SPECTRUM IN THE BLACK HOUSE

The black house where I live has this macabre new inhabitant who appeared last night, when it was dark inside and the outline of things could only be guessed at. I know she was always there, though before she was just a specter that didn't materialize, a shadowy phantom that sometimes crossed rooms, sometimes crept along the walls like a stain on the mind that torments the soul and leaves, only to return again then bigger, darker and menacing. Now she wanders silently through the house, daring through the rooms, crouching beside the heavy antique furniture, moving her head slowly and with an infinitely sad look in her eyes, watching me as I walk through the hallways, my body shivering in the icy cold.

The cold here is like a tenant. It has a constant presence and dominates the environments, aided by the current of air that never ceases, no matter how many cracks I cover or windows and doors I close. The wind causes the cracking of the tiles that collide with each other and also the unbearable noise that comes from the garden, where bushes shake and twist in unrelenting agony. I know that the next night I will wake up suddenly, for no reason at all. And she will be there, in the corner of the room, quiet and terrible, black hair over her face, a pile of dirty, rumpled clothes, a heap of barely audible whimpers, her long, sharp-nailed hands at her sides, scratching the wooden floor, before carving into my neck an escape route to oblivion and its heat.

Fear is a weapon that defends us from ourselves, takes us away from the starvation of the senses and from very high places, shelters us from our own storms and misguided desires, pushing us back towards the heart that beats naively oblivious to everything, for there are things you whisper in front of the mirror and your ears refuse to hear. But fear, in addition to armor, is also capitulation and surrender: this is when the shield opens and allows you to see in the field ahead the thorns and jagged rocks of a path that has several names, the main one being hopelessness.

Soon the black house will be uninhabited, the architecture of pain raised over abysses of feelings will succumb to the wind that first will knock down the walls, then rip out doors and windows and, finally, will sweep the dust accumulated on the furniture, the blank pages of the unwritten books, the tears that stained the ground of the world and the afflicted soul yearning for surrender.

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