Prime Time 6, Coursebook mit Audio-CD und DVD

my father who didn’t want to go. He loved his country. So did I. “I’m not going anywhere,” Dad had said in his quiet way. “Over my dead body.” en he died. And then we le¥. It’s almost three years since we moved. We live in a quiet village east of London where everything is so green that a¥er a while you start longing for something pale and dry to look at. Brown soil that has been baked dry, this is what I miss. Soil that burns your feet, like on my father’s family farm in the Free State. Pale veld and a cloudless sky and the taste of dust. My mother doesn’t miss anything. At least that is what she says. She didn’t even want to come back on a holiday. I think she is scared to see all the things she misses. But now we are here on holiday – because she thinks it will be good for me. She wants to see me laugh again. But we have been back for a week already and I still haven’t seen anything that makes me want to laugh. “Doesn’t she want to talk?” asks one of my mother’s friends. She wears far too much make-up. All my mother’s old friends from Pretoria wear far too much make-up. But this one’s neck almost snaps from all the mascara. “Or is it that she can’t talk?” I am sitting on the other side of the same room, reading. People seem to think that if you can’t speak you also can’t hear. A¥er a while they don’t see you any more. I have become used to being treated like a piece of furniture. At school too, the kids talk right over my head, look right past me as if I am not there. “It’s probably a combination of factors,” my mother replies, giving her what did-I-do-to-deserve-such-a- daughter sigh. “At „rst she couldn’t speak and then she didn’t want to any more, and now … who knows?” “Doesn’t she know how lucky she is to be living in England!” Lashes heavy with mascara utter and she utters a forced little laugh. “I wish I could leave this country!” “Anouk won’t be happy anywhere,” my mother says a¥er another long drawn-out sigh. “Not until she has worked through the past.” Work through the past. A combination of factors. A traumatic experience. My mother uses words like bricks to build walls around her, to protect herself. As if she doesn’t know that walls cannot protect one. Anouk is another one of her bricks. Anouk isn’t me, Anouk is someone exotic, worldly, my mother’s dream daughter with long dark hair. I am not exotic. I am small and ordinary. My hair is short and my face bare. I wear boy’s clothes and like to walk barefoot even in England where no one does that. People generally think that I am two years younger than my real age. I can’t help it, I don’t look like someone called Anouk, and I don’t feel like someone called Anouk. “And the psychologists?” asks my mother’s friend. “Couldn’t they help?” No, Mrs Mascara, the psychologists couldn’t help. A¥er a while I refused to go, refused to try and vomit out words. And once everybody started to leave me alone I had fewer nightmares. ey weren’t less terrible, just less frequent. When they do come at night it is still as unbearable as ever. Blood on the carpet, a carpet that stains darker and darker, blood that ows over everything, furniture and walls, like brown-red paint, blood that streams out of the front door and runs down the street. Streets of blood, rivers of blood, a country full of blood. en I also make strange noises in my sleep, my mother says, gargling, rattling noises like words in a language that doesn’t exist. Sometimes I sob loudly and then my mother shakes me so¥ly, waking me up and holding me. Sometimes she cries with me. I loved my father. My mother probably too. I don’t know. Nowadays she is going out with another man. Dad was tall and thin with a so¥ voice. My mother’s new friend is short and stocky (well, actually he is quite fat, but my mother describes him as short and stocky). He likes to laugh loudly. He tries terribly hard to be nice to me. It’s probably quite di©cult to be nice to someone like me. I wish I were someone else. No, I wish I was myself, three years ago when Dad was still alive and we still lived in Pretoria and I could stand barefoot in the kitchen in the a¥ernoon and watch Rebecca iron the washing. I wish I could turn back the clock, be eleven years old again, and listen to the hissing of the steam iron while I make myself a peanut butter sandwich. Forever and ever. 85 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 125 130 135 140 145 150 155 160 165 170 83 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentu des Verlags öbv