The winter sun sliced through Ulrich’s eyelids like a surgeon’s scalpel. He pulled the lumpy pillow out from under his neck and slapped it over his forehead to stop the pain. It was marginally effective. He swore to himself. The drinking was out of control again, and to make matters worse, his father’s voice reverberated inside his swollen head. Too much drink and you’re no better than a blind horse on the edge of the cliff. His father spoke the truth from rich experience. One night when he didn’t come home after a card game his wife bullied his hung-over friends into searching for him. They found him that afternoon floating face up in the Kaspiri river, a fifty-foot fall from the narrow road between the village and his hut, bloated but in one piece. The same couldn’t be said for the half-blind mare he was riding.
Ulrich missed his father, missed his friends, would trade his drinking for a walk in the forest and running water, but what use is it to get sick for what’s gone. He pushed the pillow off his face, rolled over and crawled out of bed. The place stank of tobacco, and shoe leather, and old grease. If he was thankful for anything in this godforsaken city, it was that his sense of smell was nearly gone. Where and how he lost it was a mystery; but it was one part of his old life he wouldn’t miss.
He expected to see Greta in the kitchen, but she wasn’t there. The stove was cold, and the supper dishes still sat on the table. He vaguely remembered her waking him up in the night, shouting something in his ear about the woman next door and her nightgown. Or maybe he dreamt it. A sudden chill set him shivering. He lit the stove and went to get his greatcoat from the hook by the front door. If Greta wasn’t going to fix breakfast, he’d have to do it for himself. Nothing much after last night, bread, butter, a slice of cheese, some herring if any was left. At least they had an icebox.
He put his foraged meal on one of last night’s plates and sat at the table. Outside, the wind was whipping dry snow into mounds. Old Moskowitz, his head wrapped in a shawl, was shuffling to the toilets, stuffed in his coat like a snail inching forward to its fate. Ulrich had a fleeting vision of the diminutive Russian freezing in place before he could relieve himself—Lev the schneeman—scarf flying, his eyes two black holes. Schnell, beeil dich, Lev. Ulrich watched him trudge to the door, pull it open and heft himself up the wooden stoop. So, he’ll live to shit another day. Good for him.
Ulrich bit into the cheese and reached for the loaf of bread. Where was the knife? He got up and looked in the sink, opened the drawer to the cabinet, got on his knees to see if it had fallen on the floor. No knife in sight. How was he supposed to slice his bread without a knife? He tore the heel off the loaf and slid it across the butter. He could smell well enough to know the fish was in worse shape than his nose. To hell with it. He speared it with his fork and swallowed the slippery lump without chewing.
All of my body is sad . . .
papower 