Read Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me for Free Online

was still almost asleep, or at least that’s what I told myself. He looked at the bra, attracted by my gesture, and I immediately hid it, screwing it up in the hand I had dropped down to the covers, hiding it behind my back. He probably didn’t quite recognize me, he doubtless remembered my face rather as he remembered those of the childish characters in his videos or the faces of the dogs he dreamed about, except that he hadn’t yet put a name to me, or perhaps he had, my name had been spoken several times by Marta during supper, perhaps he knew it but, in his struggle against sleep, could not quite say it. No words came into his mouth, there was no expression in his eyes, I mean, no recognizable expression, nothing that fitted any of the normal adult terms – perplexity, hope, fear, indifference, confusion, anger; the slight frown was due to his fragile wakefulness, nothing more, at least that’s what I told myself. I got up carefully and went slowly over to him, smiling slightly and saying to him in a very low voice, a whisper: “You must go back to sleep now, Eugenio, it’s very late. Come on, you must go back to bed.” From my great height, I placed a hand on his shoulder – I still had the bra in my other hand, as if it were a used napkin. He allowed me to touch him, and placed his hand on my forearm. Then, he turned obediently and I watched him disappear down the corridor taking short, hurried steps, on his way back to his room. Before going in, he stoppedand turned towards me, as if expecting me to accompany him, perhaps he needed a witness to watch him get into bed, to be sure that someone knew where he was when he was asleep. Noiselessly – on tiptoe, I still had my shoes on, I thought that now I would probably not be taking them off – I followed him and stood by the door of the room in which he slept and which was still in darkness, the boy hadn’t switched on the light, perhaps he didn’t know how to, although the blind was raised and the glow of the yellowish, reddish night outside came in through the window – it was not a sash window. When he saw that I was following him, he climbed, still clutching his rabbit, into his bed again, a wooden cot, not a metal one, with the bars lowered as I had imagined. I think I stayed there for some minutes, although I didn’t look at the clock when I left Marta’s bedroom nor afterwards when I went back. I stayed until I was certain that the child had gone back to sleep again and I knew this from his breathing and because I moved closer for a moment to see his face. When I did so, my head bumped against something, though nothing that hurt me, and only then, in the half-light, did I notice that, hanging from the ceiling, out of his reach, were a few toy aeroplanes suspended on long threads. I took a step back and then returned to the door where I stood leaning against the doorframe – as he had done before, not daring to enter his mother’s bedroom – so that I could see them more clearly against the diffuse light. I saw that they were made out of cardboard or metal or were, perhaps, painted models, there were a lot of them and they were all old-fashioned propeller planes that doubtless had their origin in the far-off childhood of the father who was now in London, who would have waited until he had a son in order to get them out and restore them to their proper place, a little boy’s bedroom. I thought I could make out a Spitfire, a Messerschmitt 109, a Nieuport biplane and a Camel, as well as a Mig Rat, as this Russian plane was known during the Spanish Civil War; and there was a Japanese Zero and a Lancaster too, and possibly a P-51H Mustang with the smiling jaws of a shark painted on the lower part of its snout; and there was a triplane too, it might have been a Fokker, which, if it was red, would be Baron von Richthofen’s: fighters and bombers from the First and Second World Wars allmixed up together, along with some from the Spanish Civil War and