CHAPTER 3 – Kbely hangar

The alarm clock didn't ring.

Harjin had been waking up without it ever since Amaril came. His body found the time on its own — five minutes before six, when the light outside the window was just beginning to change color from black to dark gray. Exactly at that moment when the spruce stopped being a dark wall and became a tree again.

He got up slowly.

Amaril was sitting in the basket and looking at him. She wasn't sleeping. Or she stopped sleeping the moment he started moving. Harjin didn't know which one came first. She was just sitting there, upright, with her ears pricked forward, as if every morning were an event that had been awaited.

He squatted down by the basket.

Amaril brought her little chin up to him, sniffed his collarbone, the collar of his t-shirt. Then she leaned into his hand and closed her eyes.

For five seconds.

No more.

Then she opened them again.

Harjin got up and went to the kitchen.

The tiles were cold in the morning, even through his shoes. He turned on the kettle, took a mug — the light green one with the chipped handle — and stood by the window until the water heated up. Beyond the glass was the small garden, a spruce tree, a grey sky. A bird called out from the spruce and fell silent. Harjin didn't know its name, but he recognized its song. A small black creature darted through the branches and vanished.

Amaril came into the kitchen and sat down by her bowl.

Harjin poured her food, added a little warm water, and placed a bowl of water beside it. Amaril waited until he set it at her feet. Then she stepped forward and began to eat.

Slowly.

With pauses.

Harjin returned to his mug and finished his tea standing up.

Then he went to the bathroom, got dressed, and checked whether the water bowl was full. It was a sequence of tasks that had established itself over the weeks, forming the backbone of every morning. Harjin didn't perceive it as a routine, but as the building block of the day.

He stopped by the door.

Amaril stood behind him in her usual spot. Fourteen paws from the threshold, facing Harjin. She was watching him.

"I'll be back in the afternoon," he said.

Amaril blinked.

Harjin picked up his satchel and left.

The journey to Kbely took over forty minutes.

Bus, transfer, a bit of walking. Harjin had been doing that route five times a week long enough to stop perceiving it as a journey and start perceiving it only as the time between home and work. In the morning, it was a transition—from Amaril, from the spruce tree, from the quiet apartment—into a different world.

Harjin stood in the bus and looked out the window. Hloubětín disappeared behind a bend. Then came wider streets, older buildings, followed by an industrial edge where the houses changed from residential to functional—grey, flat, with loading entrances and parking lots covered in oil.

He thought of Amaril as an anchor to which he was tied by a thin but strong rope. As the bus moved on, the rope lengthened, but it did not snap.

At home, she was sleeping. Or sitting on the windowsill. Or walking around the apartment.

Harjin didn't know for sure.

But he knew she was there.

He transferred.

The second bus brought him near Kbely. From there, he walked along a path beside a fence—wire mesh, behind it grass, behind the grass a flat expanse, behind the expanse hangars. Kbely Airport was not large. It was old and precise, with history settled in the walls and the worn asphalt. The civilian part where Harjin worked bordered the military one. The boundary between them was almost invisible, but palpable—a different rhythm, a different strictness in the air.

The hangar was open.

Harjin could tell from a distance just by the light. The doors on one side were slightly ajar, letting a long strip of morning grey fall inside, lying across the concrete floor like cut paper.

He went in. The air in the hangar was different from outside. Thicker. Heavier. Petrol, oil, cold metal, old timber, wood from crates, rubber from gaskets. The scents layered there like in a room where cooking had taken place a thousand times over. Harjin breathed it in, and something inside him quietly flipped. Like switching from one kind of light to another.

He took the coat from the locker, threw it over himself, buttoned it up, and walked toward his machine.

An ultralight, older model, with a fuselage made of aluminum profiles and fabric panels. They nicknamed it Greyboy, even though it was actually dirty white. Harjin had been repairing it for three weeks. The problem was in the auxiliary fuel system. One joint leaked, not enough to be dangerous, but enough to make the flight irresponsible.

He crouched by the wing and reached into his bag for the wrench.

