TE15 Lithuanian Honey Cake

Jaroslavas Melnikas

‘ I can see how all this is annoying you.’ My wife was able to guess my mood. ‘Just wait a bit, spring is around the corner, and then summer. It will be better.’ She was comforting me! I took out my old paintings and looked at them: God, how much freedom! The flight! What inspiration! And they were trying to tell me that I had never had my own studio? I had stopped painting a long time before; even to try to paint would prove meaningless. After I had found everything and set it out, there would be nothing to express anymore. And my children would keep coming in every now and then to get something. They would listen to their cassette player (it was their room too, wasn’t it?). The kitchen had shrunk as well. I deduced this from the fact that for some time we had been eating in turns, rather than all together. My parents ate first, then the children, and finally my wife and I. My wife, children and parents assured me that this had always been the case. But it wasn’t even a kitchen, for God’s sake, it was more like a pantry and a store room together. There were some bowls and a child’s bath above our heads. On the kitchen table, which was small anyway, was a sewing machine tray with the machine itself on top of it, and on top of that, an iron and some dirty forks. ‘You are unhappy again, Jura.’ My wife, though she sometimes sensedmymood, could not really understand it. ‘Where would you suggest I put all this instead?’

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