Free The Orange Grove by Larry Tremblay Page B

met a little girl who was our age. She was lying in the bed next to mine. I liked her a lot. Her name was Naliffa. While I slept, she heard a conversation. The doctor told Father that I would never getbetter. Something was rotting away inside me. No one on earth could stop this rotting. Naliffa told me everything before leaving the hospital. I thought she was brave. She herself knew what was going to happen to her. Because she, too, was very sick. She told me that I ought to know. I wanted you to know also. But not before I left for the mountain. Because if you’d known, you wouldn’t have let me go. I know you well, you’d never have agreed to the switch. But thanks to you, I will know a glorious death. I won’t suffer, and when you read this letter, I’ll be in Paradise. You see, I’m not as brave as you think .
    Aziz
    Mikaël was shaken. The child who had written this farewell letter had been nine years old, the one to whom it was addressed the same age. Mikaël could see how war wiped away the frontiers between the world of adults and that of children. He gave the letter back to Aziz, unable to say a word.
    The two men resumed their walk throughthe city. The little Chinese neighborhood they were now passing through had been transfigured by the snow. The shops cast a reddish glow upon the men.
    â€œMy brother didn’t know me. He was wrong about me. Even if my mother hadn’t asked me, I would have made the swap. I was a coward.”
    Aziz quickened his pace, as if he wanted to run away from something. Surprised, Mikaël didn’t know how to react to Aziz’s admission. For a moment, he watched Aziz disappearing into the snow, now falling more heavily. He felt as if he had already lived this scene: watching someone pull away from him, together with his mystery.
    â€œAziz, wait for me! You did nothing wrong. Everything you’ve just told me about your childhood . . . how you must have suffered . . . this war that’s still raging after so many years . . . your mother didn’t want to lose both her sons . . .”
    â€œYou don’t understand. I was afraid of that belt, I was afraid of Soulayed. So I lied, I pretended to be brave. I didn’t want to die! Can you understand that?”
    Â 
    Amed walked and walked for a long time. Yet his steps only took him to the solitary rock in the orange grove. In a single leap, he jumped onto the rock, light as a bird. All around, branches heavy with shining fruit were swaying in the wind. Amed closed his eyes and picked two oranges at random. Feverish, he placed them on the rock, one to his right, one to the left. He sliced through the one on his right with his grandfather’s knife. He found no seed in either half. He cut the other orange. Blood spurted from the fruit. He found nine little teeth. He held them in the palm of his hand and they began to melt like wax, burning his hand. Then he woke from his dream.
    When he was not lying in his bed, Amed spent his time looking out his bedroomwindow. He told himself that by gazing at the horizon, he would eventually make his brother reappear, would make him return from the other side of the mountain, even in a thousand pieces. His mother knocked on his door and called for him, but he didn’t answer. She came in anyway, and looked at him with all the sadness in the world.
    â€œEat something,” Tamara begged.
    â€œI’m not hungry.”
    â€œYou’re going to get sick. Do it for him, for your brother. Do you think he’d be happy to see you lying around like that in bed? So? You don’t answer your mother? Talk to me, Amed. How do you think I feel? If there’s anyone to blame, it’s me. If there’s anyone who ought to suffer, it’s me. You understand, Amed? Leave all the suffering to me. And you, just go on living. I beg you, eat something and forget . . .”
    Amed closed himself off in silence. Tamara shut the door.
    The wound on