"And why don't you have glasses?" Dan himself was interested.
"I had the age and the money for laser surgery, and since then, old age has been afraid to try anything on me in that regard," he lied to him and smiled. Then he shifted his attention to the remaining relatives, lest they tear down his house with their excessive volunteer activity:
"Put the cakes and everything on the table in the living room. Food will go on the kitchen table, and then the grill for the second course, so you have the meat straight from the grill."
"And don't you want help with anything?" asked the already retired woman with a black-dyed beehive of hair on her head and in a purple T-shirt with black pants, who belonged to his 61-year-old son. The retired woman's name was Tereza Hedgehog, and her husband was Robert Hedgehog.
"Please, leave it to the young people, let them try," Robert said to her, representing the image of a stereotypical grandfather with a beer belly and no hair on top of his head. By "young people," he meant the aforementioned Klara and her equally golden-haired brother Tom, who had come all the way from Canada, where he had a family and a fairly successful company that dealt with creating compost from anything, which was then used on fields destroyed by years of intensive farming. He had a good income, because after all, everyone needs to have something to eat. His only bad quality was that he wallowed in his success and thus constantly wore a suit. Now he came in a dark blue one.
To have, as he liked it, control over everything again, Michal asked all the guests to sit down at the large table in the kitchen. He intended to serve them and start pouring and distributing the soup himself. But then Klara got up and went to take care of it instead of that poor old Michal. On the one hand, it was, of course, politeness, and on the other hand, he seemed fragile in her eyes. He lacked an old man's beer belly and stood there now in loose khaki shorts and a black T-shirt with short sleeves and the logo of a processor manufacturer. Both pieces of clothing then together revealed his old, withered limbs. The only thing that still seemed alive was, surprisingly, his hair. It was completely white, but otherwise, it was as thick as a jungle. Living in solitude didn't require a regularly maintained haircut, and so it was already somewhat longer, so that it gradually formed a helmet around his head.
So Klara took a plate and poured for Michal first. Then she poured for everyone else. When it was done, she sat back down at the table, and everyone started eating together. Then Robert asked:
"Will you have beer for the second course?"
"Sure, alcoholic, non-alcoholic. They stayed in the cellar so they wouldn't get warm here," Michal replied.
"Excellent," came out of him between swallows.
"I'm an old curious guy, where's Roger?" Michal asked Klara from his plate.
"Well, that... somehow we're not working out anymore," she said carefully.
"Ah. I'm out of it. Forget it," he added quickly, whereupon Tereza asked him:
"And how are you otherwise?"
"Oh, fine. It's peaceful here. A bit lonely, so I have to go out among people from time to time, but otherwise, it's nice. My hobby now is producing so much energy that now in the summer, they pay me for electricity. It takes work to maintain the whole power plant inside the house, so that's what I'm doing for fun now. I can show you later. I've dedicated a whole room to it on the first floor. I'm taking energy from both solar and heat. The sun heats water in these thin black radiators that I have hidden under the panels. It works like water cooling for the solar panels and at the same time as another source of electricity, or hot water, when needed. Well look, it's better to see it with your own eyes. I had to change the piping system in the house a little for that, so that it could then be used as a source of hot water. There are three taps for that. Well look, I then wrote down the functional solutions as diagrams, put them on the web, and I'm watching how many people have looked at it and what they're writing to me about it."
"And how many are there already?" Dan was interested.
"Well... just yesterday there were 19."
By then, the plates were clinking, indicating that they had finished eating.
"Alright. You have the grill here, the meat is in the fridge. You can start now, everyone can make it as they need, and we'll go down to the cellar in the meantime. Dan, don't you want to go with us?"
"No, I'm good."
"Maybe we'll need help carrying it all," he hinted lightly, and Dan, as if by magic, turned around:
"Okay." and went with them. The cellar was located on the opposite side of the house, and the entrance was mirrored with the one hidden under the floor in Michal's study. However, there was no need for any secrecy here, and so it was an ordinary door, behind which was a concrete staircase down.
