CHAPTER 6 – Holding One's Breath

That day came in August.

Harjin knew it in the morning. He entered the room; Amaril was lying in her basket, breathing differently. More shallowly. With shorter inhalations and longer pauses before her chest rose again.

Like an engine that is still running, but no longer running smoothly.

He squatted down by the basket.

Amaril did not raise her head.

Harjin ran his finger across the pinna of her ear — soft, beige, lukewarm. Beneath his fingers, the body was warm, but differently than before. A warmth that is inside, but fades on the surface, much like the approach of twilight.

He remained crouching.

Then he stood up and called the veterinarian.

She arrived in an hour and a half.

Harjin didn't spend all that time by the basket. He paced between the room and the kitchen. He made some broth, let it cool, and brought Amaril a bowl. She didn't even sniff it.

Harjin took the bowl away.

Then he returned to the basket.

He sat down on the floor.

He ran his hand over her back—once, slowly. Amaril let out a breath, but didn't open her eyes. The dark eye remained half-closed. The milky one too.

Harjin placed his hand on the edge of the basket and left it there.

He didn't know what to say.

He didn't say anything.

The time had come when words ceased to have meaning. Not because words were few, but because the rest transcended language.

Harjin was silent.

The hand lay on the edge of the basket.

Amaril was breathing.

The vet arrived right on time, just as she had said.

Harjin opened the door for her. She brought a small black bag and followed him into the room. Harjin pointed toward the basket.

The vet squatted down.

She looked at Amaril, lightly running her hand over her back. She pressed her paws. She listened to her chest through a small stethoscope.

Then she straightened up.

She looked at Harjin.

She didn't need to say anything.

Harjin knew.

„You want to hold her on your lap,"

„she said. Yes."

Harjin sat down on the floor. He leaned his back against the edge of the bed and spread his legs slightly apart.

The vet took Amaril out of the basket carefully, one hand under her chest, the other under her hind paws, and placed her on Harjin's lap.

Amaril didn't move. She didn't protest, didn't raise her head. She simply accepted the motion and let herself be carried.

Harjin took her in his arms.

His hands went beneath her body automatically. The left under her chest, the right across her back to her little head, her paws hanging down and trembling slightly.

Harjin pulled her close.

Amaril felt him.

He knew it because she shifted slightly—truly slightly, just a fraction—and rested her chin on Harjin's elbow. She simply rested it there. She was looking for a solid place and she found it.

The veterinarian was preparing things quietly.

Harjin did not look at her.

He looked at Amaril.

On the white fur, the beige spots along the spine, one half-closed dark eye and one milky, almost translucent in the August light coming through the window. Beneath his palm he felt the movement of ribs — up, down, up, down — with a brief hesitation after every exhale.

„Whenever you're ready,” the veterinarian said quietly.

Harjin ran his thumb across Amarila's ear.

Across her back.

Across the beige spot near her neck.

He felt the warmth beneath his palm.

„Yeah,” he said.

He didn't know how he knew.

He knew it the way we know things we cannot explain. With his body. With his hands. With palms that felt the breath and knew when the breath said enough.

The vet stepped closer.

She squatted down beside them.

„"It will be peaceful," she said.

Harjin nodded.

He looked at Amaril.

On the small white body in his palms.

On the ear, on the beige spot, on the milky eye that looked elsewhere. Not blindly. Elsewhere. As always, into a space Harjin could not see.

Then came a whimper.

Just one.

Long, piercing, as if the wind touched a string. Painful, like a cry, like a sentence that has only one word and that word is enough to penetrate deep within.

Harjin held his breath.

Amaril's ribs rose.

Then they stopped rising.

The palms felt it before the head did.

The warmth remained.

The fur remained.

The weight remained in my arms.

But the movement of the ribs stopped, and that pause was not interrupted, did not return, did not continue. It was simply there and remained.

Harjin sat. Hot tears streamed from his eyes.

His hands were beneath the small body, which was still warm and still weighed the same, and he looked at Amarila's ear. At the fine beige hairs on its edge. At how they caught the light in the August sunshine.

The vet said it was over.

Harjin heard the words.

He understood them.

He did not answer.

He sat for a long time.

He didn't know how long. The light in the room had shifted a little. The spruce outside the window cast its shadow elsewhere. The female veterinarian sat quietly beside him and was in no hurry.

Then she stood up and went to the kitchen.

Harjin barely heard her.

He only heard the silence that came in place of breath.

A different silence.

