Tuesday Morning

He walked past the woodcutter’s makeshift workshop, briefly closing his eyes to fully absorb the warm smell of freshly cut plywood against the crisp charred cinnamon effused by the heavy oak. The sound of the machinery did not disconcert him the way it did his sister. On the contrary, it was a strange sort of comfort to him. An assurance that it was a day just like any other. Nothing extraordinary would happen today. There was no need to worry, no need to think. It was a day like any other. He would not turn grey today.

He stopped for a moment, pretending to look both ways before crossing, though he knew the street’s beats better than his own heart’s. He just wanted an excuse to breathe in the planks’ refreshing simplicity once more, to allow the invigorating vibrations of the saws one more chance to rouse his soul. He counted to five, and sure enough, on the fifth beat the red Daewoo pick-up loaded with vegetation rumbled passed. The street was his timepiece. The woodcutter’s his gauge to the day’s mood.

He sighed and half-skipped across the broken asphalt. He did not feel any differently. The sun was blazing in the early morning smog in typical March fashion, brazenly evicting the wisps of winter the city coveted. The sandstorms would begin soon. He gazed at the austere blue sky, wondering which palette it would choose this year. Would it select last year’s abundance of oranges and pomegranates or revert to the safe saffrons of more conventional seasons? Or would it decide to turn the city beige, blinding all inhabitants in the endless yards of fabric as it had in 1998, frightening all the children. The factory warehouse behind him will probably fade further. Although he couldn’t really imagine how much of a change could happen to walls already indiscernible from desert dunes. Had it not been for the handful of terra cotta shingles remaining on the disintegrating roof, no one would even remember that solitary memento of Soviet days of yore.

The bakery was approaching; the air was becoming grittier. So much flour lost because of its capricious nature, always duped by the breeze’s transparent seductions. It was only destined to be dropped at the first hint of tedium, to be perpetually trampled on.

The loaves were of pitiful size and quality, but they would have to do. They were all he could afford, especially with inflation taking its toll on even subsidized bread prices. He was getting less and less for his painfully pursued pennies by the day, the hour. In some cases even the minute he thought, recalling how the price of tomatoes shot up five piastres as he stood in front of the grocer, mouth agape. His brow furrowed at the thought of arriving to the point where even his measly loaves would become a luxury. They already were in a sense. Those miniscule slabs of plaster and gravel, barely large enough to cover his palm.

He spat and banished the thought as he surveyed the mob he would have to shoulder through. It was a day like any other. He refused to grow grey today.