I could tell Mikhailo was home by the small mound of Turkish coffee grounds on the plate next to a spent cigarette butt.  He had sipped his coffee for the duration of his cigarette then, extinguishing both, dumped the cup’s contents, read his fortune, and left the kitchen.  I found him on the back porch, staring at the river that had been the sidewalk. The screen door slammed shut behind me but he didn’t move. Without turning his head or asking where I’ve been all month, he spoke, “All last summer I’d been at political seminars.  The most hell bent astute minds expounded the grit of their policies. The audience cheered, discussion panels were held.  Choice wine was uncorked.  It was one of the most engaging periods of my academic life.  I heard hundreds of voices. I spoke at dozens of forums but nothing like this. Do you hear this?”  He stopped abruptly. I heard nothing but the gurgle of the overflowing rain gutter. “This monotony of water on metal speaks to me more than the cacophony of public life. When I hear this crackling, at last I can hear my own voice.”

He shook but didn’t answer. From the dampness of his shirt, I gathered he’d been standing how I’d found him for twenty minutes. “Do you want coffee?” he offered.  I didn’t, but I said yes to get him inside.  In the kitchen he busied himself with preparations and the stove went click click click but the burner wouldn’t light. Then, the faint smell of natural gas followed by the sound of forcefully striking matches. The flame hissed peacefully. “Do you want one lump of sugar or two?” After I answered, he again went quiet. I strained to think who he thought he was confiding it, but it wasn’t me.  It could have been me, I told myself, if I was home.  If he knew I was returning home. But he was about to say something new and previously unsaid, possibly unthought, before now.  Mikhailo studied politics, he saw beauty in doctrines and repetition. Standing on the back porch, halfway to hypothermia, he was on the cusp of expressing an original idea when I interrupted him. “You see the grit? You see it, right?”  I tilted the plate into and out of the light.

I turned towards the plate again and squinted, remembering the sticky aroma every time she, a woman of eighty, studied the grounds in reverence. In every upturned cup, she saw something special. I couldn’t believe the fortunes like she did. I just went through the motions, but still I could see. I looked up at his back. “Do you think it could have been intentional?   

 And we dumped the tin cups onto the plate and studied our respective puddles. His face wrinkled.  We didn’t have to say anything. We both saw it precisely. In two years’ time, Mikhailo would be delivering a package to Gorodnitsa. On the way there, he’d die in a rail road accident near the river. Petravek would be implicated in the death, and the package would be swept away in the current. Its contents would be lost and no amount of humility would save the old ticketing agent and family friend. 

After a while, the constant tin roof drumming grew quiet.  I only noticed this absently as I was preoccupied with interpreting the signs.  After two hours, we stepped back outside.  The sunlight poured in buckets across the sidewalk, across the wooden verandah, across our feet. It didn’t reach our faces.  


 
  

