merlinmerlin www.merlinpublishers.com

Published in 2014

Merlin Publishers Ltd42, Mountbatten Street, Blata l-Bajda, Malta

www.merlinpublishers.com

Layout and production by MerlinPrinted by Gutenberg Press, Tarxien, Malta

Cover design by Pierre Portelliwww.pierreportelli.com

Editor Sharon Spiteri

Copyright © Teodor Reljic

ISBN: 978999091473-3

All rights reserved.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in whole or in part, including photographs, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without prior written permission from the author and the publisher.

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9

1. Malta

Mum smiles through her red curls. The plane is white when I

wake up and see her smiling, and I’m sure she’s still sleeping — I

think I hear her snoring but when I wake up the grey-white of the

plane is what’s taking over my eyes.

It smells of soap and air-conditioned air, and it’s making my

spit taste sour. I move my tongue around to make it go away but

no, I’m just rolling the same smell over and over in my mouth and

it won’t change unless I spit.

After I blink a few times the colours begin to come back slowly

and I look at mum. It’s the red hair that makes me feel awake first.

That makes me feel good, excited. That reminds me that we’re

going away somewhere that’s both new and not new.

I reach out to touch mum’s face. I don’t know why I want to do

this but I do it anyway. There’s something nice about doing things

when you’re only half-awake. It feels like I’m reaching into the

world of her stories. The Vermillion stories.

When I touch her chin she shakes her head to say “No”, and I

feel my dad’s fingers — not his hand — on my arm.

“Shh,” one of them says.

“And how old are you?”

The “you” is longer, thinner than when dad says it, or when

anyone back in England says it. Sometimes mum says it like that

when we’re in my room and one of us says something funny, and

Malta

10

she speaks while she laughs. Or when they have other grownups

over and they’re drinking wine and telling jokes that I don’t

understand.

I notice the “you”, and I follow the noise and look up, past

my dad’s long thin arms and sharp shoulders. The sounds wake

me up. I feel the thin, round noise, I dream it before it happens; a

curled ‘o’ through thick lipsticked lips.

She woke me up, the woman who said it woke me up, which

must mean I had fallen asleep again. Does that mean we’ll be in

Malta soon? It is a woman, yes: I see her in her uniform and I notice

that she’s giving me something. Her skin isn’t like mum’s but her

hips are, coming out as if they’re appearing out of nowhere, as if

the fat suddenly starts under the bellybutton.

“It’s a cake,” my dad says. “Take it.”

He puts the paper he’s been reading on his lap and stretches

out his hand to drop the little table in front of me. He takes the

cake from the woman’s hand — even though he asked me to take

it. Mum would never do that. Mum always means what she says. I

wish we had woken up together, but she’s still asleep.

She looks big in the little seat. The thick curls of her hair look

exploded, running free. Her eyes are closed shut, but they still

look big, like old fruit behind a jungle bush. Her mouth is just a

little bit open, a small crack. I wonder if the air coming out of it

smells like the air-conditioner.

“Eat your cake,” dad says.

“I’m nine years old,” I tell the stewardess, but when I look up

to meet her eyes again, I see that she’s gone.

I know we’re in Malta when we get out of the air-conditioned

air. The plane opens to let us out and I feel my face becoming

11

hard; my nose and mouth are hit by something invisible and hard.

It’s the Malta air. “Thick like milkshake,” mum said once and I

remember this now — I remember it and everything else, so much

more: I remember what Malta means.

Then we’re waiting in line at the airport as always and dad

asks me, “So how many times have we been to Malta?”

“Twice,” I tell him. I remember the two summers — I can’t

forget. Why would I forget? I close my eyes and think about them

and count “one, two,” in a tiny whisper and with the fingers of

my left hand. I don’t want dad to see this and I don’t think he

does — he’s so tall that sometimes I can’t even see his face, just

his chin.

“Good, good,” he taps me on the back. I turn around and I

notice that he’s smiling.

It wasn’t that hard to remember.

Was dad ever a kid?

