Distant Light (5 page)

I get up from the metal chair, go and close the shutters, hear them creak on their hinges, in this deserted place where there’s not a living soul. I undress, stretch out on the bed that squeaks a little each time I move. I lie there with my eyes wide open in the dark, waiting for sleep.

This morning, rain, hail, wind. It’s impossible to get there. I looked out the window for a long time at that tumult of water and ice falling violently from the sky. The wind raged, roof tiles flew, large jagged hailstones struck the windows almost smashing them. I had to close the shutters, leaning out while those hard cold missiles lashed and cut at my hands, my arms, my head.

When I was able to get out, everywhere was covered with pieces of ice. I took the ladder and climbed onto the roof to put the tiles back in place. I walked a little in the village, stopped to look at the flowers growing here and there, now all beaten down and ruined. Including three white lilies that were flowering in an old cooking pot full of earth, next to some stone steps, that I’d been carefully watching, stopping each day to examine and sniff their open calyxes. The lilies here flower late, not in May but in June, even late June. For several days their long stems swayed under the weight of their large white petals, their stamens laden with yellow pollen. All around was a sweet perfume, from the moment when the first closed buds had begun to turn white and open.

And now they are there, crushed, their petals ruined, their stems broken, the yellow powder of the pollen spilt over what is left of the torn white corollas.

“What disaster! What horror!” I say, moving away so as not to look. “To be in a hailstorm at the exact moment of flowering! After all that vast strange chemical activity in the bulbs underground, through winter, spring, and then that sudden and almost miraculous soaring of long shoots, straight as swords, and then those swellings that begin to appear here and there and which makes them bend under their new weight, and then their lightning-quick opening in just a few hours. By the evening they have closed again, and reopen the following morning, spreading their fragrance … The mechanical process of blooming can no longer be slowed down, can no longer be stopped, and then, all of a sudden, the lash of cold freezing rain, all those pieces of ice that suddenly beat down from the sky against those white calyxes that had only just been invented …”

A day has passed. During the night the wind blew away the black clouds that hung everywhere and the sky cleared.

I went to get the car. I drove it out of the narrow stable whose walls and beams are still impregnated with the smell of animals that used to live here.

“How am I going to find that place?” I wondered as I drove down the asphalt road to the bottom of the gorge and then climbed up the other side for some distance, looking for a small road or at least a path that might take me as close as possible to the point on the ridge where I see that little light glimmering at night.

I drove slowly. There was one curve after another, so tight that they gave a slight feeling of dizziness. I looked up at the top corner of the windshield so as not to lose sight of the likely point of the ridge and the woods from where that small light filters out at night. A few birds crossed the road from time to time, flying low, almost level with the windshield, to see who was entering their realm.

All of a sudden, after a series of even narrower curves and with the asphalt all cracked and eroded, I thought I glimpsed the opening of a
lane, little more than a path. But I saw it too late, being so narrow and half-hidden by vegetation that I’d driven past it.

I braked, reversed for ten meters or so, turned into the path and then stopped.

I got out, trying to figure out whether I could carry on by car or had to go on foot.

I looked around. The path was hemmed in by vegetation which had invaded much of the pathway itself. But the surface was fairly wide and there were even small patches of asphalt here and there, broken by grass and brambles, showing that this was once a small lane. From above came the short alarm calls of squirrels.

I got back into the car. I peered out for a while through the glass of the windshield at the unknown world I was about to enter, not knowing what to do, whether to start the engine or go on foot, especially as I didn’t even know if the path really did lead to the point on the ridge where that little light came from.

I turned the ignition and put the car in gear. It began moving slowly forward over that narrow strip of road. In that absolute vegetal silence, small cries could be heard from high up in the tops of trees, from the sky, and the sound of branches snapping under the wheels, branches of low shrubs and brambles full of thorns that ran over the ground across the path.

I carried on like this for a while, at walking pace. Every so often the lane opened slightly, passing beneath larger trees where no grass
grew, and then began to climb amid the two swathes of woodland that pressed once more against the hood of the car.

I switched on the headlights, even though it was day, since it was so dark at certain points that I could hardly see.

A fox crossed the path, its long tail down as it ran. It turned its head, dazzled by the lights, before disappearing once more into the undergrowth.

The path continued to climb toward the ridge. There were moments when the vegetation cleared and the sun filtered in. Suddenly in front of me I saw a small bridge of timbers thrown across a stream that ran frothing and whistling between the stones. I crossed slowly, my wheels almost at its edges. I carried on climbing, though I had no idea where I was going, or whether it was possible to get back down that narrow track, whether there was some place where I could maneuver and turn round.

Then the track came to a dead end. Several large trees had broken and fallen down, blocking the lane diagonally. It was impossible to go on by car.

I stopped, got out, looked around at the small space across which those great trunks lay, now stripped of their bark. Long sharp splinters jutted out where they had been broken, perhaps by lightning, perhaps by the wind, perhaps from their own weight.

I clambered over them and went on foot along the path that continued on, now even narrower. I didn’t seem to be very far from the
ridge, if it was the same one that I could see from my house, if I wasn’t somewhere completely different, in the middle of those mountains full of gullies, cliffs, and gorges.

I wasn’t very far, in fact I was already on top of the ridge, since the path had stopped rising. I was now walking slowly, but the shape of the landscape was invisible, nothing could be seen, just trees, vegetation and brambles that pressed in from every side, crossing the path with their vegetal tentacles, their hooks, their rootlets, and their pincers.

Yet there were still signs of a path that led somewhere. I even glimpsed lengths of barbed wire pushed over and buried in the ground, a few broken discolored bricks and a few stones, suggesting there must once have been a house or a ruin for animals.

I carried on walking. The light from the outside world was blocked out, the sky invisible, the ridge completely overhung with trees.

