Walker on Water by Kristiina Ehin

Author:Kristiina Ehin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Unnamed Press
Published: 2014-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

The Dried Apricots of My Six Former Husbands

My six former husbands all had big juicy apricots. Lots of people would have wanted to taste them, but I was the only one who got near them. Yesterday I went again to the dark attic room where I keep them. The last apricot I took up there still hasn’t really dried. It’s moist and its surface feels velvety and warm. I feel at one and the same time both proud and ashamed of my frightening collection. This small apricot here which has dried nearly black belonged to my first husband. Every so often he loved to stress what a great swine he was. I was still very young and waited in fear all the time for when he would become a swine. But he didn’t. Before that could happen the idea of my collection came to me and I snatched his apricot away.

My second husband really was a swine, but he never admitted it himself. His apricot is this angular and slightly purple fruit here. Actually it’s reminiscent of a plum.

My third husband was the best of them all. On the night I carried away the most beautiful among his half-dozen apricots I spilt bitter tears. I felt that I really shouldn’t have snatched that particular fruit. But until now the strongest of all my feelings has proven to be my passion for collecting.

My fourth husband was a collector just like me. We understood each other with half a word and promised to leave each other’s treasures in peace. I broke the vow. I made a decisive grab for his apricot just as he was stretching his hand out for my stamens. I know that sooner or later he would have robbed me naked. His apricot still smells sweet to this day. It smells of victory that became mine by a razor’s breadth.

My fifth husband was a professor at the Academy of Forgettings. I was his favourite student. I have no memory of the day our relationship began. I have no memory of days and nights spent together – not a single word, scent or touch. I don’t even remember how his apricot finally got here. But just now, as I stroke the rough skin of this dried out fruit, I think that I probably didn’t particularly love him. And I left my studies in forgettings unfinished just before defending my doctoral thesis. Existence becomes somehow desolate if you can’t remember anything at all anymore. I only know that we were together for a whole year. A whole year of my life, my youth! Oh, how I would like to snatch back the cycle of that year, that energy and dedication that was in me.

And this sixth drying apricot here belonged to the man of my dreams. No wonder then that in this worldly life everything went as it did. But still a pity, a great pity, that he didn’t see through me either. I did after all give him a vital hint.

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