Room Temperature

“Twenty-one point four,” said Eter, and held the thermometer up to the window, as if the window might disagree.

It had started that morning on the stairs. She looked at me and said I was pale. I said I had always been this colour. “That’s what I mean,” she said, and by noon the whole building knew that Luka was ill.

They came in turns. Valiko brought half a litre of chacha and a clean sock. The chacha was for rubbing on my chest, the sock for my neck afterwards, and none of it was to be drunk, he said, looking at the bottle with real regret. Gia brought a jar of raspberry jam and the advice to sweat. Ani brought a drawing of me in bed, covered in green spots, “so you know what you look like.”

I lay on Eter’s sofa under the heavy blanket with the deer on it and did everything I was told. I drank the tea with jam. I let Valiko rub my chest; the chacha was cold, then warm, though I suspect that part was his hands. I coughed once, carefully, because it seemed rude to have so many visitors and no symptoms.

“Hear that?” said Gia. “Deep.”

Then Eter shook down the old glass thermometer, the one with the silver line, and put it under my arm. “Ten minutes. Don’t talk. Talking brings it down.”

Nobody talked. Muria came in and lay on my feet.

Twenty-one point four.

“That’s not a temperature,” said Valiko. “That’s the weather.”

“My uncle Tengiz had twenty-one,” said Gia. “On the day of his funeral.”

Eter shook it down and put it back. Ten more minutes. Twenty-one point four. On the wall by her calendar hung the other thermometer, the plastic one shaped like a cucumber. It said twenty-one as well, and it looked pleased with itself.

Eter sat down on the arm of the sofa and was quiet for a long time, the way she is quiet before a big decision about soup.

Then she got up. She closed the window. She carried in the oil heater from her bedroom, put it next to the sofa and turned the knob until it would not turn any more. She shut the door and pushed a towel along the bottom of it with her foot.

“Again,” she said.

By seven the room was a bathhouse. Valiko took off his cardigan. Gia went out onto the landing for some air. The corners of Ani’s drawing curled up. Muria moved to the door and lay against the towel with his tongue out.

Eter took the thermometer from under my arm and held it to the lamp.

“Thirty-six point six,” she said, and her whole face let go. “There. You’re well.”

“What did I have?”

“A cold flat,” she said. “Everybody’s got it this week.”