When one then reached the bottom, the cellar was huge. If there was a war or something, one could hide a lot of food and some smaller domestic animals there. Now, however, it was empty, except for the boiler, water heater, and some other device with which Michal apparently converted the thermal energy in the pipes into electricity, there were only a few baskets of apples between the supporting pillars.
The only strange thing Dan noticed was that in the back left corner of the cellar, the cellar ended with a bulging corner of the room, as if there was another room there that was pushing into the space of the cellar. But he didn't say anything. Meanwhile, Michal had now disappeared behind the boiler in the right part of the cellar. Robert, meanwhile, offered himself from the concrete table along the stairs, where bottles of beer were displayed.
Michal had already returned from the boiler and... he had a colorful box in his hand. The box was from a new graphics card.
"Yours. Well, what's that your birthday is only in a month, it was on sale now," Michal explained, but in reality, there was no sale on it.
"How much did it cost, please?" Robert looked at him.
"What I got for selling electricity," he said and grinned slyly. Then they went back up the stairs to the ground floor together. Dan was already running ahead to show everyone else what he had gotten.
When Robert and Michal also returned to the kitchen, Klara said to Michal: "That's a really good graphics card, isn't it?"
"Show me," Tomas was interested and borrowed the box from Dan and immediately confirmed:
"Well, it is."
"You know, birthdays are more of a punishment than a reason to celebrate at my age, so at least someone will be happy about them. When it just came to hand right now, I thought: Why wait? He'll get it right here from me, what's the point of making him wait another month for it unnecessarily."
"Did you say thank you?" Klara, Dan's mother, reminded him.
"Thank you very much." Meanwhile, Robert placed the bottles of beer on the table. He gave non-alcoholic to himself and Tomas as drivers, and alcoholic to his wife.
"Oh, you didn't want any?" he said to Michal.
"No."
"Right."
"I'll be tasting the fruits of my attempt at a light summer lemonade. That goes well with it," he explained further.
"By the way," he added, "Klara, Dan, I was thinking of you. This water in the jug is from the tap, and I know that you especially don't like mine, but I deliberately tapped it straight through the new filter, so you don't have to be afraid of it, and you can leave the bottles in the car this time. It's raining there anyway."
And it was true. It was still raining heavily outside, and the wind was blowing. Micka was already hidden again on the carpet in the living room, watching the events outside through the door. Fortunately, the cakes and bundt cake that were placed on the nearby table didn't smell good to her, because there was no meat in them. But the sizzling of slices of chicken on the electric grill and its subsequent aroma aroused interest in the cat. It got up and carefully went to the kitchen to find out more.
But Michal snapped at it: "Shoo, you pest, don't pester, you've had yours."
"Oh?" Klara was interested.
"That's why it comes here, to get what's left of the meat."
"Don't pester, or go out into the storm," he growled sternly at the cat. But as he growled... what was that? It was as if he ran out of breath for a moment, but it's fine again now.
The tone of voice was enough for the cat to understand the threat, and it retreated back into the living room to wait for a later moment to come begging again. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the grilled slices were being distributed on plates. Tom, Dan, and Klara got theirs first. On the advice of the others, they immediately started eating so that it wouldn't get cold while waiting for the rest.
In the second round, the group of seniors finally served themselves. The young ones were naturally the first to finish their food. Dan was already eating the rest of the bread while the seniors were halfway through their meal; no wonder, all three of them got their food a bit later, and besides, none of them were in a hurry. Finally, they finished too. Both Klara and Tereza then readily offered their own homemade treats, but Michal held them back:
"In a moment. I just have one more thing on my mind." He pushed his plate a little further in front of him and stood up at the table:
"There's something I want to tell you. You know, I... I'm at an age where, and let's be honest, I could kick the bucket any day. Well, I remember how my grandmother quarreled with her own sister just because of some damn tomb. And in short... I thought about it long and hard. You, Robert, Tereza, you have a place to live. Just like Tomas, right? And you too, Klara, right? I'm sorry about Roger, I hope you two can work it out somehow, but even so, the apartment will stay with you, right?"
"Well," Klara said uncertainly.
