Antonio Moresco - Distant Light

I was watching him, watching him as he gritted his teeth in despair.

There was a long silence.

“They told me in the village that there’s only the day school …” I stammered, all at once, in a low voice.

The little boy looked up at me.

“That’s for the other children …” he answered, looking at me, fixing me with his round, wide eyes.

“The other children? What children?”

He hesitated for a moment before answering.

“The ones still alive.”

There’s a bird somewhere down below, in the woods in front of my house, that sounds like a door creaking.

At first, I couldn’t work out what it was, where that strange noise was coming from, like an old door that creaks slowly, very slowly, on its rusty hinges when you open it, but with each creak quite separate from the others, except that it came from the woods, where there are no hinges, no doors.

Then, I don’t know how, I realized it was the sound of an animal, of a bird.

I hear it every now and then. I heard it a short while ago, and then I asked, speaking out in the middle of all this silence:

“And you, what kind of bird are you?”

It made no reply, but I imagined instead that it did reply:

“I’m the creaky door bird.”

“But why don’t I ever see you? I search among the foliage when I hear your sound, but I don’t see you …”

“Isn’t it just the same with creaky doors? You turn round and look and no one’s ever there.”

“But someone will have made them creak, even if they’ve then quickly hidden themselves so they can’t be seen!”

“Sometimes there’s no one, it’s just the wind.”

“So you’re the wind then?”

“No, I’m the door that’s made to creak by the wind.”

“So why do I sometimes hear you even when there’s no wind?”

“I’m the bird that also makes the wind creak.”

The swallows have left. Their shrieks are no longer to be heard in the sky after the sun has gone behind the ridge, in the very last moments of light, when they used to launch themselves for the last time onto their pasture of insects and other tiny lives suspended above the horizon line, before disappearing into their nests among the blocks of stone and on the roofs, before the bats came out from the cracks in the ruins and launched themselves in turn onto their meal, in the dark sky, with their wide-open, tooth-filled mouths. I waited for their arrival, once the swallows had disappeared one by one from the sky, and this meant it was also time for me to go back inside and eat my simple meal alone, in this deserted place.

The bats are now arriving earlier, it seems, perhaps because the days are getting shorter and it’s getting dark sooner.

I stay there for a while watching them, sitting on the metal chair, the soles of my shoes against the low balustrade, my knees bent. I watch their shapes which emerge from the darkness in their crooked flight. They’re always going in the wrong direction, especially those smaller ones that have just been born and start learning to fly with the membranes of their wings of skin. They come right up close and, just when it seems they’re going to hit me on the head, they suddenly veer away, continuing their asymmetrical flight, blind, in the darkness, and then they come straight back at you again, like rags coming at your face.

Yesterday evening, when it was dark, instead of going indoors to get something to eat, I took the car and went down to the village.

I drove slowly, with the headlights on, the windows down. After one of the curves I saw the cemetery lamps that flickered in the dark. The night was black. There was a slight breeze. A bird flapped its wings loudly in the undergrowth, perhaps woken with a start by the sound of the motor in that absolute silence. There must have been a covering of swollen black clouds in the sky, since there were no stars to be seen.

I carried on down, coasting in neutral every so often on the long descents. An animal crossing the road only spotted my car at the last moment as I was going silently down and suddenly turned its head toward the headlights, dazzled.

No other cars were about. I turned onto the larger road that led to the village. The few houses had their shutters closed, no light filtered out. They would all have been inside eating, or in front of the television, or getting ready for bed, since people in places like this go to sleep early.

I arrived in the village. I parked the car in the open space just as you enter. I got out and walked a little. I’d never been here at this hour. There was no one in the narrow lanes wedged between the stone houses. Nor even in the larger street that crossed the village from side to side. The only bar was also closed. All that could be heard, every now and then, was the sound of the odd television set coming from one or other of the shuttered windows, and a tenuous glow filtered through the cracks, while all the others were silent, switched off, the occupants already in their beds in the darkness.

I turned the corner and went under an archway. I took a few more steps, then stopped dead, my heart beating fast.

The school was in complete darkness. No light came from its large windows on either the ground or the upper floor.

“And yet, if there are lessons going on there, there ought to be some light …” I thought. “The windows have no shutters, perhaps they’re covered from inside with thick curtains that a janitor closes when it gets dark, once the lessons have finished, as he passes down the corridor one last time before closing up the school …”

I stood there rigid, my mind a blank, hardly breathing.

The building was completely dark, not even the smallest light or the smallest sound came from inside.

I couldn’t manage a single step, to get back to where I’d left the car, to walk through the deserted village. I remained there, still, rigid, not knowing what to do, in that place faintly lit by a streetlamp that swung in the wind in the middle of the street.

I don’t know how much time went by like this. I only knew that, all of a sudden, just as I was finally about to turn and retrace my steps, or so it seemed, unless the thought had merely passed through my mind, I felt something, like a small rush of air behind me.

I turned back toward the school. But I could see nothing.

The silence was such that I could hear the slight hum of the bulb in the streetlamp above my head.

A few moments later it seemed as though the front door was opening slowly, noiselessly, in the dark.

I don’t know why, but instinctively I stepped aside, so no one would catch sight of me. I went and stood around the corner of the building opposite, from where I could see without being seen.

The door was now completely open, but no one came out.

There was still that enormous silence. Something was rattling somewhere, up above, perhaps the streetlamp in the breeze.

I peered out from around the corner, from where I could see a large part of the double doors of the main entrance that were completely open, the whole school building still in darkness, even the ground floor, even the corridor there must have been beyond the entrance.

Then, all of a sudden, a slight sound of footsteps could be heard coming from very far away.

A few moments later, several children started coming out of the door, one after the other, in silence, with their black smocks and their schoolbags.

My legs were trembling slightly, I watched them, hardly breathing, hidden round the corner in the dark, as they came out of the doorway and walked down the few steps that brought them level with the street. I tried to make out the shaved head of the boy in the midst of the others.