The weight of a whisper (eBook)

Anna Teleki (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
200 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-092987-7 (ISBN)

Infos

This book is dedicated to everyone who thrives to escape.

In the heart of a perpetually moving Paris, a city cloaked in winter's biting cold, two lives on opposite ends of society collide. A brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, adrift in a sea of professional setbacks and personal weariness, is haunted by the patients he couldn't save. His orderly world shatters when he accidentally strikes a young homeless woman.

Driven by an unexpected impulse, he takes her in, pulling her from the frozen streets into his pristine, solitary apartment. As the young woman, with her rusty-red hair and resilient spirit, slowly sheds the layers of grime and hardship, the surgeon is confronted not only with her desperate past-a university student forced to scavenge due to her mother's spiraling debts and addiction-but also with his own unspoken burdens.

'The Weight of a Whisper' is a poignant tale of unexpected connection, hidden struggles, and the profound impact two souls can have on each other. Can compassion bridge the chasm between their worlds, or will the whispers of their pasts keep them from finding solace and hope?

Textauszug

Meanwhile, Rozanna walked. The street was familiar to her. The snow fell more heavily, and she just kept going. It would be dark soon. She turned into an alley. She stopped and looked at the burned-out basement section beneath the apartment building. She kicked away the broken glass with her feet. She looked at her clean coat.

"Well, that's it for this, Léo," she sat down on the slushy ground, dangled her legs through the window, and then began to slide down.

The musty air of the cellar, the semi-darkness, and her old mattress greeted her. She was home. Home where no one told her what to do, how to behave. Where no one asked if she was okay.

"Alone at last," she sighed.

She sat down on the worn mattress, unzipped her coat, and leaned back. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she quickly wiped them away.

This is it... This is what I have to love...

Léo just watched TV. He wasn't very interested in the show. He was nervous. Eva called, and the man just looked at his phone.

"Yes?"

"Léo! Are you home?"

"Home."

"The girl? When's she coming?"

"The girl," he held his head, "apparently isn't coming."

"Oh! Why?"

"Because she's stubborn," Léo said angrily, looking at the ceiling.

"Too bad. Help would be welcome... Oh well! If she happens to change her mind, I'm waiting," the woman said, and Léo's eyes widened.

"Okay!"

"Bye!"

"Bye," he said as he hung up the phone and took his laptop from the coffee table drawer.

"I'm waiting," he impatiently waited for his operating system to load. Emails: nothing... Léo went to Le Paris's website and read the newspaper online, but to no avail. No answer.

He leaned back and sighed. Did he still have to wait?

"How long?"

He woke up groggily in the morning. He had barely closed his eyes. Because of the storm raging outside, he kept thinking only of Rozanna. Where could that girl be? What was she doing? Was she really okay? Wasn't she cold?

He went to the bathroom, showered, shaved, and just looked at himself in the mirror. He had aged five years. He gripped the sink. The muscles on his back became more visible, and he exhaled.

He went to work out. Entering the gym, one of the girls already smiled widely when she looked at the doctor in the black tracksuit. Léo stepped onto the treadmill and started jogging, ignoring the girls watching him.

"Rozanna! Rozanna!" she heard the young voice calling her.

"What is it?" she asked, turning towards the still dark window, from which snow slowly drifted in.

"Are you coming?"

"Oh, yeah," she got up from the mattress and ran her hand through her hair. She looked at the dirty boy standing in the window.

"Where have you been?" the boy asked as Rozanna crawled out of the basement on all fours.

"Just..." the girl said, "wandering."

"I thought they took you away too," the boy said, and Rozanna ruffled the wig cap on her head.

"Never, Manuel. They won't take me away," the girl smiled. "Have you collected anything yet?"

"No, just one," the teenager held up the yellow bag towards her.

"Wow, it's huge!" Rozanna marveled, and the boy laughed,

"And it's not torn!" A bright grin spread across the dirty face, and Rozanna smiled pleasantly.

She was home. Manuel wasn't homeless, just poor. The thirteen-year-old boy went every morning to collect bottles to bring home a bowl of hot soup from the center. When Rozanna gave him some of her bottles, he could often take home two portions. His father was supposedly working somewhere in Holland, and only he and his sickly mother remained. The boy waited for his father to come home every day, but Rozanna doubted that the man would ever reappear.

Manuel's mother used to be a seamstress, until the factory went bankrupt. After that, they only received enough state aid to pay the rent for the small, one-room apartment his husband had arranged for them back then. Back then. Rozanna knew very well that everyone who was struggling now had an even harder past. Now everything was quiet. Even in her life. Even if she lived day to day. If there was no one to care for her, and if she would always be alone.

"Where did your old coat go?" Manuel asked as he climbed into a container.

