He’d never lit a cigarette. He always brought an ashtray, but never a cigarette. Not even a cigar. She’d ask him, “Fabian, why the ashtray?” And he’d just stare into the blue and shake his head, a nicely twisted ‘no’.
He remembered her. He knew she wasn’t really there, or at least not there anymore, but he was sure in his heart that she’d been there all along, just drinking whiskey and rum cola with him like they always did. But then, she was dead, a bitter cold skeleton left scarce of life.
He waited for her every single day. Even when her memory was so faint he could barely see her face,he brought out the ashtray and invited her to smoke, because he knew she always carried that great cigar in her handbag, that little handmade gadget she was so proud of. Where was it now? Buried under a stack of boxes in a closet, left there for the day she’d return… Never.

You died a smoker, but a good person. Yeah, your lungs sucked and your breath was horrid. I hated that, you know? But I never complained because you always smiled, and you were, are, and always will be so beautiful. Your lungs perished. You knew that was going to happen. Yet you couldn’t resist that one last cigar, couldn’t you? You were so scared of living you chose to cling on to an addiction you couldn’t quit. So I let you, because I am your big brother and I want to see you listen to me for once, be strong and cope with things in a different way. You didn’t have to take away that soul that was so precious to me.
He would’ve loved to shout that out to the world, to tell her all that. To remind her of how hard those last moments had been, when hand in hand they had wept together and her lashes brushed the tears, those final sapphires of water that trickled down the sullen and sick face she’d acquired, from her yellow cheeks.
The hospital was an anthole of scurrying soldiers of medicine, nurses with tasks. Beep, the machines sang in unison at repeated intervals, and the scuttling feet danced through the corridors, echoing like the rapping and tapping of the tom-tom drums. Their brows furrowed down into their eyes, or stretched up their faces leaving their eyes wide open, the worried faces passed by. He saw it clearly, that moment, when the final tick on the his wristwatch signalled the moment of silence. Printed to his mind like a dark and dreary memory, he recalled the horrifying instant, when her arms fell, lifeless, and her hands, cold, wet and fragile, dropped from his hold.

Now that he took his time to savour the events, to think over his sister’s death, he caressed the ashtray, contemplating the sunset that painted the space around him with orange flames. He wouldn’t be sitting on this porch alone, waiting, if she hadn’t died that day. He’d be dancing with his girl, and reminding his little sister that one day she’d be living under his care with Margie, so that she could be somewhere other than the farm, away from their furious father.
If she hadn’t died, Margie would be stroking her hair and calling her a pretty baby, that she wanted to steal her from this desolate world and make her a happy aunt, and then Margie would tie her hair in a wonderful braid and, taking Fabian’s hand in hers or hugging his sides while singing a lovely song, she would count all the good things that were going to happen to them.

If his sister were still alive.

His father bashed Margie’s head with a bottle of liquor. He was drunk, haggard, rude, mean, hardened by the struggles of his desperate life. That night, he was a raging fire, destructive. Why had his daughter died? It had to be that woman’s fault, she who had always invited his children to the nightclub and the town, who gave them those strange ideas and filled their heads with nonsense. IT had to be. So he’d grabbed his last drink and killed the woman who an hour ago had been pleading for Fabian’s sister to stop smoking and to please come back to her senses, the very woman who had brought life and joy to that lonely farm in the middle of the marshes who had paid a great deal to hire the fastest taxi to take Fabian’s sister to the hospital in time to cure her lungs. Yeah, Margie, was she a good woman? She’d never introduced alcohol to her. Margie didn’t propose the cigars, Fabian’s sister had found the box in the attic and had secretly consumed it. She’d smoked her life away to blind herself from her preoccupations: her father, the farm, her life, her big brother… Desperate, just like Ole had been the second he murdered Margie with a cold-blooded will. Fabian had fought him off, trying to save his girlfriend, but in the end Ole tripped himself up the very stairs he had dragged Margie and died, his skull cracked open.

Fabian was left to occupy the farm on his own; a stranger to himself and a lonely herdsman neglecting his moaning cattle to covet the memories of a lost hope, a life he couldn’t go back to. He wished he’d just burned down the farm, destroyed it, built something on top. Yet that would mean disintegrating the precious, lively stories he had written with Margie and Annie.

Annie.

Please come back. I need you. Did you know that when you were born, Mother looked into your eyes and told me you would just grow up to be like me? Not just because you were, and always will be, my sister, but because, you, like a flower blossoming in a garden of thorns, were laughing despite the snowstorm and hail that tormented the world outside the little dark kitchen where you were born, you were happy to live, to have been born!

Fabian looked into the ashtray and saw her reflection there. Then Margie’s. How Margie had just come into his life, like a singing bird migrating to the land where spring is awakening, she had left, leaving the dull winter forevermore. Margie brought sunshine. And she wasn’t especially beautiful, no, but inside, inside she was a kingdom of eternal joy. Ole had never accepted her, and he called her a cuckoo stealing the good lan’s nest.

When had Margie first appeared at their doorstep? Was it last summer? Or was it that day, when the last storm had left the earth plenty of surprises, when the sun had returned after sleeping for months?