I sit on one of the two chairs in the living room. The couch belongs to next month's salary plans, along with the writing table. I keep the laptop in my lap. Sitting with a curved back tires me, so I stand up. I want to stand but also stay on the laptop; the best solution seems to be the nightstand, which reaches up to my chest. So, I put the laptop on it, but not before removing the house keys, a bottle of water, and some paracetamol. The new position seems comfortable. Thus, the back pain, which, like every pain, despite possibly starting only a few minutes ago, feels like it has been torturing me for years, will nag me less. The doctor told me I need to move more. Because I cannot go to the park on this rainy Sunday, moving in place is far healthier than slouching on small chairs or lying in bed. My wife is in the kitchen. She is cooking lunch. I can sense her measured movements from here, from the new work table. Soon, after getting lost in what I am trying to do, which, let's admit, is my third attempt at writing a story, I feel her lips on my cheek. As always, they are moist. A sensation that, in the absence of sensuality, would be called a tickle, but in its presence, would be enveloped by the shiver of love, covers my entire back. For a moment, it even eases the pain in my lower back. My wife tries to kiss me again, but now my body stiffens. It refuses to be caught off guard again. However, the stiffness is not enough, as soon as my wife whispers something, my body shivers again. An attentive and curious reader, at this point, would hope that the shiver was not a consequence of the whisper itself but of the words conveyed through it. Unfortunately, I must disappoint this reader. The shiver, which can only be described by the ugly word learned in the distant childhood of northern towns, "kerqethje", came only as a consequence of the whisper. I start to say something, as I do whenever I feel irritation beginning, bubbling up, and suddenly transforming into anger, but I stop myself. However, this restraint does not go unnoticed by my sharp-eyed wife. She notices the nerve playing across my face, mocking it in its effort to break free from the skin; she sees it when it reaches my eyes and appears in the inextinguishable shine of irritation; she sees it in my hand, which, unable to do anything else, moves to my hair and neck, not without leaving some red lines behind. At first, my wife says nothing. Then, as the faint noise of the cooking reaches its boiling point, she heads towards the kitchen, not without leaving some words behind. "Anton, your obsessions are terribly specific." I don't need to ponder those words twice to admit she is right. Even more readily accepted is the pleasure I feel from her choice of words. She doesn't directly tell me my so-called obsessions are trivial; she calls them specific. A terribly delicate word, like a glass that could break if not handled properly; a word that insults me, yet also praises me, although not a compliment a man expects from his wife, calling my obsession also rare. Thus, both trivial and rare. Many trivial things come to mind, almost all of which I would place in the bag of things done more or less by everyone. And in many of them, it is their being done by everyone that makes them trivial. The others, the trivial yet rare ones, are indeed rare. And my wife includes my obsession with whispers in that bag. "I took a break for you, yet you are annoyed." Technically, her silence at lunch says this. It's not heavy, like those who sit uninvited at the table. It's bitter but digestable. Like a lemon. My wife eats quickly and then goes to the bedroom. My punishment is self-evident. Although it's not my turn, I will do the dishes. This is the price of an underappreciated love. The price of hating words, even love, that come through a whisper. In fact, I wouldn't call it outright hate. It's more of an annoyance. But such a deep annoyance that every mechanism inside me, which, after all, is doing its job, stops for a moment and makes on my face that expression a child makes when tasting lemon for the first time. Unfortunately, it's something I can't get over. If free will is something the heavens didn't give us just as an illusion, this so-called obsession is not admitted in the circle of actions that enjoy the right of decision-making. If I were in a better mood, I might dare call it a passion, considering that the root of this word implies the suffering that comes from the bearer's inability to control it. Our attentive reader would surely catch this too: in her reproachful sentence, my wife uses the plural. She doesn't say: your obsession. She says: your obsessions. So, there is more than one. More than whispers. Memory takes me back to childhood. With my mind's eye, I see my grandfather approaching with his heavy step. He places his large hand on my head and strokes my hair for a few moments, asking me what I did that day. Then he kisses me on the cheek, at the top part of my cheekbone, close to my eye, as is his custom, and finally pinches my cheeks with his fingers. The pinch is not strong. Unlike what I've heard about the reputation of his hand, on my cheek, it has always acted gently, like on a glass that could break if not handled properly. Despite this, I feel the same nerve, the same specific annoyance that I feel when my wife whispers. It doesn't matter that it's all happening in my mind, recalling a childhood I would like to visit even for a moment. The very idea of that action awakens in me the devil of specific annoyances. And it distorts my face. And it ignites me so much that I must strive to prevent the flame from coming out. An old friend once told me that precisely because I didn't let it out, it kept happening again. So, my self-restraint was what allowed it to remain alive. Theoretically, he had a point. For a person not to think about sex all the time, he must have sex. Practically, however, it's not quite like that. My self-restraint is not the only countermeasure I've tried against my specific obsessions. It's the only one that allows me to live with them without ruining things around. For example, without yelling at my wife over something that would bring the much-coveted feeling of happiness to anyone else. Or without punching a wall... There aren't many dishes. I can wash them in two minutes. I lift them from the small bread table and place them in the sink. The sponge, which I look for in the upper drawers for a few moments, is nowhere to be found. My search takes much longer than it should for something like a sponge, but all this happens because I don't want to look in the place where I know I will find it: inside the sink. Slimy. Dirty. The last one there was my wife and despite knowing that her heart doesn't quite like petty revenges (I dare not provoke the big ones), a part of me thinks otherwise. A quick search on the internet tells me that the word *bagatelle*, which I first learned from the title of an old Yann Tiersen song, among other things, means: 1. something of little importance 2. a short piece of writing. After washing the dishes, I return to the laptop on the nightstand-table to finish the story I started. In fact, I haven't started it yet. I had an idea at the beginning, but with the emergence of whispers, the pinching of cheeks, and sponges in the sink, it has disappeared. Forgetfulness, my mother used to say, dissolves things of little importance. Unfortunately, not all of them. Not the specific ones. Not those that, when I'm in a good mood, I dare call passions.