"I traded it," she looked at the boy wearing the thick sweater. "Manu, aren't you cold?"

"I don't feel it anymore!" the boy laughed heartily.

"Come on, let's trade!"

"What?"

"Come on!" she took off her coat. The boy just stared at her with his big black eyes.

"No need, Rozanna, I didn't mean that..."

"I know. I said, let's trade!"

"Are you sure?"

"Sure!" and she held out the coat in her right hand, while extending her left hand for the worn sweater.

Manu shyly lifted the sweater, under which was only a thin, worn tank top. Tears sprang to Rozanna's eyes.

"Quickly, put it on! Don't get cold!" she snatched the sweater from the boy's hand. She put on the clean gray one and pulled it over her hands.

"But it's warm," he marveled when he pulled the coat up to his neck. Rozanna smiled.

"Yes. It is." Rozanna smiled, for she knew it well too. "How much do we have?"

"Only ten!" Manu looked at the bag, and Rozanna sighed.

"Then let's get to work!"

The days slowly passed. The frost, which the radio and television broadcast about, was already making its presence felt. Léo drank warm tea on his living room couch, resting his left leg on his right knee, and just watching TV. Social workers began their work. They collected donations with the help of a phone service provider to provide warm clothes and food for the homeless. He was just picking up his mobile from the table when a commercial for a homeless shelter appeared in another program, complaining about the lack of available beds. They were collecting donations for expansion.

Léo's eyebrow twitched, he reached for the remote, and changed the channel.

His vacation was over. It hadn't done him much good; it had only complicated his life further. He turned off the television and headed towards the bathroom. He took a hot shower, and as he stood under the shower, he lowered his head.

I wonder what you're doing in this frost?

"Rozanna!" Manuel called again from the small basement window, and the girl turned to him. "Are we going to the dump today?"

"Today? What day is it?"

"Saturday!" the boy said, and Rozanna slowly got up from under the ragged blanket.

"Did you see any cars?"

"A lot!" Manuel said happily, and the girl got up from the worn mattress. Rozanna was back to her old self. Dirty, smelling slightly of dampness, and her face smudged. Yesterday she hadn't managed to collect enough bottles. She still owed the old man from the shelter, and she had finally given Manuel her bottles so that the boy could at least get a bowl of hot soup. It was very cold. She had never experienced such a cold winter in Paris. It was too freezing. Even the snow wasn't falling anymore, only the concrete slabs were cracking from the cold. She squeezed her frozen hands and started towards the window.

The dump. Paris's landfill, located on the outskirts of the city. It wouldn't be there much longer because a waste disposal system was being built at the new processing plant, where energy would be produced from it. Later. For now, it was still here.

When they stopped at the edge of the landfill, the frosty air made their breath billow in white vapor. Manuel huddled closer in his already dirty coat, Rozanna adjusted the piece of rag around her neck that she used as a scarf, pulled the black, torn hat she had found two days ago further down on her head, and clapped her hands together.

"Let's get to work!" They started walking.

To work! The newspaper for which she used to deliver papers in the mornings didn't want to hear from her anymore. Only scavenging remained for her. But even that was getting harder. When they climbed one of the garbage heaps and overlooked the dump, they stopped. Many junk, many treasures. Manuel already ran down for a torn bag, tied the bottom with frozen hands, and shouted to Rozanna:

"I'll look for another one!"

The girl just waved to him. She didn't speak. Tears welled up in her eyes. Manuel started off, she looked to the side. She saw it clearly. A worn, torn, padded jacket, with a split and detached sole on a boot, from which a bony ankle protruded. She went closer, she saw the old man huddled in a fetal position, his hand on his face, lying frozen on the side of the garbage pile.

She wanted to scream, but no sound came from her throat. She looked for Manuel in the distance and started trembling down the garbage heap.

"My God," she just wiped away her tears. "Manuel!" she called after the boy, who stopped. Rozanna ran to him and hugged him tightly.

"What is it?" the boy asked, but the girl just sobbed. Her face turned completely red, and she squeezed the boy, who was the same height as her, tightly. "What is it?"

"Nothing," the girl groaned, but she was trembling. Was this waiting for her too? Was this waiting for them? The frost? A silently screaming death? Would she also end up like this? How much longer would winter last? "Aren't you cold?" she asked softly, and Manuel just exhaled.

"No."

"That's good," the girl sighed and looked at him. "But are you sure?"

"Sure, Rozanna. Especially if you let me move..."

Rozanna didn't say a word. She and Manuel moved a little further apart from each other and scavenged among the treasures. Plastic was expensive, more expensive than...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 24.6.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-092987-5 / 0000929875
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-092987-7 / 9780000929877