Antonio Moresco - Distant Light

The world is changing in front of my eyes. The ground gets ever colder. The leaves are curling up, falling. A few of them remain dangling here and there from the stump of a branch. The trees are barer and barer. There’s no longer any distinction between the living and the dead.

I walk on a carpet of charred leaves that crackle under my feet. They completely cover the paths, I feel the cracking of their veins and of their lifeless tissues disintegrating under the weight of my vertical body as it presses on the ground. There are almost no more sounds in the wood. The animals have left or are preparing to hibernate. They dig their little holes in the cold ground which begins to freeze at night and is already being covered by the first light flurries of snow which leaves its white veil, dissolving in the first sun of the day. They dig headfirst with their claws, their teeth, to get deeper down into the ground, where there is still some warmth.

This morning, in a ruined house, I surprised a group of bats in hibernation. I was walking along the empty streets, among these walls covered with creepers and this dry vegetation and these trees that have grown between the stones, among small flights of loose steps that go up to the doors of derelict houses. I passed in front of a ruin I’d never been into before. It’s strange how this place is so small and yet I still don’t know it all. With my foot I pushed the door with its now broken hinges. It opened. I went in. It was completely dark inside, since there wasn’t even a window. Just stone walls and a wooden ceiling high up. All of a sudden I saw a great number of bats in front of me, hanging upside down, staring at me with their bulging eyes. There must have been some light then — at least the light coming from the door I’d just opened, even though it seemed dark in there, unless it was coming directly from the circles of their terror-stricken eyes, woken from their hibernation. It was an instant. The casings of their whole bodies which until a moment before were upside down, wrapped in the membranes of their black wings of skin, hooked with their claws onto the old beams and wall ledges, had suddenly launched into flight, terrified, searching for a way out. I flung myself against a wall. Their frantic black bodies were crashing against the walls and the ceiling. Then they found the gap in the doorway from which I’d come and, hurling themselves against me from every direction, they flew out in a whirl of naked wings and eyes.

Before going to sleep I peered for a long time at that little light. It has been shining much more brightly for some time, it seems, because the air is colder, the sky is clearer.

I changed the bed sheets and the pillowcase. I put on the heavier blanket. Over it I carefully folded back the upper sheet. I also turned down the corner of the blanket and sheet on one side, before getting undressed and putting on my heavier pajamas that I had pulled out of the wooden chest of drawers which creaks slightly from the change of temperature. In this way I would find everything ready for me when I undressed for bed and climbed in, as though that act had not been done by me, as though someone else who doesn’t exist had done it for me as a secret act of kindness.

Now it is night. I’m lying here staring, it seems, into the dark. I can’t say whether I’m awake or asleep. Just now there were some earth tremors. But faint. Slight vibrations that rose up from the deep. But so slight, so slight that I can’t say whether they have woken me up or sent me to sleep.

I think I even smiled a little, recognizing their sweet voice in the dark.

The boy invited me to eat with him again today.

I left early, but got there late as it had started snowing and the road up to the ridge was covered with a white shroud and I had to go slowly, carefully, so that the wheels didn’t slide on the downward slopes and in the ruts, and even more so on the path that went through the woods and over the narrow timber bridge made slippery with the thin coating of snow.

When I arrived, the boy was at the door, looking out, as though waiting for me.

I pulled down the hood of my parka before going in, and brushed the snow off my shoulders with my hand to avoid taking it into the house.

He ran inside, happy, or at least he seemed to be.

He went to the plate rack, climbed on the crate and pulled down a saucepan.

“Do you want to stay to eat?” he asked, once I was inside, and I took off my coat and shook it a little, by the door.

“Yes, but I’ll do the cooking this time!”

He didn’t object.

“Alright!” he said calmly.

He let me take over at the cooker and went to sit on the bottom step of the wooden staircase.

I looked at him.

“Your knees are red. Are you sure you’re not cold in those short trousers?”

“No, no,” he replied. “I’m used to it.”

I put my bag of shopping down by the sink.

The boy, still sitting on the staircase, watched me silently with his round eyes as I pulled from the bag the things I had bought in the village.

I too looked at him every now and then, turning my head, as I stood at the cooker.

I stirred the rice with a spoon so that it didn’t stick to the saucepan before adding the water and the ingredients that I had bought.

The boy carried on watching me in silence, sitting on his step.

“Do you like eggs?” I asked.

“Yes, a lot!” he replied.

I broke four of them, two for me and two for him, on the edge of the saucepan where the butter was melting.

The boy got up. He took a freshly washed and ironed tablecloth and began setting the table, climbing onto the crate to take down some dishes and cutlery.

I switched off the rice and poured it steaming into the bowl. I grated some cheese over it and began stirring it with a spoon. It was still steaming as I served it on the plates. The boy looked on eagerly, making the gesture of licking his lips.

We began eating, first the rice, then the eggs. The boy cut them in half with his fork, to watch the yoke as it ran onto the plate. Afterwards, I pulled some oranges from the bag, as a surprise.

“I love oranges!” the boy exclaimed when he saw them.

I watched him as he peeled them with his little fingers and using his nails to help.

“What have you done to your hands?” I asked, since they looked as though they’d been damaged.

His little nails were chipped, his palms full of blisters and small cuts, his fingertips grazed.

“I’m doing some work,” he replied.

“What work?”

He dropped his head and smiled, at least that was how it seemed, or perhaps he was just biting his lips.

“I’m tidying up that little house in front …” he answered after a while.

There was a nice smell of oranges in the kitchen.

“I’m clearing out the rubble, the stones,” he continued. “I’m scrubbing down the floorboards …”

“Why are you doing it?” I asked, barely able to breathe.

He blushed a little and made no answer.

The panes of glass in the door were covered with a thick veil of water droplets.

Neither of us spoke.

“I’ll light the fire!” he suddenly exclaimed, jumping down from the chair.

I got up as well and began clearing the table. I folded the tablecloth and napkins and put them back into the drawer. I put the garbage into the plastic bag under the sink. I began to wash the few dishes, the two pans and the knives and forks.

Meanwhile the boy had cleared the ashes and dead embers from the back of the fireplace with a dustpan, taken some small bundles of twigs, arranged them in a pyramid and pushed some crumpled paper bags beneath them.