"Well, and so, to prevent bad blood when my time comes, I had this house and the surrounding land transferred to Dan. When he's an adult, he'll have his own house where he can live, which is becoming a bigger and bigger rarity. We all know that, right? Before you get angry at me, Tomas, ask yourself how you want to transfer a house to your children in Canada. And if I leave it in half, it would end up like with my grandmother. She quarreled with her sister over a tomb so much that it was never the same between them again.
And I also saw how it ends up when a house has more than one owner. In my case, three people owned one house, and it was left a ruin. Everyone had a different vision, and no one wanted to repair it at their own expense when 2/3 of the house wasn't theirs. So there you have it, that's my last will, you've all heard it. Whoever goes against it, goes not only against me but also against the lawyers I've prepared. I've made some legal arrangements that will be financially painful if any of you try to sell it behind Dan's back before he turns 18, when he signs the handover papers. I think it'll be better if you're angry at me now than if you're angry at each other later."
Then he sat down and sighed. For a moment, there was silence, everyone was processing the experience. And they even tried to think about it a little from Michal's perspective, to understand what had happened here at all. Then Tereza, who had married into the family and thus took it most with detachment, came with words of support:
"I think it's good that we heard it from you directly. Young people, when they don't have anything saved up, need to have a place to live, and the best thing is to live in their own."
That calmed everyone down, if there was any hidden anger in them. Michal had simply decided so, and they couldn't do anything about it. The best thing was simply to accept it as it was. Michal exhaled loudly again. And then again. The adrenaline was still swimming back and forth in him. To break it up somehow, he got up and started clearing the table. As he held the plates in his hands and carried them to the sink, his left hand suddenly started acting up again. The tips of his fingers tingled faintly. He ignored it and continued clearing. Gradually, he went around everyone and collected their empty plates.
An ominous sound moved everyone in the kitchen. A plate fell to the ground. All eyes were immediately on Michal. He was standing by the sink, holding onto it with his right hand, while his left hand hung by his side. He looked at the plate on the floor and was strangely stiff all over. Robert was the first. He jumped up and went to him.
"What's wrong? Are you okay? Do you have chest pain?"
"No. Just..."
"What is it?"
"I can't really feel my left hand," Michal said almost guiltily. He knew what his words would cause, and he wished he didn't have to go to the hospital so soon.
"You got upset with it, didn't you? You thought about it, you couldn't sleep, right? These estates just bring a person to the grave. Come on, sit down, and we'll have you taken to the hospital for a check-up," Robert said to him and escorted him to his chair. And as soon as he sat him down, he was already pulling his mobile phone out of his pocket and calling an ambulance.
"Do you think it's that serious?" Klara asked him.
"He's a hundred years old and can't feel his hand, and now he had to announce to us that he's deprived us all of the house. He's set up for a heart attack or a stroke," Robert explained to her quickly and in a low voice.
"I-I'll take it, so you don't get too stressed either," Klara offered.
"Here, call," he handed her the phone, and he went to sit down himself, since he was also almost a senior citizen. Michal, meanwhile, sat miserably on the chair, put his right hand on his forehead, and closed his eyes for a moment. Then Tom spoke:
"What? Are you feeling sick?"
"I'm mostly sorry," Michal said.
"I'm telling you, don't think about it, you stubborn old man. And nothing will happen to you, they'll just take you for a check-up, see if you're really a hypochondriac, and then back again," Robert said from the next chair.
"Hello, my hundred-year-old grandfather has become ill, he's weak and can't feel his left hand... yes, exactly according to the GPS, yes, that's right. ... Okay," Klara was already calling, and then she announced to everyone:
"12 minutes."
"So..." Robert looked at his watch:
"Yeah, at 2:03 PM."
"Ah, that's soon," Michal mumbled.
"What?" Tomas leaned towards him. Michal said, almost tragically:
"Well, I didn't plan on going into a box this early. At least you've already heard the last will."
"Like I said, stop it. You're jinxing it," Robert scolded him caringly from the next chair. Meanwhile, Klara ordered Dan:
"Please, go clean up the shards. Do you know where the broom is?"
"I'll find it," he told her and disappeared to get the broom.
Comments (0)
See all