16
“Wish we could eat it all now,” Ivan said, holding a kilogramme or so of dry bread with crumbling edges, hard, but still so appetizing and desirable that both were looking at it and drooling almost uncontrollably.
“All, all,” Giulia echoed eagerly, her eyes also glued to the loaf.
After a brief hesitation, Ivan looked over her head at the distant snowy ridge. “No, we can’t,” he sighed.
“Can’t? Non?”
“No.”
She understood him and also sighed, while Ivan spread the jacket on the ground and placed their meagre ration on the leather. He now had an important job to do—deal out two equal portions and make as few crumbs as possible. Without a knife, they had nothing to cut the bread with.
And so he carefully broke the bread, arranging small pieces into two piles, ever conscious of Giulia
