Through a Black Window | Short Story

A window, it was a window after all. The neighbours of 104 were locals, so much so that I heard rumours that they had rented that apartment well before I set foot in the city about ten years ago. I loved spending the days watching their television in their living room from the second floor window and imagining sounds reflected in those shapes and colours that attracted my eye. I often heard the barking dog of the old woman who lived in 109 who had a scarlet car of fantastic workmanship. I studied every microscopic detail from my little world segregated by a thin sheet of glass.

The streets were narrow and dark and sometimes at night I sat on the armchair in the living room with a good hot coffee and imagined where they led, if it were true that every street led to someone's home, to someone's favourite bar, to a kindergarten that guarded a favourite child or an abandoned infant or a hospital with a sick patient on a dying bed. Deep down I knew every brick in that cluster of houses hanging on the ground, even though my hands full of cuts had never touched them.

-’You see Brigadier, I know everyone even though I have never exchanged a word with anyone and I can say with certainty that the act was not carried out by any of the locals or by their family or close friends’-

-'It rains incessantly in this season of the year, the act is not recent and this does not correspond with your reconstruction, I fear'- the man interrupted abruptly as if he had a lump in his throat which he was desperately trying to get rid of and then threw a handful of photos depicting the crime scene on the table.

- ‘The blood on the outside walls was already dry, it couldn't have happened last night’- he continued, pulling off his pitch black coat.

-You know, when I was young my family loved cats, so much so that we had more than twenty of them; one of them came towards us almost asking for our attention, one with a deep dark fur, black as the sky. I called him Schrödinger’- I replied with a light smile on my face. The man was clearly annoyed, I don't know if by my statement or by my sense of humor.

It was an evening like any other that certainly did not shine with emotions never seen before or stars that never bloomed. The dog of the 109 had recently stopped barking to eat his discarded dinner, and the neighbors of the 104 were watching a movie with a dubious plot. They were just husband and wife, the children were probably in bed as the upstairs rooms were dark. After half an hour the woman clings to the remote control turning off the television and begins what appears to be a heated discussion that grows in intensity until it reaches its peak when the woman throws a bottle of wine against the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. A wonderful mirror I feel like adding, the wood that framed it was fine and delicate and reflected in it was a body full of pain that blossomed as the red wine gushed over the shards on the floor. The two moved, dancing between shouts and anger, and I lost sight of them for a few minutes. When I saw them reappear the man pushed the woman to the wall, who was suffering, clutching her side. Not long after I noticed the shard of glass piercing her liver. They lay on the ground for a while, escaping my silent vision, I didn't have the urge to do anything but sip my coffee. God save me, but I've never exchanged a word or a glance with either of them, or for what's worth with any of the locals.

After a few minutes the man jumped up and dragged the body outside, throwing it multiple times against the wall and running with it in his arms into the forest. Then I closed the blinds, read the newspaper and went to sleep.

The next day two cops, one with a questionable hat and the other with a black coat, visited the village and I suppose someone directed them to my home.

- ‘I have already told you brigadier, I know every tile of these villages and those photos come from somewhere else I am afraid’- I whispered, interrupting the cold silence between us.

The sergeant looked at me for a moment with eyes filled with fear, I could swear it.

-’Do you remember your name?’- He asked me with a tremor in his voice. The question left me flabbergasted, but even more to notice that I actually didn't know what to answer.

- ‘Isaac Robinson, spouse of Jane Robinson, murdered two weeks ago in the east of the country’ -

- ‘I have lived here for ten years, Your Honor’ - I repeated with a bored attitude.

- ‘The last person to rent this house was Rose Pearlman, who died of natural causes three years ago. The neighbors told us that you broke in last week’ - the man said, handing me a folder with several photos of the crime scene.

- ‘We identified you as the gentle lady from 109 was taking care of a dog that last night was found gutted in "your" garden, to which obviously the woman called the police and the identikit terribly coincides with your criminal records'-

From the cold bars I observe fragile men in uniform drinking their coffee and bitterly think back to my conversation with the man in the black coat and whisper to myself with a half smile -'What a cream of Arabia this coffee has! '-