17
He gets home late.
When he opens the door to the barn, he sees the female curled up, sleeping. He changes her water and replaces her food. She wakes with a start at the sound of the balanced feed hitting the metal bowl. She doesn’t move closer and looks at him in fear.
She needs to be washed, he thinks, but not now, not today. Today he has something more important to do.
He leaves the door of the barn open on his way out. The female follows him slowly. The rope stops her at the entrance.
Back in the house, he goes straight to his son’s room. He picks up the cot and takes it out to the yard. Then he gets the axe and kerosene from the barn. The female is on her feet, watching him.
He stands next to the cot, paralysed in the middle of the star-filled night. The lights in the sky in all their appalling beauty crush him. He goes into the house and opens a bottle of whisky.
Now he’s next to the cot again. There are no tears. He looks at it and takes a sip from the bottle. He starts with the axe, feels a need to destroy the cot. As he breaks it into pieces, he thinks of Leo’s tiny feet in his hands right after he was born.
After that he douses the cot in kerosene and lights a match. He takes another sip. The sky is like an ocean that’s gone still.
He watches the hand-painted drawings disappear. The hugging bear and duck burn, lose their shape, evaporate.
The female is watching him. He sees her there. She seems fascinated by the fire. He goes into the barn and she curls up in fright.
He remains on his feet, swaying. The female trembles. And if he destroys her too? She’s his, he can do whatever he wants. He can kill her, slaughter her, make her suffer. He picks up the axe. Looks at her silently. This female is a problem. He raises the axe. Then he moves closer and cuts the rope.
He goes out and lies down in the grass beneath the silence of the lights in the sky, millions of them, frozen, dead. The sky is made of glass, glass that’s opaque and solid. The moon seems a strange god.
He no longer cares if the female escapes. He no longer cares if Cecilia comes back.
The last thing he sees is the door to the barn and the female, that woman, looking at him. It seems like she’s crying. But there’s no way she understands what’s happening, she doesn’t know what a cot is. She doesn’t know anything.
When only the embers remain, he’s already asleep in the grass.