6

The hall with the dishwashers was much larger than anything Kosef J could have imagined. It looked like a factory floor due to the large number of appliances lined up in three rows and connected by what looked like conveyor belts. At the moment, only two dishwashers were in operation, the ones used by Rosette and him respectively, yet the noise of the engines, pistons and conveyor belts was already near-deafening.

Rozette had shown him by way of mere gestures, without making use of words, how to start and stop such an appliance and what he needed to do with the individual dishes. Basically, the plates, trays, spoons and knives arrived on a conveyor belt from an entirely different part of the kitchen, a mysterious place where thousands of dishes and items of cutlery had been gathered together. ‘What kind of feast could have possibly taken place in order to leave such a stack of unwashed objects in its wake?’ Kosef J wondered. There was no way so many plates could have been used by the detainees alone. Unless the prison was adjacent to another, much larger prison that he didn’t yet know about.

The pace of work was downright hellish. Each and every item had to be checked for size and placed accordingly into an appropriate drawer. Every so often he’d drop the odd item, but this wasn’t really a problem since absolutely all the dishes were made of plastic.

Every half an hour or so Rozette would leave her workstation and come over to bring Kosef J fresh supplies of detergent.

She wouldn’t smile or be delayed beyond saying ‘well done Mr Kosef’ or ‘you’ve got no idea how much help this is to me.’ Anyway, this was enough for him. What bothered him the most was the hot steam squirting from all the joints of the two mechanical monsters. The steam was so dense at times that Kosef J could barely see a few inches ahead of him. This was just about enough for him to decide whether the next dish should be placed in the drawer for large or for small items.

All of a sudden the child turned up in the midst of this hot, oily and stinking steam, holding a glass in his hand. Kosef J was so astonished that he dropped a few dishes and then stopped altogether. Surprisingly, the conveyor belt slowed down. The child went up to Kosef J and handed him the glass. There was some white liquid in it. ‘Milk perhaps,’ Kosef J thought.

‘Here,’ the child said.

‘Thank you,’ Kosef responded. He knocked the drink back and added: ‘It was good.’

‘Would you like some more?’ the child asked.

‘Later,’ Kosef J said.

Suddenly a terrible rattle could be heard from the direction of the dryer, as if some cogwheels were about to rip these fragile plastic objects apart.

The child started to laugh. So did Kosef J. The child handed him one of those pebbles he had shown him earlier in that pit behind the kitchen.

‘It smells nice,’ the child said.

Kosef J took the pebble, sniffed it and discovered that it did indeed smell incredibly nice. But he didn’t get the chance to ask how a pebble could smell so nice. The child vanished, leaving Kosef J with the pebble in his hand.

Kosef J put the pebble in his pocket and carried on stacking the machine with dirty dishes.

When everything was all done and dusted, Rozette flung the kitchen windows wide open. Outside, there was a soft breeze, milder than the one on Sunday. The sun was about to set. Half the sky had cleared up, but the other half was still overcast by dark and ragged clouds. Kosef J took to heavily breathing in the poplar-scented air.

Rozette brought over some bread, meat and wine. Kosef J couldn’t resist coming to the conclusion while he took a seat at the table that the food finally produced by Rozette was in lieu of both lunch and dinner. The only thing that had started to bother him since he had been freed was this unpredictability of meal times.

He couldn’t recall when he had last seen or, better still, drunk wine. The woman probably wanted to surprise him.

‘So what’s next?’ Rozette inquired after seating herself at the table in order to take a better look at him.

‘What do you mean, what’s next?’ Kosef J shuddered, perplexed.

‘Where will you go?’ she made it clearer.

‘Oh, to town!’ he said.

‘When?’ she asked.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. Then added: ‘Tomorrow I’ll get my clothes back.’

‘I see,’ she nodded and then fell silent again for a while.

He took great pleasure in eating while being watched by her. He took a few sips of wine and said, ‘It’s good.’

‘It’s red,’ she replied.

He was finished with his meat and bread, and now wanted to drink his wine as slowly as possible. The thought that ‘she is fat but pretty’ suddenly crossed Kosef J’s mind, though he immediately felt ashamed for harbouring such thoughts. He cast his eyes down, hoping that Rozette won’t be able to read his mind. But the woman continued as if she had just picked up on his thoughts.

‘This awful steam makes me bloated,’ she said.

Kosef J felt so ashamed that he nearly boiled over. He had the impression that he had been caught in the act, and was seen committing an appalling deed he could never clear his name of.

‘Oh, no, this isn’t what I meant,’ he just about managed to mumble.

‘Excuse me?!’ she reacted, dumbfounded.

‘I didn’t mean this. Please . . . forgive me!’ he lifted his gaze to see whether there were any chances for the woman to forgive him. But Rozette was so flabbergasted that Kosef J no longer knew what to make of all this. They looked at each other in silence, one as baffled as the other.

‘I’m off to lock up,’ she said and Kosef J sighed with relief, without the slightest desire to find out what exactly she wanted to lock up.