When we leave the queue to pick up our bags, my dad glides

past. Sometimes he does that, so that we’ll just follow him. While

we walk, mum puts her hand on my shoulder and leans down to

whisper in my ear.

“We have to be careful about Vermillion stories now,” she says.

At first I don’t pay attention that much because I really want to

notice what the smell from her mouth is like. I’m still curious

about it.

It’s bad breath, but I also catch her perfume — like the flowers

of Hyde Park. Nothing about mum can be bad all the way.

“Look at me,” she says. I love it when she’s just woken up.

When her eyes are still crinkly, when it feels like she could be a

kid like me. It’s the eyes that stay up all night to tell stories.

12

“We have to be careful, and you have to pay attention. Dad

will be listening.” She points a finger out into the darkened space

where our luggage waits. At first I think she’s pointing at nothing

because I can’t see him; there are lots of people milling about

the conveyor belt, but then his shape comes out from one of the

columns.

He’s that tall.

“In Malta, the walls are thin,” mum says, and nudges me to

move ahead.

My grandparents are waiting for us, and they kiss me and kiss

me as soon as they see me, because nannu snatches me up from

behind that metal frame we have to walk through. I hate being

kissed like that, their lips smothering and wet. But I love that I can

finally see them — that I can finally smell that old smell, a smell

I’m not sure forms part of the house or comes from their own skin.

Because they will make everything about summer great.

We’ll be staying at the big house and going to the beach and

they’ll buy me sweets and ice-cream all the time, when dad isn’t

looking.

Dad shakes hands with nannu and hugs nanna, and tells me to

tell them how my trip was.

“It was good, a bit bumpy,” I said. For some reason, they laugh.

I don’t want them to laugh so I keep talking.

“I missed everything,” I tell them. And they all laugh. All of

them, like they hear it crisply and clearly, like they had been

waiting for it. Nannu, almost as tall as dad but stooped, wears

sunglasses indoors. Nanna, fat and with eyes like mum’s: big and

round and green.

Dad, whose face I have to lift my head to see. Who doesn’t

13

laugh much at what I have to say so when he actually does, I want

it to go on forever.

And mum, who hugs me from behind when she laughs and

says “awww”, and lifts me up into her arms, and we’re away.

We’re in Malta, and the sun in the evening is the best thing

I’ve ever seen.

The first two days were nice and hot and they were wet, too.

They reminded me of those first two summers, straight away. The

beach. Nanna and nannu. How water tastes different in the sea.

How scary the rocks are if you’re not careful; how I always look

for the ladder on the rocky beaches and how dad always follows

behind me.

That smell of barbecue. How I love to watch the sun

set with the smoke of the barbecue flying up like a bird

that keeps its wings open and then disappears in the half-

dark.

Everything was already in those first two days, as it was two

summers ago. How do we even know the difference between

years? How can you tell what is memory, and what is real?

I am thinking this because now, on the third day, there is

shouting in the house. It’s a rented house somewhere that’s

called San Ġwann, which is not at all close to the sea and is full of

just buildings and cars. Even their church is boxy, like a building

made quickly, like it’s made of toy blocks.

The flat looks just like our flat in London, more or less. I can’t

decide whether it’s bigger or just darker. There are parts of it I

haven’t seen yet, or maybe I have seen them and it all just feels

like a dream because with the bright hot sun outside that enters

even through the dark blue curtains, the shady parts of the house

14

look even shadier. Like they could go on forever.

It’s also more yellow. The bits that aren’t painted over are

yellow like the soft sun in the evening.

The noise is coming from one of the shady, hidden rooms.

Maybe it’s their bedroom. When I imagine them fighting, shouting

at each other in their room, I picture the words coming out of

their mouths — hard, harsh words, some of them I think in

Maltese — and it almost feels good to imagine their shady, cool

bedroom.

Everything is clean and neat like a hotel. There are blue-

patterned sheets and there’s purple wallpaper, and after a day at

the beach all I want is to go in there, snuggle up next to mum and

listen to Vermillion stories.