He stayed in that position for a moment—crouched, wrench in hand, eyes on the joint. His fingers ran across the aluminum. The metal was cold and smooth, with tiny scratches from previous work, with a thin layer of oil in the cracks. Harjin ran his thumb across one of the scratches, looking for the exact spot where the pressure was lost.

Then he heard footsteps behind him.

Tarn came from the other side of the hangar. By his machine, the dismantled parts lay on the ground in a row, arranged with such precision as if it were a surgical tray. Tarn was carrying a hose in his hand. He stopped a short distance from Harjin and looked at Grayback.

Harjin did not turn his head.

Tarn bent down, ran his hand along the lower part of the fuselage, and stopped at the seal.

"Here," he said.

One word.

Neither a reprimand nor advice.

Just confirmation of what Harjin himself felt.

Harjin nodded.

Tarn straightened up and walked back to his machine.

Harjin took the key and started working.

Tarn had been in the hangar since morning.

Harjin recognized it by small details: a moved tool box, a different arrangement of fuselage supports, an open cabinet by the wall where Tarn kept his rags. Harjin's arrival changed nothing. Tarn did not stop working, did not look up, did not greet him.

Or he greeted him, but in a way that needed no words.

That was how it went.

Harjin got used to it gradually. At the beginning, when he first came to Kbely, Tarn was simply a man in the hangar. One of the background figures. There were more mechanics here, each at his own machine, each at a different stage of repair. But Tarn's presence was different.

He did not go with the others for lunch to the canteen, where there was noise and crowding by the vending machine. He ate in silence on a crate by the back wall, with a plate from home and a thermos of coffee.

Harjin ate alone too.

He sat down beside him once because the crate next to Tarn was the only one free. Tarn looked at him, nodded, and went on eating.

That's how it started.

Then a lever held in place.

A bolt passed across a quarter of the hangar without a word.

A mug of coffee placed on the crate just when Harjin didn't even have time to realize he wanted one.

Things were handled this way.

Without unnecessary words.

Harjin accepted and returned in kind. He held the sheet metal while Tarn riveted. He lifted a part that was too heavy for one person. He brought a gasket from the storage room when he saw that Tarn had run out.

It was a conversation without words.

Not because there was nothing to say.

Rather because both sides knew when words were needed and when they were not.

The morning dragged on without incident.

Harjin worked on the seal. It was careful, methodical work, without hurry — finding the exact point of the leak, replacing the right part, tightening, checking, checking again. His hands did it on their own, while his mind wandered its own path.

Not far.

Around close things.

Amaril.

Basket.

The way home from work.

He wondered if she was asleep.

At around half-past nine, the apartment was probably quiet. A low light near the floor, the little garden behind the glass, the spruce. Amaril likely on the windowsill or in the basket, depending on where the morning fell. The light reached the kitchen around nine, filtered through the branches. That was when she liked the windowsill best.

Harjin loosened the screw and took a measurement.

The joint sealed only partially. The rest of the pressure was escaping further, into the adjacent profile, which must have been slightly warped. Harjin had felt it under his hand before he even measured it.

Metal had its own language.

You just had to read it.

Tarn walked past.

He slowed down, without stopping, and looked over Harjin's shoulder at the joint. He didn't approve of it, but he didn't question it either. He just looked.

Harjin took a new gasket from the bag on the floor.

He caught it, ran his finger along the edge and made sure it was seated.

It sat.

Beyond the hangar doors, an airplane was landing. Harjin heard the distant hum, shifting from a rising frequency to a descending one—arrival, loss of power, contact with the runway, deceleration. He couldn't see the plane through the doors. He only heard it and felt it in the vibrations of the floor.

He kept working.

The break came at random, as always.

Tarn raised his head from his machine and said:

“I’m going for coffee.”

Harjin straightened up.

“Yeah.”

Tarn left. He returned in a few minutes with two plastic cups, thin-walled, which let the coffee cool down quickly. He handed one to Harjin.

Harjin accepted it.

They both sat down on a crate by the wall.

Harjin took a first sip. The coffee was hot and a little bitter, from a vending machine that churned out the exact same taste regardless of the year or time of day.