Earlier, there was silence in the apartment because Amaril was sleeping or lying quietly. That silence had a bottom. Beneath it was breath, movement, warmth. It was a peaceful kind of quiet.

Now the silence was bottomless.

Empty in a different way.

After a moment the vet quietly came back and told him what would happen next. Practically and calmly. Harjin listened and nodded. He knew what he wanted. He had known since the summer, since the walks up the hill, since the stone by the Rokytka.

He told her.

The vet left.

Harjin remained sitting on the floor with Amaril in his lap.

Then he slowly carried her to the basket and put her back — onto the beige cushion, under a thick blanket. He covered her paws, her back, her ears.

He ran his hand along the edge of the blanket.

Then he stood up and went to the kitchen window.

The spruce was there.

Motionless.

Green.

Harjin pressed his palm against the glass.

The glass was cold.

Behind the glass was a tree that stood because it was a tree, and trees stand even when everything inside the house changes. It was peaceful and unbearable at the same time. That stillness. That green, dark, old tree holding the darkness at bay, completely unaware of what had changed in the apartment below.

Harjin pulled his hand away.

He went to sit by the table.

He sat there until dusk.

He did nothing.

He just sat.

Once he realized that it was dark in the kitchen and that he had forgotten to turn on the light. He got up, reached for the switch, his hand headed toward the light — and stopped.

Amarila's bowl sat on the tile.

Full.

The broth that Harjin had heated up in the morning and brought over, and Amaril didn't come to have any.

Harjin hesitated with his hand near the light switch.

Then he let it drop.

He walked over to the bowl.

He squatted down.

He looked at the broth.

It was cold.

The fat had settled on the surface in a thin whitish ring. Harjin ran his finger along the edge of the bowl, then took it with both hands and carried it to the kitchen.

He poured it down the sink.

He stood there with the empty bowl in his hand as the water drained away.

He washed it.

The bowl was clean.

Harjin had nowhere to put it, because it always stood on the tile by the wall and now it would stand there too, but empty. He left the bowl on the drainboard.

He lay fully clothed on the bed, lying in the dark. He looked up at the ceiling, where no shadows moved in the still air. The spruce tree outside the window didn't quiver. There was no wind.

It was quiet.

Harjin lay there and counted his breath.

His own.

Only his.

Then he opened his eyes.

He looked at the ceiling.

Then he looked down, toward the bed, toward the edge of the mattress — and Amaril was not there. That was the first thing he realized. The edge of the mattress was empty. Nothing sat there. No white presence. No calm gaze. No wakefulness.

Outside there was air and spruce and Hloubětín and Prague behind it, and in the flat there was a silence that had no bottom.

He got up slowly. He walked to the basket. Amaril was lying there. She lay under the blanket as he had covered her, with her little chin on the pillow. In the morning light she looked like sleep, gently, calmly, with that stillness that had been inherent to her all her life.

Harjin squatted down.

He stayed like that for a moment.

Then he got up and went.

The phone answered automatically.

He called Tarn.

It rang three times.

And for the fourth time.

„Yeah."

Harjin didn't know what to say. He opened his mouth and closed it again.

Then he said:

„Amaril."

Pause.

„"I'll come," Tarn said.

He hung up.

Harjin stood by the window.

Outside it was August. Warm, lazy, with the distant hum of insects in the surrounding gardens and an unmoving spruce tree.

Tarn arrived by car — Harjin didn't know the exact model, silver, practical, with a grease stain on the driver's seat — and came to the door empty-handed. He just came.

Harjin opened the door for him.

Tarn stepped inside, looked at the basket, and then at Harjin.

Harjin squatted down by the basket.

Tarn stood next to him.

They said nothing.

That was how it should be.

After a moment, Tarn said:

„What do you need?"

Harjin thought about it.

„I don't know."

Tarn nodded.

„We'll see."

He stayed.

All this time he had been quiet in the apartment, with minimal movement, without comment. He had brought a toolbox from his car because Harjin had mentioned last week that the birdbath in the garden had a loose leg, and Tarn remembered.

Now he went to fix it.

Harjin sat at the table and looked through the window at the garden.

Tarn worked outside.

The tools clinked quietly.

A screwdriver.

Screw.

Checking motion.

Done.

Tarn came back inside, wiped his hands on a rag, and sat down at the table opposite Harjin.

Harjin had made him some coffee.

They sat.

