- 1-
I have often been told I was born under a lucky star if such a star has ever shone upon our District 12, or any other districts. It seems that stars and the sun alike choose to send their rays straight to Capitol. Either that, or they just cannot break through all this coal dust from the Seam. Well, if this one tiny baby-star did, for some reason, it picked me out of all the kids.
Much more deserving kids, as my uncle Rote would say. Much lovelier ones, as my aunt Nola would sign. Much smarter as well, as some of my former classmates would probably smirk. And I would just smile back brightly and say, "Yeah, sure, but so what?" - as if I do not care at all - that's what I usually do. The best response against any offence is to agree that your offender might be completely justified, only you don't give a damn about them. It works so nicely I have even managed to persuade myself that what others say does not really matter. Most of the others... There is an exception for every rule.
My lucky star must have been shining particularly brightly during the whole bleak snowy week of Christmas 64 ADD when both of my parents died one after another from the pox epidemic that took over almost one sixth of the district. I was five and a half then, and did not get infected only by some miracle. There are no photos, and I do not remember their faces clearly anymore. Only a faded image of a small bird-like woman who always danced and sang as she cleaned the house or cooked dinner. She had soft light brown hair and warm breath smelling of something sweet like marmalade... I tried marmalade only once at Madge Undersee's birthday party and for many years after, I believed it was the best treat ever.
My aunt Nola says I do not look much alike to either of my parents. As a teen, it made me strangely sad. I used to spend quite a while in front of the mirror. My elder cousins Grita and Rote mocked me, my aunt shooed me away, but I was only desperately trying to find a trace of my parents in my own face until my eyes watered. I even had my small ritual. Every Christmas when my relatives went to bed after a somewhat luxurious dinner of a roasted turkey or sometimes even a lamb, I climbed into the big closet in the living room. The closet had a mirror inside. Its surface was dimly shimmering in the light of my flashlight. I put on my aunt's lipstick and brushed my hair to one side. I smiled, and tossed my head, and moved my shoulders in a way I saw the Capitol TV singers do. I pretended to be my mother singing and dancing in her small kitchen.
The habit is still there. Up till today, I sometimes dance in front of the mirror in the bedroom or bathroom when no one is there to see me. I like to think of that not as a vanity, but as connection across the time and space. The only connection between me and the memory of the little woman who - they say - was as brave or, perhaps, as stupid as not to leave her husband's side once he got sick. Even though it was obvious from the very start that he had no chance of surviving. Almost no one of the first victims of the epidemic did. And it took quite a while for the Capitol to send us some vaccine. My mother brought me to my aunt's house and came back immediately to stay with my father. Till the end. Her own end.
The Peacekeepers were ordered to burn the bodies of the deceased to avoid spreading the infection. That was probably cheaper than disinfecting everyone and everything around after the burial. Most of the things from our house were burnt too. That is why I have no photos of my parents.
I started it all wrong. This is my story, true, but it is not about me at all. Yet, where do I begin? How can I tell about the person who seemed to be always there as long as I can remember. A part and parcel of District 12. Like a never descending coal dust cloud over the Seam. Like the gloomy shed of mine holes in the dark-grey stony earth. Our symbol. Our shameful pride. Our very own. The only victor alive, and probably the only one we are ever going to have, or so we all thought until the second-to-last Hunger Games.
I have seen him quite a few times on the weekends heading off to the Hob where they sell those ever scarce drinks, and then back to his huge house in that empty village. Bottles clinking in his bag. Stumbling slow steps. Wrinkled clothes and expressionless face. How old is he or rather how young?
When my aunt Nola mentions once that him and my uncle Rote are the same age, I gape at her in disbelief. For some reason, he seems to me like something eternal, someone out of time and space. I cannot imagine he might have once been a youngster on those old black and white photos my uncle has back from his school years. They were classmates. Like me, Delly, Peeta, and Katniss.
