Invisible Murder by Lene Kaaberbøl Read Free Book Online

was peeling off in big flakes, like a freshly boiled new potato, and the surface underneath the old, dead layer of skin was strangely reddish brown.
    “I burned myself,” Tamás said.
    “On what?”
    Tamás flipped his hand back over. “A motor,” he said. “Now get lost. I can handle this myself. Don’t you have to study or something?”
    Sándor did, but it was impossible to concentrate with Tamás in the room. He was a foreign body, and a fidgety one at that. He rolled around on Sándor’s old office chair and drummed his fingers on the worn desktop, humming or whistling softly but constantly. Twice he pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket and spoke into it in a low voice, but it didn’t sound like he was talking to his new conquest.
    “You have a mobile phone,” Sándor said, half as a question. Maybe that meant money wasn’t quite as tight as the last time he had been home.
    Tamás simply said, “Yes.”
    “Does Mama have one, too?”
    “No.”
    It was quiet for a bit. Then Tamás said, vaguely apologetically, “Here. I’ll write the number down for you. Give me yours, then she can call you, too.”
    Sándor gave Tamás his number, even though the idea that his mother could now call him at any time made him feel strangely uneasy. Going back to Galbeno for a few days a year when he thought he could cope with it was one thing. Being … 
available
like this, whenever his Roma family felt like it … that was entirely different.
    Added to that, there was the other increasingly urgent problem.
    He needed to pee.
    His computer was hands-down the most expensive thing Sándor owned. Scrimping to buy the Toshiba had been a struggle, even though it was secondhand and far from state-of-the-art. There was no bathroom on Sándor’s floor. He had to go down two flights of stairs and partway down the hallway. But he didn’t trust Tamás enough to leave him here, eventhough right now he seemed completely focused on typing and had just hissed a soft, triumphant “Yes!” which might mean his chat romance was paying off.
    In the end Sándor didn’t really have a choice. He set down his Roman law compendium and got up off the bed.
    “Don’t touch my stuff,” he said. “And if you wreck my computer, I’ll rip your nuts off.”
    That was the kind of thing he could never say to other people. To all his Hungarian friends and acquaintances who had no idea that he was half Roma. But Tamás just grinned.
    “That would take bigger hands than yours,
phrala
.”
    S ÁNDOR HURRIED . B UT of course the lavatory was occupied, and it wasn’t until he had knocked on the door twice that one of his downstairs neighbors came out.
    “Yeah, yeah! Give a guy a chance to pull up his trousers.”
    “Sorry.”
    He locked the door, pulled down his fly and relieved his sorely tested bladder. Someone had tried to improve the smell in the room with a pale-green air freshener hanging off one side of the toilet bowl, but as far as Sándor could tell, it just added an odd chemical sweetness to the considerable stench of sewage and urine.
    He was too anxious to take the time to wash his hands properly, just quickly stuck them under the tap and dried them on his trousers instead of the damp, red towel hanging next to the sink.
    When he got back, Tamás was gone. Luckily the computer was still there, unharmed, still on and logged in. He pulled the window open and looked down at the street. His brother’s slender yet compact form was heading toward Prater Street.
    “Hey!” Sándor yelled.
    Tamás turned and danced a couple of steps backward.
    “Thanks for letting me use your computer!” he yelled back at Sándor. “See you,
czigány
.”
    Then he turned the corner, and Sándor couldn’t see him anymore.
    S ÁNDOR TURNED OFF the computer. Now that Tamás was gone, he suddenly wished he had asked more questions about how things weregoing and what kind of girl Tamás was so terribly in love with that he would travel for five hours on