chapter eleven
AFTER a few weeks on the glass mountain, I’m an expert in the recovery of nickel. My grapnel digs, my fingers grab the caps, thwack! I pull the wire. I make twice as much money now as I did the first days, and we can afford to buy more food at the small grocery store. I’m proud of myself, but I’m worried about Gloria. She’s coughing more and more; Mr. Betov says that it’s because of the dust.
“This damn dust gets in your throat, deep down!” he says. “You have to be very careful!”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Gloria says, panting. “It’s just bronchitis, it’ll pass. Don’t forget that I’m as sturdy as the trees, Koumaïl!”
At work, when I squat near Stambek, I talk to him about all sorts of things. I tell him about Abdelmalik and Sergei, about Vassili and Zemzem. I explain that I promised Emil I’d bring him back some loukoums. I teach him the different cuts of beef and the mineral hardness scale, but Stambek’s head is like a sieve. He repeats the things I say, but they don’t stick in his brain.
“It’s OK,” I say. “This way I can tell you the same thing every day and you won’t get bored.”
Stambek laughs, and we keep digging cheerfully in the sharp depths of the mountain. He’s a good friend. It’s too bad that I’m too tired at night to play with him. The pure and simple truth is that I miss running in the staircase with Baksa, Emil, and the others. But I guess life goes on and you have to grow up.
One day I witness an accident caused by the drunk driver of a truck. It happens when everybody lines up, right where we unload our bags of nickel to be weighed. The truck starts suddenly with its load, but instead of moving forward, it backs up. People shout, jostling each other … too late. A little girl is crushed under the truck’s wheels.
The girl’s mother throws herself on the ground and pulls at her daughter’s body. She lets out such a piercing wail that my hair stands on end. The driver gets out of the truck, totally unsteady. He puts his hands over his mouth when he understands what he has done. His eyes pop out. The mother screams, and the crowd looks at the driver. He takes off running like crazy, trying to get as far away as possible from the truck and the dead girl’s body.
When Chief arrives, he sees the disaster. People help the mother carry her dead daughter to her shed. Silence falls over us, except for the engine of the truck, which keeps running stupidly. Then Chief gets behind the steering wheel and drives the truck to the factory, on the other side of the glass mountain.
All night I think about what happened, while Gloria coughs her lungs out.
The next morning when I go see Chief to get my grapnel, I ask him whether the drunk driver came back.
Chief shakes his head. “If he returns to Souma-Soula, people will kill him,” he says.
“I know someone who can do his job,” I say. “Someone who doesn’t drink alcohol. Just tea, Chief!”
“Someone who can drive trucks?” he asks distrustfully.
“Yes, Chief! She can even repair engines and oil pistons, and isn’t afraid to get her arms deep in grease!”
From that day on, Gloria abandons her job on the mountain. Behind the wheel of the truck, she jerks along the road full of potholes as she makes her way between the unloading zone and the factory. She’s happy and so am I. When I see her not far from the spot where I sort things with the Betov family, I stand up and wave to her. Stambek does the same, and we shout, “Hello!” Gloria honks three times and flashes her lights. All the pickers of nickel are startled, and Stambek laughs like a madman until his father slaps his head. Then we calm down and go back to work. But the most important thing is that at night Gloria doesn’t cough as much.
Stambek has four sisters. The youngest one is only six years old, and the oldest is thirteen. In the middle there are the twins, Suki and Maya, the ones I like best. To tell them apart, Mrs. Betov gave me a tip: Suki has a beauty spot close to her mouth, whereas Maya’s is located between her eyebrows, like a period between two sentences. I look at the twins a lot, but I can’t decide which one is prettier. And when one of them happens to talk to me, I mumble and I get confused. I become a complete idiot. Exactly like Gloria when Zemzem gave her his flask of water and she couldn’t say a word.
Even Stambek notices that his sisters make my heart beat faster. Every time my eyes rest on them, he puckers his lips and makes kissing sounds.
“Stop it!” I tell him. “It’s disgusting!”
His face drops. “Really? It’s disgusting?”
“Yes!”
But, like always, he forgets everything and does it again until my cheeks become warmer than the coal under the samovar.
At night in our shed Gloria notices me daydream.
“What makes you sigh like that, Koumaïl?” she asks.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Just as I thought … you’re in love.”
I grumble, and Gloria laughs as she makes pancakes.
“There’s nothing wrong with being in love!” she says. “It’s probably the most beautiful thing in the world. When I walked with Zemzem along the railroad tracks, I was happier than ever before.…”
She sighs loudly and starts daydreaming too, her gaze lost through the plastic of the window.
After a while I jump up. “Is something burning?” I cry.
“God damn it!” Gloria says, retrieving the burned pancakes.
I make a face. “They’re like coal now!” I say.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk! They’re well done, is all!”
I sit on the floor, on top of the tarp that we found and use as a rug. We smile at each other as we chew our burned dinner. Sometimes I have the feeling that my heart is directly linked to Gloria’s.
“Even if I’m in love,” I say, “I’ll always love you, right?”
“Of course, Monsieur Blaise! And don’t forget your real mother. You must think of her, too!”
I nod to make her happy.
But as hard as I try to imagine Jeanne Fortune’s frail figure and pale face, I can’t see my mother as other than tall, with dark hair and red cheeks, and a little on the heavy side.