The Hired Man

by Aminatta Forna

At about fifty metres from our destination I told the dogs to go down and wait for me, which they did, sinking slowly to their haunches. They liked to pretend they didn’t care, Kos and Zeka, but under the skin every nerve and muscle twitched.

The way the English saw it, the past was always better. But in this country our love of the past is a great deal less, unless it is a very distant past indeed, the kind nobody alive can remember, a past transformed into a song or a poem. We tolerate the present, but what we love is the future, which is about as far away from the past as it is possible to be.

‘But the structure is pretty sound, is it?’ ‘The house is good. Built the old way. Will be here one hundred years from today.’ ‘Fabulous. Told you, Laura, didn’t I?’ Conor smacked his lips, leaned back and crossed his arms as though he had built the house with his own two hands and just eaten a piece of it.

If Krešimir’s nervous it doesn’t show, a pitying smile rests on his lips. What had seemed noble to me when I challenged him now seems pathetic. But condescension is an old trick of his.

Anka was born with joy in her soul, to which they feel she has no right. Behind it all, as with so many things in life and in death, lies envy. In the end it gets the better of them.