The Empty Space in the Middle of the Sofa
Once upon a time there were three siblings.
Terezka, Ondřej and the youngest, Šimon.
They were together almost all the time. Sometimes they played beautifully. Sometimes they argued so loudly that Mum would say:
“Judging by the sound, two trains and one dinosaur have just crashed in the children’s room.”
And sometimes they simply got on each other’s nerves in a completely ordinary way.
“Don’t touch that!”
“Move over!”
“He’s looking at me!”
“I’m not looking! I’m just facing that way!”
Siblings, in short.
But one day, one of them went away.
Ondřej.
He was going to be away for a while.
The first day it was almost interesting.
Terezka sat in his place at the table.
“Look! I can sit here!”
Šimon took the block that Ondřej usually kept taking away from him.
“And this one is mine now!”
Nobody told them they were stomping too much.
Nobody took the remote from them.
Nobody said:
“I had that first!”
Things at home were somehow suspiciously easy.
But in the evening, Terezka sat down on the sofa.
Next to her, there was an empty space.
Ondřej’s space.
She looked at it.
And suddenly it didn’t seem wonderful at all that she didn’t have to squeeze in.
“Mum,” she said, “there’s somehow too much room here.”
Mum looked at the sofa.
“There certainly is.”
Šimon didn’t say anything for a while.
Then he brought Ondřej’s pillow and put it in the empty space.
“There.”
“There what?” asked Terezka.
“So it’s not empty.”
The next day they wanted to build a blanket fort.
Terezka held one side.
Šimon held the other.
And the middle kept falling down.
“Ondřej always held it here,” said Terezka.
For a moment it was quiet.
Then Šimon announced:
“Yeah. And he was always terribly bossy about it.”
Terezka started to laugh.
“He was.”
“He’d say: Not like that! Like this! You don’t know how to do it at all!”
Šimon stood up, put his hands on his hips and imitated Ondřej:
“PEOPLE! CONCENTRATE! WE’RE BUILDING A FORT, NOT A POTATO SALAD!”
Terezka laughed so hard that the fort collapsed completely.
And then they laughed even more.
But when the laughter was over, Šimon sat down among the blankets.
“I miss him anyway.”
Terezka nodded.
“Me too.”
“Even though he’s annoying.”
“Even though he’s annoying.”
“Very.”
“Terribly.”
For a while they sat quietly.
And Mum, who had been listening at the door, came and sat down with them.
“Do you know what’s strange about it?” she said.
“What?”
“When you live with someone for a long time, they make a place for themselves not only at the table or on the sofa.”
She pointed to Terezka’s chest.
“They make a place here, too.”
Šimon looked at his T-shirt.
“I don’t have anything there.”
“Not under your T-shirt.”
“Oh.”
“I mean inside. In our lives.”
Terezka thought for a moment.
“And when he goes away, does that hole stay there?”
Mum shook her head.
“It isn’t a hole. It’s more like a little room. His little room inside you. And it stays there even when Ondřej is far away.”
Šimon frowned.
“And does he have a little room with us?”
“Of course.”
“With me too?”
“With you too.”
Šimon thought about it.
“Then I hope it isn’t messy.”
Mum burst out laughing.
“Knowing you all, it certainly is.”
From then on, Terezka and Šimon began to notice something strange.
Ondřej was away.
But at the same time, he was still a little bit everywhere.
When someone said his favourite catchphrase.
When they found his sock under the bed.
When Šimon built a Lego robot and knew immediately what Ondřej would say about it.
“Its head is too small.”
“Exactly,” said Terezka.
And when they went to bed in the evening, Šimon sometimes called out into the dark:
“Good night, Ondřej!”
Once, Terezka laughed at him.
“He can’t hear you.”
Šimon shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter. I need to say it.”
And so from then on, she said it too.
“Good night, Ondřej.”
One evening, Mum found a piece of paper on the table.
On it was drawn an enormous sofa.
On the sofa, three children.
One of them was drawn a little further away, on the other side of the paper.
Between them ran a long red line.
“What’s this?” asked Mum.
Terezka answered:
“That’s us.”
“And the line?”
Šimon made a face as if it were completely obvious.
“That’s the sibling string.”
“I see.”
“It can’t be cut.”
Terezka added:
“Not even when someone is far away.”
Šimon thought for a moment.
“Not even when he’s annoying.”
“Not even when he’s annoying,” Mum agreed.
“Not even when he takes my Lego?”
“Not even then.”
Šimon sighed.
“Then that’s a really, really strong string.”
And it was.
Sometimes it stretched across one room.
Sometimes across the whole town.
Sometimes maybe even further.
But it was always there.
And when the children missed Ondřej, they were no longer so afraid of that sadness.
Because they knew that missing someone is not a sign that something has disappeared.
Sometimes it is exactly the opposite.
It is a sign that someone still matters to us very much.
And so the empty space on the sofa stayed empty for a while longer.
Nobody took it on purpose.
Because it belonged to Ondřej.
And everyone knew that when he came back one day, he would most likely sit there, sprawl across half the sofa and annoy someone within three minutes.
And surprisingly, everyone was rather looking forward to it.
The end.