It was in November, on a Tuesday, and there was no occasion whatever.
That is, there would have been an occasion in a week, and in a month, and always: there is always something to hand over here, always somebody not managing and somebody whose evening mustn't be spoiled. I knew that, and so I chose a day on which nothing was happening.
Slava left at six. I locked up, turned the sign round and did not put out the light.
"What is it?" Igor asked from behind the partition.
"Come here."
He came out wiping his hands and stopped, because I was standing at the till with the drawer open, and I never open the till in front of him, there's nothing to look at there.
In twelve years he has not once asked how much is in the till. He asks whether it's enough for the rent, and that is enough for him.
I took out the tray and set it on the counter.
Then I got out the paper, unfolded it and laid it in front of him. Then I laid the spool beside it.
"This is the copy of that consent form," I said. "Safonov left it in November last year and asked me to pass it on to you. I didn't pass it on. When you asked whether he'd left anything, I said 'no', and that was a lie. The spool was in your jacket in March, I found it doing the washing and put it here. The copy has been lying here for eleven months. The spool since the spring."
Igor stood looking at the counter.
I had not prepared that speech. That is, I had prepared it, of course, for months, only aloud it came out different: shorter and drier, and there was not a single word in it about why I had done it. It turned out that if you speak in order, there simply isn't room left for the "why".
He did not take the paper at once. In fact he did nothing for about ten seconds, and in that time I managed to think that now, that was that.
"Eleven months," he said.
"Eleven."
He took the paper and began to read, and read a long time, because he reads slowly and everything to the end, including the printed border and the form number.
"'Did not report for work,'" he read aloud.
"There's another paper. I went to the archive in September."
I laid the issue slip beside it.
He read the slip too, and I saw him reach the date and go back to the first paper, and check, and go back again.
"He took it."
"He took it. Four days after signing."
Igor put both papers on the counter, square, one on top of the other, and looked at the spool. He did not touch it.
"And where's this from?"
"I don't know. Things like that turn up for people after a conversation. Yours turned up after Safonov asked about the knife."
I heard how that sounds aloud and added nothing.
"After a conversation," Igor repeated.
"Yes."
"With you?"
He asked it without any preparation, looking at me, and I understood that he was not asking about the order of the world but about his wife.
"No," I said. "Not with me. I did everything, in fact, to make sure there was no conversation."
He was silent a long time.
"You were afraid I'd leave," he said at last.
"Yes."
"The shop?"
"Me."
Igor picked up the spool. He turned it over, looked at the thread, tested the cheek with his nail; he can't help checking wood; and put it back.
"You idiot," he said.
And went to the kitchen to put the kettle on.
I stayed standing at the till with the drawer open. Then I folded the papers up, put them back under the tray, because there is nowhere else, and understood what I was doing, and took them out, and put them on the counter, and set the tray in its place, and locked the till.
We had supper that evening as always. He ate and looked at his phone, and once showed me some nonsense about cars, and I looked.
Nothing more to the point did he say that evening.
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