Beyond the hangar doors, another aircraft landed. This time lighter, faster.

“Whose Cessna is that behind the fence?” Harjin asked.

“The old man’s.” Tarn drank his coffee and looked at the opposite wall, where old posters hung — aircraft types, technical drawings, one tourist flyer so faded it was unreadable. “It flies as long as it flies.”

Harjin nodded.

Tarn added nothing more.

Nothing more was needed.

Harjin let his gaze wander over Tarn’s hands, which were clasping a plastic mug. They were large, tanned, with grease nested in the creases of his knuckles and under his fingernails. Not just from today’s work. Older, settled, which wouldn’t wash off. That kind of grease gets into the skin. Harjin knew it. It becomes part of the hands just like the lines on the palm.

Tarn’s hands were calm.

Not motionless. Every now and then, Tarn turned the mug, running his thumb along the rim. But their calmness wasn’t in staying still. It was somewhere deeper.

Harjin looked up. Tarn also glanced his way just then, quickly, without intent, and for a moment their eyes met. Tarn turned his gaze back to the wall. Harjin finished his coffee.

He stood up, took his mug and went to put it in the sink behind the counter. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Tarn getting up too and walking back to his machine without a word.

The break had ended without anyone ending it.

At noon, the two of them ate sitting on a crate.

Harjin had bread with quark and a tomato wrapped in paper. He had been preparing it that way ever since opening the fridge in the morning stopped being just about himself. Now it was: Amaril first, then me.

Feed her.

Give water.

Only then myself.

The snack was prepared with Amaril at his feet, always waiting to see if something would fall.

Tarn had a thermos and a container of food that looked homemade. Soup, or a thick broth. Harjin couldn't see clearly.

They ate in silence.

From the other side of the hangar, one of the younger mechanics came over with a phone in his hand and stopped by the door.

"Do you need that number six?"

Tarn looked up.

„No.“

"Then I'll give it to Ondřej."

“Yeah.”

The mechanic disappeared.

Harjin finished his tea from the thermos.

Tarn wiped his hands on a rag, folded it, and put it in his pocket.

“How long have you been traveling with that Graybeard?” he asked.

Harjin thought about it.

"I'd like to have the auxiliary circuit finished by Thursday."

Tarn nodded.

"It has a bent left linkage," he said. "Behind the engine compartment."

Harjin stopped.

"I didn't see that."

„Just a little bit.“ Tarn took the thermos. „But it's in there.“

He stood up and went back to his machine.

Harjin wrapped up the bread paper, walked over to Grayback, and squatted down behind the engine compartment. He reached his hand back over the sheet metal, feeling for the rod.

At first touch, it felt straight.

Almost perfectly.

He moved his hand an inch.

There.

A tiny deviation. A bend so small it got lost in perspective when looked at, but under his fingers it was as clear as a misstep off the path.

Harjin straightened up.

Behind the counter Tarn laid out the components on the floor, quietly, systematically.

Harjin returned to his tools.

In the afternoon the wind came.

The hangar doors opened wider—who had opened them, Harjin didn't know, perhaps one of the mechanics, perhaps the wind itself—and a current of air brought into the hangar the scent of grass and burnt kerosene from the runway. Harjin breathed it in and continued working.

The light changed.

More gray fell inside through the open doors. Not full sun, but spilled, cloudy light with shifting shadows across both the concrete and the hull of the Gray One. Harjin stopped when a shadow passed over the spot where he was working, and continued when the light returned.

His body sought the light on its own.

Around three Tarn arrived.

He said nothing. He pulled a low crate over next to Shag and knelt on it, bringing him level with Harjin's shoulder. He reached across Harjin — not toward him, just across, with a precision that never strayed into foreign space — and held the lever that Harjin needed to push down in order to reach the screw behind it.

Harjin caught the screw.

"Thanks."

Tarn released the lever and stepped back from the machine.

He lingered for a moment longer. Not like a supervisor. More like someone who knows that in two minutes they'll need to be on hand again. Harjin felt him behind his left shoulder.

