Harvesting E-Book

Lisa Harding

• Herausgeber: New Island
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Winner of the Kate O'Brien Award 2018. Shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2018. Shortlisted for Newcomer of the Year at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards. Sammy is a spiky, quick-witted and sharp teenager living in Dublin; Nico is a warm and conscientious girl from Moldova. When they are thrown together in a Dublin brothel in a horrific twist of fate, a peculiar and important bond is formed . . . This is a novel about a flourishing but hidden world, thinly concealed beneath a veneer of normality. It's about the failings of polite society, the cruelty that can exist in apparently homely surroundings, the bluster of youth and the often appalling weakness of adults. Harvesting is heartbreaking and funny, gritty, raw and breathtakingly beautiful, where redemption is found in friendship and unexpected acts of kindness.

Leseprobe

Harvesting

Harvesting

Lisa Harding

HARVESTING

First published in 2017 by

New Island Books

16 Priory Office Park

Stillorgan

County Dublin

Republic of Ireland

www.newisland.ie

Copyright © Lisa Harding, 2017

The Author asserts her moral rights in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000.

Print ISBN: 978-1-84840-597-4

Epub ISBN: 978-1-84840-598-1

Mobi ISBN: 978-1-84840-599-8

All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.

British Library Cataloguing Data.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

New Island received financial assistance from The Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon), 70 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, Ireland.

This is a novel. The characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance with any real person is coincidental and unintended.

For Shell,

with love, gratitude and admiration

This book is dedicated to all those

whose lives have been stolen by traffickers

No one worth possessingCan be quite possessed;Lay that on your heart,My young angry dear;This truth, this hard and precious stone,Lay it on your hot cheek,Let it hide your tear.Hold it like a crystalWhen you are aloneAnd gaze in the depths of the icy stone.Long, look long and you will be blessed:No one worth possessingCan be quite possessed.

Sara Teasdale, ‘Advice to a Girl’

Contents

1. Nico

2. Sammy

3. Nico

4. Sammy

5. Nico

6. Sammy

7. Nico

8. Sammy

9. Nico

10. Sammy

11. Nico

12. Sammy

13. Nico

14. Sammy

15. Nico

16. Sammy

17. Nico

18. Sammy

19. Nico

20. Sammy

21. Nico

22. Sammy

23. Nico

24. Sammy

25. Nico

26. Sammy

27. Nico

28. Sammy

29. Nico

30. Sammy

31. Nico

32. Sammy

33. Nico

34. Sammy

35. Nico

36. Sammy

37. Nico

38. Sammy

39. Nico

40. Sammy

41. Nico

42. Sammy

43. Nico

44. Sammy

45. Nico

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

1

Nico

A cooling breeze creeps up my skirt, tickling my thighs, as I climb to the highest branch of the highest tree in the forest. Puffs of cloud, like God’s breath, float all around. Some of the other fellows are yellowing and balding, but this old man holds on to his crown all year round. He smells of leather and Papa’s pipe. Lying back on his wrinkled bark, blotched with freckles, I scout the sky for shapes. With a slight squinting and blurring, a galloping filly appears just beyond my reach. I swing both legs either side of the branch and ride like the cowboys ride in the films Maria’s dad lets us watch.

‘Would you like a man like that?’ he’d say. ‘A man with bandy legs who spits on the ground?’

Maria would laugh, and I would think: but what about the gun packed so close to his thigh?

When we’re alone, Maria says she dreams of those spitting men.

Luca has climbed up behind me and is shaking the branch I’m clinging to. ‘Hey, don’t be such a dumbass! I could fall.’ He starts to laugh, sounding as cruel as Sergiu. The dog is running round and round the base, making strange grunting sounds.

‘That stupid animal doesn’t know it’s a mutt,’ he says, and throws a baby-green fairy cap in its direction. He should know better. Mama says if they are pulled too soon, you can hear their cries on the wind.

