The Zigzag Kid [antikvár]

he whistle blew and the train pulled out of the station. There was a boy at one of the compartment windows watching a man and a woman wave to him from the platform. The man waved one hand in a shy little farewell. The woman waved both hands plus a large red scarf. The man was his father, and the woman was Gabriella, a.k.a. Gabi. The man was wearing a police uniform because he was a policeman. The woman wore a black dress because black is slimming. Vertical stripes are also slimming, but if you really want to look slim, she used to joke, stand close to someone even fatter than you, though I have yet to meet anyone quite that fat. The boy at the window of the moving train, gazing back as though he might never see this picture again, was me. Now they'll be alone together for two whole days, I thought. All is lost. The mere thought was enough to yank me out the window by the roots of my hair. I could see Dad's mouth forming the grimace Gabi called his "final warning before legal action." Well, too bad. If he cared so much, why did he send me to Haifa for two days, to stay with "him"! A uniformed trainman on the platform blew his whistle loudly and motioned me to put my head back in. It's a crazy thing, the way men in uniforms with whistles will always pick on me, out of a whole train-load of people. But I would not obey. I stuck my head out even farther, in fact, so that Dad and Gabi would see me till the last possible second and remember the kid! The train was rolling slowly off through waves of heat and diesel