Sun Alley. Cecilia Ştefănescu
breasts of his grandmother’s friends, who admired him and who would always spit three times to guard him from the evil eye. ‘There you go, beauty. Come to Mummy; let me give you a hug.’ And he would abandon himself in their arms, uncomplainingly indulging in their adoration. His nose sunken deep between the two mountains, he was surrounded by the whiff of aged skin and of the perfumes the ladies would dab behind their ears, on their necks and inside their cleavage. It must be that women couldn’t feel boys’ touches; they were but ethereal beings that passed unnoticed through the world of curvy women, and neither their filthy thoughts nor their immodest desires could be read. If it were so – if Sal could at least make sure that the lady lying here on the table couldn’t feel him, if he knew he had the freedom to explore her body while she slept, to inspect every hidden corner, to examine every pore – how he would look down at Harry then, what stories he would have to tell the boys!
He decided to look for something he could light the room with. He drew back slowly and, groping around in the same manner he had got there, he crept back out. The dark hallway had awakened and was moving; the walls were quivering, and along them one could vaguely discern the aligned doors to the storage rooms. Sal got scared and took a step back, trying to calm his own heartbeat now blasting all over the basement: ‘There’s nothing to be scared of, there’s nothing to be scared of.’
Repeating this chorus in his mind, Sal decided to cross the dark hallway that seemed, nonetheless, much friendlier than the den he had just emerged from. Near the door, he stumbled upon something that made the basement resonate with the loud chime of the stuff scattered on the floor. Had he disturbed the sacred order of the stinking vault – had he awoken the haunting ghosts, overcome by boredom and with their ears buzzing from so much loneliness? Now he was filled with regret; he wished he could take his steps back so that the box with its belongings remained in its place undisturbed.
Sal bent down and groped along the ground. His hands bumped against all sorts of objects, and carefully, but still trembling with excitement, he searched among them. He felt an oblong shape like a flute; the material the object was made of, however, felt strange. He put it down and continued his probing, down on his knees. A metal box. He took it in his hands, fumbled for its rims with his nails and tried to open it. The box slipped from his hands and the corridor vibrated in a long, shrill shriek.
Sal stopped dead. Emi’s cheerful image and her luminous face flashed in his mind, and he felt his heart ache while his eyes began to glow. She was looking at him and waving her hand with her fingers unfurled, bidding him ‘Farewell!’ in her childish manner. He was suffering abstractly for the first time, and stopped in his tracks. When the girl’s image had disappeared, he found himself in a panic attack: doubled up in agony, standing on all fours and rummaging indiscriminately through the objects on the floor hoping that, if he made as much noise as possible, either he would be heard by someone who would come down to save him or the ghosts, deafened, would take flight in their shady gullies. He came across the sharp, cold blade of a knife that briefly nicked his skin. Sal released a sigh, this time relieved upon encountering a shape he finally recognised. He took the knife, stood up and headed to the storage room, groping in the dark.
It was chillier still. His head was heavy and his heartbeat was muffled, as if coming from a jar of molasses. He was afraid and, if he had had the guts to let the tears run, he knew the fear would have subsided a bit – or at least it wouldn’t have mattered so much. After a few steps, he stopped and decided to turn back.
He fell on his knees again and started scrabbling in the dark for the metal box he had dropped a few minutes before. The floor was slimy and touching it turned his stomach, but he continued to search and finally returned to his feet holding a box of matches with the tips of his fingers; from inside it he could hear the friendly sound made by the matches in their cardboard shell. Sal carefully opened the box and took out a match; he struck it once, twice, three times, but the cardboard was damp and the match broke in two with a short crackle.
He took another one out, and this time the match caught fire, throwing out a mellow light. But it wasn’t exactly what he wished to see. All along the corridor the moving air carried a cohort of dust specks. With his eyes wide open, he tried to make an imprint in his mind of all the details – the cobwebs hanging in corners like brocades, the black doors, the shiny floor reflecting the dark ceiling – and then he closed them. Two big beads of water trickled down his cheek like two tears. The flame of the match slowly singed his skin, and he let go of it and lit another. He squatted, looked for the metal box, found it, clasped it in his hand and let the cool metal ease some of the pain the burn had caused. A whiff of air put out his flame, but now he was more serene. He had a good supply of light in the matchbox, a penknife and a metal box – the latter he had taken as a souvenir. He returned, fumbling in the dark, to the door that led to the storage room; he opened it with his foot and, after entering, he stopped.
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