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4
Once again, I’m living a regular life, going to work, coming
back and reading a book. My mother has brought the clean
curtains and hung them. I’ve picked green curtains this
month. I have a pretty box. Inside, there are curtains
selected and sewn based on my mood. Curtains are very
important to me, in general. They are protective depending
on their color, transparency, and the flowers or black and
white spots on them. There are other things in my box as
well – shawls, the socks from my childhood that my
grandmother had knitted, my silver rings, and in the box
there is a smaller box with a hookah. My cello is next to it.
True, I never learned how to play it, but it’s beautiful, so
I’ve put it in a corner and admire it. The thin feminine
neck, the brown body of a Negress, its tight strings – it’s
beautiful, in a word, and I like it, so I keep it. My mother
sometimes roughly cleans the dust off it. I’ve left a spot for
a lamp in the room. I’ve seen one and I will buy it – big and
beautiful, with brown fringes.
I gather the green curtains in my hands now and look –
there is a blurry light in the woman’s place in the opposite
building. I pull back the curtains, put my chair right up
against the window and sit. Makurik purrs her way into my
lap and curls up. I pat her as my fingers caress her
thrumming body. She’s purring, I’m thinking. They say that
thinking is essential to writing, but then I’m not really
thinking, I’m observing my old lady. She’s coming and
going slowly in her house. She has no curtains. Her
windows are not that clean. The dirt has left a white film on