But now in the corridor, I am alone, and the sun is dividing it

sharply down the middle and all that I hear of my mother’s voice

are shouts. I can’t make out the full sentences, but what I notice

is that the angrier mum gets, the more she uses Maltese.

“Ħaqq allec — ”

“F’għoxx — ”

“Ħallini — ”

There’s a lot between those words, but these are the words

that stick to me. In the shady part of the corridor their shapes are

in shadow under dark blue and black. Their voices are the same:

quiet, hidden but behind the door I can only imagine that they’re

shouting at each other, that even dad — who never moves when

he speaks — is moving his arms up and down.

Mum’s Maltese words burst in the shadow and they’re almost

like a picture in my head. I feel a pull inside me when I hear them,

like a little sting, because all they remind me of is anger. Mum’s

anger. Which is like when you slip. Which is like when somebody

slaps you and you don’t know why. I don’t want to be dad right

15

now because I know that when mum is angry, there is nothing

that can stop her. When she’s angry she is the only person who’s

right. When she’s angry, she wants to make you feel bad about

everything that you did, or tried to do.

When she’s angry and when there are Maltese words coming

out of her mouth there’s nothing that can help you.

They stop talking, and I see mum’s outline getting bigger

through the door. I run to my room.

Dad goes to the living room, opens the fridge and takes a beer. I

don’t see all this but I hear it from my room. Even though it’s far

away down the corridor I hear everything. Mum was right, the

walls are thin.

I hear dad sigh after his first sip. It’s a long sigh, and I hope

he’s really relaxing. I try to listen to mum but then I regret it,

because I hear her crying, and it’s not the quiet crying.

I’m bored and worried. And there’s nothing to do except

remember where mum had left off. Where she had left

Vermillion …

The forests were made of shadows and rustling. Vermillion always thought the woods would be green: green, the lush green of home; that they’d remind him of home.

But as he ran through the forest to save his life — which was still so little — he could neither see nor feel anything except the dark, the moving dark, the squeeze of the black soil and the wet impact of the leaves and branches on his face.

Vermillion wished he had never hidden from the truth. He wished he was still home, and that nothing had changed. With each step he

16

took deeper into the forest, the boy began to resent the stories he had read, again and again, in the basement. They made adventure and escape seem like it was the most freedom you could ever have.

But the forest is swallowing me, he thought as he gasped for breath and summoned as much courage as he could.

And still he heard the footsteps. And still they approached, closer and closer …

It’s mum’s voice that makes the stories true. Without her, when I

try to imagine what happens it all just feels smoky, like thoughts

made out of air, forgotten as soon as dreams are forgotten after

you wake up.

I wait for my mum to stop crying but then I think: why isn’t dad

doing anything either? I move to the living room, just brushing

the floor with my feet. There’s a beer can on the floor. It feels like

a whole hour has passed when I finally get to dad.

In that hour, in that strange time, I can imagine another

Vermillion story …

He’s asleep in the chair. People often sleep during the day in

Malta, but I wonder if they only do this in summer.

Dad is wearing a white shirt. The top part of his chest is flat,

then there’s a bump, and he has a little belly but not a big one,

not like nannu’s, which I remember from the beach. His little hairs

look like trapped flies in a spider-web. They’re sticking to his

shirt — he must be feeling hot, he must be sweating. The fan is

on but we have no air-conditioning here: that’s one of the things

mum said was good about going to her parents’ place but still, my

dad didn’t want to move from here.

17

He isn’t snoring yet, but his breathing sounds like he’s about

to sneeze.

I really want to play with his camera. I really want to see

what he keeps in his big folder of drawings. One day when he

came back from work he told me he’d show me his ‘storyboards’

and the word excited me so much that I couldn’t wait. Were

they like board games made of stories that you had to tell each

other again and again, and the winner would be the one to tell

the most stories, and faster? Or were they blocks with stories on

them that you exchanged like cards? But that night — it was a

bit before Christmas, maybe closer to summer — he forgot about

them before I went to bed, and I was so excited about what would

happen to Vermillion that I forgot about it too.

