Le Berceau by Julius Eks

Author:Julius Eks [Eks, Julius]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781635556889
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2020-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

Part 3

Ava and her mother were under the awning when I returned to the deck. Her mother was clearing the table from lunch earlier, and she was just about to go down to brew coffee in the cafetière. Her father had taken Leo’s parents out on the small, motorised, inflatable dinghy attached to the back of their boat.

“Hi,” I said to Ava, taking her mother’s place at the table.

“I’ll be back soon with coffee,” her mother said as she ambled down the stairs with a tray full of dirty plates and cutlery.

“Hi.” Ava smiled back at me. “Having a nice day so far?”

“A lovely day,” I replied, trying to think only of the positives of a day spent at sea. “And I think Gabriel is feeling the benefit, too.”

“That’s good.”

I picked up Ava’s book and thumbed through a few pages. It was written in Italian and had lots of scribbles pencilled in. Certain words were underlined and others had the direct translation into French written above it.

“I didn’t know you knew Italian.”

“Well,” she snorted nervously, “I’m not very good at it, but I’m learning.”

“How much of this would you say you can understand?”

“About half.”

“I don’t know why you didn’t ask me for help. You know I study Italian and English.”

“I know. But…I don’t know.”

Ava was a strange girl. She could be shy, understated, awkward, and very much a wallflower, but she had a crazy side to her, which was loud, energetic, and ridiculously funny.

“You should speak with Leo and his mother. They both speak Italian, too.”

“Leo’s mother is Italian.”

“Exactly. Anyway, where is Leo?”

“He went diving. He took the snorkel and a fork and bucket. See that bucket floating in the sea?”

“Yeah.”

“Leo is underneath it. You’ll see his head pop up soon, and he’ll put a sea urchin in it.”

“Well, at least we’ll never wonder where he is.”

I scanned the front cover of the book on the table in front of me while Ava stared out at the bucket on the water’s surface. The front cover was plain and the title was quite abstract, giving no indication what the book was about. The back cover was neatly taped over with craft paper, covering the blurb. It was all very bizarre.

“Do you like Leo?” I asked her, noticing her gaze was fixed on the bucket in the sea. If I couldn’t have him, I shouldn’t stop him from being with anybody else. I had suddenly found myself in the dark regarding his sexuality after his mystifying reaction to my earlier shameful behaviour.

He was a personification of this cryptic book that lay in front of me. Italian to the core, but his blurb was taped over. He was extremely difficult to read, simply because he had one external emotion. That stupid smile, like neatly taped craft paper, hid who he really was to the outside world. It said he had the emotional range of a ball of yarn, but it was enticing and comforting. It drew me in, like this book, simply because I wasn’t allowed to understand the contents.

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