Luca hits the dog on its head, who yelps helplessly, looking towards the sky. It still hasn’t worked out where we go when we climb up the trunk of the tree; as far as it can see we disappear into the clouds. It’s been around as long as I have, which must make it very old in dog years. ‘Senile old nutter,’ Sergiu would say, as he’d give it its tenth whack of the day with his pointed boot. We’ve never given the old hound a name. My brothers all laugh when I suggest it. ‘It’s an animal, a creature, an “it”, and that’s that, silly sis’. Mama reckons the boys were knocked on their heads when they were little, or jostled about too much when they were growing inside her. I think it’s because they came out just like Papa, except for Luca, who is more like Mama and me, although he tries very hard not to be.

‘Where is your little friend today, sis?’ As if he doesn’t know. He follows us to the river most days and hides behind a bush where he thinks we can’t see him.

‘Just who are you talking about, donkey?’ I’ve arranged to meet Maria later at the watering hole, at the same time we meet every day during the summer holidays.

‘Do you think she likes me?’

He’s asking for it now. ‘She doesn’t even know you exist.’

He shakes the branch in a fury so I’m on the edge of falling.

‘Stop, you castrated bull!’

He laughs. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll catch you on the way down.’ The dog’s anxious grunting increases. ‘Stupid yoke,’ he says.

Of the three boys, Luca has the bluest eyes, the thickest hair and the smoothest skin. Although he’s the youngest, he’s also the tallest, with wide shoulders, narrow hips and a taut body. The girls in school giggle when he’s around and wear high colour on their cheeks. Maria’s no different, although I’d never tell him this. ‘Come swimming with us today.’ The words are out of my mouth before I can pull them back. Maybe it’s because I know there are only five more days left before school starts, or maybe it’s because I want the shaking to stop.

‘Ok,’ he says, as if he doesn’t care.

An image of Maria and Luca alone together floats out of nowhere, gaining substance until it’s hard and solid, hitting me in the chest, leaving me breathless.

‘I can see up your skirt,’ he shouts, conceding nothing.

There is a silence, until I realise he has started climbing back down. I let go of the branch I was clinging to and spread my arms wide. Look: no hands! The sky is piebald blue and white, and I am trotting, cantering, galloping along the plains.

I would much rather be one of those men than meet one, as a girl.

‘Are you coming down?’ He’s in a desperate hurry to get to the river.

‘In a minute,’ I shout, as a strange and strong pain hits me in the stomach. It has been happening more often: this clutching feeling, which comes with no warning and leaves me with wet in my eyes. I lean forward and lay the length of my body down, pressing my stomach against the wood, resting my cheek on the rough bark. Waves of swimming lines float in the air.

‘Come on, sis, Maria might think you’re not coming.’

I turn my head so the other cheek is rubbing against the old fellow’s gnarled skin. I press and I breathe. Almost as soon as it arrived it’s gone and I sit back up, swing my legs around and drop down into the centre of the tree, using legs and arms to root and dangle until the last swing lands me on my feet.

‘What took you so long?’

‘Just thinking.’

‘You do too much of that already. Look, sis …’ He holds out the palm of his hand and there’s a giant centipede marching up towards the soft part of his arm.

I won’t give him the satisfaction of hearing me scream. ‘Disgusting.’

‘It’s what the stupid dog is snuffling around at.’ He points at the dog, its nose pressed deep into the earth, digging a frantic hole. ‘There must be some kind of a nest down there.’

‘Those things don’t build nests.’

‘A hive then?’

The dog looks frantic. I don’t want to see. ‘Come on. Maria will be waiting.’

‘Race you.’

Without saying anything, I build up my speed inside, until I take the first step, pushing off the ball of my right foot. I run like the rabbits run when they know they are being hunted. Even though I’m smaller and my sandals are loose around my ankles, I’m still the fastest. ‘Swift as the foam bubbles dissolving on the river,’ Papa says. ‘Like a silver bullet,’ Luca says. The dog loves the speed of these bursts and the squeals that come from me as I push out past my brother. It runs ahead and then circles back, barking madly at the air.

