Sun Alley

by Cecilia Stefanescu

  His eyelids felt heavy, as if someone had poured wax on them. Blinking was such an effort that it made him dizzy. The smell was gone and so was the fear; all that was left was a deep exhaustion. ‘That’s because I didn’t sleep enough!’ thought Sal. But instead of lighting the match, Sal groped his way again to the table with the metal pane. His thighs hit the edge and he stopped. Shaking the matches mechanically, as if to make sure they were still there, he opened the box, took out a match and then clenched it with the tips of his fingers for an instant, motionlessly. When he struck it, the light of the match gave out a matte, smoky light.

  In front of him lay a woman. Just as he had perceived, the woman was naked, stone-still, with her eyes closed, seemingly sleeping. Sal brought the match’s flame next to her motionless face: a white face, with beautiful, smooth skin, an angular nose and a rather small mouth. There was nothing special about the immobile face and, probably, if he had closed his eyes again now, it would have been impossible to recompose her countenance in his mind.

  He looked around. In a corner, there was a pile of floor tiles, some wooden slats and, immediately next to them, a few cardboard boxes and a small chest with broken doors. Sal lit another match and headed to the chest. A petroleum lamp rested on top of the kind his parents had at home and which his father would use whenever there was a power failure. He lifted the part made of glass and lit the snuff; the light grew stronger and the room was enlivened by his shadow on the wall.

  He turned his head to look at the table. The woman lying there had long, black hair, carefully combed over her shoulders in a sensible way that contrasted with her cold breasts and her uncovered genitals. He approached her again, put the lamp on the table and took a step back. It was only now that he noticed the walls were gleaming, as if covered by a curtain of water. He wanted to really get a feel of the skin that shimmered unobtrusively in the smoky light of the lamp – to wake up the sleeping woman and ask her what she was doing – but not before sniffing once again the fine, damp skin, not before caressing the stiff breasts that prodded the air.

  ‘Miss…’ he whispered in a hoarse voice.

  She remained silent, unmoving.

  Sal lowered his hand to her shoulder, covered in the black hair.

  ‘Miss!’

  A bead of sweat stood hanging on the tips of his eyelashes, distorting his view of the woman into asymmetric shapes.

  ‘Are you feeling OK? Do you want me to call an ambulance?’

  He placed his small, young hand upon her white, smooth-skinned, fine-fingered hand, with red-painted fingernails grown slightly to reveal a pinkish semicircle. Its touch gave Sal the creeps. The woman in front of him either couldn’t feel him or didn’t feel like answering or even opening her eyes. He leaned above her and put his ear to her tightly closed mouth. She wasn’t breathing; everything about her was still. He noticed on a finger of her right hand, hidden behind her body, a black stone, crossed by golden streaks that glittered in the lamp’s light. He lifted her hand and looked at the stone: it was a simple setting, in silver. The ring made him think of Emi – how boyish and hasty she was sometimes and how warm and full of love at other times. Girls lived in a different world altogether. And the lady on the table, with her ring, with her breasts prodding in the air, with her red, overgrown fingernails and the beautifully combed tresses on her shoulders, was, as likely as not, dead – or as dead as a woman as beautiful as she could be.

  A cold draught crossed the room, as if all the windows had been opened at once. Sal let go of the woman’s hand and turned toward the door. Then he looked at the lamp, but the flame stood upright in the dark, still throwing its dim light into the room. His whole body was overrun by a wave of heat, accompanied by a pain that gripped his chest. He looked at her again and almost without realising it, he lay down on the table alongside her, draped his arms over her soft flesh, over her damp skin, placed his cheek on her shoulder covered by black tresses – the hair had a herbal smell as well – and the fear, the pain and the cold went away. Never before in his life had he seen such a beautiful woman, such a tantalising nakedness. He hardly felt time pass, but when he sat up the room looked different. He climbed down from the table and rummaged through his pocket to retrieve the penknife and the metal box.

  The flame undulated slightly, moving its shadows around. Sal tried the sharpness of the blade, placing its tip against his finger; then, with an unmoving face as if in preparation for an execution, he took hold of her right hand and gripped her ring finger, on which the black stone rested, between his forefinger and thumb. Contemplating the finger, he adjusted it and then started to cut it scrupulously, without even a flinch when the bone gave way. Finally, the finger was severed from the body. Sal put it in the metal box, closed it, and watched the motionless body again.

  ‘I love you…’

  He had started to sober up. He plugged his ears. The summer heat had poured into the basement. From outside he could hear the sound of a racing engine. He took the box, put it into his pocket and dashed out the door, his heart pounding in his chest.

  ‘I love you…’

  The basement smelled bad again, and when he was outside, out of breath, Sal stopped a little and fell to his knees on the burning asphalt. The heat had dried out all traces of rain. And in Sal’s ears, the two words that had been so funny before, giving him butterflies in his stomach, still echoed: ‘I love you…’

  II

  ‘FAREWELL!’

