Eden Motherlandtrilogy 1

Chapter 6, 7/ Part 3

     6. Leni

We worked in silence for a while and Peter resumed his zombie posture.

When the sun was quite high and sweat and earth had mixed enough, a van turned the corner and one of the cousins, such a young one with a blond moustache, shouted: "Break!"

I stood up and told Peter to pull the basket with me to the truck bed. It was too heavy to lift and we tugged and pulled it with dirt-encrusted fingers.

The blue van braked and a stocky, elderly gentleman with a fringe of grey hair got out: "I'm bringing the food for the boys," he addressed the one cousin, my special friend, "How's it coming?"

"Very nice!" the flattered him, " But that woudn't have been necessary!"

I looked at my muddy feet, at my skinny legs and felt into my belly, which had taken nothing but water for a day.

"Well, I think it's very necessary!"

The world stood still for a moment and the cousin's eyebrows drew together. The old man twitched his moustache.

"Holy shit, I said that out loud. What was wrong with me? This man was apparently from the Real World and I had said that out loud."

The cousin's face closed up like the sky before a storm and he made a barely noticeable movement towards the driver's cab. I knew that he had hidden the rifle there.

The old man's face, on the other hand, brightened and he blurted out with a resounding laugh: "Yes, when I look at you like that," he eyed me up and down, "I think so!"

I didn't know what to do. I had to look terrible. If I hadn't been clean yesterday, now I had tob e caked in dirt. I also started laughing! My colleagues came closer and some joined in the laughter. They looked like dirty little moles that had dug their way out into the daylight.

"What is your name, son?"

"Well, good question..."

The cousin next to me gave me a poke: "Answer the man!"

"Christo is my name!" Following an impulse from a past life, I extended my black hand to the man from the Real World.

"I'm Holger! This is my daughter, Leni!" Amazingly, he grabbed my hand and then looked for the passenger seat of the car and as if on cue, a girl got out. She was wearing a dress with stripes, was slim and had blonde pigtails. On her head she wore a scarf. She came around the truck and I felt the boys' eyes glaze over. I felt their looks and their envy on the back of my neck. She was fiddling with the latch of the hold. Thank God it was stuck.

I immediately jumped over: "I'll help you!" With brute force I pulled the metal lever out of its anchorage.

"Thank you! The stupid thing is always bitching." She smiled. But when I raised my head, she winced a little.

Then she laughed: "Don't you have a shower in juvie?"

"Juvenile detention? I'm not..."

"Hey, Leni. Where's the problem?", Holger called out.

"I've got it dad. The door was stuck...Get in line!"

"What row?"

"Well, this one." She took me by the shoulder and stood me in front of the hold, where there was a large pot. While I was still looking puzzled, she pressed a tin bowl into my hands and lifted the lid. She made me a big dollop of soup in the bowl, pointed to a basket, "There's bread! Next!"