Arvida

There was a very beautiful photo from after the war, which was, like all beautiful photos, an empty picture, with practically nothing in it and everything outside it. In it, a dozen bicycles were strewn over the lawn in front of the clinic. Outside the photo, in the building's basement, children were lined up before a large white curtain, waiting to be vaccinated against polio. Outside the photo, the few times I saw it, my grandmother pressed her finger down on it, saying:

"You see? There are no thieves in Arvida."

That's what she said all her life, my grandmother, mother of my father. Except for about twenty years when, from time to time, she looked at my father and said:

"There were no thieves in Arvida. Now there's you."

From Arvida by Samuel Archibald, translated by Donald Winkler 2015. Published by Biblioasis.