He gazed out of the window. In the room facing his, he saw the woman with yellowish eyes. They were yellowish like amber, the shades inside them creating erotic designs. There was a white and thin curtain at her window. When the light was on, the cloth looked orange and a perfume would come from the night as if it was coming from her glassy, colored eyes.

He would  wait for her to look at him, with those eyes composed with liquids. She finally turned to him, her look tinging the rain that has started to fall.

He opened the window. He wanted to ask for her name. But she turned off the light and disappeared into the darkness of her room.

There was now only the damp smell of concrete brought by the wind filling the void between them while her eyes remained yellowish for a stranger.  

   

She was sitting at the garden. The grass was still. A smell of summer in the air. A boy and  a girl were playing hide and seek around a white marblestone crafted fountain. The girl was wearing a pink T shirt matching her sneakers. The boy was all dressed in navy blue. The girl seemed upset because she had fell down. The boy was staring at her with clueless eyes and half- open lips. She could hear their muffled voices and the soft sound of the water against the marblestone. 

She was bored with the ordinariness of life in the countryside. She would like to be on the beach. She closed her eyes and framed this moment. The sand was still. A smell of summer  in the air.  There was a boy and a girl playing hide and seek around a sand castle. The girl was upset because she had fell down. She could hear their muffled voices and the soft sound of the waves against the shore. 

She opened her eyes, lit a cigarette. She was smiling now, listening to the soft sound of the water against the marblestone,  watching a boy and a girl play hide and seek and a black and yellow butterfly flutter around them.

the ghost of himself

Even shadows can walk, he thought, when he heard footsteps outside the house. He got up and reached the window. A woman was walking away, her black dress wrapping her as the fuzz of a nocturnal bird. He recognized his neighbor´s figure. In the darkness, the grayish trees coexisted with the autumnal decayed green already dead by the chill. The branches were howling in front of the window like delicate forms of ballerinas dancing in a dim light. But they were no more than faceless shapes in the night. And when he approached the candle to the window pane, he could only see the sight of his face reflected in it – an observed man, he thought, imagining that, perhaps, he had found the ghost of himself. And nothing from outside could touch him. He touched the glass, it was warmless and the outline of his face was only a transparent, cold and flat surface, with no bones to support it. Still, he existed. And now, the ghost of a living man was blurring his vision so that he could not see what was happening outside or what the woman was doing. His reflection mixed up with her shadow walking among the trees. And everything blended in indistinct, colorless and nocturnal images. He thought about the way those images overlapped and pictured that he and that woman could be making love in a clearing nearby without him tasting her lips or sensing the smell of her skin. And the ghost of himself could be in that room, staring at him, and at the same time, taking another shape whatever to lie down with that woman. But when he extinguished the candle, the ghost of himself vanished, entered his body, abandoning that irrational act of love.

He kept the memories of his lovers deep down only to see them starve to death. But he was now in love with his violin, perched on the corner of the room, motionless, untouched. He worshipped her every curve as if they were lines on a coloured map where songs were cloistered in multilingual tunes. He cherished the texture of her skin in a frivolous yet naive way. He was a musician who didn´t want to touch his muse in fear of stiffling her voice with his bare hands; her inert face staring at the ceiling with blank eyes.

He had been a murderer. He was a musician now.

This was a state of comfort. A supremacy he believed he had achieved.

She was sitting at the garden. The grass was still. A smell of summer in the air. A boy and  a girl were playing hide and seek around a white marblestone crafted fountain. The girl was wearing a pink T shirt matching her sneakers. The boy was all dressed in navy blue. The girl seemed upset because she had fell down. The boy was staring at her with clueless eyes and half- open lips. She could hear their muffled voices and the soft sound of the water against the marblestone. 

She was bored with the ordinariness of life in the countryside. She would like to be on the beach. She closed her eyes and framed this moment. The sand was still. A smell of summer  in the air.  There was a boy and a girl playing hide and seek around a sand castle. The girl was upset because she had fell down. She could hear their muffled voices and the soft sound of the waves against the shore. 

She opened her eyes, lit a cigarette. She was smiling now, listening to the soft sound of the water against the marblestone,  watching a boy and a girl play hide and seek and a black and yellow butterfly flutter around them.

When the clouds moved away, the gray of the pebbles rose up to her head, the green of the moisture became darker, the marks of rain appearing right under her eyes were more visible. He noticed the shadow of her face bent on the ground, the dark corners the sun had never reached. He touched her breasts, they were warm, although they had lived for centuries without love. And he imagined why the sculptor had made her that way, looking down, the centuries reduced to pebbles, to the leaves running in the autumn and at the men’s feet. She had never seen a man’s face; had never had a lover. 

The Gypsy

Anne was only ten years old when she was presented with the violin. She was homeless, spoke a little of several languages or a combination of them; dressed like the gypsy women in shades of yellow and red, having never wished other colours. She knew the black colar as a mourning sign, had once seen a woman dressed this way – a black lace veil covering her head and a rosary round her neck – a crow contrasting with the ochre coloured houses and the deep blue sky of Rome.

Anne owed nothing, just a golden bracelet with pendants on it in the shape of a half moon like the one she had once seen around a gypsy woman’s ankle. The woman was by the Fontana di Trevi, a wooden box by her side and a clove held by her teeth. Anne came near her, watched her profile, her shapely nose. The red petals touched the woman’s face, creating a vivid contrast on her tanned skin. She turned to Anne and smiled, then broke the stem and gave the upper part of the flower to the girl, a fluid draining from it – the white blood of the women with no identity.

And, next, the woman opened the box and took a violin out of it. She played a nameless song, filled with notes that were merely sounds without a nationality. She left the instrument with Anne and went away, walking in the compact sun, a veil descending over her back, a female outline disappearing in an alley. Anne never saw her again. She was not even sure if she had ever existed or if she was a ghost who had found in music her resting place.

She was there, among the sheets, white curves engulfing her fingers, dunes of nowhere. She was there, when her hair seemed to go from dark to white in  minutes. She was there while her soul traveled among the memories that aged her as if years had passed like agitated waves.

She was there, in the emptiness of her room, listening to the songs of the moths bathing in the summer.

She was there when he loved her and shared the bed with her. She was there when he left. She was there when nobody  came to rescue her.

white night

It was a white night. The river was quiet, tinged with Gray, a blend of White and Black, creating a gothic effect. A silver hue bordered the river in such a thin way that it became intense only when exposed to the moonlight.

 The thick  mist which  blotted out the stars moved as a veil among the cold constellations –now images  reduced to fragments, just a concentrate of dust floating in the black panel.

The trees denuded of leaves were covered with dead shades.     A perfume of nothingness invaded the air under the winter sky.  The night hours breathed slowly.

When the morning came, the first sunlight enlivened the pale colors under the ice, the shadows swallowed by the morning.    

The white night faded away while the waters remained still under the last vague stars.