Sojourn by Amit Chaudhuri

Author:Amit Chaudhuri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2022-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

Sometimes Dahlem was so quiet that I could hear the silence in the way I could see sunlight in the room. I wasn’t miserable. But my need for home made itself present to me – I wasn’t conscious of it – through Gerta’s arrivals on Friday mornings.

‘Dieses Handtuch ist schmutzig,’ she called to me from the entrance of the bathroom, holding up a large white towel. ‘Ich lege es in die Wäsche.’

I echoed her grave, matter-of-fact expression with a nod and knitted eyebrows, since there was no question of disagreement. We only agreed on everything. I’ve never had conversations in which I’ve been in so much harmony with the person I’m talking to.

She smiled, coquettish, implying the joke was on me. ‘Schön,’ she said; disappeared.

This word I understood. The others I didn’t, but I could hear each one distinctly.

After she was done with the noisy bits, the vacuum cleaning, and was wiping the kitchen top – the one thing she undertook as a life-saving task, when I could hear her breathing – I said: ‘Do you have plans for the weekend?’

She paused for a second; looked up. ‘Das Waschpulver ist fast alle.’ She added with a radiant look: ‘Mach dir keine Sorgen, ich kaufe neues.’

I felt reassured: happy she was happy.

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