"How did it feel having a future victor as your classmate, dad?" asks Rote once, and my uncle snorts.
"It's been quite a while. Haymitch was a loner. Didn't think much of our kin even then, I'd guess."
"Is it true he killed his girlfriend and dig the body in the Meadow at midnight?" chimes in Grita a bit tremulously. "That's what people say."
"No way," answers my uncle. "All this woman talk. He is sure a weirdo, but he ain't no one's girlfriend murderer."
"But even my teacher says..." persists Grita.
"Girls were sure fond of him though in those days after he came back a victor,"my uncle remarks. "Even your mum took a fancy."
"Rote..." my aunt hastily interrupts and blushes ever so slightly as my uncle grins.
"Ain't I saying the truth? You swooning over him till the day of our wedding. Just like other morons. Dreamed of becoming a mistress of a large house, huh? Ended up in mine instead."
I don't ask any questions. First, because my uncle would never trouble himself with talking to me. It is already enough that he has to pay for my food and clothing, as my aunt Nola never gets tired to repeat. And then, I still do not believe that this tall dark man - this legend from the long-gone past - could ever lead a real normal life. The kind of life my cousin Rote now has. All this laughing, and story-telling, and girls. The kind of life me, Delly, and Peeta have. Dull lessons and a lot of homework, and sleeping at the back of the classroom, and running away to the Meadow, and getting punished for this.
He goes to the Hob at dusk, never in the mornings. He leaves when the sun is going down and colors the dusty air in faint pink. His long shadow stretching far ahead of him. The darkness is closing all around him as he ascents the hill leading to the Victors' Village.
People do talk. In a small place like ours where everyone knows everyone else and nothing ever happens except the yearly deadly reapings, occasional epidemics or mine accidents what's left but to talk over and over again about someone who has once made District 12 famous. Some are sympathetically clinging their tongues: "One day this fellow is going to drink himself dead, and no one will ever notice till the next Hunger Games come." Some - and these are usually the relatives of the dead tributes - are bitter: "Such a nice house he has. What a shame! What a waste of money! What did he do to deserve all of this? Watching our kids die and not doing anything."
And then there are all kinds of rumors. The dead girlfriend whose spirit haunts late-night walkers in the Meadow is the most popular of many others. Even when my uncle Rote grudgingly says that this is a tale made up to scare young lovers from lingering in the Meadow after dark, Grita and other kids are still terrified and avoid the place in the evenings. The haunted Victors' Village is another well-known story that the merchant kids like to tell hurdling together somewhere in the dark corner of the square, in a safe proximity to the shining windows of their parents' shops.
The sky is pitch black. The stars are pale and already fading when someone begins in a deep whisper: "... And there was that big dark house on the top of the dark hill. No one has ever come close by to the place. No one but Haymitch..."
I am sitting there as well. Listening to the speakers interchanging one another. Never interfering and never taking on the line. Inside my head there is another story in which the lonely man beats off the demons and ghosts instead of pairing up with them to scare the neighbourhood children. Deep in my heart I know that although my tale is all cooked-up, it is still more true than what the others say. One does not have to believe that something is true. One has to feel it from within.
That's how I know this...
- 2 -
I am nine or ten years old. One summer evening I am running past the Hob back to the merchant section. I have been wandering around as usual searching for a discreet place to practice a new dance from the Capitol Saturday night show without anyone overlooking and booing me. Now I am late for dinner. My aunt Nola will be so angry, and my uncle Rote simply hates non-punctual people. As a merchant, he knows the price of everything including people. Absent-minded irresponsible youngsters like myself are certainly worth less than pig's entrails which means not worth feeding. That's what he says.
I am very hungry. Today is Sunday, everyone cooks something tasty for their evening meal, and Peeta's mother is in her bakery all day long. She does not take an afternoon break; therefore, no way of asking him for a tiny-itty-bitty piece.