When we arrive at the watering hole Maria is already there, lying on her back in her white dress with the yellow flowers. She has two dresses this summer: the other is light blue and has longer sleeves and hemline. I wish she was wearing that one now. Her legs are bent, feet lined up underneath her knees.

‘Hello you,’ she says. ‘What’s he doing here?’

The veins on Luca’s neck swell, and he starts to back away. ‘Just passing. I’ll leave you two to it.’

Maria rolls onto her elbow and sits upright. ‘Last one in is chicken-hearted,’ she says, as she rips off her dress and wades into the cold, murky water in her bra and pants. I had forgotten about this part. I don’t wear a bra and don’t want Luca to see my naked body, so I run in in my cream cotton dress.

‘What are you doing, you queer duck?’ she says. ‘You’re going to ruin your dress. It’s filthy in here.’ We’ve been warned all summer about the dangers of this polluted river with its tongues of yellow foam lapping against the banks. Plenty of others swim here, and no one I know has been ill, although there have been whisperings about the Tcaci sisters from the next village. Something about them becoming so sick that there was nothing left inside them, that they’d surely be left barren. The water becomes clearer the deeper you go, and anyway, it’s way too hot not to swim.

I stick my head under and push my body down to the silty floor. The silk-like liquid covers my sticky body with cool, the dress billowing around me as I swim low. I kick my legs and open my arms in big circles, holding my breath for sixty-one seconds, hoping they’ll be impressed. When I come back up the other two are splashing each other and Maria is pushing Luca’s head beneath the surface. He’s making a big show of spluttering and waving his arms about, even though he’s one of the strongest swimmers in the school, and Maria knows this. The dog is running up and down along the banks of the river, howling.

‘I was under for sixty-six seconds,’ I shout – hand in the air, clenched fist, victorious – thinking that number sounds more impressive. No one’s listening. I lie on my back and try to float. Although I’m light, the river won’t let me; my legs and feet keep sinking and then the rest of me goes down. Papa says it’s because it has no salt in it, unlike the Black Sea. He says you could lie for hours on your back on the inky, salty water, floating in the night sky. Mama would bite on her cheek as he’d tell me these stories, only letting herself speak later when he was out of earshot. ‘Don’t mind your father, Nico, he has never been to the sea.’

I allow my feet to touch the bottom, which makes a sucking sound when you stand. My toes curl around the mud as I wade against the water, feeling strong as I press it away. The other two are shouting and laughing still. I shouldn’t have told Luca to come. I swim until my arms and legs are burning and my heart’s pounding in my ears, then I climb onto the bank, my wet dress sticking to me like another skin. The dog pushes its head against me, shaking, and I pat it between its eyes.

Maria comes out next and throws herself on the ground beside me. ‘You didn’t tell me you were bringing your brother.’

‘You don’t seem to mind.’

She smiles at me and rolls onto her front. I wish she would put her clothes back on. ‘Are you cold?’ she asks. I’m shaking and there are blue and yellow patches on my legs and arms.

‘I’m fine, but you must be …’

She turns onto her back and stretches her arms long over her head, her toes pointing towards the ground, back arched. I see Luca staring over, and I cross my eyes and touch the tip of my tongue to my nose. He pokes his tongue through his teeth, narrowing it, before he too, touches his nose.

‘Impressive,’ says Maria, deadpan.

‘I bet you can’t do it,’ I say.

‘Nope, and I wouldn’t even bother trying. It’s a Zanesti thing.’

I feel a small shiver of victory.

