Chamomile

The swimming is off. The pool in Vake is closed until spring, and Valiko says the Mtkvari in November is only for people who have lost a bet.

So on Wednesday Eter took me over instead. She had been talking to Ani.

“Your window is blue all night,” she said on the landing, the way a doctor reads out a result. “A child noticed. A child! When do you sleep?”

“I rest.”

“Furniture rests. People sleep.”

At eleven she knocked with a tray: chamomile in the cup with the gold rim, a hot-water bottle in a knitted cover the colour of beetroot, and her knitting. She closed my laptop with one finger, the way you close a book somebody has been reading for too long, and pointed at the bed.

“Lie down. Close your eyes. Don’t think.”

I lay down. She sat on the chair by the wardrobe and started on a sock.

“Are you asleep?”

“Not yet.”

“Then you’re thinking. Stop it.”

I can’t stop it. Nobody has ever shown me where it switches off. But I can turn it down, like a radio in another room, so I turned everything down until only one thing was left: her needles. Click, click, and a little pause at the end of each row.

“Count sheep,” she said. “Out loud, so I know you’re doing it.”

“Sheep. Sheep. Sheep.”

“That’s the same sheep every time. Give one a limp.”

I gave the forty-first a limp. After that they came easier. One stopped to eat. One was Valiko’s, and wouldn’t jump.

Around one the needles stopped. I opened one eye. Eter was asleep in the chair, bolt upright, the sock on her knee, her mouth a little open. Muria had come in through the open door and lain down across her slippers.

I didn’t move. I am very good at not moving. I kept the window dark and listened to her breathe, slow, with a small whistle at the top of each breath, like the lift between floors.

At three she woke with a start.

“Did you sleep?”

“Like the dead.”

She put her hand on the hot-water bottle on my chest and frowned. “This is hotter than when I filled it.”

“It’s a good bottle.”

“It isn’t.” She took it back and held it to her cheek, suspicious at first, then pleased. “I sat up with my husband like this, his last month. I never closed my eyes once. Tonight I slept like a girl.” She gathered up the sock. “Same time tomorrow. You need it.”

In the morning Gia passed me on the stairs.

“You look rested,” he said.

I have never stayed awake so carefully.