Antonio Moresco - Distant Light

The ridge opposite is all white with snow too. I spent a long time looking, as soon as it was dark, to see if I could still spot the little light. But I couldn’t see anything, I can’t see anything, only the soft gleam of the snow illuminated by the celestial vault that covers everything in the deepest darkness.

Before going to sleep, I went to look inside the toilet one last time. The moth was still there. I pulled the chain once more. It whirled around as the water went down. Then it reappeared, with its wings spread wide, immobilized at the point of maximum span.

I bent down, put my hand into toilet and pulled it out of the water. With the other hand I tore off a few pieces of toilet paper and wrapped them two or three times around the moth’s stiff little body so as to give it some weight.

I pulled the chain one last time.

Only then, wrapped in its shroud, was the moth finally swallowed up.

You can hear nothing. You can see nothing. The mountains, the sky, the woods, the precipices, the footpaths, the cobbled streets, the ruins and the few empty houses, the cable that crosses the village and still brings power to my house, who knows why, who knows where from, the balustrade, the metal chair with sunken legs in front of the steep white drop, the plant masses that emerge from the walls, all bent down under the weight of the snow … Plant forms also emerge from the walls of the other houses and ruins, actual trees and horizontal shrubs that sink their roots between the stones, sucking nutriment from their hard heart, while bushes grow out, dangling in the void, pushing their tissues and their fibers and their sap directly into space. There are ruins completely covered by them, you can’t tell if they are houses or slanting trees launching themselves into the void. The creepers have completely enveloped them beneath their blanket, from which small curved branches emerge that struggle to break out and free themselves from their terrible embrace.

When the winter ends, these old walls and these stones are covered with cruel new leaves and flowers. Clouds of newborn insects hum around them, come back to thrust themselves into their deep gashes, they enter once again upside down into the wounds of the figs growing on the walls and twisting upward to reach the light, into the wounds of the wild apple and peach trees with their small riddled and tormented fruits. Then the fruits go dry, shrivel, fall, stay for a while attached to the ever-barer branches. The leaves fall too, cover the collapsing roofs, the roots press beneath the frozen slates to snatch a little sap from that mineral world suspended in space.

Plants go on dying and being reborn, dying again, everything inside the same circle of created pain. Their cells continue to struggle away desperately, continue silently reproducing and duplicating themselves, and they will carry on like this even when humans are no longer here, when they have disappeared from the face of this little planet lost in the galaxies, there will be just this whole torment of cells that struggle away and reproduce, for as long as some light still arrives from our little star. They will carry on relentlessly breaking and pulling apart the walls between whose stones their roots are clinging, the floors, the ceilings, they will burst out through the gaps in the broken windows, they will smash the few panes of glass still intact with their irresistible soft vegetal pressure, sending out ahead their tender waving pedicels into space in search of a place to land, they will smash and bring down roofs, they will overrun the paths, lanes, roads, emerging with their miniscule shoots looking up to space for the first time. They will split open the inner structure of matter they meet along their way, they will find their way with their own atomic emptiness into its atomic emptiness, they will make the empty space whirl with those residues of electrically-charged particles that float in the void. They will demolish houses, roads, motorways far away from here, in some other part of the world, great deserted cities full of skyscrapers and towers, they will crash through window panes, garage doors, silently they will burst pipes, lift drain covers, with their vegetal torment and their soundless pressure, through car bodies, gas pumps, great glass shopping centers on the outskirts of cities. They will launch their vegetal pillars over skyscrapers, will rise over the roofs of skyscrapers with their furthest soft tentacles, will feel out new structures and new places to land in space. New reshaped cities, new visions of cities devoured by vegetation will reach the horizontal liquid masses of the seas, of the oceans, launching their tentacles ever further to reach the forests sleeping under their mute waters in deepest obscurity, to rouse them from their sleep and cover the world.

I spent the whole day getting ready. But first I tidied the house. I washed the floors, made the bed, threw away the ashes from the fireplace. I washed the plates, cleaned the top of the cooker, inside the oven, the door handles, the panes of glass in the few windows. I also washed myself and put on clean clothes.

Before going up to bed, I banged the saucepan lids for a long time to scare away any animals.

Now it is dark. But the sky is still white from the snow that continues whirling over the earth. I watched it a short while ago from the little window of my room. All dark and white.

Beside me I have all I need. I won’t set the alarm, tonight.

It’s hard to say what I’m doing …

All is ready.

There, now it’s night. Now it’s night.

What’s going on?

I can hear thuds.

But far, far away.

I’ve been listening to them for some time, from where I am.

But where am I? Why can’t I wake up?

Time has passed.

I can still hear those thuds. Someone’s knocking at the door of my house. But from far away, from very far away.

Who is it hammering so hard on my door?

I’m frightened, but I can’t move, I can’t wake up.

Why is it so hard for me to wake up?

I fall back to sleep again, though I was already asleep and I was hearing that sound of thuds in my sleep.

Again, again. Those dreadful thuds arriving here, from far away, from very far away.

Terrifying.

It’s all dark. It’s all black.

And yet there are still those thuds. Louder, even louder. There’s someone who won’t give up banging at my door, so far away.

I’d like to try and wake up, if I’m asleep, to get out of bed and go and open it. But I can’t. I’m drifting back to sleep and listening to that far away banging in my sleep.

There’s a voice now, shouting, shouting.

Shouting to open up.

I open my eyes. Though perhaps I already had them open.

I don’t know whether I’m asleep or awake. I seem to be lifting my head from the pillow and trying to get out of bed.

I look around, still sleepy, half dazed.

I reach across to the nightstand. I switch on the light. But I can’t see, I can’t see anything.

I try to pull myself up, to sit up.

I feel the bed, the chair by the bed, while that banging and those shouts continue coming from far away, from very far away.

Under my toes I can feel my short trousers lying in a heap.

I slip them on, standing on the frozen floorboards, propped against the wall so I wouldn’t fall over.

I put my socks on, my shoes, still sleepy, half-dazed.

I take a few paces toward the wooden stairs. I start to climb down, very slowly, one step at a time, since my legs are short and the steps are high, very high.

I’m in the kitchen.

I go toward the door, walking over the freshly washed floor while those shouts, those thuds continue, ever closer.