Nothing more.

But nothing less, either.

Beyond the doors, a vehicle with its lights on drove across the yard.

Tarn left.

Harjin pulled out the bolt, replaced the seal, and put the bolt back. He ran his hand over the joint. He felt how it fit—tight, clean, with no leftover space. A good joint is recognized by the hand before the gauge.

He set down the wrench.

He straightened up, stretched his back, and looked across the hangar.

Tarn was by his machine, working.

Harjin stood for a moment. Tarn ran his hand over the metal plate, checked the joint, took a wrench, held it in place, and turned. Everything in his movement was natural.

Harjin picked up a rag and wiped his hands.

Overnight, the Gray One would rest.

Before leaving, he checked the work log.

He wrote in it every day. Not with austere technique, but specifically, so the next day it would be known exactly where they had left off and what remained. Date, machine, what was done, what remained, whether a part needed to be reordered.

Tarn didn't use a diary.

Harjin didn't know how he remembered things. But he never forgot anything and never worked on the wrong spot. As if he carried the condition of the machines in his head: every joint, every profile, every hour since the last service record.

Harjin wrote down today's progress.

Then he took his bag and went to his locker.

Tarn was still at his machine.

Harjin hesitated by the door.

“Night,” he said.

Tarn didn't turn around. He just raised his hand — a hand, not his head — and let it drop back onto the sheet metal.

Harjin walked out of the hangar.

It was an autumn evening outside. The air was different from the morning. Colder, drier, with the scent of grass that already held something of hay within it, even though nothing was being mown here. Harjin walked along the path by the fence, and a small craft flew over him, low, with a clearly audible engine, too loud for such a lightweight hull. It flew past quickly and disappeared behind the hangars.

Harjin watched him until he disappeared.

Then he cast his eyes down to the road.

He thought of Amaril.

Not whether she was all right. He knew she was.

He thought of her specifically. Of the morning when she watched him by the door. Of the scent against his collarbone. Of the five seconds with her chin in his palm. Of how she then turned and walked to the bowl, as if the entry ritual had ended and the next item on the agenda had begun.

He changed at the bus stop.

The bus was full. Harjin stood holding onto the pole. He looked out the window at the receding houses. The buildings in Hloubětín were different from the ones in Kbely. Older, with more gardens, with gates behind which trees stood. Spruces, lindens, a single horse chestnut around the corner whose fruit lay on the pavement—smooth and fresh chestnuts.

After a moment he transferred a second time.

He was home in twenty minutes.

The spruce was visible from the corner. Just the top jutting out above the fence, dark and motionless in the late afternoon light. Harjin caught sight of it and quickened his pace. Not because he was afraid. Simply because it was the end of that thin line. And beyond it was the apartment. And in the apartment, Amaril.

He stopped by the gate. The little garden was quiet. The grass a little wet, the spruce motionless, the flagstones dark with moisture. No movement.

He opened the gate. He walked over to the apartment, unlocked the door, and went in. The apartment was quiet. Then the click of claws on the tile floor. Amaril was coming from the room. Slowly, with her usual dignity. She stopped a meter away from Harjin and sniffed the air around him. The air of what he had brought back with him from Kbely.

Gasoline. Oil. Cold metal. A different air.

Then she stepped closer. She sniffed his left hand. His right. His forearms. Harjin took off his jacket and Amaril ran her snout over the pockets too. Harjin squatted down. Amaril brought her snout to his face. She sniffed his neck, his facial tattoo — that always interested her, she ran her snout over the lines as if reading with a finger along the lines — and then she took a step back and sat down.

She looked at him. With her dark eye and her light one.

"I was in the hangar," Harjin said. "I was repairing Gray. Tarn helped me with the linkage."

Amaril tilted her head.

"Tarn is a mechanic," Harjin said. "Like me, but different."

It sounded nonsensical. Harjin knew that. But Amaril listened with that slight shift of the head which could be agreement, or simply the movement of an animal readjusting its balance.

