Algimantas RUSTEIKA: When I was the only man (For My Mother’s Day) – Respublika.lt

On the left hand side is a bed made of yellow, polished wood, on the right is the same chest of drawers with five drawers, the handles are wrought iron, and a wardrobe – all by one craftsman, made in a carpenter’s house, the door creaks open, and inside are the family’s bedding and my brother’s clothes, the lower drawers and I haven’t seen any useful ones, my grandmother is always here, during the day, if she has made dinner for the family and cleaned up, always leaning over the newspaper or her prayer books, I still have her Bible, published in Boston around 1934 – I’m too lazy to look when, what difference is the accuracy – without ž,č,š, gothic font, with the priest’s dedication in calligraphic font.

Bobutei is 92, she always was and always will be, a strand of curly hair is pinned on the top of her head in a bun, and when she combs it, it looks like a bunch of hair from Chingachguk, Juoz and I always find it funny when she grimaces while combing and, as in the joke, she has two teeth, one on top, one on the bottom , and her eyes are as pale as the sky and kind – she loves me very much – and she was mad when she was young, when her grandfather was taken into the tsar’s army for the Japanese war and served in the rear units, so she drove to him those thousands of miles and lived nearby, and worked for Russian farmers, but something, just so they could see each other sometimes, and after he came back, he got married – he died of cancer nineteen years later, but he managed to start my mother, and me at the same time, his terrazzo monument in the Sparrows cemetery is overgrown with moss and the letters have faded, this year it will definitely need to repaint the letters.

It was a hot summer then too. That morning I slept soundly, as always, after work at the “Siūlo” factory, where we had to load and load 50 kg linen bales, called kips – we sixteen “Malalietkas” worked as tailors and attended the evening party, and where else lifting irons in the basement club, by ourselves installed next to the boiler room – the board of the house allowed us – it’s cozy and warm there in the winter, but unbearably hot in the summer, where is the guitar giddiness when we play the Hungarian instrument, sparkling with excitement, rock squares in the empty hall of the cultural center and the first string keeps loosening, and we need to retune it.

Then it was a simple, bright summer morning, sleep itself, but already at dawn, maybe half past five, mother moves her shoulder and you wake up, Algiuk, don’t sleep, come, you can’t sleep tonight, grandma is dying, you need to be with her, she’s scared – and I get up, the only one the man of the family, my brother Juozas in the Russian army, my aunt in the hospital after a heart attack and my mother at home alone, I am now the only man in our family.

She’s breathing hard, as if someone has put on an invisible gas mask, she keeps opening her eyes, and I’m standing like a fool, mom says – sit down, let’s all be together now – time is passing slowly, it seems like two hours have passed, and only five minutes left, I see the clock on the dresser , I don’t feel anything, neither fear nor anything, only the clock is ticking and the room is full of breath, it’s not dawn yet, although it’s light, I’m just me and that’s all, my mother is kneeling by the bed and saying something, what – I don’t understand, apparently she doesn’t understand either, only you want to be heard – mom, what are you talking about? – she needs to hear us to know – she is not alone and here we are.

My mother always calls my mother mamut, it’s funny to us, like some mammoth with two fangs, mamut, she says, maybe she wants something, tell me, mamut, and she suddenly, barely intelligible, says with great difficulty – Lenyt, I want bulbiene – and mom runs to the kitchen, howling. , I hear them peeling potatoes, carrots, changing the pot, the stove whirring, and I just sit there like a fool listening to my breath, and I look at my white hands with chewed nails and my grandmother, who looks like a marathon runner at the finish line, catching her breath, and mom comes , and pours a spoonful of soup into her mouth, another, third.

And then she begins to breathe intermittently, the pauses are getting longer and it seems – already – but she starts again, and as if everything is fine, then suddenly she opens her eyes and says, with difficulty, with a long pause, she says to her mother – Lenyt … look … children ! – and falls silent, and still inhales, but can’t exhale anymore, and mom doesn’t cry, she kneels and kisses her hands and says – thank you, mom, thank you, mom, thank you – she exhales slowly slowly and suddenly becomes silent.

I stand like a fool, my mother is kneeling, there is silence and I don’t know what to do. When a person leaves, the body still remembers being here, sometimes the hand twitches, the eyes move under the eyelids, the fingers still clench, but everything is already moving away, the past begins to get serious, and the hands are so wrinkled and wrinkled. My mother prays silently for a long time, only with her lips, I can’t hear anything she says, then she stands up and says – Algiuk, now you are the only man in the family, let’s do what is necessary, and I am like that, even though I am only sixteen.

No tests will be needed, the doctor will write to the polyclinic, says mother, let’s collect it, and we will cover her face with her mother’s green scarf, support Algiuk’s hand, give her a cotton ball from the medicine cabinet, we will undress her and mother will wash her white body, soaking the cotton ball in alcohol in a brown bowl where she used to put the mixture, and I look and see her through my grandfather’s eyes, she is beautiful and young, and this is really true, then we dress her in a dark brown dress, tie a white scarf and my mother says – find the addresses in the top drawer of the chest of drawers, money in a brown handbag, go send telegrams to the post office, immediately will open, although the telegraph works 24/7.

I did everything as it was necessary, everywhere everywhere – and I sat in the body of a flatbed truck like no one wanted to die, holding the coffin with my right hand so that it wouldn’t go through the turns, and we loaded it as light as fluff, cold and hard, and it was a pity to leave it alone in the church, but we left it and I did everything as it was necessary, and I see how my mother tells my aunt to rest – Algiukas was the oldest man in the family, and my aunt does not say anything, but his eyes are bright and for some reason he looks at my mother, not at me, and he died only five years later years, already in my second year, after some time both Juozas and I were really the only man in the family.