Open Hands

The woman at the courtyard gate had a cutting left over. Pavel closed his hand around the coins in his pocket. As a boy he had once held out his palm for a sweet and had the whole row of desks laugh when it was empty.

“It needs water by tonight,” she said. Its little roots were inside a damp scrap of newspaper. He took it upstairs, found a chipped blue cup and poured in half a glass of water. By morning a leaf had lifted clear of the rim.

There was a slip of paper under the red scarf. Pavel unfolded it with the quick, sick feeling that comes before a bill. In his sister’s handwriting it said, ‘Wash cold. It ran all over my good tea towel.’

He read it aloud. Emil laughed so hard his spoon slipped into his mug. Pavel wound the scarf once around his neck and set an extra cup on the table. He kept the slip in the box. It sounded like her even when she was a hundred miles away.

At the top of the tower stairs a brass plate carried Pavel’s name. The rail they had fitted together ended just below it. Going down after dusk, he missed the shallow tread halfway round the turn. Emil caught him by the wrist.

They sat on the step until Pavel’s leg stopped shaking. Lantern light picked out the pale scrape on the plaster. He had once meant to paint it over. Now he rested his thumb there while Emil finished the story he had been telling before the slip.