  In the summer afternoons, when it is very hot, the neighbourhood seems to be asleep. Yet it is actually all an illusion, because real life runs its course inside the houses, away from the heat, in the shady corners where people stay still for hours on end or move very slowly to preserve their body temperatures. During those afternoons, in which the heat pervaded all living spaces, Emi was bored to death and would have given the world to run about at leisure on the empty streets, alone but for her thoughts. Her body, throbbing in all its joints, didn’t seem to be inconvenienced in any way by the heat but with things as they were, she had to stay inside, pretending to sleep and waiting for the call from Sal that would announce four o’clock. Emi hated to sleep, and that was partly because she had no patience. She felt she was losing precious time which she could have used for thinking or for doing lots of other things. For instance, she could have crept to the attic and from there onto the roof, from where she could have spied any movement up to two blocks away. She could have stayed indefinitely like that, watching people swarming by and passing one another blindly. Up on the plate roof soaked in sunshine, she felt that nobody could know she was there, the small god of the neighbourhood.

  She pricked up her ears. Fully dressed, she was sitting up in bed, with her knees drawn to her chin and her toes outstretched. Her forehead rested on her kneecaps, and she scrutinised the streaks in the bed’s upholstery, inside the grooves of the fabric where the threads blended in a secret mesh. She heard the same noise again. Jumping out of bed and rushing to the window, she caught sight of Sal, staring up at her from the pavement below. When he saw Emi, he waved his hand and signalled to her to come down. She opened her window.

  ‘Why are you so late?’

  Sal threw her an outraged look – what did she mean by ‘so late’? It was raining, that’s why.

  ‘Come down, will you?’

  He was late because strange things had been happening to him, things he could talk about with no one but her.

  ‘In a minute!’

  Emi slammed the window shut and dashed to the door. Behind her, a woman’s voice squeaked angrily: ‘Emilia, where are you off to?’

  Emi darted through the front door and rushed into the street, bumping against Sal, who was just about to enter. They stopped and gazed at one another for a moment until Sal, happy to see her at last and still excited, put his hands on her face and brought his lips to her mouth. It seemed to Emi that she completely abandoned herself to the kiss, staring straight into his eyes while he was kissing her. There was a swee
tish, slightly off-putting that somewhat turned her stomach but at the same time gave her tingles up her spine: that dampness that met hers, the slippery tongue that groped around and clumsily cuddled itself around hers. Then Sal let go of her, taking a step back. Emi remained with her eyes riveted upon him, visibly thrilled.

  ‘What was that?’ she babbled.

  Sal broke out in laughter. ‘Are you afraid?’

  His question was mistimed and turned a key in the girl’s interior mechanism. Emi’s expression suddenly changed and she cast a nasty glance toward him, ready to fight, then rushed upon him and thrust him away, ‘Oh, dear. You love to show off, don’t you?’

  Sal made a wry face. Then he swung around and started off down the street, heading back to the apartment building. Emi stared for a few seconds in his direction, astonished.

  ‘Sal… Sal, where are you going?’

  The air was full of little floating fluff balls, chasing each other on the pavement. Across the street, an old lady was carrying two overflowing shopping bags. She would take two or three steps, then stop, put the bags down, heave a noisy sigh and start again. When she lifted the weight, her face muscles strained in a funny grimace. Although she had started halfheartedly on Sal’s trail, Emi shuffled her feet and had time to study the old woman from a distance, watching her as she crossed the street in front of Emi. The woman had just put the bags down again and was adjusting the silk-spotted coloured scarf on her crown.

  ‘Do you need any help?’

  The old woman gave Emi a long stare. The girl repeated the question, shouting in a high-pitched voice: ‘Missus, do you want me to help you?’

  Sal had already reached the corner, but was halted by Emi’s voice chiming in the air. She had stopped across the street from the hag, pointing to her bags. Then, after the hag seemed to have answered, Emi started again, coming his way. When she got near, she put on a dismissive face.

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘I don’t know; how would I know?’

  ‘Well, I saw you speaking to her…’

  ‘I speak to a lot of people!’

  Emi started ahead, with Sal following her like a good dog.

  ‘Are you upset?’

  Sal’s voice trickled toward her ears, surrounding her, and Emi felt the need to get revenge.

  ‘Look, if you don’t feel like it, we don’t have to see each other every day. Only don’t have me wait, okay? I hate it!’

  He threw her a distressful look. He thought she was unfair, and all of a sudden all the expectation and pleasure of seeing her was gone. He noticed that her features had become sharper and felt that nothing was the same: he could no longer tell her what he had found in Harry’s basement. He knew that the woman in the cellar had to remain his secret, and this made him extremely sad. Yet immediately he started to search his mind for an excuse to leave as soon as possible. Emi the girl was extinguished inside him like a flame over which a very weak draught had blown.

  With the tip of her shoe, Emi was now prodding a fluff ball that had gathered at the corner of the street. It looked like candy floss without the stick, and this thought cheered her up.

  ‘Listen, Sal, doesn’t this fluff look like candy floss? If we stuck a stick inside, we could give it to Toma to eat. Wouldn’t that be cool?’

  Sal became even more distraught. ‘That seems to me like the stupidest idea I ever heard.’

