It was a good week.
The hotel on the embankment sent twenty-two pairs of uniform shoes at once, paid in advance. We get orders like that about three times a year, and every time Igor spends two evenings running working out aloud what it will come to, and every time it comes to a little more than he first thought. This time it came to our covering the rent through to February.
He worked it out, then worked it out again, then said we should have charged more, then said no, it was all right.
On Saturday he got up before me, made coffee, put my mug on the side of the table where I sit, and mended my boot, which I had mentioned once in September and not mentioned since. The boot stood by the door, stitched so that you can't see the seam unless you look.
We have Saturdays like that. Quite a lot of them, if you count honestly.
In the morning he also showed me how to sharpen a knife properly, an ordinary kitchen one, because in his opinion I ruin them on the plate. I listened for ten minutes, then said I would sharpen them whichever way suited me, and he was offended for a quarter of an hour and then sharpened both himself.
In the afternoon we went to the market for potatoes and quarrelled on the way about whether to take a whole sack at once or half a sack twice. I said the sack couldn't be carried, he said he'd carry it, and he carried it, and mentioned it for half a day afterwards. The sack now stands on the balcony and I trip over it every time.
In the evening we ate dumplings from the blue packet. Igor said the dough in the blue one is thicker but the meat is more honest and we should buy the blue one after all, and I said there are four more in the red one for the same money. That was the end of our discussion of food.
Then he watched the hockey, and I sat beside him reading, and every few minutes he retold me what I had already seen out of the corner of my eye. That is roughly how every second Saturday goes with us, and I can't remember when it started, and I don't remember our ever agreeing on it.
Around eleven he fell asleep in the armchair, and I didn't wake him for another half hour, because he sleeps well in the armchair and afterwards tosses about in bed.
While Igor was busy with the hotel shoes, I took on the shop, because over a season it becomes impossible to move in it.
I sorted out the shelf of lasts, threw away four empty paint tins, scrubbed the windowsill, carried out three sacks and shifted the shelving half a metre toward the window so that the machine could be reached from two sides. Igor said afterwards it should have been done long ago.
The father's box I pushed under the bench as far as it would go and stacked on top of it the lasts Igor hardly uses and won't let me throw out anyway. It looked tidy and in its place, and to get at the box now you have to take the lasts off first and pull the shelving aside.
Igor never moves anything I have put away. I put things away well.
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