Kissy spat out Victor’s head and watched it roll along the edge of the lake. When it came to a halt the head looked like a full stop marking the end to a chapter. The wide open short-sighted eyes stared into the distance where they could, for the first time, see and decode what living people of normal vision couldn’t: a little song on the music stave of a world where suffering was unknown and there was no name for it. The little song went:

...between Dracula and Chernobyl

we were happy kids…

...

The town and the lake were inseparable.

They could have been Siamese twins or suicidal lovers dreaming amphibian dreams.

The town was small and vibrant. Amid clamorous bingo venues and vociferous sellers of lottery tickets, amid shoppers of life and car thieves, there was a boy called Rob, a boy whose heart knew only hatred and rejection.

The town was now in the grip of fear.

The boy was now in the grip of love.

WAS THE LAKE BY the Home or the Home by the lake?

The children fought over it as they dived into its crystal waters, bouncing off the clean sanded bottom. Rob, Fatzy Dembo, Sali and Gosho the Poet. Sometimes Lala, the cross-eyed beauty, would come too with Byron running behind her, jumping, wagging his tail. Sali’s father had stolen the dog and given it to them for the Birthday.

Since no one knew the real date of their birthdays they shared a Birthday once a year, changing its timing and choosing their own age since no one knew their real age.

Lala, whose thick red hair cascaded down to her waist, had decided to be six although she looked sixteen while Tettie declared she took two years in one and wondered why she always remained small. For the Birthday feast they had puree of wild fruit they collected in the wild: blackened pears, squashed over ripe plums, small hard apples. There were rumours that wolves and bears sometimes came down from the mountain so Fatzy Dembo carried raw nettle in his pockets to protect himself and his friends.

They all insisted to eat the dessert first. For second they had chicken heads soup with the feathers. Last on the Birthday menu were the bones, tendons and ligaments hanging, scarce meat remnants like lichen. Last year the bones seemed to be from bison, even Byron didn’t succeed in gnawing into them, not to mention Child Harold, the cat, whose laziness rivalled Sali’s.

With a gentle motherly caress the sun stroked the surface of the lake and the wet heads of these juvenile inhabitants of the suburbs of civilisation as they, being overtaken by a prenatal memory and a vague yearning for love, screamed chasing each other and jostled in a fit of unspent emotions.

Nine-year old Rob was tall and rail thin. The freckles covering his face made him look, as a random volunteer worker noted, like a study to a pointillism painting technique. Rob’s eyes were small and malicious. His trade mark superior look achieved by a smirk and squinting made them look even smaller, two grown out of proportion freckles. He was rude and quick to act with his fists and held to authority with the determination of a born bully which together with his surprising charisma had put him on the top of the pecking order in the Home. Somehow the children not only accepted him the way he was, but fought for his attention. Even the redheaded Lala would accept a slap on the cheek from him, wipe her nose and continue to look at him in awe. Rob didn’t need admiration. Rob didn’t do admiration and friendships. His life of an orphaned child, short but eventful, had taught him that the world was hostile, people were evil breeders and one must strike the first blow.