TE19 Iberian Adventure

Gabi Csutak

and turned around, there had been a door right opposite me. But there were doors everywhere. I saw that, even if I left out the areas between doors, it could still be almost anywhere. I looked more closely at the coats. I could see right away that some were larger, smaller, or more worn than mine, but most of them still looked exactly the same. Then I began to sniff at them. In this way, I managed to rule out a few that smelled of mould, vanilla sugar, smoke, pancakes, cats or carried the sharp smell of sweat. But this method wasn’t going to be the answer because most often they had no smell at all. Then I began to go through the pockets. I remembered that in mine there was a round white jar of lip balm and some coins. It turned out that in nearly every pocket there was the same jar of lip balm and some coins. I continued to search, but more and more mechanically, only being startled out of my rhythm for a moment nowand thenwhen I putmy hand into something sticky or crumbs stuck to my fingers. I started to count up how many coats I had done already, but that just made the whole thing seem more hopeless. After coat number fifty, there was black dirt coming out from under my nails. That’s when I decided I’d had enough. I picked a coat at random and put it on, but carried on delving in pockets, stowing all the change and all the lip balm I found in them into the pockets of the coat I waswearing. All the time I was doing this, my heart was in my mouth, and I kept looking over my shoulder as if I was being watched. I only set off when every pocket I had was stuffed full. I was amazed at how easily I found the way out. I was shaking as I walked out of the gate, then I began to run. All those coins began to 230