One Long Moment [short story]

Fingers slowly tapped on the table. Their rhythm told of some kind of independence: as if they did not belong to anyone, as if there was no think tank behind them, which would control them and give them commands - “tap steadily, now faster, and now just stop and make neat movements along the table surface".

Hardly that! There was decisiveness in their every movement, the will was manifested: the pads of the fingers alternately went down and up, the surface of the skin caught in a split second the warmth and roughness of the wood and, between touches, oxygen penetrating into the pores.

The intensification of all these sensations was facilitated by moisture - small droplets of perspiration on the skin of all the same fingers. The day was not too hot, but steaming. And you would like that someone, while you are at the table, would come up to you and douse you with cool water from a basin, and so that you keep sitting, in your clothes, and by inertia you continue drumming with your fingers for a couple of moments. And then it’s as if it dawned on you, so that this cool water just by this unexpectedness would wash away all this alien heat, all this unnaturalness from you, and so that the palms calmly, fully spread over the surface of the table, would move from edge to edge, without fear of getting splinters, they would feel the edges and legs. So that the fingers themselves could feel the play of light and shadow, which so poetically paint pictures on wood.

Closing your eyes, you are chilled, because, although it’s hot, you’re soaked. Water flows down your hands onto the boards - you raise your palms, and stains remain. Gradually, soon they will dry out: evaporate or be absorbed. But first, they will run water over you, wash you.