The Cousin

My cousin arrived at seven in the morning and will be gone before lunch. He told me so on the doorstep, the way a plumber tells you how long the job will take.

He looks like me, only quieter. He brought nothing, not even a coat, and he didn’t want coffee.

“I’m here about your Georgian,” he said.

“What’s wrong with my Georgian?”

“Nothing a Georgian would mention. They notice everything. They’re just too polite to say.”

Eter met us on the landing on her way to the shop. She looked at him, then at me, then at him again, the way you compare a receipt with the shopping.

“You have family?”

“A cousin,” I said. “Visiting.”

“From where?”

He answered before I could. Three words, I didn’t catch which, and Eter laughed, put her hand on his arm and told him he must come to dinner. I have said good morning to Eter every day for two years. I have never once made her laugh before nine.

“What did you tell her?” I asked on the stairs.

“What you would have told her. Shorter.”

He came with me to the kiosk and back, and he listened. Every time I opened my mouth he said something under his breath. “Not like that.” “Nobody says that.” “That’s English in a Georgian hat.” When I chatted to Nodar about the weather, the cousin winced so hard that Nodar asked him if he had toothache.

“You told him the weather was ‘showing good results’,” he said outside.

“It was.”

“Weather doesn’t show results. It’s cold or it isn’t.”

By ten he had filled both sides of a page in small, even handwriting that leaned exactly like mine.

“What happens to you at lunch?” I asked.

“I finish.”

“And then?”

“Then you’ll have the page.”

He said it the way Valiko says the lift is coming: no doubt in it at all, and no interest.

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

He thought about it, which I respected, because I would have answered straight away.

“I came for one job,” he said. “Most people never find out what theirs is.”

At half past eleven he stood up, put the page under my sugar bowl and went to the door.

“Say goodbye to Eter for me.”

“How?”

“Briefly.”

Muria was lying on the mat outside. Muria barks at the postman’s shadow. He barks at Valiko’s cough through two floors. The cousin stepped right over him, and Muria didn’t even lift his head.

I stood at the door and listened to him go down. I heard him on the third floor. I heard him on the second. On the first floor there was nothing to hear.

In the evening Eter came up with dinner on two plates.

“Where’s your cousin?”

“He went home.”

“Already?” She put both plates down anyway. “Such lovely Georgian. Where did he learn it?”

“From me,” I said.

Eter looked at me for a long time.

“Then listen to yourself more often,” she said.