3 Evening

Yet my life is itself full of unknown drama and tragedies. As anybody may suspect, the little dear town has put its seal over my soul. I am what you may call a day-dreamer, an author like no other of Gothic sceneries that come and go and walk their plots along the dusty or rainy Harrowing's Town. I also have a slight fear that, however small, a change may destroy the strange affection that I have for this place of my childhood. The simplicity of life here is legendary. Nothing is impossible and yet nothing can break the balance of anything. People live and die, love and hate in the same quiet way, they sing and cry with the same eyes and heart and they seem always the same. The most simple of all things is dying. We can not see it as a tragedy, since it is the only way to complete life, to complete freedom. We learn to make it our friend, a cold and serious friend, but devoted and true. Death is part of our everyday life and still it remains outside it in the same time. Tears are then necessary somehow, because pain can never remain silent. That is the one law we really respect. Nothing must remain hidden because it grows and kills from the inside. And the inside can only be full of God. God's life. Life must never hide death, but always spit it out. And so we cry. Not too much, only when needed. And then life goes on just as pure as before.

I walk slowly along the road. I must admit I am a little disappointed. I had expected something a little more... complicated than a missing old lover that suddenly decided to rise back from the dead. Lucinda shall soon realise her hopes are in vain and be gone as well together with Michael to live happily ever after in the lights of their extraordinary outland. I'm sure they already regret their visit to our sun-forsaken place which no one could love more than I, who know so well its sadness. Eventually, I decide to pass by the Church to see if our guests have managed to improvise any kind of accomodation. The only thing that I have too much is time. Endless time. I have nothing to be late for.

I arrive in the churchyard quite late. It is deep silence and dark. As usual. There is no other path to the door than over the grass, on a portion of earth dried by so much walking. I'm quite sleepy and maybe a little too enthusiastic about the whole story, because again I think I see a tall shadow by the fence. It's not moving so it's most probably an illusion. Now I hear whispers from inside the arcade that bounds the Church and the priest's house. I go that way and recognise Lucinda's figure at the faint light of a further lamp. She's talking to father Joseph. No sign of Michael.

"There are so many stories, I her her say, and all fantasies. What can one do when such a thing really happens?"

His words flow like the distant wind.

"You are different people, I can see that. Here, among us, this is at the same time more and less than just a story. Your fear is strange to an ordinary man. And if that is not fear, I am unable to call it otherwise."

"I've already told you what it is, father, answers the beautiful Lucinda in an icy tone. I've never enjoyed a quiet life, a peaceful happy existence, I long to travel and to learn all new things. I don't hold to the past. I let my past rest in peace. I let dead people rest in peace and I expect the same from them."

I almost guess the smile on the priest's face.

"There is no past, it doesn't exist, I hear him answer. The only real thing is the present. Death is never in the past. Just in the future..."

They see me coming and they both welcome me. I get a kind smile and a severe frown. I understand the smile, it comes from my father. I make an effort and understand the frowning as well, since I appear uninvited and interrupt a confession.

"Hello, father. I only wanted to check your accommodation, milady", say I with a charming smile.

She casts upon me an empty look.

"Go inside, my child, and try to sleep, he tells me. We'll talk in the morning."

I feel very grateful that he still remembers about my nightmares. Just now Michael appears from the opposite direction.

"And so we meet again, our little guide. I thought you'd go home. We are grown-ups now and we can manage, don't worry."

"Home it is, sir Michael" say I cheerfully. "Only you don't seem to adapt as easily, I've seen you by the fence just a moment ago. Have you been walking for a long time now?"

"I've been inside, he answers a little amazed. It wasn't me."

I realise I keep making mistakes so I decide to fallow the advice and go to bed. I give them a friendly sign of goodbye and step away. The garden is even more silent than before and a white clever fog starts sneaking along the lonely alleys and through the huge branches that dig the blurry sky. Meanwhile, I think fondly about this night that I plan to spend in the most wonderful place on earth. My steps become faster as I remember its beauty, especially when the fog is there and dances all around me. I can see it already- in the deep back of the churchyard, an enormous walnut tree, whose hight defies all the surrounding houses. Only the top of the old belfry looks down at me from above, as I sometimes attempt to climb it the only way one can reach it, by the tree. There must be several years since the wooden stairs have turned to dust and never replaced again. Now only I and the spiders prove brave enough to turn this old place into our homes, and in between their delicate traps lay I on my back, staring at the big bell whose music I can tell he himself may have forgotten. All these come to my mind as I place my hands around the stiff trunk and jump up. I have a feeling like no other, because here all I smell and taste and hear is air. I become air- invisible and quiet and fresh. I drink fog like red wine and fell asleep in a paradise of freedom. In the deep silence of the evening, a strong sound strikes me and paralyses with amazement. The old bell of my tower makes his voice heard again, but in what a music! A funeral would produce more joyful notes, and yet the sound of this is distantly familiar to me. The fog is mysteriously swirling around me and I can barely see the next branch to grasp with my hand. The bell keeps crying in despair and I remember a faint sound of what it sounded the first time ever that I heard that dying pace. It was an old story of my childhood. A young man, of twenty and a few years old, had been found dead at the base of the walnut tree after playing such a desperate music as the inhabitants of the small town had never heard before. The priest, as doctor and village headmaster, was the only one to examine the case. The verdict had been rather non-public but no one had doubted that the poor boy was mad. That also because a strange act of his had been filling the tower with tens of candles before throwing himself at the ground. Sad story, but simple and clear. As a curious child, who was not allowed to witness the tragedy, I first came to be interested by the tower that very night and that was the time I also discovered the secret of the second way up. The place hold to me since a strange attraction and as the other saw the accident as a sign to stay aside, I took it as an invitation in. Now I feel like my own time in there is up, but also see this intrusion as a violation of my home. For the sake of it alone do I dare to continue climbing, in spite of the growing obscurity and noise.

Then the bell suddenly becomes quiet and even if my ears almost hurt, I can sense the noise of the few people that the calling had resembled. I look down where the fog is thinner, but it's still the voices that I recognise, not the profiles.

"Ayla, is that you?" I hear father ask.

"No, father", I shout calmly.

"Come down, my child", he says.

I look up and, for the third time already, I think I distinguish in the smoky air the outline of a stranger guarding the huge bell as a raptor. I feel sorry to obey but I do. As I touch the ground, Lucinda pushes me aside with one hand and takes out a small black object which she then aimed at the balcony of the belfry.

"No, Lucinda, father says and his voice is kind but strong. This is not our way. Death is no longer a solution."

"Death is always the solution", she says and the sound of her alone makes me more afraid than having been so close to an insane.

The fog is almost vanished so we all see the gun on fire and the sparkle that stops in the stranger's chest. The noise repeats a few more times, but the shadow upstairs seems made of stone. Only after the shooting finally stops, the shadow takes a step behind and we see it no longer.

Michael grasps Lucinda's arm and tries to recover his gun.

"Damn it, it's burning" he says and throws it away.

I'd never seen a woman so angry before. Her beauty is gone and the fury takes her over. A statue of hatred, she seems. The night is cold and I am cold. I'm not used to it and tremble entirely. Michael whispers some words at father's ears and the priest makes us a sign to fallow him to the house. I wish I stayed.