The Old Man

On a cold November morning a beaten down Fiat snaked its way down a dirt road on the coast of the Black Sea. Every so often the car front dipped into a puddle and then bounced back up sprayed with mud. It had rained the night before and the water had hollowed out the ruts and grooves into large craters filled with brownish brew. After much jolting and shaking the little Fiat turned the corner onto a section of smooth asphalt and stopped. A wide metal gate blocked its way. The car stood in front of it with the motor running and when nothing happened after a minute or so it started honking. Finally, a small door on the right flung open and an old man in a faded military coat plodded out. 

“No, no, no,” he said. He eyed the dirt covered Fiat, shook his head and raised his hands defensively in front of him. “I can’t have you drag all this gunk inside, I just swept the yard.”

With a creaking sound the driver’s door opened halfway. 

“What’d you do that for, the seagulls?”

A woman poked her head out as she spoke and grinned at the man. Her face was round and brown like she had been in the sun for too long. The smile exaggerated the fine lines around her mouth and the deeper ones around her eyes. Her hair was collected in a bun and coloured a bright red.   

“One of them is coming tomorrow,” the man said. 

The woman frowned at this new information. 

“In November? Why?”

The man threw his hands up in exasperation. 

“Why? How would I know why? Nobody tells me why. They call and say ‘Ivan, Mr So a’ So is coming, they say, ‘turn the heating on’, they say, ‘make things ready’ and I say ‘ok’, not my business to ask why.”

With one hand he pushed the car door open all the way, and with the other he motioned the woman to come out. 

“Just leave the car here, nobody else is coming today.”

The woman kept frowning but turned off the motor. 

“For all that money they could have fixed the road”, she said. 

The old man grunted. 

“Ha! The road is not even legal, it’s all natural reserve out here, everything outside the gate. How they got to build here at all, I don’t know.”

The woman leaned inside and grabbed a large brown bag from the passenger seat. The leather on the handles had started to crumble and a tiny patch of brown material peeled away and stuck to her palm. Oblivious, the woman swung the bag around her shoulder, stepped out and slammed the door. 

“The bags are heavy,” she said as she walked around the Fiat and opened the booth. “Did you really need five bottles?”

The man came around with her and shrugged.

“Saves a trip to the store.”

“You don’t go anyway,” she said.

The boot was stuffed with several plastic bags with a supermarket logo on their side. The woman picked up two, seemingly heavy ones, and balancing one in each hand waddled towards the door at the side of the metal gate. The old man put his hands on his hips and stared at the rest of the bags. A thin, dark green bottle poked out from one of the bags at the back. The man bent forward, read the label, then rummaged further into the bag until he saw another bottle squeezed between a packet of rice and some potatoes. He straightened out again and rubbed his hands together.

“The other ones are already inside.” 

The man startled at the words and turned around. The woman had come back and stood next to him empty-handed. 

“Yes, yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

He grabbed the bag by its handles, then chose another and started towards the gate. The woman collected the rest and locked the car. 

The door led into a cobblestone courtyard with empty flower beds at its sides. The yard extended into an alleyway which in turn branched off into elevated driveways. Next to each driveway stood a house with huge windows, few walls and a lawn with dry grass. 

Just left of the front door stood a low building, something between a garage and shed. Through the open door one could see a single chair and a table, the two supermarket bags arranged neatly on top of the latter. Presently, the old man placed his load on the floor, walked back and closed and locked the door. The woman paused in the middle of the yard, the bags still weighing her down and surveyed the houses. They were modern and bright, and inside them all summer long she had been cleaning expensive bathrooms and kitchens equipped with weird machinery which nobody used. Although the houses looked the same, there was a hierarchy among them: The closest ones which overlooked the courtyard were on the bottom of that hierarchy, and the ones on the far, with the clear view of the sea, were at the top. And now, when the owners had returned to their city homes they were all empty and silent. 

The woman grasped the handles of the bags tighter and walked through the open door into the small shed. The old man sat at the table with a glas and an opened dark green bottle in front of him. The woman lifted the bags on the table with a sigh and started to unpack them: Rice, noodles, canned goods on a shelf behind the door; cheese, milk and vegetables in a small fridge in the corner. 

“Leave it,” the man said and took a sip from his glas. He swallowed, squeezed his eyes and smacked his lips together to savour the taste. “I’ll do it later.”

The woman ignored him. Once everything was in its place, she pulled a dusty stepladder from under the sink, wiped it down with a cloth, opened it and sat on the top step. It was almost as high as the chair. 

“I thought I could stay a couple of nights,” she said and crossed her arms across her chest. “Keep you company.”

The old man studied her under his brows. She was a short woman, sinewy without much fluff. She wore a padded jacket over an oversized hoodie and loose sweatpants. They didn’t match. He leaned back slightly and spied under the table. Her feet were in thick woolen socks and slippers like she had left in a hurry and hadn’t had time to change.  

“I told you,” he said, not unkindly, “one of them is coming tomorrow.”

She uncrossed her arms and spread her palms across the table. 

“Only tonight then,” she said.

The old man pointed at her feet. 

“You shouldn’t drive in these.”

She just looked at him. Even on the improvised lower seat, her eyes were on the same level as his which was unfamiliar for the old man. He had always been taller. He wondered if it was because they were sitting or because old age makes men smaller. When he couldn’t hold her gaze anymore, he looked down at her hands. They trembled slightly. Her fingernails were chipped and looked dirty, with a reddish-brown mass caked underneath them. The man leaned forward to have a better look but she lifted her hands and placed them under the table. 

He looked at her and it was her turn to look away. The old man lifted an eyebrow. 

“Again?”

She shifted on her seat. 

“It’s only for tonight,” she said. 

The old man took another sip from his glas. This time he didn’t seem to enjoy it as much as before. He stood up, picked up a coffee mug from the sink, rinsed it briefly and brought it to the table. 

“And the kids?”

“My mother has taken them, he won’t harm them there.” 

“And you?”

“If I’m there, he’ll drag me back home.” 

She hesitated. 

“But he’s afraid of you.”

The old man nodded. He poured some liquid from the bottle into the mug and handed it to the woman. Then he refilled his glas and saluted her silently. She returned the gesture and took a sip.  

“Should I sleep in one of the houses?”

He shook his head.

“I’ll get you a spare mattress. It’s too cold to sleep in them glass cages.”

He gulped the rest of the drink and walked out. 

The woman picked up her mug and poured the rest of the liquid in the sink. She wasn’t much of a drinker but hadn’t wanted to insult the old man before. She took in a long breath. She could stay tonight. And tomorrow… tomorrow she would figure out something else.