Robina by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY NINE

Alice was told that her son was being held at the Prison de la Santé located in the Montparnasse district of the 14th arrondissement. She took the bus out to the prison the next day. It took her twenty minutes to walk from the bus stop on the street to the prison gates, and then an hour to pass through the many levels of security and another three hours of waiting before she could see her son.

Bruno looked half-asleep and dreamy, Alice thought, as she sat across from him separated by a thick glass pane in the visitor’s area. He held limply to a prison phone, breathed air in and out of his parted lips and took short little quick breaths like he was in the middle of a dream. His eyes stared at her with a dull, burned-out look, like there was something missing from them.

All around Alice she could see candles lit, and glowing in the civilian’s side of the prison glass.

Alice turned to Bruno. Into the phone she asked, “How are you? Do you feel all right?”

Bruno stared at Alice and leaned his head down, almost touching the glass. His eyes closed limply and he didn’t speak. At last he straightened up and stiffened and Alice saw the expression in his eyes had changed, they were haunted and seared, and his jaw was set tight.

“Robina needs to pay,” he hissed quietly at Alice, and shook his head, “after I kill the man who did that to her.”

Alice was shocked. For a moment it was too painful for her to breathe. She turned a probing glance back at her son, and stared in unblinking incredulity. She felt frozen in a timeless dimension of grief. Then her eyes shifted back to Bruno, she held his gaze steady as she folded one arm across her breast, and she furrowed her brow. This was the Algerian Arab within him talking now.

When she spoke there was a tremor in her voice.

“I have been fighting tooth and nail to hold this family together,” she said wretchedly to her son. “Stop this gloomy thinking. It doesn’t suit you, Bruno. You are better than this! How do you think you ended up in here?”

Bruno started to say something to his mother, then reddened, jerking his eyes swiftly away. He was suddenly aware that he had let his mother down once again. He had disgraced the family, to save Stefan. A vein throbbed in the side of his rugged face. He returned his mother’s hopeless gaze, dropped the phone back in its cradle, wiggled the fingers of his hand in farewell, and silently strode away.

Crestfallen, Alice’s brows bunched together. As Bruno turned the corner with the prison guards and disappeared slowly back into the building, Alice sobbed. She hooked her arms around herself. Then she heard a sudden loud crashing sound, and coarse guard voices yelling at Bruno to get back in his cell before they beat his stupid ass, and she slowly lowered her head in grief.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.