All at once, still in the thick vegetation, a small stone house suddenly appeared in front of me.

I stopped.

“Here it is! I’ve found it,” I told myself, my heart pounding. “This must be where that little light is coming from, the one I see from my house at night when I’m sitting on the metal chair and looking out from the other side of the gorge. From a lamp at the front door, from one of the windows …”

But there were no windows, no doors. Just blank stone walls that enclosed it on each side.

“How is it possible! What kind of house is this?” I thought.

Then I realized I was at the rear, that I needed to go round to the other side to find the entrance.

I walked around it, arriving at the front.

There was a door, and it was open.

Inside, in the kitchen, there was a boy in short trousers, his head shaved. Under his little arms he was holding a cloud of sheets he was about to put into a tub.

I stopped in enormous surprise.

He also stopped, the cloud of sheets still under his little arms.

We looked at each other in silence. The boy had large round gazing eyes. In his mouth I could see a small broken tooth.

“And who are you?” I tried asking.

He didn’t answer.

He carried on gazing at me with his large round eyes. His small shaved head could barely be seen behind the cloud of sheets.

“What are you doing? The washing?” I stammered again, not knowing what to say.

“Yes,” he answered in a small voice, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Why are you doing the washing?”

At once he began to blush.

“I wet the bed!” he said, lowering his head in shame. “I’m always having to wash the sheets, so they don’t smell.”

I was still looking at him, hardly breathing.

“You wash them yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t your mother wash them?” I asked.

“I have no mother.”

“And your dad?”

“I have no dad either.”

“You live by yourself, in the middle of the woods?” I asked astonished. “You have no parents?”

“No.”

I was standing, stock-still, in front of the door.

“Are you the one who keeps the light switched on at night?” I asked.

He paused for a moment in silence.

“Yes!” he said lowering his head.

“Why?”

“I’m frightened of the dark.”

I remained there, stock-still, in front of the door, while the little boy began looking at me again with the cloud of sheets pressed against his cheek.

“Do you want me to help you?” I tried asking.

“No, thank you,” he replied, with his small voice.

I didn’t know what else to say. The boy was standing hunched in front of me, leaning a little under the weight of the sheets.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked him once more.

“No,” he answered.

I wanted to ask if I could come in but realized it was better not to, especially since the child had moved, turned round, dropped the bundle of sheets into the washtub full of soapy water and was kneading them with his little hands.

“Sorry, I’ve a lot to do right now …” he said politely.

I turned round and began walking back, round the house and along the path through the woods, to where I had left the car, listening to the stones crunching and twigs snapping under my feet.

I arrived back to where the broken trunks were, and clambered over them. I got into the car and started the engine.

“Yes, I’ve found it!” I said to myself, driving slowly back along that narrow path crossed by brambles that lashed against the windshield and the doors with their long limbs full of thorns. “That’s where the little light comes from! From that window up there on the first floor, over the kitchen … It obviously manages to filter through the trees, from some point where the branches are further apart, the foliage not so dense, on the other side of the gorge. Switched on by that little boy who lives all alone in the middle of the woods, in those short trousers from which those spindly legs stick out. But how strange … It’s quite a long time since boys went round in short trousers!”

It is night now. Several days have gone by since I went there. I look at that little light, knowing now where it comes from, sitting behind this low stone balustrade, while the clear moonless sky is filled with stars, and not very far away can be heard the cries of night animals and birds of prey and the occasional grunts of wild boar moving about in the thick undergrowth.

“And perhaps,” I marvel, “perhaps that boy can also see the light from my house up there, at night, on the other side of the gorge, in the middle of all this darkness as far as the eye can see, of all the darkness of the world, in the same way that I can see his. I forgot to ask him if he can see it …”

This morning I wanted to go back to see the Albanian who is interested in alien presences, to tell him I’d discovered where that light comes from, that extraterrestrials had nothing to do with it. Not least because I had to go down to fill up with gas in a village not far from his, where there’s a gas pump in front of a yard, and an old man who spends all his time tormenting his few black teeth with a small wooden ice cream spoon. If he sees someone stop at the pump, he leaves the vineyard where he’s been working and comes and serves you.

I told him everything as soon as he’d stopped making those guttural sounds and sudden abrupt grunts on seeing me scrambling down the small slope full of manure and fetid puddles.

“You see?” I said. “It’s got nothing to do with extraterrestrials, aliens, movements in hyperspace, time warps … It’s a child, simply a child …”

He looked at me puzzled, and yet, due to the particular shape of his mouth, he seemed to be smiling.

“Ah … a child … You say it’s a child?”

“Yes, sure, it’s a child!”

Two or three times he shook his head, from which his two large ears stuck out, and his crown of straight greasy hair that hung down like spaghetti.

“A child living alone, in the woods … And you don’t think it’s strange? It seems normal to you?”

“Yes … or rather no. It surprised me as well.”

“What sort of child?” he asked, shaking his head again, with that fixed smile. “Is he really from this world?”

“But I saw him! He’s a little boy, I promise you!”

“You see, aliens aren’t like what they show you in the movies! They can also take on a completely human appearance. Indistinguishable from the others. Who knows how many are already here, among us!”

I looked at him. He was smiling at me, though I don’t know whether
he was smiling or not. The goat bells could be heard close by. The dog was jumping up and barking.

Even though it’s late, I’m still sitting here, looking at that little light that flickers on the other ridge. The night is cloudless, stars loom in every part of this immense hollow space that dwarfs me. I’ve zipped up my sweatshirt and put the hood up over my head as it’s beginning to get cold at night, in this place surrounded on all sides by trees and vegetation. Even my legs are rather numb, since I’ve been sitting here a long time looking at that little light, while that child will be asleep in his little stone house in the middle of the woods, alone.