Then the lady broker arrived. Harjin heard the gate slam and then a knock. He opened the door. She stood there with a bag containing bread, cheese, a tomato, and a jar of homemade compote.

„"I heard," she said. Harjin didn't know how. Some information spreads through houses without words. Across gates, down hallways, through quick glances over the fence, through a change in the air.

The broker handed him the bag.

„"You must eat."

Harjin took her.

The real estate agent looked into the apartment, saw Tarn and nodded at him. They knew each other from somewhere else, or at least it seemed that way. Then she looked at the basket.

„“Do you want me to stay?” she asked.

„“No.”

The real estate agent nodded.

„All right." She glanced around the apartment. "If anything comes up, give me a call."

She left.

Harjin put the bag on the table.

Tarn opened the bread.

They ate.

Then the pet funeral service arrived.

The vet had arranged it in the morning, over the phone. Harjin chose cremation. Afterwards, the ashes to the hill behind the viaduct. Just that, for her to go back to the place where she used to sit and look at the Rokytka.

Two people arrived.

One older, one younger.

Both quiet and precise.

Harjin showed them the basket.

The younger man crouched down and covered Amaril with a cloth—white, soft—and folded the edges under the little pillow.

Harjin stood by the door.

Tarn stood a step behind him.

Then they carried her out.

Tarn placed his hand on Harjin's shoulder.

Just for a moment.

Then he pulled it down.

Harjin stayed by the door until the car disappeared around the street corner.

Then he turned around.

The apartment was so empty.

The basket was in its place.

The blanket in the basket.

The little pillow.

The bowl on the drying rack in the kitchen.

The leash on the hook by the door.

The spruce tree outside the window.

Everything was in its place and everything lacked the body those things belonged to.

Harjin walked over to the basket.

He stopped beside it.

Then he took the blankets — both of them, even the older flannel one — and laid them on the bed. He picked up the basket and carried it to the wall by the radiator, where it always used to stand. He put it back in its place.

The empty basket.

In its place.

Harjin sat down at the table.

Tarn sat opposite him.

He didn't ask.

Harjin ran his hand across the wood of the table — old, with scratches from previous tenants, with a stain near the corner where someone had left a hot mug. Smooth in some places, rough at the edges.

„"I don't know what to do with the basket," he said.

Tarn looked toward the basket.

„"Leave it there."

Harjin nodded.

„Yeah."

They sat on.

After a while, Tarn stood up.

„"I have to."

„Yeah."

Tarn took the keys out of his pocket. He stopped by the door.

„"I'll come tomorrow morning. Or in the afternoon. However you like."

Harjin stared at the table.

„Morning.“

„Fine.“

Tarn went out.

Harjin heard the gate close behind him.

Then silence.

Harjin sat in the apartment.

The spruce tree outside the window.

The basket by the radiator.

The leash on the hook.

Things were in their place, but their place was no longer their place, because the place had existed for their sake and now existed without them.

Harjin got up and went to the kitchen.

He took Amarila's bowl from the dish drainer.

He stood with her by the window.

Then he carried her to the cabinet and closed the door.

The spruce whispered.

Outside, the light was fading.

Harjin went to lie down.

He woke up before three.

He knew that time. Amaril would get up fifteen minutes before three, or around then — and come to the edge of the bed. Harjin opened his eyes and let his hand hang down. Amaril touched it with her little chin. Then she went back to her basket.

That was how it was.

Harjin lay awake at fifteen minutes before three in the morning with his eyes open.

The edge of the mattress was empty.

Nothing came.

Nothing was coming.

He looked at the spot by the bed where Amaril used to sit. She wasn't there. The floor was there, the carpet, gray and a bit worn down.

Nothing else.

He closed his eyes.

It was the moment when the world didn't collapse out loud.

No storm came, no air was forced from his lungs, no window broke. Only Harjin lay in the apartment before three in the morning and in that spot by the bed Amaril was not sitting.

Then he began to cry.

From quiet crying into the pillow, his weeping spread to all corners of the house. Desperate like a dog's howl. He wept in waves, quietly and loudly, quietly again and then choking once more, crying into the pillow that he was left here all alone. His hands on the empty edge of the mattress spoke volumes.

Then he fell asleep from exhaustion.

In the morning, Tarn came.

Harjin opened the door for him still wearing his old t-shirt.

„Coffee?"

„Yeah."

They made coffee.

They sat at the table.

Through the window, a spruce could be seen — morning-lit, in the August light, green and motionless.

„"I want to repaint the door," said Harjin.

