This year the day of the dead was rung in on the tolling of faint bells, which were carried along soft waves of light and seeped into the houses of sleepers in the same way that the perfume of soil pervades a forest. None were woken by the bells, whose sound shivered in the chilly morning, as substantial as perhaps only the puffs of breath lifting from the lips of dormant bodies and diffusing in the air. Simon listened to them in half-sleep, the refractions of the distant sounds, cool bands of metallic air dilating and protracting. He tossed on his side. He became aware of a sudden desire for the heat of another body. He tossed again, restless. In the frame on the white wall across from the bed, obfuscated by a glare of slanted light from the window, hung a photograph he had taken of a dry, four-tiered stone fountain in a sandy courtyard. Along its lower most basin some loose stones lay among moss. A single tree stood farther in the courtyard, in autumnal flourish, thinning of its leaves which were scattered like patchwork across the white gravel. The fountain was appended to an ancient wall, where faint traces of ruined frescoes almost appeared. On the uppermost tier of the fountain, the statue of a Naiad, her body twisted in dance, playing a lyre. It was from this lyre that in earlier days water would issue in a plume of sunbursts, a stream of honey cascading in an arc across the sky. Its music would bubble and splash in the basins all summer long, overflowing one and gurgling into the next, and the courtyard would sigh with this sound, like a steady wind, through long, light-filled afternoons. But the absolute, stilled, sheer present, the eternal present moment caught in that particular photograph showed no golden cataracts or illuminated mists. Tufts of weeds were sprouting in the seams between the stones. The wall beneath the solitary tree was in disrepair. No water flowed, no music filled the courtyard. There was the orange light of autumn, a white door in the derelict wall, the elegant abandonment of the lyre-player, the silence and resonance of her crystal-like time.
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Footfall followed footfall over the green and gray cobblestones. The street was almost empty, though the sky was clear and the sun unusually warm. He walked from the bakery and crossed the street, where a fruit vendor was set up under the arches near the canal. She yawned and put an open hand to her mouth, looking about aimlessly over the multiform shapes and piquant colors stacked in bins below her. His hand was plunged in the pocket of his coat, working at something. Blackbirds were perched on the walls above and every few seconds one would suddenly flap its wings and dance in place, giving out a shrill call that echoed curtly in the bright morning. He cut his pace and hesitated by the banks of the canal, watching water pour from the lock and the swans lazily drifting about in the current. On the footbridge directly across from him someone was clipping the flower boxes. An old man, with umber skin and a thick white moustache, his hat pulled down over his eyes, was drawing out quantities of lifeless stems and limpid petals with gloved hands and placing them in a wheelbarrow. A mallard swam toward him from the opposite bank and Simon watched its slow progress. He tilted his head upward in concentration; a trail of steam was rising into the atmosphere from somewhere beyond the rooftops. A moment passed. One of the blackbirds darted from its perch and landed a few steps from him. It approached him with an awkward gait, bobbing side to side, its shiny black eyes darting this way and that. Simon drew a clinched fist from his pocket, and then abruptly released a shower of crumbs about the startled animal. It greedily dove into the debris, and its companions followed, leaping from their perch in a fury of flapping wings and squawks. Simon quickly moved on, the birds descending in a blustery black cloud behind him. He tossed another handful of crumbs over the river in the direction of the mallard and walked on, watching the sun-specked water course steadily along the stone walls of the embankment. He crossed the bridge and gave a nod to the umber-skinned man, who in turn acknowledged him with a slight adjustment of his jaw.
Passing under the shadow of the Church of the Ascension, he took notice of the grand wooden door standing out in sharp contrast to the large building’s white stone façade. The sky was pure blue above the bell tower, adorned by a simple white cross. He came out into the square, where hardly anyone lingered now that the mass of all soul’s day was underway. He watched a man and woman pushing a stroller along the sidewalk, the pink face of the little baby girl staring absently into the air. A chilly breeze wafted through the square, and on it the smell of breakfasts being prepared in the kitchens of restaurants.
Under the equestrian monument he found a bench in the shade of a tall tree. He swept the brittle red and yellow leaves from it with his hands and sat down. His thoughts now began to settle, too. The clear morning cheered him, and he thought with pleasure at how he had nothing at all to do the entire day, that there was no work that had to be caught up with, no obligations to anyone, and all that lay ahead of him was a strand of blissful hours of freedom, and the sun shining at that. He looked upward through branches of flaming leaves at the blue sky that came through at every interstice. Towering to his right was the figure of a soldier mounted on horseback. An arm was extended and held a rapier aloft in a sharp line against the horizon. With each breeze that blew through the square, leaves rained lightly from their bows. Simon felt a strange, sleepy peace come over him. His eyes were tired from tossing all morning in bed. Dreams and the brightness of the early hours kept waking him. No matter how he sank his being into darkness, when he shut his eyes tightly, or plunged his thoughts into deep, dark, hollow places, he still could not entirely keep out the brightness of the morning sun, which pierced the slats of the blinds. His tired eyes gazed at the statue. Streaks of dirt from a recent rain had obscured the soldier’s face. Some sort of filth had washed over him and dried there in blotches.
Simon had a presentiment of something emerging from one of the side streets, and before this being entered his periphery he was already drawn to it. Now he began to make it out. Across the square a figure moved silently. A young, dark-haired woman in a long coat and black boots was walking slowly in the slanted shadow of the buildings. Through his tired eyes, Simon thought he saw the air distending about her, as if her physical form was warping the space she moved through. He blinked his eyes and focused again, and this effect was lost. Her shoulder length raven’s hair was tied in a spout at the back of her head, where her lovely neck rose from a tall collar. Her hands were in her pockets, and her slender body was wrapped up in a rather large gray coat, her arms drawn into herself as if she were walking against a stiff wind. And in fact a wind had picked up, and dry leaves lifted and swirled about her ankles. Her hair took in all the light of the morning and held it in a silver sheen that seemed to ripple across the dark strands. His whole attention was drawn to the hair about her neck, bobbing lightly as she stepped. As she moved out of the square he had the sudden urge to follow her. The luminous day, the clean, chill air, his sense of freedom, all rose within him in a single urge to know this woman. But as suddenly, a kind of anesthetic haze descended over him, and while he thought of all the things he might say to her, while he tried to imagine with what words he could possibly open himself up to this girl, she disappeared beyond the stone wall of the Church of the Ascension in the direction of the lake. In the empty square, a wind rushed through the tops of the trees, singing among the limbs as it went. In the distance he could hear the coursing of the water in the canal, and some vague voices which were also like music, if only because they were rendered incomprehensible by the length and obstacles over which they sounded. He listened to this music and the sounds of the square, and almost forgot himself and the reason he had set off in this direction this morning.
