Baltimore by Jelena Lengold Page A

naturally, I fight for my life. No one really wants to be hit by a bus.
    I was winning almost to the very end. That was when the game took an amazing turn and my husband was dealt a really good hand. I covered my eyes. They laughed and cracked numerous cruel jokes at my expense. People can be unusually cruel during a card game. They’re capable of sending you to your death. Of course, they were convinced that I would soon raise my head and suggest a rematch, or that I would offer them a cold beverage. But, as far as I was concerned, there wasn’t going to be any more talking. I have nothing to say to people who don’t value my life whatsoever. That’s understandable, right?
    They tried everything to make me laugh. At first, they even had a tiny chance of succeeding. I remember having to make a small effort not to laugh and focusing on my own gloomy thoughts, in order to remain in the same position. My hands over my eyes. Elbows on the table. Their giggles, which were slowly turning into boredom. If only they would forget about me, I thought.
    After a little while our friends got up to leave.
    “Are you going to see us out?” they asked.
    It still seemed like a good joke, the silence.
    They left and I didn’t budge an inch. Good manners suddenly didn’t seem important anymore.
    During the next few hours, my husband tried everything he could think of to get me to talk. He tried to win me over by being sweet, hugging me, making funny faces, dancing the Kazachok, marching in front of me; then he became angry, and again went back to being nice, but the grip of silence only grew stronger. I thought: Why can’t a person decide to be silent for once? Why is that so unusual?
    And so we went to bed without me uttering a single word. I did all my usual evening chores in silence. I did the dishes, watered the flowers, turned down the bed, removed my make-up, showered, disconnected the phone, set the alarm clock, and got into bed.
    I fell asleep in an instant, like someone who has been sleeping on their feet for some time, only they weren’t permitted to rest their head on the pillow. It was a good night’s sleep, without dreams, without waking up, without nightmares. It was the kind of sleep I used to have as a child, when I wasn’t troubled by all the things I needed to do the next day. I wasn’t ready to fully admit it to myself at the time, but somewhere deep within I knew: I wasn’t going to do anything tomorrow. Except for the things I need to do for myself and the things I find absolutely pleasing.
    The next day, my husband woke up before me, which was out of the ordinary. I heard running water in the bathroom, and then he opened the refrigerator, made tea, took a cup from the cupboard and for a little while longer made all these usual morning sounds which were, I guess, supposed to wake me up. But, I was already awake and perfectly aware of the fact that I didn’t want to get up and that I didn’t want to go to work. Besides, who really wants to do that? Such things are done mechanically, because we have to, and not because this is something we want to do. On the contrary, I wanted him to leave for work so that I could slowly get out of bed and take a walk by the river. I wanted to be quiet and to think, and the fact that the very thing I considered to be perfectly normal was being made out to be extraordinarily odd, made me determined to finally start behaving as I see fit. This was one of those moments of unusual clarity of thought that comes early in the morning. That is to say, all my life I’ve wanted only two things: to be completely passive and to be silent. Of course, I always did the complete opposite of this, so much so that there were years during which I would completely forget about what I wanted. But this morning, everything came back to me, appearing in our window in the form of a perfectly clear, blue sky. It was one of those idyllic spring days. A perfect day, I thought, for starting a new life in