I think that folder has to be in his little suitcase: he puts all

his work stuff into that one, and he’s always going on at mum for

carrying too many suitcases with her when we travel.

Dad starts to snore, and I think about the ‘storyboards’ some

more. And when I walk down the corridor again, afraid that he’ll

wake up but wanting that folder so bad, mum calls me from the

bedroom.

“William, let’s talk.”

I don’t like mum telling me Vermillion stories during the day, and

I’m glad she doesn’t, now. She tells me about how I shouldn’t be

too worried about her and dad, that they’re fighting because it is

just so hot and that they’re tired from the trip.

Mum doesn’t look like she’s been crying. Her face is clean,

though she hasn’t been to the bathroom to clean it for sure, and

she smiles at me when we talk, like nothing’s happened. Mum is

always like this: after she cries, nothing happens. Dad sometimes

18

spends days frowning after a fight.

“I just hate stewing around here, William, that’s all, you

know — ”

“What does stewing mean?”

“Oh, well … it means you’re really hot, because it’s like you’re

being put in a stew, that thick soup, you know?”

All of us in one big soup. Boiling under the starlight in a

cauldron. Where did I first see that? Where did I first think that?

Sometimes when mum speaks to me, and not just when she’s

telling stories, these pictures immediately appear in my mind and

I don’t even know where I get them from.

But I think I understand what mum means. This is one of my

favourite things. When I see how words are connected to the real

world. The thick air is like soup, and the sun is warm everywhere

unless you’re in deep shade.

“Summer is long, isn’t it?” I say.

“Depends what you mean, Will — ”

“I mean, it’s like one long day.”

“Well, it is to you. You’re lucky. You don’t have to worry about

anything yet. But when you’re as old as I am — ”

“How old are you?”

“I’m thirty-seven. Can you imagine that?”

I can’t. Not really. I’m not sure I even understand how years

work. There aren’t any pictures in my mind to fit the word ‘years’

yet. I know that there’s spring, summer and then Christmas and

the New Year and a year has then passed, but I don’t understand

what all that time passing means. Thirty-seven. Thirty-seven New

Years passing by. In a second I imagine one New Year’s Eve, two,

three … but after a while I can’t imagine them anymore.

“And how old is dad?” I say. It slips out of my mouth. I didn’t

even know I had the question in my mind.

19

“Oh, dad is younger, much younger. He’s a baby!” She’s smiling

when she says this, the same way she smiled when she told me

how old she was. It’s a strange smile … a smile that says she might

be joking, that she might be making fun of me. She never smiles

like this when she’s telling me Vermillion stories.

“He’s thirty-one.” She whispers the number to me like it’s a

secret.

And then, I feel like everything is the way it should be. That

mum and I exist somewhere alone, together, and that nobody

else can hear what we say.

Then we talk some more about the heat and the food, and

when we wake dad up from the chair, we all go to the supermarket

and buy things to make a salad, and I tell them that I want orange

juice, and we get that too.

“You know, I really feel like Valletta,” dad says.

“Oh but it’s summer, we should go to the beach first,” mum

says.

“You’re right, you’re right,” dad says. He scoops a bit of salad

into his plate, and looks at me. There’s a smile on his face. It’s

small, but I can see it clearly because his skin is pale and his lips

are bright red, like a lobster. Soon, his skin will be just as red too.

“Another beer?” I ask, and they both burst out laughing, and

dad says, “No thanks, Will, beer is not good for you. Anyway,

where do you want to go tomorrow?”

I want to go to nanna and nannu’s because there I could play

in the old house, that’s big and full of shady corners I’m not

supposed to go into. I want to then go to the beach, like mum

said, because then it would get really hot so I could swim in the

sea, which would make me feel good not just because it’s nice

20

and cold but also because I only learnt how to swim last year, and

want to make sure I remember. Then I want to go get an ice-cream

in Sliema, and look at videogames with dad while mum goes

around looking for clothes. I don’t want to go to Valletta — it’s old

and boring, and all you can do is walk, walk next to other sweaty

people.

