The Kettle That Boils by Itself

Lada was killed, and Marko begged all the gods to bring her back. In the second week after the funeral he walked into the kitchen at the sound of bubbling: the kettle was boiling on the stove, the lid rattling finely, the wall behind the cooker sweating itself to tears. He lifted the lid - the ringing broke off, the water rolled at a full boil. He laid his palm on the burner - cold, the switch at zero. He hadn't put the kettle on himself.

He told himself: you put it on and forgot, grief does that to people. But he stood a long while yet with that lid in his hand, like a hand you're afraid to let go of. The first time the kettle boiled by itself was on that fatal day, under the noise of the rain, twenty minutes before the knock at the door with the news. That time the water boiled until it had all boiled away, down to the dry bottom.

Lada, stepping out into the rain, said from the doorway: "Put the kettle on. I'll be back in twenty minutes." Her last words in this house were about the kettle. That's how people talk when they are sure of their tomorrow. The bus went off the wet road, and those twenty minutes have not ended to this day. I knew them both, having lived behind their wall for years. Their evenings were warm and quiet, each with their own book, sometimes reading a paragraph aloud to the other.

She could tell his mood by the way his cup settled on the table. After the death he did everything by custom - hung the cloth over the mirror himself, and it fell from his hands twice. But the glass of water on the windowsill, set out so the soul could drink, he did not take away even after the ninth day. Once he told me quietly, staring into the emptiness: let it stand, maybe she'll still need to quench her thirst after the road. The water in it never got lower...

The glass stood on, and the apartment began to answer. A month later I started hearing a steady ticking at night through our shared wall. At first I decided Marko had wound one of the clocks, though on the ninth day I had seen for myself: every hand stood motionless. In the morning I called on him; he said the sound wasn't coming from them.

The ticking came from behind the sideboard pushed against the outer wall, where beyond the brick there should have been nothing but the street. He had spent the whole night beside it, because the air there seemed to grow warmer and smelled of baked dough. He remembered that Lada used to bake every Saturday... But since the day of her death no one had turned on the oven in that apartment.

Beyond the first door, two years had passed. Lada was cross that he had bought the wrong tea again. On the windowsill stood a potted plant they had never owned. Marko's hands had aged, the veins standing out plain. By his thumb whitened a scar he had never had before. She asked why he was looking at her as if he'd come from a funeral. He said nothing. Only watched her breathe, be cross - live. When the evening began to lean toward its end, a door opened back in the wall.

Marko stepped out before the clock struck its last stroke. In the morning the kitchen stood ordinary, the sideboard in its place, and in his head lay a whole evening that had never been. That same morning he started a notebook: what's written down, no one can take away. Wiping the tears off the paper, he set down on the first page: "She was cross about the tea. God, how I've missed the way she gets cross."

From then on, every night the next evening opened. The move to a new place. The reconciliation after a bad quarrel. The night at the bedside of Lada's sick mother. The old cat they never managed to take in - in the morning Marko wept for a cat he had never had. There he was the man he was meant to become in that year; he came back his present self, but the memory stayed whole, down to the smell.

There were other people's doors in the corridor too. Most stood locked, but one opened right in front of him. Beyond the threshold an old woman was buttoning a man's shirt with trembling fingers. In the mirror behind their backs the same man was reflected young: sitting in a dark kitchen, deleting messages and laying his phone face down. With each of his traitor's movements the room lost something: first the bed, then the woman's hand on the button.

Marko threw himself at the door, but the threshold would not let him through. From a cracked clock came a voice: - Another's future cannot be lived. Marko backed away into the corridor, sank to his knees and begged for that extinguished evening to be given to him and Lada. The corridor was silent. He no longer knew how to pretend there was plenty of time ahead.

In the evenings that followed he watched Lada too closely, knew where she would set her cup before she did, wept over her grey hair, which in the present would never come. He would not let go of her hand as the evening leaned toward the clock's last stroke. For her, those evenings joined into one unbroken life. She remembered the years between them too, though Marko lived only separate evenings. So in time Lada began to notice something strange.

In the end she made him tell - about the rain, the crash and the corridor. She was silent a long time. Then she asked: - How many evenings do we have left? In the morning Marko stood on my doorstep grey as ash and put the notebook into my hands. He told me the rule: when a door appears in the wall, you must leave before the clock's last stroke. Wait it out - and it will never open again. And he added quietly, through tears: "She knows.

And still, every evening, she sets out two cups." The last entry breaks off mid-word. "We are sixty. A pie with burnt edges, her feet in my lap, and I don't understand what I need a door for, when" - and that is all. In the night I woke at four: the ticking behind the wall beat in time with my pulse. I laid my palm against the wall - warm as a fevered forehead. I knocked. On the other side, someone laughed with Lada's laugh.

I had heard it through that wall for years and could not be mistaken. I did not dare knock a second time. I sat until dawn, listening to the ticking. In the morning I went to Marko's. No one answered. The lock was open, but the door would not move, as if a wall had grown behind it. The locksmith from the third floor tried it with his shoulder, then ran his palm along the doorframe and stepped away without a word. The rescue crew came in through the balcony.

The apartment stood empty. The sideboard was in its place, behind it - an ordinary cold wall. On the table stood two cups... The apartment is up for rent again. The landlady lives in another city, so she left the keys with me - to show the place to anyone interested and see that the taps don't drip. Yesterday a young couple came by. They argued about where to put the wardrobe, laughed that the kitchen was too cramped for two. I saw them out and went back to check the window.

The kettle was boiling on the cold stove. The lid rattled finely, and the switch stood at zero. I froze. Twenty minutes passed. Then the kettle went still. On the table stood two cups. I swear, only a minute before the table had been empty. One cup had a chip by the handle. From the other, steam was still rising. I went out, locked the apartment and turned the key twice in the lock... Going down the stairs, I heard, behind my back, the quiet clink of a teaspoon.