He waited in the bedroom while I went for bread

I took the cord out of the dresser before I said a word to him. Sunday, just past ten, the fridge empty — a block of butter and half a jar of mustard on the shelf. He was washing the breakfast cups and knew from the sound of the drawer what was coming. The tap went off. He dried his hands and came to the bedroom on his own.

“Lie down. On your stomach. Hands behind your back.”

He lay down. He had nothing on that day but the cage: on Sundays he goes around the flat like that, and it stopped being a discussion a long time ago. I sat beside him, laid one wrist over the other and wound the cord around them — silk, soft, the kind that doesn’t cut into skin but can’t be undone from the inside either. Two turns, the knot to the side so he couldn’t lie on it. A finger under the cord — it slides through. Then the ankles, the same way. He didn’t move, only breathed into the pillow, and I heard the breaths getting slower.

“Call me.”

“Vera.”

“Louder.”

He called so that I walked out to the hallway and checked: I could hear him, through two doors I could hear him. I came back and turned the alarm clock on the nightstand to face him. Twelve minutes past ten.

“One hour. Bread, milk. What else?”

“Apples.”

“Apples.”

I put my hand on the back of his neck and held it there. Hot. The fingers of his tied hands — warm, moving. Phone in my pocket, the key to the cage on its chain under my sweater, the bedroom door left wide open. The front door I locked, two turns.

The shop

It’s an eight-minute walk to the shop, and the whole way I thought about the list. Not about him. That’s how it has to be: picture him on the bed and your feet turn round by themselves, and then the whole hour is worth nothing. He is lying there because I decided he would lie there, and I will come back when I decided I would.

The shop was Sunday-slow. I took bread, milk and apples, then cheese that wasn’t on the list, then joined the queue — the longest one, at the only till that was open. The woman ahead of me was rearranging bags in her trolley, and I watched her hands and pictured his — lying on the small of his back right now, crossed, the silk already starting to itch on the wrist bone. He told me after the first time: the first ten minutes are nothing, then it itches, then you want to turn over, and then comes the part it’s all for.

Twice in that queue I thought about going back without the cheese. I didn’t. An hour is an hour, and he knew that when he lay down.

There was a clock above the till, and I looked at it more than at the belt. Twenty to eleven. The alarm clock on his nightstand says the same thing, and he is looking at it, because there is nothing else to look at.

The key had warmed up on my chest under the sweater. At the till I caught myself touching it through the fabric and took my hand away.

I walked back at an even pace, not fast. At the door of the building I looked at my phone: 10:58. I didn’t call the lift; I walked up to the fourth floor.

Quiet

In the flat the fridge hummed and nothing else. I left the bag on the hallway floor, took off my jacket and went to the bedroom with my shoes still on.

He was lying as I had put him. Cheek in the pillow, red from the pillowcase, hair damp at the temples. His feet were pale and, when I took hold of them, cold. His fingers were not — warm. He had heard me from the hallway; I could tell by his breathing: quick, shallow, as if he were holding something and waiting for permission to let it go.

I didn’t untie him at once. I sat on the edge of the bed and put my hand on the back of his neck, the way I had before leaving. He breathed out into the pillow — long, all the way. Only then did I pull the knot at his ankles, then the one at his wrists. The cord had left pink lines on his skin; I rubbed them with my thumbs.

He didn’t sit up. He turned his head and looked up at me, and the look was heavy, like after sleeping in the heat. Not resentment. Something else, something he has no name for himself, and I’m not going to find one for him.

“I thought you’d be a long time.”

“I could have been.”

That was all we said. I brought water from the kitchen; he took the glass in both hands, and the hands were shaking — not much, but the glass knocked against his teeth. He drank it to the bottom. Then he laid his head in my lap, and I sat like that for ten minutes or so, running my fingers through his hair, listening to the fridge.

“What did you think about?”

“First, that it itched. Then the door. Then I just listened. The fridge. Water in the pipes. Someone on the stairs — I knew it was you by the steps.”

“And?”

“That’s it. After that I didn’t think anything.”

That “didn’t think anything” is what I leave him for. Not a punishment — he hasn’t done anything. An hour in which he can decide nothing except that he is lying there. I see it in him for the rest of the day afterwards: he moves more slowly and doesn’t argue, not even with his eyes.

“Unpack the bag. Cheese in the fridge, wash the apples.”

He got up, and I watched him walk down the hall — naked, caged, pink lines on his wrists — and didn’t follow. I heard the fridge open, the water run over the apples.

Evening

We ate what he had heated up. The cord lay in the dresser drawer, folded in two, the way I always put it. Over dinner he asked only one thing:

“Next Sunday?”

“An hour and a half.”

He nodded and finished his plate. His hands weren’t shaking any more. He took longer over the dishes than usual, and I didn’t hurry him: after that hour he does everything at half speed until he falls asleep, and I like that more than I like the hour itself.

One thing I thought about all evening and will say here: at the door of the building, looking at my phone, what I felt wasn’t pleasure but something close to fear — that behind two doors a man had been lying all that time, and nobody but me knew. It’s the right fear. As long as I have it, I won’t leave him for three hours and won’t forget the phone. When it goes, I’ll stop tying him.

• The first time: twenty minutes, and no further than the kitchen. An hour comes after he has told you himself what happened in those twenty.
• Before you go: he calls your name and you hear it from the hallway. A finger fits under the cord. His fingers are warm.
• The phone goes with you, the bedroom door stays open, and nothing goes in his mouth.
• When you’re back, hand on his neck first, knots second. He needs to know you’re home before his hands are free.
• Ask what he thought about only after the water. Don’t judge the answer — remember it. It tells you how much to give him next time.