Read Under a Red Sky for Free Online

always right, but what can I do now? I’m grateful that you stayed. There’s no use crying over the past.”
    Grandma Iulia always has the last word. “What do you expect me to cry about, Yosef, the future?”
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    UNCLE NATAN has a presence no one can ignore. He is tall and as thin as a rail. He wears his belt tightened to its last hole so that his pants pucker in the front, making him look even thinner. His belt buckle digs into his ribs every time he coughs, his body convulsing uncontrollably. Despite this, he lights a new unfiltered cigarette before he finishes his last, which is why his fingernails have yellowed. His thick glasses magnify his blue eyes so that they bulge like the eyes of a fish out of water, gasping for breath.
    We all know that Grandma Iulia favors him—Uncle Natan is her firstborn and only son—but since he is also the only bachelor
in our midst, he has been relegated to sleeping on a cot in the dining room. Even Sabina has her own tiny room on the attic floor above the pantry, yet Uncle Natan’s presence is a fixture in the dining room. After meals he hides behind his paper, smoke billowing from his cigarette toward the cracks in the ceiling. Everyone forgets that he is here because he rarely engages in conversation.
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    UNCLE MAX is the first to leave for work in the morning and the first to get home for lunch. Every day except Sunday, I hear his familiar I’m-home whistle announcing his impending arrival from as far as two blocks away. Aunt Puica bounds out of bed in a panic the moment she hears him and rushes to her dressing table, where she pinches her cheeks until they blush appropriately in the mirror. She dashes a touch of red lipstick across her puckered lips and runs a sharp comb through her tangled curls. She accomplishes all of this in a flash while barking orders at me.
    â€œMax is coming! Evioar, get off your butt and grab his slippers.” She marches into the dining room, the belt of her fuchsia silk robe flying past me as I place his slippers by the door.
    â€œSabina, Sabina!” Aunt Puica’s voice rings through the house like an alarm. “Master Max will be here any minute. Have you set the table?”
    After lunch, Aunt Puica and Uncle Max retire to their bedroom, a small room that Grandma Iulia refers to as the Bat Cave. All of their windows have black curtains so that Aunt Puica can sleep in for as long as she likes. While Uncle Max is at work, Aunt Puica smokes until the room is in a fog, reads thick romance novels with
complicated titles, and talks incessantly on our new telephone. The room is so crowded with large pieces of furniture that even I have trouble moving about. Their ornately hand-carved bedroom set is dark-stained walnut and was imported from Italy—a wedding present from my grandparents before the Communist takeover.
    â€œI’m a lot smarter than your mother,” Aunt Puica loves to remind me. “I made sure that I got a dowry. Your mother was happy to get her hands on that stubborn Hungarian mule, and conveniently forgot about material things, as she likes to call the finer things in life. Pretty stupid, if you ask me,” she mutters before striking a match to light her cigarette.
    Aunt Puica’s wedding portrait hangs opposite her bed. The white of her veil frames a radiant face. Looking at that photograph, you would never suspect the depth of rage waiting to surface from the smiling bride.
    My aunt’s favorite scent, Chanel No. 5, lingers in the stuffy room. “Too expensive for little girls,” she says, offering me a whiff of the bottle cap.
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    MY PARENTS AND I occupy the second largest bedroom because there are three of us. Our room has private access to the bathroom that all eight of us share, a door to the only terrace, and natural light that streams in every afternoon. Opposite my parents’ bed is a new armoire, its corners adorned with hand-carved