‘The clouds are moving about fast up there,’ Maria says. We both look up at the shifting shapes in the sky. ‘I’d love to get on an airplane and fly away from here.’ I ask her where she thinks she’d go. She tells me her older sister Alina met a man in the village who said he could get her a job as a waitress in Greece, and she could earn more money in a month than she would working in a factory in Chişinău for a year.

‘You’re too young,’ I tell her.

‘I heard Papa say I will make a good marriage, in time.’ We both lie silently, staring at the clouds as they skitter across the blue. I don’t want her to go away from me. I don’t want her knowing this.

‘What do you wish for, dreamer?’ I’ve never thought beyond this – beyond school terms and holidays and essay prizes and climbing trees and swimming in the river. ‘Are you writing in your notebook every day?’ she asks, looking at me closely. ‘You’re the best in school, everyone says so.’ That’s just because everyone else is so lazy. ‘You’ll win the essay competition again this year.’ I shrug, pretending that I don’t care. ‘You should be a teacher, like Miss Iliescu.’ I like this idea, for then I might not have to marry at all. ‘Ms Smith thought you were the cat’s miaow!’

My heart hurts thinking of her open face, always kind, even when the stupid boys fell asleep in her class, or pulled our ponytails, or wrote filthy notes and flew them as paper airplanes, aiming their pointy noses at the back of the girl’s head in front. ‘You have a bright future, Nicoleta,’ she’d said on her last day, before she returned home to America after volunteering at our school for two whole years. ‘Students like you make doing what I do worthwhile.’ My face tingles recalling these words.

Luca climbs out, his body strong and wet. He goes for a run, to warm up, the dog running alongside him. Maria laughs. ‘That dog is in love,’ she says.

3

Nico

When I stretch my arms to their widest span my fingertips hit against slimy moss-covered walls. The freezing water is at my chest and creeping its way higher. I hold my breath while telling myself that no one really dies in their dreams. Even when I open my eyes, pinch myself and let the bedside lamp cast its glare around the room, I feel as though I’m deep down under and there is a cover blocking out all the light. I did not meet a white rabbit, nor did I tumble – I was pushed, by Sergiu and Victor, with Papa looking on. Mama taught me to twist the skin on my arm, hard, to scatter the ghosts that have entered my imagination. My forearm is mottled pink and purple, my lungs filled with well water.

Maria likes to tell me of her dreams, which involve boys, and those spitting men. I bet Luca is in some of them. I tell her about the ones where I’m climbing trees, or swimming in a river, or sometimes in a sea that is like swimming in the sky, or about winning first prize in the essay competition. I don’t mention any of the other visitations that have Mama running to my bed and slapping me, pinching me hard. I never remember these after, just the sense of having been invaded. This is different. I hit myself on both cheeks to shake the memory, which is as alive as this moment I am living.

Outside, a strange bird sounds. I think back to nature class and try to remember – jay, song thrush, blackbird, woodlark? Placing my feet on the patch of worn carpet beside my bed, I stand and stretch, pull back the tattered lace window-dressings, turn off the light and allow my eyes to adjust to the darkness outside. Through the grimy glass, I can make out the shape of the small tree with its carpet of shed helicopters, the rusted wire of the sleeping chicken coops, and the silhouette of the dog, tethered to a post, curled in on itself, its body rising and falling. I want to go outside and bring it back to my bed but Papa would never allow it: ‘Filthy flea-ridden thing’. I listen to the sound, which is thin and distant. Maybe it’s not a bird at all. Maybe it’s the cry of a baby acorn being taken too soon. Red squirrels live in the forests around here, although nobody I know has ever seen one, except Papa, who claims they are like ‘giant rats with fluffy tails and razor-sharp teeth.’