Tarn sipped his coffee.

„"You, into gardening?"

„"And paint the hallway." civilisation

Tarn nodded.

„"Fine. What color?"

Harjin thought about it.

„"White."

Tarn stood up and walked to the door. He ran his hand over the wood, the old paint, the small cracks where the paint had chipped off. Then he came back.

„"I'll bring the paint this afternoon."

Harjin nodded.

In the afternoon, Tarn brought paint and brushes.

Harjin moved things away from the door, and Tarn covered the tiles with newspaper. They worked side by side in silence. Harjin took a brush and began to paint over the old layer on the door. The movement was steady, up and down. The paint went over the old grey-green, leaving a clean white behind.

Tarn painted the hallway.

They worked for an hour.

Then a second.

The hallway and the door to the garden were done.

White.

Clean.

Harjin stood in front of them and watched.

The garden in the evening light, the path, the grass, the birdbath with the repaired leg. The spruce in the middle of the garden, old and green.

Then he turned and went back inside.

Tarn was washing brushes.

Harjin sat down at the table.

„The real estate agent said the owner of the house wants me to repaint the apartment door," he said.

Tarn turned away from the sink.

„The decorated ones?"

„Yeah."

Tarn came to the door and looked at it.

The door to the hallway had a decorative dark brown coat of paint — Harjin had painted them two years ago, adding subtle colored patterns along the edges.

„I'll do it," said Harjin.

„Because of the landlord?"

Harjin thought about it.

„No," he said. "For my own sake."

Tarn nodded.

It had been a week.

Harjin was repainting, moving things, shifting furniture. Not all at once. Gradually. A little bit every day. He moved the bookcase away from the window so the light could reach further. He packed Amaril's accessories into a box — and took that box to the trash can.

He left the basket.

Empty, in its place by the radiator.

He didn't know why.

He only knew it was supposed to be there.

Tarn came every day.

Not for the whole day. He came in the morning or the afternoon, worked for a while — fixed a door handle, replaced a seal under the sink — and then left. Harjin made him coffee. They sat. They spoke little.

It was enough.

Harjin's mother came on Thursday.

This time she called ahead. Harjin picked up the phone and heard her hesitate before saying the first sentence.

„Can I come?"

„Yeah," Harjin said.

She came with food. With dumplings and goulash in a container and with bread. Harjin let her in, made tea, and they sat down at the table.

The mother looked towards the basket.

The basket was empty, and the emptiness in it was visible. On the beige cushion was the shape left by a small body lying there repeatedly, a gentle indentation in the center.

The mother let her gaze wander further.

„"You've remodeled the apartment," she said.

„A little."

„"It's brighter."

Harjin sat down.

„Yeah."

Mother placed her hands against the mug.

„How do you sleep?

„Differently.

Silence.

„Harjin.“ Matka se podívala na stůl. „Udělal jsi dobré rozhodnutí.“

Harjin to slyšel.

He knew what she meant. He knew she was saying it to help him.

But it wasn't in the decision.

It was in what came after it.

„"Yeah," he said, because it was the shortest and truest thing.

Mother took the cutlery.

„Let's eat."

They ate.

Then they sat and were silent in that new quiet way — without tension, just tiredly. The mother looked at the spruce outside the window. Harjin looked at the table.

Then mother said:

„You have memories. No one can take that away from you.”

Harjin looked up.

The mother kept looking at the spruce.

„Grandmother said that memories aren't in things. They're in how you learned to see things."

Harjin didn't nod.

But he heard it.

Mother left at six.

Harjin accompanied her to the gate.

There she stopped and turned to him.

She looked at his face — at the tattoos, the bald head, the tired eyes.

„You know when to call,“ she said.

„"I know."

She left.

Harjin stayed by the gate.

Hloubětínská Street was quiet. One neighbor walked past with a dog—a large, calm one—and greeted him. Harjin greeted him back.

 

By the second week he woke up and knew where he was.

It came by itself. One day he opened his eyes and knew: he is in the apartment, in Hloubětín, in bed, outside the window stands a spruce. Amaril is not here.

And that realization stopped being a blow.

It was a fact. A painful fact and a painless fact are still facts. This one was painful. But Harjin knew how to bear it.

He was repainting the apartment door.

Tarn had brought him paint — cream, soft, somewhere between white and beige. Harjin painted slowly, layer by layer. The old pattern beneath the brush vanished gradually. First it was still visible through the coat, then less, then not at all.