Harjin stood up and went to the kitchen. Amaril followed him. He filled her bowl, then washed his hands. The grease from the day came off with warm water and a bit of dish soap, harder from the knuckles, but it came off. He watched the water running down into the sink with a faint greyish tinge and wondered if Tarn washed his hands every day too, or if it simply stuck to him permanently. Probably both.

Outside the window, the spruce tree moved. The wind, light, evening-like. The branches bent, the needles rustled, the shadows slid across the garden tiles.

Amaril came to the door and stopped by the glass. Harjin stepped up to her. They stood side by side for a moment — Harjin by the glass door, Amaril at his feet — and watched the spruce tree rustling in the evening wind. It was quiet and simple. And complete.

Harjin put his hand down. Amaril touched his knuckles with her snout. Then she walked over to her basket and lay down. Harjin stayed by the window.

He thought of the hangar. Of the sheet metal, the joints, the grease on his hands, Tarn's hand holding the control rod without a word. He thought of the journey there and back, of the thin line between two worlds. Of the air he had brought home with him.

Outside, the spruce tree rustled.

Amaril breathed by the radiator.

Harjin turned away from the window.

He took an old linen rag and threw it over the door latch. An everyday gesture, for no reason, simply because that was how it was. Then he went to the kitchen to prepare dinner.

It was a day like any other.

And yet he was whole.

The next morning was different in only one thing.

Harjin went to the basket before he even got dressed. He sat down on the floor and Amaril rested her head on his knee—not in his palm, but on his knee, with a lightness that does not burden, yet is simply there.

Harjin ran his hand along her back.

The fur was warm and smooth, with beige patches along the spine.

He sat like that for a moment.

Then he got up, dressed, and left.

In the hallway, he stopped and listened.

There was silence behind the door.

He left.

Tarn was in the hangar before Harjin.

When Harjin came for the keys, Tarn was already working. He had the fabric across his knee and a dismantled part in his hand, which he was slowly wiping with a rag. He looked up when Harjin entered, nodded, and returned to work.

Harjin took his coat from the locker.

He went to see Šedivák.

The auxiliary circuit was half-repaired from the previous day. All that was left was to tighten the joint on the other side and check the flow. Two hours' work. Maybe three.

Harjin knelt down and reached for the wrench.

The air in the hangar was the same as always — gasoline, oil, metal, concrete. Fresh air from the tarmac was coming in through the doors, but only for a moment. Then it mixed with the hangar air and ceased to be distinguishable.

Tarn came around ten.

Not to Šedivák. He walked past, stopped by the wall, took a new bag of seals from the supply and walked back. On his way through, he tossed one bag onto the crate next to Harjin.

Harjin looked up.

Tarn had his back to him and was walking toward his machine.

Harjin picked up the bag.

The right size.

He went back to work.

At noon they both ate on the crate again.

This time Harjin talked more and Tarn listened in a way that was pleasant precisely because it did not require a continuation.

"Amaril had a pine needle behind her ear this morning," Harjin said. "From a spruce. I don't know how it got there."

Tarn drank from his thermos.

"Dogs go to things that are close to them," he said after a while.

Harjin thought about it.

"Maybe." He shrugged. "Or it's just a spruce and she sits under it."

"Or both," Tarn said.

Harjin ate his bread.

An airplane landed beyond the gates. This time a larger one, with a deeper engine sound that penetrated the hangar and for a moment overshadowed everything else.

Tarn waited until the engine fell silent.

"How old is she?"

Harjin stopped with the bread in his hand.

"I don't know exactly. Small." (or "Young.")

Tarn nodded.

He wasn't satisfied with that as a complete answer, but he didn't ask another question. He just nodded. And that nod meant: I understand you don't want to talk about it.

Or perhaps: I understand that you don't even know.

Harjin didn't know what Tarn was exactly thinking.

There was no need to know.

They ate on.

At four, Harjin finished the additional circuit.

He ran his hand over the entire route — from the source through the two hoses, through the partition, across the new joint all the way to the output. Everything fit. He ran it over a second time, more slowly. No leftover space, no loose spot, no fold that would suggest a future problem.

The Gray One was repaired.

Harjin stepped back from the machine.

