Mr. Dostovelov’s family owned a teapot--not a samovar, a teapot--brought from their friends in Sweden, their civilized friends. They named the teapot Gustav, for the father of the Swedes because it was round and shrieked when upset.
I loved that teapot. As a servant in the house it was my duty to care for the fine dishware, and Gustav was the finest. The delicacy of it’s translucent bluish walls; the curvature of its snout--it spoke to me. In my free time, I began to sit staring at the teapot waiting for something. I don’t know what I expected but I was not unsatisfied.
It began with the fish that Katarina brought in, Katarina the cook. The fish spasmed and jerked as if struck by lightning. (I know how it looks because that was how Gavril Dostovelov died, my master’s brother. I was there--it was the day we brought the teapot back into our summer house. He was sitting on the river bank, and out of a blue sky the sceptre of the gods struck him down. There were trees all around, but the trees were untouched. Mr. Dostovelov called the lightning. Come to think of it, maybe it didn’t start with the fish, but with Mr. Dostovelov.) We would have eaten it, but when we slit it open, we found that the bones had melted into the flesh, an unbreakable calcified shell.
Then there was the day it rained salt. Not for long, only a few moments, but it was a miracle nonetheless. Katarina was thrilled--our salt was near spent, and it was a far ways to the nearest market. But the mistress cried when she saw it and heard it crunch under her heels. Sonya Dostovelova stopped boiling water in Gustav. She said she preferred the samovar’s water, but we knew it was her superstitious old mind cursing the teapot, as if Gustav--well maybe he did.
Despite the happenings, I still loved that teapot. As I caressed it in the bleak hours of night and early morning, it saddened me to think of how lonely it was, sitting in disuse. I began to dream of it, strange dreams, where amid a deluge of salt, I would hear wonderful voices speaking to me through it’s whistle, telling me of a life in bright lights amid the stars, a life gleaming metal and brilliant glass, a life with mystical glittering angels who knew me by name. It was a life where I was no servant, but treasured, an artifact as precious as Gustav was to me. The whistles called me and called me and told me that I had to hear Gustav again.
One night, unable to withstand the urge I set Gustav on the stove and the water began to boil. As I heard the steam swell in Gustav’s throat I looked up and found that a ray of light had pierced the roof and was beaming down on me, a light brighter and warmer than that of the moon, and I pressed my hands on Gustav as Gustav emitted a sonorous whistle.
I heard them call me. When I answered, it was in a new wavelength, and aware of a buzzing in my cells like that which would be received by an injection of Eznepephoral 23.3, I realized that I didn’t quite understand the function of the needle in my brain, but understood very much the future of electricity and salt beneath the coming conditions and that I wished vaguely that I could warn my mother. But this desire was not enough to resist the Paradise I saw.
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