Saturday, June 25, 2022

the last book I ever read (Andrey Kurkov's Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev, excerpt six)

from Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev by Andrey Kurkov:

Saturday 14 December

My mum complained about my dad, as usual. He broke the headphones again, which he uses to watch television every night. At three this morning, he was watching it with the volume turned as high as it will go. That woke her, and she had it out with him in the living room. She was worried he would wake the neighbours. My brother promised to come round and repair the headphones. Nothing new. Apparently this is not the first time that these headphones, which have a ten-foot lead, have been damaged. During my conversation with my father yesterday, however, I had the impression that his hearing was improving. His deafness is sometimes selective: he hears only what he wants to hear. I remember how he never used to hear the questions my brother and I asked him about his communist beliefs.

We stayed about an hour and a half with Grandma Raya and Grandpa Yura, then we went home. I attempted to get back down to work on my Lithuanian novel, but I didn’t write anything. There is a heaviness in my head that makes my ideas seem as clumsy as a tortoise.



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