Sava's Thirteenth Stroke

At midnight every clock in Sava's house stopped. Except one. The one ticking under his ribs. Sava opened his eyes in the half-dark and understood at once: the ticking was beating inside his chest, in the place where his heart should have been. The old wall clock above the bench had no hands. But it struck thirteen all the same. On the dial, where the last number should have been, a hole gaped black. Sava came closer and looked in.

His shoulders began to tremble when he recognized his own eye in it. It was watching him from inside. Sava rushed to the door. He opened it - and stepped into the very same house again. The same bench. The same candle on the table, lit, yet the wax did not melt. The same clock without hands. The window showed a grey dawn, but the dawn never came. As if the day stood behind the glass and was afraid to come in.

Sava pressed his palm to his chest and felt an empty place under his ribs. Not a wound. Not pain. But a hollowness, as if someone had pulled something living out of him and carefully locked it away in another time. From the clock came a rustle: "Find what you signed away from yourself." A crack opened right in the dial. Sava saw himself young. Not old, not bent, not frightened. But straight-backed, clean-shaven, in a good coat, at a scribe's desk.

Before the young Sava lay the community book and a small bag of coppers collected for the widows and orphans. The young Sava looked at the door for a long time. Then he slowly untied the bag. And hid part of the coins in his pocket. Old Sava screamed. But his voice did not pass through the split in the dial. Only the pen in young Sava's hand scratched across the paper.

So loud, as if it were scraping bare bone. Sava reached his hand into the hole in the clock to tear out the page. His fingers turned black at once. The ink clung to his skin, packed itself under his nails, pulsed, as if it were not ink but someone's congealed blood. Young Sava suddenly raised his head. He looked straight at his old self. He was not frightened. Not surprised. He only smiled that calm smile with which people cover their worst deeds.

And he said: "Quiet. Don't touch it. If I tell the truth, you won't exist. There will only be a thief, a liar, and the empty place where you've been hiding all your life." The crack in the dial closed over. And fresh ink remained on old Sava's fingers. It smelled of iron, raw earth, and the breath of a hungry mouth. The second one opened in a bowl of water. The light reflected on the ceiling. It showed a night yard many years ago.

Oleksa stood at Sava's door. Wet. Frozen through. And quiet, because he already knew the answer. Beside him stood a woman with a child wrapped in an old kerchief. Oleksa knocked not with his fist but with his fingers. Carefully. As if he were ashamed of waking not Sava, but his conscience. "Sava, tell the truth. You know it wasn't me." Behind the door stood young Sava. And said nothing. Old Sava rushed to his own door. But there was no handle anymore. Only a smooth board.

No crack. No way out. Then he heard a light knocking of a child's hand. Barely alive. As if the frozen fingers had no strength left. A new crack tore reality open. In it the child raised its head and looked straight at old Sava. Though they were in different years. In different nights. In different worlds. The child did not beg. It only asked: "Did you hear us, back then?" The water in the bowl behind his back began to tick. Drop by drop. Like a clock.

And every tick beat under Sava's skin, closer and closer to that empty place in his chest. The fourth crack appeared in the mirror. Sava saw the day the community asked about the missing coppers. People stood in the entry hall, took off their caps, shifted from foot to foot. Oleksa kept silent. Because he still believed Sava would tell the truth. Young Sava opened the book. Wet the pen. And wrote down Oleksa's name. In the mirror his face was clean. Almost righteous.

Old Sava tried to shout: "I lied." But what fell from his mouth was not a voice. It was the dry rustle of paper. On the mirror words slowly surfaced, as if traced with a wet finger: "I had no choice." Sava thrashed about the house. But the house was no longer a house. It had become a book that someone was opening at the most terrible pages. In a crack in the clay wall he saw Oleksa's wife at the fair. She carried an empty basket, and he turned away.

In the keyhole - the child who no longer knocked. In the eyes of the icon - his young self, calmly crossing himself after the lie. In the ashes under the stove stirred the entry from the book. All the cracks whispered in his voice: "There was no other way." "I had to." "Everyone does it." The house was shrinking. The walls came closer. As if the whole world were dwindling to the size of a coffin. The space grew tighter. In the corners sat other Savas.

The young one - with clean hands. The one in his prime - with a well-fed face. The old one - with empty eyes. Each held his own truth like a candle. The young one said: "I only took what I needed." The middle one said: "I saved myself. Is that a sin?" The old one whispered: "I could no longer change anything." They did not attack. They did something worse. They persuaded.

He froze, and suddenly he understood: all his life he had lived inside a choir of his own justifications. The clock, which now hung right before his eyes, struck thirteen again. And then the black hole on the dial stirred and pressed close against Sava's eye - so close that he looked into it against his will. Inside lay a small shard. Black, shrivelled, like charred meat.

Sava understood: it was a piece of his soul. The very piece he had signed away from himself the day he put another man's name to his own sin. He reached out his hand. But the shard slid back into the darkness. And then all the Savas in the corners fell silent. For the first time that night it became truly quiet. The clock whispered: "Name it." The walls parted, and he fell to his knees before the clock. At first he wanted to say: "I was afraid."

But the hole in the dial grew wider. He wanted to say: "That's just how it happened." The walls creaked again and moved closer. Then he covered his face with his black fingers and said: "I took what was not mine." The clock ticked. "I lied." Tick. "I let Oleksa perish to save myself." Then all the cracks in the house opened at once. In the clock. In the water. In the door. In the mirror. In the eyes of the icon. In his own chest. His soul came back not as light. As pain.

Pain so strong that for the first time in many years Sava wept not for himself. In the morning people came to Sava's house. They came for the body - he had died the evening before, quietly, in his bed under the icons. The neighbour woman who had watched over him in his last hours had covered the body with old linen. But in the morning Sava was sitting against the wall, dead, but with his eyes open. One hand was pressed to his chest.

Everything that happened that night was neither dream nor vision. It was Sava's soul walking its own loop, looking for a way out in the place where it had once left itself behind. He was looking for a door between worlds. And found the place where he had abandoned himself.