He was sitting on the old wooden chair in the darkness of the attic. The evening sunlight sneaking through the gap in the roof tiles showed his profile silhouetted against the blackened roof. There was a book in his hand. I tried to read the cover of the book, but I couldn’t make out anything in that faint light.
He didn’t notice me standing on the wooden ladder and peering into the attic. I felt that even if he had noticed me he wouldn’t acknowledge my presence even by glancing at me.
Finding him there again, I held my breath and I watched him for a few more minutes. Though he was just seventeen, with such a serious face he looked almost twenty four. When I began to feel a little bit bored by seeing just his profile and when I felt that I couldn’t stop myself from striking a conversation with him, I pinched myself hard remembering my mother’s rebukes.
Slowly, without making any noise, I began to climb down the ladder. He still sat there and went on reading in that darkness. As I stepped down two rungs, the wall on which I had leaned the ladder hid him from my eyes.
Almost stealthily, still my heart beating irregularly, I came down to the bedroom in the ground floor. Through the windows I saw mother sitting in the garden. No. She hasn’t seen me climbing up the attic.
But seeing her sitting like that alone I couldn’t keep myself from going to her. And being with her I couldn’t keep myself from asking her, perhaps the thousandth time, why doesn’t she like me talking to him. Before I finished my question she looked at me angrily. Her eyes were like embers and I read the words written in them once again, perhaps the thousandth time.
“Will you ever grow up and stop disturbing him? Do you expect me to go on living like this forever, safeguarding his death from you?”
