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‘Tato!’ She leaned out.
Her father handed her a bag full of snacks – bottles of Coke, potato chips and bars of chocolate.
No reprieve, then.
‘Baba dala nam yisty v dorogu,’ she said. Baba had supplied them with plenty of food for the journey – fat sandwiches and a flask full of borscht.
‘Tse vid mene,’ he said. This was from him.
Yeva passed the bag to Olena and stretched her hand out to her father. He grasped it and, talking fast, said, again, all the things he had said last night, all the things he had already repeated in the car that morning. Stay together. Stay with the Kravets. Let him know, at all times, where they were. He would come for them, he promised. Text him whenever they moved. Keep the phone charged. Mind each other.
Yeva nodded,yes, to everything, just as she had last night, just as she had in the car that morning. She had cried before, but she didn’t now. It was the urgency of his voice that held her steady. It was his last chance to say it all, and her last chance to listen.
He let go of her hand and pulled his watch from his wrist. It was her father’s most precious possession, she knew. Her mother had given it to him when they were very young, before Yeva and Olena were even born, years and years before she died.
‘Podbay pro tse dlya mene,’ he said. Yeva was to mind it for him.
She nodded again,yes, and fastened his watch on her own wrist. Olena took her place at the window, waving frantically and blowing kisses.
The train moved. Their father, pale and dry-eyed, walked down the platform to keep pace.
‘Nazavzhdy razom,’ he said, again, shouting now as the train pulled away. Together, always.
* * *
Yeva imagined heavy steps on the stairs leading up from the pizzeria, imagined a strong knock on the door, imagined opening the door and Tato standing there, laughing, arms held wide for her to run into. She’d have to tell him she’d lost his watch. He’d look sad – of course he would – but then he’d hug her and tell her it didn’t matter. What would a watch matter when they were together?
She wasn’t going to cry over it. It was just one more thing taken away. She wouldn’t let this be the blow that broke her. She would take care of her sister, whatever it took.
Yeva kicked off her shoes, slipped under the duvet and tucked her body against Olena’s back.
A Conker
When Claire and Ronan came up from the Métro, they faced the perimeter wall of the cemetery, but it took ten minutes more to reach the main entrance. From the gates, a wide tree-lined avenue reached up the hill, with narrower paths branching off to either side.
Ronan led the way, taking the first left turn, onto a cobbled alleyway. ‘We can do a circuit, clockwise,’ he said.
Claire opened her guidebook.
‘So, it says here that Père Lachaise was confessor to Louis XIV, the one they called the Sun King, his reign being 1643 to 1715.’
‘Got it. Continue, madame.’
‘Don’t laugh at me.’
‘I can’t help it – it’s nice to see you excited.’
It was nice to be excited, she thought. The air was crisp, the sky a veritably Wildean tent of blue. Green and red and yellow leaves carpeted the ground. Their fall made spaces between the branches for rays of sunshine to find a path, as if it was nature’s intention to cast a marigold spotlight on one epitaph or another. The cobbled laneway was lined with mausoleums, hardly a hand span between neighbours, each a miniature chapel complete with its own limestone spire, stained-glass window, web-draped altar, and dustyprie-dieusfor mourners long since departed to their own final rest.
‘How bigisthis place?’ asked Ronan, when it seemed the rows of tombs might never end.
‘It says here that a million people have been buried here.’ She held up the book. ‘And, if you include the ossuary, the cemetery holds what remains of three million souls.’
‘Whatremains, though?’
‘Ah, well. That is the question.’
‘Look,’ said Ronan, bending to pick up something small from the ground. ‘A conker.’ The spiky green shell had already cracked open, and he pulled it apart with his fingers. He released the smooth brown seed and held it out to her.
