Chapter 10
311 Words
7
The garden was calling him again. Leaves partly covered the sun. The minutes of the present oozed from the echoing emptiness of past years. You cannot look at the sun, but you can look at the point where the sun’s rays land…
N. sat on the bench and closed his eyes. Silence. No, not silence, a cricket is chirping, the leaves are rustling; this is not silence. Silence is when there are no books, and it is good to think in such silence. Akhmatova said: you can live without books, and that is how he lives now. But in the city, in his flat, dozens of bookshelves were piled up with volumes and volumes, all read and re-read. But he couldn’t read them any more: they belonged to his past life. Now there’s nothing to do but watch the garden, ponderously green, frowning in the breeze.
The gate was green, too. Look, it’s opening now, and in comes a beetle, a timber-worm. No, not a beetle, but something beetly, hugging a heavy iron sausage in its front paws.
“Gas.”
But no-one had ordered anything, not even Noone. Then it dawned on him: maybe the runaway landlord had ordered it?
“This way,” N. showed the gasman the kitchen door.
The canister was installed, but the gas man didn’t straighten up, he stayed crablike. What else does he want, that dark-haired beetle?
“Do you have any water?”
“Ah, he wants a drink. Where’s the kettle?” But the kettle was hiding, so N. showed the gasman the bucket. He lifted the lid – and gave a start.
“What have you got in there?!”
There turned out to be nothing but a bunch of pondweed in the bucket.
“I thought it was someone’s hair!” the gasman calmed himself down after groping around in the bucket. “But it’s seaweed not pondweed! Are you growing it?”
“Yes, instead of sea kale,” N. remarked dryly.
And the gasman left, forgetting his drink.
- Writer
