Chapter 4
Matej
He comes in at ten, or close enough. At the door he stops, pulls out the left AirPod.
“The Romans used limestone dust as concrete,” he says. “Mixed with seawater. Still standing after two thousand years.”
Luca is standing in the kitchen doorway. He looks like he has been awake for perhaps four minutes. Same clothes as last night, his dark hair thick and not yet dealt with, one hand on the doorframe.
He looks at Matej.
“Good morning,” he says, carefully.
Matej goes to the sink. Washes his hands in the cold water, efficient, already hours into his day. Reaches for the coffee.
“The wall,” he says. “Outside.”
“While listening to—”
“Podcast.”
“Right,” Luca says. He glances at the wall outside the window, then lets it go. “Coffee.”
Not a question.
Matej gets a second cup.
They sit. Outside the yard is quiet, low and indifferent, the same as always. Luca wraps both hands around the cup and doesn’t speak, which Matej notes. He had expected it. The silence is easier than he’d assumed.
Matej cuts two pieces from a young wheel he made some weeks ago — not ready, but close enough — and puts them on the board with bread. Sets it on the table.
Luca looks at the cheese, then at Matej.
“Did you make this one too?”
“Yes.”
A silence while Luca eats. For once he is tasting a thing instead of describing it. Matej is used to people not knowing what to say. He is not used to caring whether they do.
Luca says nothing. Cuts another piece.
“Where do you make it,” Luca says, a polite question, nothing more.
Matej tips his head towards the door off the kitchen. “In there.”
Luca glances at it, nods, goes back to the bread. He has taken it for a small thing, a man’s sideline, and Matej lets him. He could say more. He doesn’t. There is nothing he owes the morning yet.
“You were up early,” Luca says, eventually.
“Always.”
“How early.”
“Five.”
Luca considers this like a man for whom five in the morning is a theoretical concept. “Why.”
“Things,” Matej says. “In the morning.”
“Right.” He lifts the cup. “I knew that.”
He clearly did not know that. Matej says nothing.
Luca refills his own cup — finds the pot without asking, and doesn’t make anything of it — and leans against the counter, looking out the window at the yard.
The coffee takes some getting used to. Brown water, basically. The beans, the grind, the pot, all of it wrong at once. He drinks it anyway.
He has twenty-three unread emails. He checked at eight and put the phone face-down. At home he would be on his second cup by now, from the beans he orders from a place in Navigli that roasts them fresh every Tuesday. He is not thinking about that.
The yard is flat and grey and completely indifferent to his inbox.
“It’s a good wall,” Luca says.
“Two thousand years,” Matej says. “Give or take.”
Luca looks at him. “That wall is not two thousand years old.”
“No,” Matej says. “I built the top section myself, not long ago.” He drinks. “The Romans, though.”
“The Romans,” Luca repeats.
“Limestone dust. Seawater. Still standing.”
Luca looks out at it again, then back to him. The almost-smile, not quite, the kind that lives just under the surface. “You just wanted to tell someone that.”
Matej picks up his cup. “It came up.”
Luca takes his coffee and moves towards the door. Pauses in the doorway. Looks back.
“Thank you,” he says. “For the coffee. And the—” A gesture at the board.
“It’s breakfast,” Matej says.
“Yes,” Luca says. “It is.”
He goes upstairs. The chair scrapes, then the quiet settles back in.
Matej makes his third coffee. Stands at the window.
The wall is, he thinks, not bad.
The other thing comes to him there, sideways, from a video weeks back.
The dripstone in the caves under the Kras.
Halls down there big enough to lose a house in, and the stone growing the whole time, drop by drop, slow.
Slower than anyone guesses. Less than a finger in a thousand years.
Two thousand years of rain pressed into one wet column.
Almost like a cathedral, he thinks, and is surprised at himself for the word.
He turns from the window. “There’s a stone—”
The kitchen is empty. The stairs go up to where Luca is, behind a door, working.
Matej closes his mouth. Drinks his coffee.
It’ll keep.