When I turn back towards the bed I see a staining on the sheets: berry-red and glistening. Did this happen in my dream? Was I hurt when I fell into the well? I look down at my body and there is blood between my legs. The water should have washed me clean. Maybe I punctured myself climbing the tree. The Virgin Mary, in her gilded picture frame above my bed, glints at me and smiles. I want to go to Mama but am too afraid to wake Papa, who was late coming back from the village for dinner and had taken too much Rachiu. His eyes were shining over-brightly and two spots of purple appeared high on his cheeks, criss-crossed with veins, like bruised plums. I could feel his gaze on me. Mama and I were careful not to get too close, not to look at him directly and not to say anything that might make him laugh, or cry, or swear, or punch a hole in the wall.

‘You two are much too silent,’ he said. ‘What are you plotting?’

When we assured him, ‘Nothing, nothing at all,’ he kicked at the already unsteady leg of the stool, buckling it. He roared and bucked, declaring it was all our fault, all our fault, all of it, before he slumped back on his armchair, falling unconscious immediately, making soothing snoring sounds that signalled it was safe to lift him into bed.

I pull the sheets off my bed, go to the kitchen to fetch the bucket with the well water, and submerge the stain into the cold clear water, which turns pink as I scrub. I don’t dare put the water on to boil. I scrub, rubbing my knuckles against each other until they are red and raw. Mama would not want me to use the soap for this purpose. The staining won’t disappear; it changes from red to rust to brown. I must get to Mama first thing in the morning, before Papa or my brothers hear that I have hurt myself climbing trees.

After I’ve cleaned myself, changed my clothes, padded my underwear with tissue and hid the bucket under the bed, I sit on the sill of my bedroom window and open it wide. Hues of dawn are leaking into the corners of the black screen of night. I wonder if the Sandman could still appear. Papa always said that if you didn’t close your eyes late at night a man would come and fill them with sand. When I was tiny I asked Papa what this would feel like. ‘Stingy like salt, dirty like grit from the back yard, and sore like an attack by stinging flies,’ he said. Although I didn’t really believe him, I made sure to close my eyes after midnight. So, we will see, Papa. No wonder Mama throws her eyes towards heaven when he speaks, or sometimes she blesses herself when she thinks no one’s looking.

My body feels charged with electric energy, so sleep will not come. I take out my notepad: My Summer Holidays, by Nicoleta Zanesti. I write about strange images of spiky branches that pierce me and the river running red as I swim through it. I want to wash myself clean, from the inside out. My cheeks are blushing at what has just happened. My body feels like it doesn’t belong to me; there is a dragging sensation deep inside. I’m not sure who is writing this thing that seems to whisper and cackle in my ear, flowing to my hand, the pen, the page. Miss Iliescu would not recognise these words, these secret words of shame, as mine.

Mama rises with the first cockerel’s cries coming from the Petran’s farm next door. Our own died a long time ago. We do not expect a replacement. I am careful to dress in long trousers and brush my hair and tidy it back in a ponytail before I go to her. ‘Mama?’ I say to her back as she bustles about the kitchen.

‘Nico, we must go to the well straight away. The water’s gone.’ She turns to look at me and sees the bundle under my arms. ‘It means you are a woman now.’ A fiery heat blasts through my body. She points at the sheets. ‘Quick, before the others wake. We’ll boil those. Go get the bucket.’

‘But the water is stained.’

‘Just do it.’

I return with the rose-coloured water, which Mama pours into the pot over the fire. She stirs it impatiently.

‘Mama?’

Her body stiffens. ‘Just what I said, young lady.’

I want to ask if this has happened to her; I want to run to Maria to find out if she’s also a woman now, but I know not to ask Mama any more questions when her face is set like this. I think of the whisperings of the older girls in school, which would stop any time I came near. Irina would say, ‘Definitely not, she doesn’t even have to wear a bra,’ and Petra and the rest of them would laugh and the skin on my face and chest would become hot and blotchy.

