TE15 Lithuanian Honey Cake

Jaroslavas Melnikas

24 hadn’t experienced feelings like that before. Generally, I was a good person with a positive outlook on life. I hadn’t experienced before, as I did now, the pain of hitting my leg on the grand piano on the way over to my office desk. Or what it meant to stick my fingers into white paint while trying to take some sheet music from the drawer (I was short of drawers in my office and there was no space for a new table or cupboard). In addition to that, I hadn’t realised it was possible to knock the bust of Beethoven off while attempting to take a book from the shelf (Beethoven now had a glue- scar on his forehead). I hadn’t known a lot of things. I was especially affected by one terrible incident: one of my most precious paintbrushes disappeared. I looked for it for four hours. On principle. I swore I would find it. No matter what, I had to find it (before that I had had no idea what it meant to look for things!). And when I was worn out, I finally found it by chance (I sat down at the grand piano to calm myself and by its dull sound I realised that the brush was stuck between the strings). I began to weep, probably for the first time in my life. I used to be so strong all the time; with my grand piano room and the studio I had no idea that space and order might play such an important role in my life. I had assumed that my strength, my self-composure, my seriousness were all intrinsic to me. So I cried as I pulled the paint brush from the grand piano in my overcrowded office. And I was not myself. I could not identify with this broken man. I understood, though,