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‘We’ll be back,’ he said, echoing his father’s words. ‘You’ll see.’
His mother smiled at him and kissed him on the forehead.
‘As long as you’re with me, I don’t care where we go,’ she said.
His mother had a way of reading his thoughts. Half an hour later, the entire family passed through the front doorway for the last time, heading towards a new life. Summer had begun.
*
Max had once read in one of his father’s books that some childhood images become engraved in the mind like photographs, like scenes you can return to again and again and will always remember, no matter how much time goes by. He understood the meaning of those words the first time he saw the sea. The family had been travelling on the train for over three hours when, all of a sudden, they emerged from a dark tunnel and Max found himself gazing at an endless expanse of ethereal light, the electric blue of the sea shimmering beneath the midday sun, imprinting itself on his retina like a supernatural apparition. The ashen light that perpetually drowned the old city already seemed like a distant memory. He felt as if he had spent his entire life looking at the world through a black and white lens and suddenly it had sprung into life, in full, luminous colour he could almost touch. As the train continued its journey only a few metres from the shore, Max leaned out of the window and, for the first time ever, felt the touch of salty wind on his skin. He turned to look at his father, who was watching him from the other end of the compartment with his mysterious smile, nodding in reply to a question Max hadn’t even asked. At that moment Max promised himself that whatever their destination, whatever the name of the station this train was taking them to, from that day on he would never live anywhere he couldn’t wake up every morning to see that same dazzling blue light that rose towards heaven like some magical essence.
*
While Max stood on the platform watching the train ride away through clouds of steam, Mr Carver left his family standing beside their suitcases outside the stationmaster’s office and went off to negotiate a reasonable price for the transportation of luggage, people and paraphernalia to their final destination. Max’s first impression of the town, judging from the station and the few houses he could see, their roofs peeping timidly over the surrounding trees, was that it looked like one of those miniatu
re villages, the sort you got with train sets, where the imaginary inhabitants were in danger of falling off a table if they wandered too far. Max was busy contemplating this variation on Copernicus’s theory of the universe when his mother’s voice wrestled him from his daydream.
‘Well, Max. What’s the veredict?’
‘It’s too soon to tell,’ he answered. ‘It looks like a model, like those ones you see in toy-shop windows.’
‘Maybe it is.’ His mother smiled. When she smiled, Max could see a vague resemblance to his sister Irina.
‘But don’t tell your father,’ she went on. ‘Here he comes now.’
Maximilian Carver was escorted by two burly porters whose clothes were splattered with grease stains, soot and other unidentifiable substances. Each had a thick moustache and wore a sailor’s cap, as if this was their uniform.
‘This is Robin and Philip,’ the watchmaker explained. ‘Robin will take the luggage and Philip will take us. Is that all right?’
Max wasn’t clear which one was Philip and which one was Robin, and he wondered if they could even tell themselves, but he chose to keep his mouth shut. Without waiting for the family’s approval, the two men walked over to the mountain of trunks and hoisted up the largest one as if it weighed nothing. Max pulled out his watch and looked at the face with its curving moons. It was two o’clock. The old station clock said half past twelve.
‘The station clock is slow,’ muttered Max.
‘You see?’ his father replied excitedly. ‘We’ve only just arrived and already there’s work here for us.’
His mother gave a faint smile, as she always did when Maximilian Carver had one of his bursts of radiant optimism, but Max could see a hint of sadness in her eyes, that peculiar light which, ever since he was a child, had led him to believe that his mother could foresee events in the future that the rest of them would not even dream of.
‘Everything’s going to be all right, Mum,’ he said, feeling like an idiot the moment he’d spoken.
His mother stroked his cheek.
‘Of course, Max. Everything’s going to be fine.’
Suddenly, Max felt certain that someone was looking at him. He spun round and saw a large cat staring at him through the bars of one of the station windows. The cat blinked and, with a prodigiously agile leap for an animal of that size, jumped through the window, padded over to Irina and rubbed its back against her pale ankles, meowing softly. Max’s sister knelt down to stroke it, then picked it up in her arms. The cat let itself be cuddled and gently licked the little girl’s fingers. Irina smiled, spellbound, and, still cradling the animal in her arms, walked over to where her family were waiting.
‘We’ve only just got here and already you’ve picked up some disgusting beast. Goodness knows what it’s infested with,’ Alicia snapped.
‘It’s not a disgusting beast. It’s a cat and it’s been abandoned,’ replied Irina. ‘Mum?’
‘Irina, we haven’t even got to the house yet.’
Irina pulled a face to which the cat contributed a sweet, seductive meow.
‘It can stay in the garden. Please …’
Alicia rolled her eyes. Max watched his older sister. She had not opened her mouth since they had left the city; her expression was impenetrable and her eyes seemed to be lost in the distance. If anyone in the family was not overjoyed by the promise of a new life it was Alicia. Max was tempted to make a joke about ‘Her Highness the Ice Princess’, but decided not to. Something told him that his sister had left behind much more in the city than he could possibly imagine.
‘It’s fat and it’s ugly,’ Alicia added. ‘Are you really going to let her get her own way again?’