As the road winds on the steep slope, I run faster and faster watching only my feet so as not to triple over some big stone. If I fall and mess my dress in the mud, that certainly will not increase my chances of getting dinner. I do not even look ahead. No one ever goes this way except some random adventure-seeking kids. At the full speed, I reach the end of the slope and head on to the main street where the shops start. I circle around the fence and then... boom...
I bang my head on someone's chest. Tinkling of the broken glass. Pungent smell of liquor. I do know this smell since my uncle drinks a glass now and then on holidays. Someone is swearing under-breath, as this someone's hand grabs my shoulder and almost lifts me off the ground I am sitting on. The collision was so strong, I fell on my behind probably bruising myself.
"Are you damned blind or on fire?" asks the man, and as I raise my eyes, I immediately recognize him. Haymitch Abernathy. Our ever drunk victor. The only owner of the haunted place. And this broken glass is all that is left of his liquor bottles. Of course, how could I have forgotten?! Weekend evenings! The drinks at the Hob...
I am so scared I cannot move or even make a sound. Once I broke a plate at home, and my aunt immediately tugged on my hair, while my uncle tried on me his leather belt. But these are my relatives. They are generally kind people. Didn't they agree to my living at their place? And that was only one plate... Here I stand in front of the victor of the Hunger Games who probably killed more people in one day than the flies that my aunt slaps down in our kitchen on a hot afternoon. What makes it even worse - judging by the sound and all this liquid spilling on the ground, I destroyed far more than one bottle.
I am so scared I cannot even see his face clearly. Besides, it is getting dark. So, I cannot really tell... is he very angry? He still holds on my shoulder. Is he going to slap me or ...?
I blurt the first thing that comes to my mind:
"Please, please, sir, don't! Don't kill me..."
He makes a strange sound like snorting or laughing, and all rumors wildly alive, I plead with him again:
"Please, I'll never ever again... only don't kill me like you killed your girlfriend!"
"What?" he breathes out sharply as if I again kicked him under the ribs.
All I can do is to put my hands over my head so that when he first hits me, it won't be in the face or ear. That's what I do with my uncle, and it usually works.
But instead, he suddenly lets go of me. For a moment, I watch his face now clearly visible in the pale blinking light of the streetlight that has just been turned on. There is something in his face that keeps me staring on even though the smartest thing I can probably do is to take my chances and run away... It is something very subtle... something I cannot name but that makes me gasp and say hastily:
"I am so sorry... I didn't mean..."
And sorry I am. I do not exactly understand why, but this does not go in any comparison with the "sorry" I usually mutter to my aunt's precious plates and tea cups.
Haymitch Abernathy does not even look at me. It is not anger or hurt, no... It is as if I am not there anymore. As if he has already forgotten I just bumped into him and smashed his liquor bottles. He slowly rearranges what's left of them in the bag, dugs in and throws away glass debris. His forefinger starts bleeding, and he wipes it off his pants quite absentmindedly. Then, he gets out a bottle and takes a big gulp. I see his Adam's apple twitching.
He goes away slightly staggering. I watch his back. His bent shoulders and sweaty shirt.
I think that was the day I first really see Haymitch Abernathy as a real person. Not just a symbol of the hateful Games or the main character of some scary stories. It was not only what I see in his eyes. It was also this incomprehensible unbelievable way he just left me there. Without even as much as telling me off. That shattered all my ideas about who is good and who is bad. Before that evening, I have always thought my uncle was a good decent man. Everyone from the merchants respected him. He had also taken me into his family although he did not have too - that's what my aunt always says. On the contrary, Haymitch was considered to be not exactly bad, but someone better not to be dealt with. Yet, my uncle would have sure beaten me black and blue if he were at Haymitch's place...
I have been avoiding passing by the Hob ever since. Not that I am afraid of Haymitch. It's just that I feel strangely guilty. I do not know why, so I decide it is because of the expensive bottles. Better not to try my luck. What if Haymitch decides to tell on me to my uncle if he sees me again?
