La casa

"Her shadow walks behind the corners' wind."
(Anonymous Sephardic)













Maybe this story which is not a story could sound strange, it is strange even for me, dear reader.
Nonexistent reader; lovely reader, but, but once you read it, you will be myself. Maybe.
I still don't know if it was whispered in my ears, late at night, in dreams, or if my own eyes beheld it, in its time, and in its place.
The time of the story is uncertain (is not any time uncertain after all?), the place is in some country of sunny sidewalks during its winters, let's call it Israel...and although I have nothing to do with this narration, some details of it hit me powerfully.


One of the brothers was lost, the other was blind, their mother was living in her own world of insanity, because she was losing progressively her mind, one night the brothers fought, although I think it was at dawn, their home was small and poor, and in my opinion, the house was alive, living on its own and by itself, independently, like in Edgar Poe's "The Ruin of the House of Usher", and this living house dictated -in part- the fate, life, future -even past- of its inhabitants, on through the powerful and invisible ooze the walls transpired, on through the subtle but ineffable energy exuded by the structure of the mansion.


One strange and sunny morning three burglars entered their house, they acted with violence, and the mother -who was seriously ill- suffered a heart attack, and died.
Actually the burglars were four: the criminals, scared, they escaped when they saw the dead body of the woman on the floor, the zone was highly dangerous, the burglars never were caught.

Both brothers, the lost and the blind one, they blamed each other for their disgrace, arguing constantly, with increasing violence every day, until one night of March, the lost one shot the blind one in the chest.
The blind brother had to be taken to the hospital in coma, the lost brother was arrested, the house stayed empty, alone with its own ghosts.


Notwithstanding the house was not empty, spiders and rats still lived in it, and the memory of the mother, lonely in a corner, dwelling in a jade mirror, which had her photograph adhered to the frame.

In the stormy nights, the mirror was black, the wuthering and the haze brought whispers at the feet of the photograph, and the effluviums of the walls were more intense.
The spiders, like black and nervous hands, walked on the mirror constantly, like searching, searching for something that was there, something that was close, behind the mirror, something that was too far, that was one million years away. Or maybe one life away.


But in the clear summer nights, when the southern moon shines in its passive-aggressive calm, like screaming for blood, when the exhausted dogs of January laugh sinister on the corners of the town, in those nights the mirror was white, like an open curtain, white like the armpit of the summer girls and their "Polyana" deodorant... a fresh breeze entered, then, through the tall and open windows, to blow on the mirror a lost blessing, sort of sibilant and warm love for the mother's photograph, which now looked like a diva from the 1950s', lit her blond hair by a light that was not come from Heaven above, creating an aura on her head, giving her eyes the grey and rarefied fire of the Rita Hayworth promotional pictures.


In those summer nights, when the desperate delinquents get hardened, and the dogs of January laugh, sinister on the corners of the town.