Andrei Bitov – “A Stack Of Lavash Like An Ancient Manuscript”

I close my eyes and see this table… Here are the tomatoes, so round, so red, so separate from each other. Here is a lobe of village cheese with the imprint of gauze mesh. Here are onions – long, straight arrows in droplets of water.

Here are the greens – green greens, blue greens, red greens, a whole cart, a whole stack. This is not food – it is food crystals, not a mere combination of elements. This is what God sent…

And a stack of lavash. Like an ancient-ancient manuscript. Lavash is the father of bread, the first bread, the progenitor bread. Flour and water – as I understand it – a crystal of bread. Eternal bread. And here is a wet towel that makes the ever-fresh pages of lavash sigh…

Andrey Bitov, from Aregnaz