Chapter One
Every time I try to understand the meaning behind the continuation of this life, I fail to find it. I find nothing but an emptiness that swallows me whole. My thoughts swim like remnants of debris in a vast, dark, bottomless sea, and I get lost in the turmoil between cold reality and the flimsy rope of illusion I cling to.
His presence was always like air to me; I breathed it without thinking. Now, with every breath I take, a suffocating sense of missing him overwhelms me. I hear his voice always, constantly, as if the walls of the house have not yet forgotten his tone. I see him vividly, rushing towards the refrigerator with a child's eagerness, only to return with a scowling face, accusing me with his one half-closed eye: "Don't you know I love this thing? Why didn't you leave me a single drop of orange juice, you selfish person?"
We used to compete with love and passion for the last drop of orange juice, as if it were the only remaining treasure in the world. But today, I stand before the closed refrigerator, not daring to open it for fear of seeing him. I have come to hate oranges as much as I loved them in the past, or perhaps more, because I am now the sole owner of every drop he no longer competes with me for. It is a cruel ownership, reminding me of my final victory that cost me everything.
Sometimes, when the night draws its heaviest curtain, I hear his careful footsteps on the old wooden floor of the living room. He doesn't want me to see him, I know it. He wants to maintain the mystery, to continue his favorite game. He vanishes with the lightness of a ghost as soon as I go looking for him. He smiles in my imagination, inviting me to the final game of hide-and-seek, the one we never finished. No matter how hard I search for him—under the table, behind the thick curtains, in his favorite bookshelf—I cannot find him. He is certainly skilled at this game, much better than me, for he has chosen a hiding place I will never reach.
And what do I hear now? A strange sound interrupts the sacred silence of the night. A light knock, then a louder one, followed by a distracting sequence of beats on the front door. At this late hour, when the town is asleep, its eyes and doors closed, who dares to invade my fragile solitude? I tried to push the sound out of my consciousness, to keep it outside the perimeter of my inner world. I returned to my diary, pretending to be busy writing, ignoring this annoying insistence, just as I ignored the thread of smoke rising from the flickering candlewick, whose light was now similar to my heart: faint, about to go out at any moment.
But the knocking persisted, growing louder and more stubborn, its sound becoming definite, leaving no room for doubt. It is real. It is neither one of my illusions nor a residue of Steve's specter. It is a caller from the outside world, from the world of the living. I couldn't ignore it anymore.
I stood up suddenly, stumbling on the hem of my long nightgown that resembled a grey cloud. I wasn't scared, I didn't feel the terror that might seize a solitary woman in a dark house, but rather, I was filled with a fierce curiosity that felt like shock, pushing me toward the door. Who dares to share my loneliness?
I opened the door without asking who it was, without caring if he was a lurking thief, or a serial killer searching for his victims in the darkness of the night. Perhaps if I hadn't felt this intense loneliness, I wouldn't even have dared to get up from my seat.
A tall man was standing about a meter away from the doorstep, maintaining a respectable distance between us as if he feared contagion. He was wearing a large jacket with a high collar that swallowed half of his face. Even if the collar hadn't concealed his features, I wouldn't have been able to see them in the thick darkness enveloping our village. Nevertheless, there was something in his stance, in his slightly slumped broad shoulders, that suggested exhaustion or deep sorrow.
He spoke in a low voice, filled with confusion and apology: "I'm very sorry for coming this late, Miss. I'm looking for Steve."
I didn't immediately comprehend the question. It was unexpected. I said to him, my confusion doubled: "You are looking for Steve?"
He confirmed: "Yes, I am looking for him. I promised him that as soon as I arrived in this village, he would be the first person I see. We just arrived after a long journey."
In that moment, I realized the cruel truth that he was oblivious to. He had come from a world that the hand of death had not yet reached, he had come to fulfill a promise to a man who had become a part of the past. He didn't know what had happened, he didn't know the bitter truth. He came to see his friend, but he didn't know he would never see him again.
I couldn't raise my voice. I whispered to him words that barely left my chest, like heavy stones: "Sir, I'm sorry... Steve... he died a year ago."
I was the one who delivered the news, but the impact of the words fell upon me, as if I had directed them to myself after a long phase of denial. Time warped back to the moment I first received the news, and I felt everything before me begin to collapse for the second time.
We both stood motionless, like statues of ice, looking only at the ground. I couldn't see his face, but I doubted he saw mine either, as he never raised his eyes to me for a single moment, as if he wanted to make it easier for his tears to fall straight to the ground, sparing him the effort of wiping them from his cheeks.
I could hear his muffled sobs, coming out of him like the sound of a lost child searching in a large crowd for his missing mother, waiting for someone to rescue him from there and take him to her. I wished I could comfort him, I wished I could ask him to stop crying, but had I said one more word, I would have been the one in need of comfort.
I remained silent, listening to his broken cry, which he was trying desperately to suppress and hide. Then, finally, he said to me, in broken, almost incomprehensible letters: "My condolences to you, Miss. Goodbye."
He turned and left immediately, moving away from the faint light spilling from the entrance, and I watched him disappear little by little into the darkness of the road.
I can't say how long I stood there, staring into the space in front of me, waiting for something I don't even know what it was. I felt like I couldn't move anymore, as if I were nailed down by heavy chains that could not be opened. I remained there, frozen, until I finally surrendered to the weight of reality and closed the door.
Only then did I realize that the house was shrouded in pitch-black darkness, and that the candle had gone out a long time ago. I didn't light another one; instead, I went straight to bed, lay down, and stared at the ceiling.
This is my nightly hobby—staring into the void, as if sleep were my enemy, unwilling to reconcile or befriend me.
I had so many questions about this mysterious young man. How did he not know Steve was dead? And why didn't he try to ask me who I was or what I meant to Steve? Why was he standing far from the door, maintaining that strange distance between us, and why did he never raise his eyes? Was he truly that close to Steve to cry over him like that, with such depth and sincerity?
His sobbing still rings in my ears like an alarm bell. I regretted not doing anything while I watched him collapse in front of me. He was receiving the news for the first time, while I had lived it and, supposedly, adapted to it for a whole year. Wasn't it natural for my reaction to be one of comfort, not this freezing immobility and coldness?
Perhaps... perhaps my reaction wasn't cold, but rather a final affirmation of the truth. Maybe I had just admitted to myself that he really died, and that I had been living in denial all this time, waiting for his return with every knock.
I should have been more humane, said something reassuring, extended my hand to him, asked him to stop crying that way, but I just stood there watching him without moving, because, deep down, I refused to believe that Steve had actually gone, and that everything I saw and heard were just illusions.
But the arrival of this young man today shattered everything I had built out of denial. He slapped me with the bitter truth I had always tried to escape. I finally collided with it, and it held me tightly, without mercy or compassion.
I shifted restlessly in bed, turned to my side, pulled my knees to my chest in a fetal position, and hid my head in the pillow, desperately trying to quiet the sound of the visitor's sobs and the sound of the breakdown that began storming inside me. A desperate attempt to kill the noise in my head.