Familiar Touch

For a lady sailing through her eighth decade, Ruth is in excellent shape. With a clear and unmistakably commanding gaze, she scans the kitchen, for behind her rise decades of culinary routine. Pots of intricate shapes, exotic spices, knives unafraid of any bone, menus with a dozen courses — all this variety is an extension of her own nature.

The preparation of breakfast is crowned by the choice of an outfit. At any moment, the trill of the doorbell will sweep through the house, announcing the arrival of her suitor. Steve is much younger than Ruth and infinitely removed from cooking, for architecture is closer to his heart. And yet a spark passes between them, and the charming woman lets her hand linger meaningfully on the guest’s thigh.

The next morning, Ruth wakes not in her own bed but in a hotel room. For the first time in a long while, the sun does not warm her — the windows treacherously face the Pacific Ocean. Her charming acquaintance has also vanished somewhere, and the bed is meant for one, so the circumstances of the previous night, which had promised something wonderful, cause mild confusion.

And yet, despite her bewilderment, Ruth pulls herself together and once again rushes toward new accomplishments. But the hotel restaurant turns out to be strange, as it has no menu and serves everyone the exact same dish. And as an aperitif, guests are given a handful of pills that resemble colorful candy.

Upon returning to her room, Ruth notices a photograph of herself and Steve smiling. But this picture is clearly older than the single day she has known the sad-eyed architect. If the heroine were not confident in herself and had not — heaven forbid — forgotten her signature borscht recipe, one might think her mind was failing her, as happens to many who have lived a long and eventful life.

Days replace one another like the emptiness that takes the place of fallen leaves. The restaurant still doesn’t take orders, the medications shimmer enticingly in the flicker of the lamps, and Steve smiles from the photograph. And though Ruth is stuck in a hotel she barely remembers checking into, her life is quite cozy and orderly. From time to time, she even manages to return to the kitchen and recall the old days.

Yet one detail does not let her rest — for some reason, a doctor regularly visits the hotel, performing examinations and asking strange questions. For example, he asks her to name all the words she knows that start with a certain letter, within a limited amount of time. And some guests, just as elderly as Ruth herself, sometimes shuffle through the hallways in the middle of the night.

The heroine’s restless neighbors resemble weary ghosts. Once, life boiled within them, but now their gaze is clouded, their movements resemble lazily swaying branches, and not a trace remains of their former aspirations. The days differ in nothing — wake up, take medication, three meals, a doctor’s checkup, and bedtime.

Over time, Ruth has no reason left to deny the obvious — she has ended up in a nursing home. But the culprit is not her advanced age, but her memory, thinning like calico in the sun. The clearest example of these gaps is Steve’s recent visit, for he didn’t come for a pleasant chat — he came to help the heroine move into the care facility.

Moreover, in reality he is no suitor, but Ruth’s only son — it’s just that she completely forgot this, as well as her husband’s passing, nearly placing herself in an awkward situation. Though that wouldn’t have become a problem, since the details of that confusion — like dozens of warmer and more important events — would soon dissolve into the depths of her mind.

Ruth, still a spirited and confident woman, finds herself in a terribly vulnerable position. The illness tears her future and past into shreds, while the present is wrapped in a haze of uncertainty. Her mind, suddenly stumbling over every pebble, takes its own owner hostage, and time and space blur under the pressure of cosmic twilight.

Within these contradictions, an astonishing world is born — one devoid of suffering, filled with fleeting joys, and blossoming with the arrival of each day. But for those who retain even a few grains of memory from their former life, it is a cold, frightening whirlpool in which the self struggles helplessly against the unknown.

Perhaps the shuffling wander through hidden hallways — concealed from prying eyes — is the very immortality humanity dreams of. But immortality mocked, disfigured in jest by ancient gods who themselves are on the verge of losing their sanity. Thus, the world Ruth has entered inspires not so much sympathy as it chills the blood in one’s veins.