Episode 16

The creditor’s obligation sat on my desk like a stone I could not lift. Overdue, they said, the papers yellowing at the edges, the ink fading into a language I once understood but now only felt. Two percent for the poor funds, two percent for the taxes—these numbers had become a mantra, a prayer I whispered into the hollow of my wallet. But the poor’s earnings, I thought, must be preserved, not just in ledger columns but in the hands that held the coins. I remembered a woman in the market, her fingers counting out potatoes for a child, her eyes fixed on a future I could not see. The cash withdrawals and the play—the gambling of hope against the house of necessity—had to establish themselves, to root into something solid. Seven percent, they said, for the avatar of this new economy, a digital ghost that demanded its share. But I wondered if the avatar was me, or the debt, or the lingering scent of rain on the cobblestones of Trakai. I closed the file and listened to the city’s hum, a creditor’s chorus that would not be silenced.