Chapter 10
Matej
It is late. Later than it usually gets before one of them moves — to the kitchen, upstairs, somewhere with a reason.
Neither of them moves.
The fire is low. Luca is on the other end of the couch with his notebook open on his knee and his pen not moving, and Matej has his back against the armrest with his legs out, a book open on his chest, and at some point in the last hour the distance between them became different than distance.
Neither of them did anything deliberate to cause this. It arrived on its own.
He is aware of Luca’s feet near his thigh. Not touching. Near.
He thinks about the week. The days have a shape now — Luca out in the region in the morning, back by afternoon or evening, the things he brings with him, the things he says and doesn’t say. His silence when something has interested him and he hasn’t processed it yet.
Matej knows this silence. He has catalogued it without meaning to.
This is information he doesn’t know what to do with.
Luca
He is not writing. He stopped writing twenty minutes ago and hasn’t closed the notebook because closing it would be an acknowledgment that he’s just sitting here, on this couch, in this house, not wanting to go upstairs.
He is just sitting here. Not wanting to go upstairs.
In Milan on a Friday night he would be somewhere with people — not a crowd, he doesn’t need a crowd, but people, conversation, the energy of a city that doesn’t stop. He would come home at midnight and sleep well and wake up with three ideas and a slight headache and call it a good night.
He tries to remember the last Friday night in Milan and can’t retrieve it clearly. It has the texture of something that happened to someone else.
The fire makes a sound. Outside, the plateau. Inside: warmth, and the smell of woodsmoke and aged milk and whatever Matej uses on the leather of his work boots.
Luca looks at the page. Looks at the fire.
He thinks: I should go up.
He thinks: in a minute.
Matej
At some point he becomes aware that Luca has stopped pretending to write.
He doesn’t say anything about this.
The log in the fire settles. The room gets quieter in the way rooms do late at night — not empty, just: concentrated. Everything that’s in it more present.
He thinks: Luca’s feet are four centimetres from his leg.
He thinks: I know exactly how this goes. I have known since the first morning. I am not surprised by any of this.
He thinks: knowing doesn’t help.
The fire. The cold. The four centimetres.
He reaches over and puts another log on.
“Go to sleep,” he says. Quietly, the way the true things come out. “You have Komen again tomorrow.”
“I know,” Luca says. He doesn’t move immediately. Then he closes the notebook, stands, looks at Matej in the low light — something Matej doesn’t try to name — and goes upstairs.
Matej sits with the fire for a while longer.
He thinks: four centimetres.
He puts it away. Goes to bed.