The long neglected dinner table is dusted off, dragged on its heavy legs into the living room. A plastic cover with garish, stupid flowers is spread at a kite's angle - another cloth, still holding on to its pristine pre-packed folds lays over it. Mismatched bowls of salads, oiled fish, pickled cucumbers and green chillies, cheeses, hunks of black bread all strive for space around the potato-crammed saucepan in the middle. Pyotr's mother shuffles in with a flat bed of bubbling hot pork with onions still baking themselves into curls on top - stenching as brutal as it should - appropriate and ravishing.
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She speaks - her voice now finished quivering for the first time since Pyotr cleaned himself up. Pride sparkles in her tone now.
'Who's for pork then?'
'Pyotr - tell her it looks and smells wonderful and I'd love some.'
'Mum - we'll both have some.'
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The plates fill up with carnage. Must have razed half a farm for this table. It's a necessity of humanity to be corpulent sometimes - fuck the little man - serve me dead pigs and stuffed everything. Break my plate with food.
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Within an hour the plates have been restacked, cleaned off again several times. The bowls and plates littered on the table have claw-holes in the food sitting in them. The remaining pork looks like it's had a second killing. They all rest, faces with buttery smiles swollen across them sit a foot back from their bellies.
'Tell your mother that was fabulous Pyotr.'
'It was good. I feel the best I've felt in weeks - mum we loved it.'
Pyotr stretches forward and plasters a kiss, just like the one he gave the taxi driver, on his mother's cheek. Her eyes glisten at just a perfect temperature as he says 'thank you' softly - not for his friend to hear only - just for her.
'Now - lets get this vodka open. We've got Finnish stuff which is good quality, Ukrainian with chilli - hot and does the job well, or we've got a good Russian table vodka. Which one first Derek?'
'What! Which one rather than which one first perhaps Pyotr?'
'Okay - you're right - the table vodka first.'
Pyotr's 'first' is ripe with teasing defiance. Derek abandons the idea of drinking one bottle readily with a shrug at Pyotr's mother. She doesn't understand though - she's no idea what they are talking about without her son's translation.
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The sounds of Pyotr's voice are a pleasure enough for her. It somehow sounds to her like he is doing it right - speaking well and relaxed. It's good - properly good that he's intelligent.
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'Right - here's the first one. Let's get it down us.'
'To great pork - tell your mother Pyotr - to greatly cooked pork.'
'Come on mum drink with us.'
They angle glasses in unison and rest them on the table within a second of each other. Pyotr leans forward for the bottle to pour more. He stops - rigid ' motion gone. It takes a second.
'Pyotr - are you okay?'
'Son, son - what’s wrong?'
'He's not moving! He's not moving!'
'Pyotr my son - please! Please!'
Derek pats his leg a few times.
'Come on Pyotr!'
Slow, broken - Pyotr ekes out a sentence:
'Derek - I - can - go - to - the - hospital - now - tell - my - mother - call - an - ambulance - this - is - bad.'
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Then it comes, fanfared by a screech - the black flies out, hits the table, such force it knocks over the empty bottle of table vodka. Pyotr's head hits the table and stays there. His mother is already on the phone.
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