TE15 Lithuanian Honey Cake

Jaroslavas Melnikas

take care of the damn ceiling so that I could somehow carry on with my life. It drove me crazy. However, when the ceiling was up I calmed down a little. At least the canvasses now had their own place. But the studio felt crowded. The grand piano, the ceiling... I tried not to look in the direction of the grand p i ano . I looked at the birds that came to peck at the crumbs (which I put out on the windowsill every morning). The sun, the birds and there you go! I started painting. Something began to pour out onto the canvas; colours, lines. All was well. Life could go on. After all, I didn’t live in the studio. In general, my life hadn’t changed: I still worked at my desk in the office, went to the sitting room to watch the television, played snooker in the snooker room. And my wife would still use her dressing room to do her make-up. Just one thing made me break out into a cold sweat: the thought that what had seemed a random occurrence might not be so random at all. The surface of reality upon which I was standing seemed fragile. Which is why, when the studio disappeared a year later, I was not only not surprised, but felt happy in a way; a certain logic had been confirmed, some vague presentiment of mine. I was obviously on a journey towards something; I had crossed something that I had to cross. The process was unpleasant and unavoidable and I knew it was pointless to resist it. If I had seen real workmen dismantling the studio brick by brick, or

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