White

Not everything needs an explanation

Photo by Velizar Ivanov on Unsplash, rendered black & white by me

I open my eyes and look at the clock -- three thirty-three. The window panes, wide open, allow a pleasant breeze to filter in through the horizontal slats of the shutters. It’s surreal how the day’s torrid heat transforms into a quasi-fresh stream deep into the night. Lying on my back, uncovered, I turn to look at the window. On the ceiling right above, unpatterned specks of light flicker, as if reflecting from an illuminated pool of shimmering water below. 

Except no pool of water, or fountain, is underneath my window. I live on a narrow, secondary, cobblestone street in a nondescript part of town. It emerges into a small square with two cafés facing each other, a newsstand, and a taxi stop, on one side, and into a larger street where trams number ten and nineteen run, on the other. Overall, mine is a short little street, just a few meters wide, with perhaps no more than six or seven buildings, where cars rarely pass and the echo of footsteps can be heard clearly in the silence of the night. Footsteps and voices of people speaking in a normal tone, as if in a conversation occurring in the next room. 

And a normal tone of voice, I hear. A calm female voice speaking, almost whispering, words that sound like a soliloquy, a quiet conversation with no interlocutor. Someone’s on the phone outside, I think, at this time of night. How strange. I can only catch a word here and there, but the tone is amicable and reassuring. I get up and slowly approach the window. Before opening the shutters, I try to detect where the voice is coming from. It seems to come from the building opposite mine, across the street, more or less at the same height as my window. 

The building has been uninhabited for more than twenty years, my concierge will tell me later, and he’s never seen any of its shutters open. He will add that it belonged to a wealthy family whose fortunes experienced a sharp reversal long ago, went into foreclosure, and was sold to a German gentleman who hasn’t even opened it since. My concierge, however, has been in service for only a few years and learned these facts from the barber next door, who’s been there forever, he will specify. Why am I asking, he will then inquire. Just curious, I will respond.

I try to see outside from the shutter louvers, their angle allowing only a downward view. The voice, meanwhile, sounds closer, but I still can’t make out what it’s saying. Down below, I see a course of flickering water in lieu of cobblestones, like a canal in Venice, flowing between the two sides of the street. Where am I? I finally gather some courage and open the shutters.

She is standing in a window of the building across the street, wearing white. Her hair and dress wave in the wind, but there’s no wind; it’s a hot, stagnant summer night. Weird, I think, I felt a pleasant breeze coming in through the shutters, earlier. I turn to the right to check the trees visible in the distance at one end of my street: they’re as still as stillness itself. Her face is illuminated by the fluorescent water below, making her pale complexion even paler, and her gaze is directed toward me. She speaks in a calm, velvety voice, without pause, as if reading from a book, or reciting from memory. Her facial expression is neutral, not a blink in her eyes. 

Everything goes, everything flows, she repeats. Over and over. I watch her for a little while, standing still, as if hypnotized by the sound of her words, more than their meaning. I’m not even sure these are her exact words. Everything goes, everything flows. I thought it was more than that; I thought she was giving a whole speech. At least that’s what it sounded like before I opened the shutters. Suddenly, she stops. And all I hear now is the water flowing below. She stops but remains there, standing, her gaze fixed on me, her hair and dress continuing to wave. Behind her, a pitch black background. She is standing in the window of a room with no lights on, the white of her dress and her pallor making a stark contrast.  

She slowly closes the shutters, without losing eye contact with me. Once the shutters are closed, and have returned to the appearance they’ve always had, a piano starts playing from inside the room. It sounds like the intro of Firth Of Fifth, perfectly executed. Instinctively I shout Hey, pushing out my right hand, as if trying to hold on to the magic of that moment. But the music fades away, gracefully. Then I look down, and the water is gone. At the far right end of the street, the trees now sway, a man on a bicycle passes by, pedaling slowly, and an embraced couple giggles at something funny one of them said, their steps on the cobblestone gently echoing in the street.

I don’t want to return to bed. Everything seems to be back in its right place. Maybe I’ll just close the shutters and lie on the bed for a while in the dark, I think. It’s now darker than before, absent the water reflection. What did I just witness? Who was she? And those words, and the water, and the music -- what’s the meaning of all this? Is there even a meaning? Sleep comes unexpectedly. 

I wake to the sound of distant church bells. The room feels different, almost as if the events of the night had left a tangible residue in the air. I get up and open the shutters again; nothing unusual in the street below. I’m in a haze, and my mental fog needs a certain amount of coffee, immediatamente. I go out my building’s front door, turn right, and head toward the small square with the two cafés. Always packed with people, they both have large awnings open above the tables on the respective sidewalks. The one on the right seems a little less crowded, so I look for a table outside. A white-haired gentleman wearing a beige linen suit, black shades, and a straw hat is preparing to leave. Some kids playing nearby catch my attention, and when I turn to look back at the table, it seems free. As I sit down, I notice he left a book behind, near the check and the money. Excuse me, I say, raising my voice and holding his book in my hand, as I see him walk away. He doesn’t seem to hear, or care. I glance at the cover and then look up again, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

Resigned, I sink into my seat, order a double espresso, and inspect the book. It’s worn out and has a blue cover with nothing written on it. I open it to a random page, and what I see makes my heart skip a beat. Between the pages printed with text in a language I cannot recognize, is an old photo on glossy paper. In it, the woman in white is standing in the same window as she was last night, her hair and dress wafting in the wind, with the same identical facial expression. On the back, a name -- Beatrice -- and a date: 24 July 1255. Right underneath are these words, written in neat calligraphy:

Happiness is a train without a schedule: one comes by every now and then. You cannot predict its arrival, nor know when it will depart. Your task is to go to the station.    

As I sit back, a hint of a smile appearing on my face, I remind myself that not everything needs an explanation. Some things are meant to remain mysteries, open-ended experiences.

They might turn into revelations, one day. Or they might not.

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