Antonio Moresco - Distant Light

I looked toward the other ridge.

The little light was still there, as though nothing had happened. It was filtering through the woods, in the night, in the darkness.

“I wonder if he felt the earthquake too!” I thought.

Today, the boy let me in for the first time.

I arrived there in the early afternoon. I wound up the windows before getting out of the car — I had left them open last time, and when I’d come back to drive off I’d seen a fairly large animal, probably a fox, on its hind legs, stretching up with its pointed nose level with the window and looking inside.

It had disappeared in a flash when it heard me coming, with its long tail amidst the undergrowth.

I approached the house, reached the door and looked inside.

The boy wasn’t there.

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t call him as I didn’t even know his name.

The door was open but I didn’t feel I could go in without being asked.

I sat down on the broken bench beside the door and waited.

After a while I heard a light sound of feet coming down the wooden stairs, slowly, one by one, since the steps were a long way apart for his little legs.

I stood up and turned toward the door.

Step by step, the boy arrived at the bottom of the stairs. When he saw me his eyes opened wide and he came almost running toward me. He arrived almost at the doorway, then stopped.

He looked at me. His eyes were red, as though he’d been crying.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

He said nothing. But he was shaking slightly, uncertain whether to tell me something or keep quiet.

Then he turned. He went and took an abrasive sponge from the sink, poured a few drops of detergent on it and set about cleaning the oven.

He worked away inside with both hands, and I could hear him scrubbing with the rough side of the sponge and then cleaning away the soap with the other.

“You use the oven as well?” I asked in surprise, standing at the open door.

“Yes, of course!” he replied, on all fours in front of the oven, with his head in the open space of the door.

“What do you make?”

“Oh, lots of things …”

His little voice arrived rather indistinctly from inside.

“That’s impossible!” I blurted.

The little boy pulled his head out from the oven.

He looked offended.

“And what do you make, for example?” I asked him again.

“Today I did a potato pie!” he exclaimed.

“I don’t believe it!” I blurted again.

The little boy got up and went to the dresser. He lifted an open napkin covering a plate.

Beneath it was a pie.

He took the plate and brought it toward me, holding it in his little hands.

“Do you want to try some?” he asked.

And so I went in.

I took one step inside, barely breathing. I looked about me, in that kitchen where everything was so tidy: the table clear, the dishes washed and all neatly lined up on the draining rack, the cutlery standing in the cutlery basket so that it would dry properly, a cloth folded over the back of one of the wooden chairs, another hanging from a small nail near the sink.

He put the plate with the pie on the edge of the table.

“See how good it is!” he added.

I bent down to look at it. One slice was missing, which the boy must have eaten.

Taking a knife that was nearby, I cut a slice and lifted a piece to my mouth.

I began eating it slowly, with an enormous thrill. I felt its texture in my mouth, crumbling between my teeth, against my palate and my tongue.

“It’s very good!” I said eventually.

“You see?” he replied, content.

I looked about me once again, in the kitchen. Around a corner there was also a fireplace, which couldn’t be seen from outside, and pieces of wood piled up by it and a box full of bundles of broken twigs.

“You have a fireplace as well!” I said. “And you light it?”

“Sure!” he said. “When it’s cold.”

His answer was clear enough, but I could see he had something else on his mind, he was thinking about something else from which I had distracted him on arriving.

“Will you let me see your house?” I asked.

He remained silent for a moment.

“Alright …” he said eventually, with a sigh.

He turned and began to climb the wooden stairs, lifting high the little legs that stuck out of his shorts so he could reach each step as he went up.

I followed him without a word, and watched his back and his little shaved head in front of me that moved in silence up the stairs.

We reached the floor above.

There was a single large room that was lower around the sides, where the roof sloped, a small metal bed with sheets neatly folded back, with a pair of slippers by it, wooden floorboards, a wooden nightstand by the bed. Nothing else.

“Just one room …” I murmured. “Perhaps it was a hay loft at one time …”

“A man stored chestnuts here, they told me.”

I glanced at the boy.

“Who told you?”

He didn’t answer.

I looked around, in that large bare room.

“There’s not even a toilet!”

The little boy made a gesture with his hand.

“I go in the woods,” he replied.

I heard the sound of my feet on the floorboards as I moved across to the small window, the only one in the room.

I looked out. All I could see was that green vastness, uninhabited and covered with trees. There was no sign of my village. But looking more carefully on the other side of the gorge I could make out one corner of my little house sticking out of the vegetation.

I turned to the boy.

“You can see it as well, when it’s dark, the little light from that house over there in the distance?”

He hesitated a moment before answering.

“Yes” he said, eventually, in a whisper.

I felt a slight shudder, in that large empty room, in front of the boy who watched me in silence, looking up at me with his round swollen eyes.

“There, now you’ve seen everything!” he said quietly, before turning round and starting toward the staircase.

I followed him. We reached the top, he in front and me behind. He went down slowly, his small legs climbing down the steep steps, at a slight angle, supporting himself with his hand against the wall.

Once we were back in the kitchen, the boy pulled his exercise books from his schoolbag without saying a word, opened them on the table and sat down before them.

I didn’t know what to do, whether to stay or whether this was a sign that I ought to go.

I watched him as he opened his exercise book, his head bent, his eyes still rather red and swollen, running the palm of his little hand over it several times from the bottom upward.

“You’re always alone!” I couldn’t stop myself exclaiming.

“I’m used to it,” he replied without lifting his head.

He began to sharpen a pencil, more and more slowly, biting his lips as he was doing so.

“Yesterday they put me behind the blackboard!” he suddenly exclaimed, uncontrollably.

I was standing rigid.

“So that’s why it took him so long to come downstairs when I arrived!” I thought. “He was crying, ashamed, up there in the big room, alone …”

I sank down onto the other chair, close by.

“And why did they put you behind the blackboard?”

He remained silent for a while. He was trembling.

“I never understand anything! I never learn anything!” he exclaimed again, and I could see he was clenching his teeth and biting his lips so as not to cry in front of me. “I can never do the homework!”

“So let me help you!”

He shook his head two or three times without looking at me.

“No, it’s no use! The teacher knows if you haven’t done it yourself!”