Mama pours the boiling pink water back into the bucket, submerges the sheet into bleach, and we take it to the shed where it’s left hidden for the morning. I untie the dog, whose tail thumps loudly on the ground when it sees us, and we walk single-file on the narrow path through the yellowed grass to the well, one empty container in each hand. The pale sun is creeping steadily higher, irritating my already hot skin. My insides feels twisted and raw. Mama expects me to gather the water as I normally would, but when I lean over the wall I feel as if I might fall into the black mouth, which looks like it will swallow me whole. Mama waits, saying nothing, then stretches over and fills both pails, scooping the water sideways, which makes a greedy glugging sound as it rushes in. I want to tell her about my dream, but my throat narrows and stops my voice. The thing I want to say gets pushed back down and lodges in my stomach like a stone. We walk, the only sound the water sloshing about inside the buckets, the metal brushing against our bare legs.

When we get home, Luca is in the yard feeding what’s left of the chickens, and the others are still in bed. ‘Race you?’ Luca says when he sees me.

‘Your sister will not be climbing trees today, Luca. She needs to rest.’ I feel like running and climbing and swimming, but maybe Mama knows more than I do about what it means to be a woman. ‘You go on, Luca,’ Mama says. ‘Did you eat your breakfast?’

Luca nods and looks from me to her. ‘Are you ok, sis?’ Mama tells him to go find some boys of his own age to climb trees with.

‘Can I just go and sit in the shade of the tree?’ I ask.

‘No, Nico. Today you will stay with me in the house.’

Luca scuffs his shoe, then bends to tie his laces. ‘Off you go,’ Mama says, shooing him with her hand. He shrugs, sticks his hands in his pockets and walks slowly down the lane, sneaking a backwards look when he thinks Mama has gone inside. She is standing there still, one hand gripping my shoulder, narrowing her eyes at her youngest son. The dog doesn’t know what to do. It chases Luca, then comes back to me, barking. ‘Come on,’ it’s saying, ‘it is time to run.’ I look at it and turn the palms of my hands towards the sky, as if to say there’s nothing to be done, dog – today is a new day, with a new set of rules, and I am as much in the dark as you are. Mama tells it to shush, and she looks at me like she might hit me or hug me.

Papa has a sore head when he wakes and does not pay much attention to me, although Sergiu and Victor are sniffing around. ‘What is wrong with her?’ they ask Mama and each other, with sly smiles. ‘Get out of here you good for nothing layabouts,’ Mama says. I have never heard her speak this way. I’m not sure what is expected of me today. She told Luca I was to stay in the house and rest, but I have never seen her sit for more than the length of time it takes her to gulp back a steaming mug of tea. How she does not scald herself I do not know. Am I meant to sit and watch her as she sweeps and chops and dusts, and serves the men of the house their lunch of pickled cabbage soup and dark bread?

‘Here,’ she says as she passes me the ladle to dole out the broth to the boys.

After lunch, Sergiu and Victor scratch their full bellies and belch. Do they hang around Mama all day? As soon as it’s late enough to be served alcohol they wander slowly up the lane towards the village, where Papa had gone to do ‘business’ with a man from another village just after breakfast. I could see Mama bite down on her cheek as he informed her of his day’s plans. What would his new venture entail? Would it be scrawny chickens that arrived with a disease, or a rotting tomato plant that had no hothouse in which to grow, or a goat that frothed at the mouth if you walked anywhere near it?

When the boys have disappeared from the lane, Mama and I breathe out at the same time, and without saying anything we go to the shed to check up on the sheets. They have washed clean. We hang them on the line under the high blue sky, where they flap gently in the breeze, the dog growling at them from the shade. It did not go with Luca, without me.

Just as I wonder if Maria and Luca are swimming in the river, I see her running down the path towards the house. I have to stop myself from sprinting to her and throwing myself into her arms. The strange energy that visited me in the night charges me with restlessness and tears. Perhaps the Sandman did come after all; my eyes are scratchy and my skin sore to the touch. Mama is watching me carefully, so I smooth back my hair and nod at Maria coolly.

‘Are you ok?’ She is breathless. ‘Luca said you were sick.’