vibrate. We’re at the top of the line now, and I don’t know if we’re all meant to go together, but I see a real family go ahead as one group. I thank God that Igor is not my true papa, as we move as one small circle.

In the cubicle a man in uniform, a man with pale eyes and skin and hair, sits behind a sheet of glass. Again, this man studies our documents far longer than any of the other people that went before, and glances at us every so often, his eyes flickering up, down, up, up, down, up, like a machine tracking a pattern. I pray this man sees the truth of what is standing in front of him. Magda squeezes my hand so hard it feels as if the bones in my fingers might break.

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