Act One: Unbrewed Tea
Matthew hurriedly fastened the buttons on the cuffs of his plain shirt, then pulled on his dark knitted sweater—the one whose carefully pressed shape had refused to last for years. Time had moved faster today than he had expected, and the clock had already slipped past seven-thirty. He didn't want to spend too long in Lena's spotless, orderly kitchen, but that didn't mean he wanted to be late for work.Matthew moved along the smooth lines of the walls, and as always, he daydreamed, tracing their edges in search of a single line out of place, or even a hairline crack. Perhaps the reason for this was that somewhere deep in his soul, he wished he weren't the only old, disordered image in this excessively perfect house. Matthew's hopeful gaze eventually wandered from the tireless lines of the walls to the lifeless expanse of the matte navy-blue cabinets—identical, seamless rectangles without handles, resembling those space-cube props from senseless films that claimed to portray a distant future. More quietly than a cat's footfall, Matthew reached one of those cubes and, relying on experience, swiftly and delicately pulled out his plain elephant-gray mug, then filled his beloved old pistachio-green enamel kettle with water behind it. He tried to complete his daily tea-making ritual as quickly and as silently as possible.
"You got up late again today."
Lena uttered this sentence in the most wearisome tone imaginable, drawing out each word. She sat behind that perpetually cool white island counter with its gray veins, behind mountains of papers that appeared to belong to her new case file. Holding her simple, long-handled porcelain cup containing her usual white tea with a brown rock sugar stirring stick, she swirled it absently, staring at nowhere in particular. She seemed a harmless, calm presence. But the direction of that seemingly indifferent gaze was something only Matthew could recognize—a gaze fixed with hidden disgust on his enamel kettle.
Matthew stirred his spoon silently in his cup, sinking into his thoughts. He sometimes imagined that the white quartz stone wasn't much different from Lena's gray mandarin-collar shirt. And sometimes in his fantasies, he envisioned Lena as one with that stone, with this house, with its flawless walls—as if the cold scent and the smell of ironing came not from Lena, but from those very walls. As if the walls had pledged their eternal allegiance to their true master. Matthew saw those walls like her fine woolen shirt—neither transparent nor heavy, but like a delicate cloud, with a precision whose boundaries lay beyond his understanding. Sometimes he imagined that his house was among the clouds. And though he lived among clouds, he made every effort to preserve that pistachio-green enamel kettle—an heirloom from his grandmother—because it simply offered him a small proof of being earthly, of living among the living.
While Matthew wandered in his reverie, Lena had finished her herbal tea, gathered her files, and now stood before him. As she re-buttoned his cuffs—which, as usual, he had fastened through the wrong holes—she said: "That kettle doesn't belong in this kitchen, Matthew."
Matthew knew she was right. Lena's electric kettle and stainless steel teapot harmonized far better with the house—like a small modern sculpture, always present on the counter. Lena was a tall woman with short, curly hair and lips perpetually adorned with an exquisite shade of red. Perhaps that was why, when she sat on those high stools behind the island, she made that corner even more striking. For Matthew, even the thought of standing beside that island was agonizing—perhaps because of the full-length mirror beside it. Even if Matthew managed to forget how insignificant he looked next to that island, the mirror would remind him of that truth. That was why the dark walnut dining table with its simple, dignified chairs felt like a safer space to him—and safer still was standing beside that pistachio-green enamel kettle.
As Matthew was putting on his black leather shoes, Lena once again took it upon herself to push back the inevitable silence between them with another simple reminder: "Matthew, why haven't you polished your shoes yet?"
Matthew felt that Lena had grown more accustomed to his non-answers than he himself had. Yet this never prevented her constructive comments from reaching him—and sometimes Matthew felt she didn't actually intend for her comments to reach his ears at all, but merely wanted to repeat those sentences. So when Lena looked at his old, black city bicycle with its small basket, rusty lock, and dim headlight with disgust and asked why he didn't buy himself a new car, Matthew gave his daily response: "Because I don't need one, darling. It's only a twelve-minute ride from here to the faculty." Then he leaned forward to kiss her goodbye, mounted his old bicycle, and rode away from that house among the clouds and that perfect wife, to begin his new day amid earth and stone and rain.
