Free A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska Page B

and attractive eyes. The morning was very cold. It was the first of April, and we were celebrating our school’s namesake. Srebra and I were wearing espadrilles—black with decorative yellowish buttons. Our toes were so cold we stamped our feet the whole time, but the cold spread upward, throughout our bodies. We shook like branches, and it was more obvious than with the other students, because our heads shook in unison as if someone gave them a shake every five seconds. Even if one of us tried to stop, the other’s head would go on shaking. The director continued reading his speech. A soldier approached us from behind. His head touched our hair as he said, “Hold out a bit longer and I’ll take you somewhere.” Srebra and I were taken aback, but said nothing. Each of us sank into the cold and our own thoughts, which were definitely the same that day—thoughts of our mother, who, during the night, had felt sick again, just as she had throughout almost the whole year, and our father had taken her to the doctor yet again. That morning she hadn’t gone to work, and our father told our uncle to stay at home with her in case something happened. The pain in our toes was like the pain in our chests—sharp, unbearable, devastating. Finally, the director stopped talking. Since it was a holiday, they let us go home early. The soldier behind us said, “Come on. Let’s go someplace and drink something warm.” I liked the soldiers a lot. They all seemed good-looking to me. They infused me with trust. They conveyed something protective. Perhaps I would have agreed to go with him, but Srebra dragged me along the path and said we were going home, our mother was sick. The soldier tried to persuade us that she would get better. He said we could go home soon, that he was alone and wanted female company to pass his two hours of free time, and we were extremely nice girls, despite our conjoined heads. “That’s nothing,” he said. “I’ve seen people with two bodies and one head. You at least have hope that one day you’ll be separated, but for those with only one head andtwo bodies, there’s no such hope.” “He’s lying,” Srebra whispered to me while dragging me as hard as she could toward the road, and finally, we set off at a run, staggering left and right as if drunk, leaving the soldier alone by the school fence. Halfway home, we caught up with Roza, who was also hurrying home. “Do you know that last night, my sister Mara and I played the fortune-telling game? Mine came out the same as last summer.” “Well, of course! How else should it come out if you did everything the same as the last time?” Srebra laughed. “No,” said Roza. “This time I put the number 33 in the square so I’ll get married when I turn thirty-three, and everything still came out the same.” “Are you crazy?” Srebra shouted, and it wasn’t clear to me either why Roza wanted to get married when she was so old. “Well, that was the age Jesus was when he was resurrected,” she said. “I want us to be the same age on the most wonderful day in our lives.” Good Lord. It didn’t make sense that Roza would wait so long to get married, and more importantly, if her P would even wait that long. What if he wants to get married earlier? “I’ll explain it to him,” Roza said. “I’m going to Greece with my grandma and grandpa on April 15. Mara wants to come too. Grandma and Grandpa haven’t been for almost forty years! They’ve been told they can go for one day, and we want to go with them. Mom and Dad don’t want to let us. They say what’s the point of going for just one day, but Mara wants to see where Grandma and Grandpa lived before. We’ve never been—we always just go to Katerini—and I want to call Panait; it’s cheaper if you call from a village to a city within