TE15 Lithuanian Honey Cake

The Grand Piano Room

located in the warm basement) once a week, or even once a month? That wasn’t important. The important thing was that everything there had only one purpose, was dedicated to only one need. Everything was waiting for me. In a haze, I would finish a picture I had started some time before, having finally found the right solution. Then I would forget about the studio again for a while. I never thought about whether I was a professional or just an amateur: I simply painted. I needed to. Occasionally. So my life revolved slowly around these ‘rooms’. At my desk I wrote and thought, in the grand piano room I played the piano, in the studio I painted. I had my meals in the dining room, I washed in the bathroom and slept in the bedroom. In the sitting room, next to the fireplace, I watched TV. I relaxed in the snooker room. We don’t need to mention the obvious things like the toilet, with its light blue unit, the woodwork room (I used to like turning wood), and the gym (a sprung floor, a gymnastics wall, weights and other sports equipment). Somehow, it never occurred to me to think about how privileged I was to have all this. Was I a count? A duke? A millionaire’s son? Who was I? Was I dreaming? No, that was how I lived. That was the air I breathed. That was me; a different ‘me’ in each of the rooms. My parents, my wife and my children were exactly the same. My children had their own room, my wife had a dressing room with mirrors and cosmetics. We all lived very nicely.

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