He thought he could smell it, the cowshed. He had woken up because of the smell. Carefully, he inhaled the darkness. The smell remained. What, he thought, was he dreaming about? He inhaled again, slowly, and his dream re-emerged: the low wooden ceiling, the semi-darkness, the beams, the lamp above the door, the dim light. He could remember it all very well now. More images surfaced: the round sides of the cows, the horns in the dark. One of the cows was called Esther and the other one, the Hereford, was called Ruth.
He inhaled again but now he couldn’t feel anything, just the air. The man panicked. He understood that it was essential for him to remain in that cowshed, to stay there for just a moment longer, to feel the warmth and the stillness just one more time. He tried to reconstruct the smell from his memories. What was it made of? He remembered the bucket of fresh warm milk, the wobbling moonlike oval, the foam. The straw under his feet, the cowpats he couldn’t see, the calf born a week ago. The scent was made of all those things but it was gone now, however hard he tried to piece it back together. He woke up and he broke it. The steamy breath of the cows, he thought. Out of nowhere, a sleepy fly descended on the piebald rump. It happened an eternity ago.
The man didn’t want to open his eyes. We don’t die, he thought, I read that in a book. He felt reality unfolding around him: the walls, the window, the ceiling, all the monitoring devices connected to his body, the cannula inserted in his forearm, the urinary catheter. What was the book called? Some self-help, pseudo-philosophical didactic catchphrase title; doesn’t matter. When in danger, he remembered himself reading, the speed of our perception becomes infinitely fast and time slows down to a halt. Could be true, he thought, this is what happens when you are scared to death. Am I scared to death, he thought, am I really? He snorted quietly; this was all nonsense, this was funny. Not exactly, no, he decided after a moment, rather curious and this is why I cannot stop the time. Time stops when we are seriously afraid, frightened to the core and only then can we remain forever suspended in that cocoon of time, in that private eternity. Could this be true? Remember, he thought, that tram in Amsterdam? Almost ended your life despite all those warnings displayed everywhere across the city. Thought them excessive, smug sod, thought yourself way too clever for them as opposed to all those crowds of wide-eyed mugs mooching around with their open guidebooks or smartphones in their hands, felt experienced and sharp, on top of the world. It was sunny, he remembered. You waited for a couple of cyclists to pass, stepped down from the kerb onto the cobblestones of the road, started crossing the tracks, and all of a sudden something massive, shiny, noisy entered the periphery of your vision. Time did slow, the man thought, it stopped all right, entirely. Pigeons with their wings flapping stopped. Could see every feather; their beaks stretched out towards the sun, gleaming. All the people around stopped: the woman with the pushchair, the old man on his mobility scooter, the repairman with his ladder. Even now he could feel the acid horror exploding through his body. The blazing front had frozen not an inch away from his left elbow. He could see his own reflection in that giant convex glass. He could see the man behind the glass, the strangely distant lonely face, indifferent, as if the driver had seen it all a hundred times before, all those dumb tourists mown down time and again by the public transportation. The jump was wild. Did he actually scream? Quite possibly, he thought. He landed three meters away from the tracks. But for a moment time did stop, he could remember it quite well now, and it was him who made it move again, who broke the spell with his desperate leap. In the same way, he could make the unwanted reality around him fold back into that obscure another dimension from which it had recently emerged, collapse, disappear. He could, he thought, if he tried hard enough. Don’t want to be here, he thought. Could have chosen to remain forever caught in that endless split second. He had thought it was all nonsense, psychobabble, all those weird ramblings in that book organised into lists bulleted with cute little symbols, tiny trees, dogs, or dolphins. He had thought that his mother-in-law who had given him that book as a present for his birthday didn’t know him at all, after five years of his marriage. Or rather she thought that he wasn’t a good match for her daughter, he realised. Wanted him to change; thought he could learn a thing or two from that book. He chuckled quietly under his breath. Death, he thought, stops the time. No one dies. We just remain caught in that moment of our lives we remember best. It did sound plausible enough. Outside, time flows as usual for all other people like in that example illustrating the relativity theory, but inside us it just stops. And we live forever. We enter eternity. Could happen, he thought. In retrospect, that book was pretty good. Probably wasn’t silly at all.
He picked up the bucket; the milk sloshed around; the smell of freshly cut grass reached his nostrils. Was he actually able to milk a cow when he was a child? Yes, sure, he thought, the farmer taught me that. Yes, I could. They trusted me with that. And it wasn’t that hard, was it? The cows liked me; they trusted me too, and the dogs. There was a small ancient footstool. I could indeed milk a cow, the man thought, feeling a surge of pride washing up his chest. I could split a heavy log. I could sink a post, tar it first. I could shear a sheep. Just two long months on that farm, the man thought, and I could do all that and more. What I couldn’t do though was to make that girl like me. The girl, the farmer’s daughter, she still thought that I was just another dumb tourist. Now, could it be true that all my life long I’ve been doing nothing else but trying to prove her wrong? The boys she liked were all men. They hunted hares. I didn’t stand a chance against them, the man thought, no matter how hard I tried. They could shoot ten bottles out of ten from quite a distance. Blood didn’t scare them. They could actually skin a rabbit. Everyone could repair a fence, he thought. And his poetry didn’t work on that girl at all. She just laughed. That’s right, the man thought feeling a lump of happiness expanding, blocking his airways, she just laughed.
He picked up the bucket and opened the door. Careful not to hit the top of his head against the low lintel he stepped outside. The door creaked behind his back and the latch clacked softly. He inhaled the lungful of fresh air. Three windows in the large house across the expanse of the lawn were all aglow with the indoor life. He saw his mother standing near the fence smoking, looking at the distant firs. She turned to him. The burning end of her cigarette illuminated her cheeks, her forehead, her freckled nose. Her eyes sparkled. She smiled.
‘Look who’s here,’ she said.
Cowshed
Sergey Bolmat