On Wednesday I gathered up the washing.
In Igor's jacket there was the usual: a bolt, two receipts and a ten-rouble coin, darkened on one side. The same one; I know it, it has been going round our pockets for about three years and never gets spent.
And there was also this.
A flat wooden spool, dark, half the size of a palm, and thread on it. The thread was wound on whole, entirely, in even rows, and had never once been unwound: the end was tucked under the turns the way it comes from the factory.
I took it out and put it on the windowsill, by the coin and the receipts.
Then I took it back.
The wood was smooth, without a single burr and without wear: the cheeks clean, the axle not worn out, on the ends not one dent from fingers. The thread had not faded anywhere, and thread that has lain about always fades on one side. No stamp, no number, no trace of paint.
Nobody's at all.
I stood with it by the machine for about three minutes.
What it means I did not understand. I still don't know. Leather is sewn by hand with such spools, and paper is sewn with the same ones, and at Velichko's workshops they are surely used for something too, and those are three different lives, and not one of them was written on the spool.
Igor was watching television in the room, loudly, as always. From the kitchen I could hear every word, and he couldn't hear me at all.
He probably wouldn't have noticed either. He doesn't notice half of what's in his pockets. That bolt has been in there since the winter.
I shut the machine, set the spin and went to the kitchen.
In the morning I came into the shop first, as always, because I open up.
I took off my coat. Hung up my overall. Turned on the light in the front room but not in the shop, because the light in the shop is Igor's to turn on. Opened the till with the key, took out the change tray and laid the spool on the bottom.
The paper was already lying there, folded in four.
I moved it aside so the spool would lie straight, and lowered the tray into place. The tray sat as it should, without tilting, and when I closed the till nothing clinked.
Then Igor came, turned on the light in the shop, and the day began.
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