He raised his hands, interlocked his fingers, stretched his arms out in front of him, and cracked his wrists. Then he took a rag and wiped the oil from his palms. He looked at his hands the way he used to do after finishing a job — a quick glance, a check to see if everything was right, if a screw or a part hadn't escaped somewhere.

It sat.

He picked up the journal and wrote down the final entries.

Tarn approached quietly, stood beside Graybeard, and swept his gaze over the repaired spot. He didn't touch it. He just looked, with his hands behind his back and with an expression that wasn't inquiring, but stating a fact.

„Done?“

“Yeah.”

Tarn nodded.

He turned around and walked back.

Harjin folded the diary into his bag and took off his cloak.

Beyond the gates, the sky was gray and calm, with a single layer of clouds low on the horizon. Where the sun was sinking, they were tinted red-orange.

Harjin walked over to the door.

“Night,” he said.

Tarn raised his hand.

Harjin stepped outside.

On his way home, a train overtook him.

Or rather, the bus ran parallel to the tracks for a moment and the train crossed faster, so Harjin watched the carriages from the window as they disappeared around the bend — grey metal, red stripes, windows with light inside, silhouettes of people.

The train was gone in thirty seconds.

Harjin looked after it.

He got off in Hloubětín and walked.

The linden tree on the corner dropped a leaf. One, golden, landed on his jacket shoulder and stayed there because Harjin didn't brush it off. He carried it all the way to the gate, where a gust of wind from the street blew it away.

The gate closed behind him.

The small garden.

The spruce tree.

Tiles.

Key in the lock.

The apartment accepted him the way it accepts warm air—unobtrusively, without a gesture, simply as a change of environment that you notice the moment you step inside.

Amaril came from the bed.

Not immediately. She gave him time to enter, close the door, put down his bag. Only then did she come. She sniffed his boots, his jacket, his sleeve. Then higher, his hands, his palms, her muzzle passing over his fingers.

She smelled of oil and grease. She stopped. She sniffed again, more carefully. As if she were assembling that scent into an image she remembered. Hangar. Metal. Work. Day.

Harjin crouched down. Amaril placed her chin on his shoulder. Lightly. Harjin held her. Two seconds. Then Amaril stepped back, turned, and walked toward her basket.

Harjin watched her go. A small white body across the carpet, claws clicking against the tile by the threshold of the room. She sat down in the basket and turned to face him. She looked at him. With a dark eye. With a light eye.

Harjin stood up. He went to the kitchen, washed his hands — warm water, dish soap, grease from the day — and wiped them on a dish towel.

Outside the window stood a spruce. Immobile. In the dusk of early evening, more silhouette than tree. A dark outline against the lighter sky, its branches almost touching the window.

Harjin put the water on for tea.

He waited.

The room was quiet. Amaril in the basket, Harjin in the kitchen, the spruce outside the window. Somewhere far away — beyond the streets, beyond the railway tracks, beyond the airport — was a hangar. And in the hangar, Tarn, probably still by the machine, with calm hands and a way of working that needed no one else, yet accepted someone when they came.

The kettle whistled. Harjin poured the water into a mug.

He came with the mug to the garden door and stood by it. The spruce rustled. Not loudly. Gently, with a gust of wind through the needles, slowly and wearily like the breath of a man sleeping deeply.

Claws clicked behind Harjin.

Amaril came to the door and sat down beside his foot.

She looked out.

Harjin drank tea.

Amaril was sitting.

The spruce whispered.

The day was drawing to a close slowly. The hangar was behind him and home was here. Between them lay a piece of the world that Harjin walked back and forth across. His hands still smelled of work even after washing. Amaril knew it. She sniffed them and filed the day away in her memory, scent by scent, just as Harjin filed the days one after another.

Auxiliary circuit.

Tarno's hand on the lever.

The bolt tightened to the correct torque.

A cup of coffee from the vending machine.

The things from which a day is built.

The things from which a rhythm is built.

Harjin finished his tea and returned the mug to the kitchen.

Amaril lingered by the door for a moment.

Then she followed him.

As always.