Numbers

The cleaning finished, I sit on the freshly changed bed. It’s nice to suspend yourself for a second in existence. Then I look at my hands, dried out by cleaning fluids, at my swollen feet in black slippers. But my body is alive and fills my skin to the edges. I breathe in the smell from the sleeve of my uniform – it smells of tiredness, sweat, life.
I deliberately leave a little of this smell in room 228. I close the door and go to my cubby-hole. I put away my dusters and my box of things and then take off my red and white uniform, and stand for a moment, naked and anonymous. In order for the Change to happen in the other direction, I must put on my ear-rings, my colourful dress, arrange my hair and do my make-up.
When I walk out into the sunlit street, I pass the Scot changing in the entrance. The kilt is lying on the bagpipes, and he’s buttoning up a pair of fashionably torn jeans.
“I knew you were a fake,” I say. He smiles enigmatically and winks at me.
 

Olga Tokarczuk
Nowa Ruda, Poland