“I wanna go anywhere,” I say, because I know we won’t go to

Valletta. Because mum said we shouldn’t.

Mum has a glass of white wine with the salad and when she’s

done, she tells dad, “So we’ve reached a compromise, then?” She

smiles. I’m not sure what she means, I was distracted thinking

about where we were going. Later mum tells me that we’ll be

going to nanna and nannu’s in the evenings, and that we’ll spend

the days here.

“Is that ok with you?” mum says, tucking me in with

a thin sheet, the window open but covered with a

‘mosquito mesh’.

“Yes it’s ok … mum, where do we live?”

“We live in England, ħanini … you were born there, remember?”

“No,” I say. “I mean, where’s this, now, what’s this called?”

“Oh,” she smiles. “This is San Ġwann. It’s a … suburb,” she says.

When she realises that I don’t know what this means, she winks

and says, “Look it up.”

This is when I realise that she won’t be sleeping in the same

bed as me while we’re here, and I feel something inside me.

Maybe it’s a sting, or something is pulling me. She isn’t moving

around in the same way that she moves around before she sits

next to me in bed to tell me a story. She’s moving around in the

same way as when she’s making lunch or dinner. Her red hair is

21

bouncing. Her hips fill the room when she moves from one place

to another. She fiddles with the mesh over the window after she

tucks me in. She opens and closes drawers, checking for I don’t

know what.

She’s getting ready to leave the room and go back to the world

with dad.

“No Vermillion tonight, Will, it’s late and we have to be up for

the beach early tomorrow. Promise to tell you one on the way, and

dad will just have to deal with it.”

The stories will have to be dreams tonight. And I never liked

dreams.

When it happened, we were getting ready to go.

Dad was looking for suntan lotion and a white T-shirt for me,

and mum was finishing her coffee. Dad had gone to buy ‘special

coffee’ the day before and maybe that’s why mum was taking her

time to drink it.

“I remembered Vermillion in the forest yesterday,” I tell mum.

We are waiting for dad in her bedroom.

“Really? Good boy,” mum says, and strokes my face. “What do

you think will happen next?”

I can’t think of what happens in between. All I know about is

where Vermillion needs to get to.

“Well …” I say, words leaving my brain for a second. “H-he

needs to find his mum, doesn’t he?”

Mum is up getting stuff ready for the beach, and she’s looking

sideways to check the weather and maybe to see what my dad is

doing but then she stops, and she goes down on her knees and

looks me in the eye to tell me, “I don’t know what happens next,

Will. I really don’t. Isn’t that exciting?”

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22

She smiles a strange smile again. Like she’s afraid. Or like she’s

been naughty.

Dad calls me, or us, I don’t know. I turn back to look at the

corridor and I hear him sorting through the drawers — or is it his

suitcase? I turn back to mum quickly because I want to know

what she thinks of what I said about Vermillion, because it makes

me feel good to know that I understood something about the

stories, that I’ve taken them inside me somehow and made them

a little bit mine.

But the first thing I see when I turn around again is the coffee

cup on the bed, because it stings my thigh when it touches me,

and when I look up I see that mum is trying to take deep breaths,

like a long yawn, and her arm shoots quickly up to her head

and then, when she tries to take in a breath and looks like she’s

swallowing an invisible ball instead, she falls on the bed and

nothing else happens.

“She is safe,” dad says. He doesn’t say that she is going to be okay.

“She’s stable,” he says. I’m not sure what he means, and I think of

horses. Dad is sitting in the kitchen with me. We have just come

back from hospital. The table is small, and I have to look him in

the eye. I was crying all the way back, even though I didn’t want

to. And I am not okay with it now, I don’t know how mum does

it, I don’t know how just by crying she makes all the sadness go

away.

And when dad started crying a little bit after we got back home,

I cried some more and now the dried tears are really bothering

me — they’re like the mosquito stings I get here, every summer.

Did that mesh keep me from them last night? Another night of no

stories. Who will fix the mesh now? What will my dreams be like?merlin www.merlinpublishers.com