Mama Leone Read Online Free PDF Page B

cry, Allende was good and would never have killed his mom . . . Why not if it’s better she weren’t alive . I didn’t even notice that Grandma was getting more and more upset with every sentence. Sons never kill their mothers, ever, not even when it’s better , because it’s never better when sons kill their mothers and now give Allende a rest, play something else, play Partisans and Germans, kill them if you want to kill someone, but don’t you ever shoot your mother again .
    By the afternoon everything was fine. Mom had forgotten I’d shot her and was quietly eating her beans. I’d quit playing Allende and was waiting for the evening news on television, for news from Santiago de Chile. At some soccer stadium Pinochet had cut a guitarist’s fingers off, a friend of Allende’s, and it was then I swore I’d never play guitar.
    On the fifteenth day, just before Mom was going to find out about my F in math, the teacher brought a new pupil into the classroom. This is Ricardo , she said, he doesn’t speak our language, but he’ll learn . Small and dark, Ricardo sat in the back row, his hair so dark you’d almost think it was blue. Ricardo is from Chile , the teacher filled us in when it was homeroom, but now he’s from Sarajevo too, and so I ask that you treat him like he’s always been from Sarajevo . I didn’t understand what she meant, though I figured it must be something really serious. Before Ricardo learns our language I’m going to learn how to treat people who’ve always been from Sarajevo. It was very important to me. Because of Salvador Allende and because of his mom. I’m going to ask Ricardo if Allende’s mom is still alive, if she is then we’ll play La Moneda Palace, Pinochet will try and kill Allende again, but Ricardo and me will save him. The main thing is that I hear what Allende’s mom says when they try to kill her son again.

No schlafen
    In the mornings someone eats our dreams, gulping them down and swallowing up the little creature of darkness, the little creature of dawn, the hours that disappear in sleep or in preparation for death, a time sure to come and to leave nothing behind, neither an object nor a memory, not a single trace of a path on which I might light out like the brave prince who heads into the forest in search of something lost that might save the kingdom. In the moments before waking the little creature of darkness slips from the head, the heart, and the room, hurriedly departing this world, always sloppy and running a bit late, always forgetting something, leaving something behind, and this something is what I remember in the morning. I keep it as my dream stolen from the darkness, from the slinky creature just departed. Sometimes I see hislittle black foot slipping out my bedroom door, see him dragging a little suitcase covered in stickers saying Amsterdam, Berlin, Novosibirsk, and Sarajevo . . . Sarajevo, the precious Sarajevo of my dreams, a gigantic city, the most gigantic in the world because it’s the only one I know, because I’m just four years old, and because last night’s dreams are in that little suitcase, heading off into another world. But they’ll be there to meet me one day, up in the sky, a sky that doesn’t exist. They’ll be there to meet me, a me who will no longer be, in a room like this one, furnished only with these dreams, the only trace of me.
    I don’t like sleeping. I fight sleep with all my might, but all my might isn’t yet all that much. Grandma pulls me to her chest and says c’mon, time for schlafen , and I yell so that the whole house, the whole street, and the whole gigantic city can hear – no schlafen, no schlafen . She pays me no mind but carries me to my room and lies me down in bed, even though I’m still howling no schlafen . I can’t hear what she’s saying anymore, she’s betrayed me, she doesn’t