Secrets in the Fire by Henning Mankell

Author:Henning Mankell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781743437186
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2000-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

SOFIA NEVER FORGOT Hortensia.

But she never saw her again.

Every morning, when she woke up, she was reminded that Hortensia had gone. Her bed stood empty. Sofia asked Veronica whether another girl would come. But Veronica didn’t know.

The bed remained empty.

The days passed, slowly and heavily. Sofia sometimes thought about time and how strange it was – how it both existed and didn’t exist – and how it was like the lazy hippopotamuses she used to see floating in the river when she and Maria washed their clothes.

Sofia wanted to learn how to walk so she could go home as soon as possible, but she also wondered what the future held. She would never be able to run or dance. And no man would want her when she was grown up and ready to have children.

Her thoughts would have been less heavy if she’d had someone to share them with.

But Hortensia was gone for good.

One day, her new legs were ready. Doctor Raul came to fetch her from the hall where she practised walking with Benthino. Together they went to Master Emilio. He smiled at her and pointed to two legs that stood leaning against the table.

‘May I introduce you to your two new friends?’ he said. ‘They’ll be with you for many years to come. Since you’re still growing, you’ll be needing new and longer legs at some stage, but until then these are your best friends.’

The legs were made of light brown plastic. They were the same thickness as normal legs and had black shoes at the end. One of the legs was longer than the other, since it had to be fastened to her thigh.

Together Master Emilio and Doctor Raul attached Sofia’s new legs. When she stood up, she felt how well they fitted her. It only hurt a little bit below her left knee. If she let her capulana fall all the way down to her shoes, no one would notice that her legs weren’t really her own.

Doctor Raul told her to walk around the room.

‘Does it hurt?’ he asked.

Sofia shook her head.

‘Can I go home now?’ she asked instead.

‘Not yet,’ said Doctor Raul. ‘You will need at least another month here, to practise. But then you can go home.’

That night, Sofia tried out different ways of arranging her capulana so that the artificial legs couldn’t be seen. She walked back and forth outside the building, and it was almost as if nothing had happened. People who didn’t know wouldn’t see that her legs were made of plastic.

From then on, Sofia no longer used the wheelchair. Before, she’d always put on her legs when she got to the hospital, but now she did it in the morning and kept them on until she went to bed at night. She took them to bed with her, too, and kept them under the blanket, because she was afraid someone might try to steal them.

One night, when she’d gone to bed with the legs beside her, she thought she would give them each a name.

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