He stood in the doorway with a brush in his hand and looked at his work. Still the same wooden frame, the same door, but different to look at.

Harjin ran his hand over a dry spot.

Smooth. Even if not perfect.

Tarn stood behind him.

„Good," he said.

Harjin lowered the brush.

„The homeowner will be satisfied.“

Tarn walked up to the door.

„The homeowner is always satisfied when a job is done.“

Harjin took it as it was.

An affirmation.

He planted a flowerbed in the small garden.

A small one, by the wall where there used to be only hardened soil. He brought wild strawberries from the little woods—a few seedlings—and planted them, added soil and watered them.

Tarn looked at the flowerbed.

„Wild strawberries?"

„"Amaril liked them," Harjin said. "These she didn't get to."

Tarn nodded.

Nothing else.

Exactly as many as was needed.

Harjin went back inside.

He moved the basket to the garden window, right where the morning light fell.

Empty basket in the light.

It was strange.

But it was better than an empty basket in the shade.

Outside, a bird was circling.

Harjin heard it from the kitchen — a brief sound of wings, then landing, then silence. He came to the window.

On the birdbath sat a blackbird. Black, with an orange beak. It took a drink. Then it raised its head, looked at the window — right at Harjin — and flew away.

Harjin stood by the window.

He looked at the spot where the blackbird had been sitting.

The spruce tree.

Pine needles.

Nothing.

The real estate agent came at the end of the week with the papers.

Harjin let her in, made coffee. The agent sat down, spread out the papers and began to talk about extending the lease, about the conditions for next year.

Harjin signed.

Then the agent paused by the repainted door.

„"Nice," she said.

„"Tarn helped."

The real estate agent nodded.

„"The landlord said you repainted together. He was pleased."

Harjin picked up the pen.

„"I was surprised that he was glad."

The real estate agent smiled.

„"He always appreciates when things get done. He doesn't ask much of the tenants. Just that they treat the house like a house."

Harjin swept his gaze across the apartment.

Bílé dveře.

Košík u okna.

A flowerbed outside with little strawberries.

Fountain repaired by Tarn.

„"How is the owner?" he asked.

The broker folded the papers.

„"He's sick. He always was. But he's holding on." She looked through the window at the spruce tree. "He says as long as the spruce stands, he will stand too."

Harjin nodded.

The broker was getting ready to leave.

At the door, she stopped.

„"Harjin."

She turned around.

„"Grief lasts as long as it lasts. It has no timetable."

Harjin heard her.

„"I know."

„„Fine.“ She turned toward the door. „Then everything is in order.“

She left.

Harjin closed the door.

He stood alone in the apartment.

 

August was almost behind him. Harjin walked over to the window. A bird was sitting on a spruce branch. Harjin did not recognize it. Dark, smaller than a blackbird, with a slightly bluish tint to its feathers where the light hit differently. It sat on the branch and looked down—at the flowerbed, the birdbath, the little garden.

Then it took flight.

Over the fence, across the garden, above the roof.

Harjin watched him until he disappeared.

Afterward, he turned away from the window.

And that was when it came.

Like when in an empty room you feel a gust — not a draft, not a wind, just a movement of air — and you don't know where it came from, but you know it came. Harjin was standing by the kitchen window and felt something pulling him toward the stone. Literally like a memory of a place — of a flat, mossy stone on a hillock, of Amaril beside him, of the Rokytka flowing below them, of silver light on the surface. He knew that stone. He knew it under his hand, under his palm passing over the surface, under his finger that once wiped moisture from it. And Harjin felt — not consciously, but clearly — that he was being pulled there.

The spruce whispered.

A light August breeze passed over the pine needles and faded away.

Harjin ran his hand across the windowsill.

Amaril's place.

Empty.

But at that moment, the emptiness shifted slightly. Harjin ran his hand over the glass. Beyond it was a spruce tree, and beyond the spruce the street, and beyond the street Hloubětín, and beyond Hloubětín Prague, and beyond Prague the landscape that went on — across fields, across rivers, across places Harjin did not know.

But he knew the Rokytka.

And the hillock.

And the stone.

And he knew he had to go there.

 

Simply because the silence in the apartment was different now.

Still empty.

But with that slight breeze.

With a movement that came from somewhere else.

Harjin walked away from the window.

He went to the basket.

He squatted down.

He placed both palms on the edge.

He exhaled.

The quiet after the breath.

And somewhere behind him, neither in the apartment nor outside, a light moved.