  Emi giggled; she took his anger as spite. ‘Why? I would like to know why, exactly, you find it stupid.’

  ‘Because Toma would never eat fluff instead of candy floss. Because Toma doesn’t even like candy floss! And because Toma,’ Sal added, almost shouting, ‘is not a moron!’

  No sooner had he finished uttering his last word than he swung around and started walking back home – although actually he wasn’t walking toward home. It just so happened that Emi had given him a good idea as to whom he could confide in about the woman in the basement. Even if he decided not to tell him everything, then at least he could intimate, through a parable, that the woman existed and that he had discovered her on that torrid and rainy afternoon. He was ready to share his discovery with a trustworthy person, with someone who deserved it.

  He could still feel Emi behind him, thrusting daggers straight into the back of his head, but now that he had escaped, he didn’t mind much. He could bleed at leisure, with the arrows still in his back, until he reached Toma and could forget about her in the rush of conversation. Toma was a true friend, the most honest of all; he was like a boy version of Emi, without her airs and her whims. Sal was relieved. Now that he knew which way to go, the day had recovered its meaning.

  A soft breeze had started to move the hot air around a bit. He didn’t want to look back, because he feared he might change his mind and turn around. Yet as he advanced, the thought of Emi, stranded in the middle of the road with tear-filled eyes weakened his determination and slowed his steps. After a few seconds, Sal stopped and looked straight ahead at the street that joined the boulevard. He could hear the faint sound of the joggling trams, dragging in the heat. Suddenly, he didn’t feel like braving their thundering noise, or facing the dust and the squalor; he didn’t feel like waiting for almost three minutes for the traffic light to turn green; he didn’t feel like going to Toma’s anymore. He realised that Toma would insist to be shown the corpse, would want to see it. Toma wouldn’t be satisfied with his simple account of the story; he would go on his own exploratory survey, even if Sal refused to go with him. And maybe, in the end, Toma would discover something absolutely dreadful: that the woman wasn’t even dead, or that she didn’t even really exist because, apart from having seen her and touched her, what other evidence did he have – how could he prove to anyone that it wasn’t just another fancy of his?

  Sal turned his head. The street was empty. A few fluff clouds still drifted to and fro.

  ‘Hey!’

  He gave a start. From behind him, Harry had popped up out of nowhere, dressed in shorts and wearing a yellow T-shirt resembling that of the national football team. He had the number 10 printed on his back as a tribute to the great player and, as always when he was wearing this T-shirt, Harry had an overconfident attitude and strutted like a turkey cock.

  ‘What are you doing here, man?’

  Sal looked him up and down.

  ‘Nothing. Where are you going?’

  ‘To the playing field, for the game.’

  Sal brooded a bit. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

  ‘Really? When?’

  ‘Half an hour ago, or so.’

  Harry sniffed. ‘Impossible.’

  ‘How is that?’

  ‘If you had looked for me half an hour ago, you would have found me. I was at home all day.’

  ‘Hm. I lingered for a while in your building – it had started to rain. I thought you were at home.’

  ‘Well, I was, man, didn’t I just say so? But I’ll be damned if I heard you!’

  Sal gazed at him. He could have sworn that Harry was telling a pack of lies just because of his uncharacteristically transfixed face and his thoughtful look.

  ‘Who else is going be there?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘For the game, man, who else is going be there for the game?’

  ‘Oh! Well, who do you think? Those two from 112, the Stoicovici brothers, Maxone, Toma…’

  ‘Is Toma coming, too?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s coming to gawk. Are you coming?’

  Sal looked over Harry’s shoulder toward the boulevard. ‘That depends…’

  ‘Come on, are you coming or not?’

  Sal nodded and set off beside Harry toward the school’s football ground. When they crossed Emi’s street, Sal looked along its distance, hoping to see her sulking on the street kerb waiting for him, but Emi was nowhere to be seen. He wished he had stayed with her; he really didn’t feel trashing it out on the field with the others. He was bored and tired. Shoving his hands in his pockets, his fingers sought the creases of fabr
ic, trying to find their place, when something stopped him dead. In his trouser pocket he had encountered the regular shape of the metal box in which he had put the severed finger.

  ‘You know, man, I don’t know what to say, but I’d rather not go…’

  Sal stopped and apprehensively dropped this line to Harry, hoping that he wouldn’t hear it and wouldn’t even notice his absence; that he would keep walking to the football field on his own. But Harry pulled a long face. ‘What’s with you, man, have you gone crazy? Why would you rather not come?’

  Sal shrunk. ‘I don’t have my gear…’

  Harry burst into laughter. ‘Big deal! Like it’s Champions League!’

  He hurried off and Sal followed him. Harry had started talking again about the last game, the one Sal had missed, during which they – the guys from school 122 – had scored ten goals. As he struggled ahead with the hot air pressing upon his skin, he heard Harry’s words as from a dream.

  The two crossed the road and turned left. At the end of the street, they could see the school, a white building with grates over the windows and casements painted bright blue. Harry continued to talk, kicking every now and then at any stone he would encounter on the road. Two silhouettes slowly started to move toward them, the only people they had met on the street in the last half hour.