“Ah,” Janushek said.“It hasn’t been easy, then, this homecoming.”
“No,” she said, “it hasn’t.”
He squinted at the book she had in her hand.“Nietzsche?Your taste in reading has undergone a revolution!”
“Yours hasn’t,” she returned.“You donated this one, didn’t you?”
He laughed.“Am I so predictable?”
“Gloriously,” said Violet.She looked doubtfully at the book.“It looks dense.Is it worth the effort?”
Janushek considered this.“Is it worth the effort for the chicken to inquire why the cook is scouring the pot?”
Violet raised her eyebrows.“That’s grim.I think I’ll choose something else.What do you suggest?”
Janushek leaned down and selected a book for her.
“The Wind in the Willows,“ Violet read.“Sounds like the sort of poetry Aunt Emily goes for.”
“It is a novel for children, but also poetry of a kind,” he agreed.“The best character is the bargewoman.”
“I’ll look for her,” said Violet, tucking the book under her arm and making a movement towards the open door, expecting him to move aside for her.
He didn’t.
“Violet,” he said.“You have not signed the book.”
He pointed at a table equipped with an open notebook and jar of pencils.
Violet laughed.“Have you become a rule-follower at last, Janushek?”
“Oh, I have always tried to follow the rules that matter,” he said with a smile.“But neverbecausethey were rules.”
Violet sobered.“I always thought of you as a restless soul, like me.What was it they said of Abraham?That helooked for a better country?You’re not looking anymore, are you?”
He followed her gaze around the room, and then met her eyes again.“Perhaps I just realised that the better country is the one you make, not the one you find.”
Violet lowered her eyes.“What if you make it worse, just by being there?”
Janushek’s voice lowered.“Most of us have days, I think, of believing that.”
“And what do you do, on those days?”
“I cry,” Janushek said simply.
Violet looked at him in alarm.
“If possible, in the company of someone I care for,” he added.“It is preferable.”
“I don’t think Una would thank me for that,” Violet said morosely.
Janushek leaned on the doorframe with a sigh.“I’m sorry if I made it sound too easy, Violet.It is not easy.But it is good.”
“What is?Crying on people?”
“Not running away,” he said.He cocked an eyebrow at her.“Now, stop trying to distract me, and write your name in that book.”
Violet wrote her name in the book.
