Free The Convalescent by Jessica Anthony Page A

discarded by the sticky hands of Other Children. One day the boy climbs off his bed and plays with an Indian doll, holding a small sack. The sack is filled with miniature towels and clothing. Assorted textiles. He plays with the toy, and the next day he comes down with a prickling fever. He lies in bed gulping air for four days, as images of the fever-carrying Indian appear in and out of his brain. He vows never to touch any of the toys again. But Janka scolds him for not playing with them. She comes into his room and sees him lying motionless on the bed and scowls, “I don’t know why I buy you a damn thing, Rovar.”
    They named the boy Rovar. It is a Hungarian name. It’s pronounced RO-vahr. It means “insect.”
    Today, as he lies in bed watching a fly hurtling around the edges of the windowscreen, the boy wishes he were an insect. If he were an insect, he thinks, he would be invisible.
O, to be a fly, a flea
, he thinks, observing the small things about his room. The things that insects observe. The curl of paint on the windowledge. The jagged fray of the blanket. The sound of bees throwing themselves at the windowscreen. He pinches his arms and watches the hairs rise up. He presses his fingers on his eyeballs until globes of light appear behind the eyelids, each taking the triangular shape of the wings of a butterfly—
    “Shit!”
    The boy props himself up on his elbows and looks out the window. His father stomps onto the front porch, thumbing mud from his shoes. It’s gotten dark.
    The violin will not be found today.
    It belonged to Grandfather Ákos. The old man came to visit the farmhouse only once, three years ago, when the boy was nine years old. Ján had told him that Grandfather Ákos was very rich, but the old man didn’t look rich. He was a bus driver, and pulled up to the farmhouse in a yellow school bus. He wore a big wool coat that made him look, the boy thought, like avagrant. His grandfather was thin, with knees that jutted out from the top of his shins like small lightbulbs. His face was shaped like Ján’s, small and pointed, but flaked with age. On his chin he sported a white goatee that looked like he’d just kissed a sticky cloud. He carried no bags or luggage, just a violin case, shaped like a small side of beef.
    When Grandfather Ákos stepped down from the bus and saw the boy for the first time, he dropped the case on the grass. He looked at Ján and Janka.
    They said nothing.
    He beckoned the boy forward. He took his chin between his fingers, holding it as though examining an egg: “
Mi ennek a neve
?” he asked. “What is the name of this?”
    Janka scratched her legs. “We call him Rovar,” she said.
    Grandfather Ákos smiled at the boy. His mouth was full of rotted, ill-spaced teeth. “That’s not a good name,” he said. “I will call him
Kis Ákos
. Little Ákos.”
    “Now look here,” Ján said.
    But Grandfather Ákos ignored him. He spent his visit sitting outside on the front porch in his wool coat, eating lemons, his favorite food. He peeled them with his rotten teeth, and unfolded the
Lick County Gazette
over his lap like a blanket. He liked to read a section in the newspaper called “Today in History, by Eldridge Cooner.” It was merely a list of events that have all happened on the same day over time, but the old man loved them. He would read them out loud, and the boy never left his side. He would sit next to him on the front porch for hours, waiting for the lemon peels to drop. Waiting to be called Little Ákos. Once Grandfather Ákos spit a lemon seed into the palm of his hand and showed the boy. “Notice, Little Ákos,” he said.
    In his palm, the seed was white and shiny. It looked like a diamond. The old man grinned at the boy, and the grin looked wicked. “Eldridge Cooner never writes about the small things,” he said.
    After the newspaper had been read, he would reach into the violin case, then stand up and play underneath the porch light. His arms