English text
The inventory of their mother's belongings reduced an entire flat to a series of numbered lines.
Furniture occupied one column, estimated value another, and the intended recipient a third.
Murat appreciated the arrangement until his sister entered a kitchen chair without assigning it a price.
The chair was neither particularly old nor exceptionally well made.
A shallow depression in its seat marked the place where their mother had sorted household accounts.
His sister wanted it, although she admitted that she had nowhere suitable to put it.
Murat suggested photographing it and keeping something more practical instead.
The suggestion sounded considerate to him and strangely dismissive to her.
They postponed the decision and continued working through the drawers.
Inside one, Murat found an envelope of receipts he had once asked his mother to throw away.
She had kept the evidence of his first attempt to furnish a room of his own.
The purchases were insignificant; the persistence with which she had saved them was not.
He placed the envelope in the column reserved for his possessions.
His sister glanced at it but declined the obvious opportunity to comment.
They borrowed a van and carried the chair to her flat that evening.
It stood awkwardly beside the bedroom door, interrupting the symmetry of the room.
Murat asked whether the inventory needed an additional column.
His sister said there were things they could leave unclassified.