So far untitled

She says: Remember, it is a privilege, or — look at it this way, you’ll never get this chance again.

A chance to gain a blessing (oh, oh, be careful using that word...)

Outside is blazing sun but in this courtyard the soothing plash of softly playing fountains. The doves kroo-kroo in a weary manner, waiting for sleep to still their murmuring.

She thinks: I should record this somehow because in the years to come, when memory fades, I will want to recall this moment.

She walks slowly across the glazed tiles, slightly cooled by the drops spattering from the fountains, and enters the second courtyard.

How soft the air, how welcoming the light inside. Here there is another fountain and now a pool with golden fishes, their languid movements catching the shafts of sunlight that streams from a point high above.

There he is. Seated on an embroidered cushion. Gazing apparently at the swimming fish.

Without speaking, she sits down beside him, cross-legged on the floor. It feels cold through her thin linen trousers. She shivers slightly. Chill and apprehension.

Should she wait fro him to speak? He does not look at her, has not acknowledged her presence.

Unexpectedly, she wants to weep. A huge pain swells from deep inside her. Silent tears roll down her cheeks. She puts out her tongue to lick them. Salt. Cleopatra. Always the words of Shakespeare running through her head. ‘Be thy tears wet?’ Their music formed a loyal companion, never forsaking her. That’s why she’d come.

‘Is there any cause in Nature that makes these hard hearts?’ She had to understand, before the unthinking silence finished her. She needed at least a partial answer. The question was simple, contained in one word.

Why?
She had been told this man might help. So she was seated beside him on the chill floor. Observing the movements of fish in clear waters.

Where should she begin her story? With the birth? She had only been told about it, could never feel how it must have been. In another country, under a foreign sky, strange language, different food and customs...

He turned and looked at her. Such quietness. And kindness. She let out an uneven, sobbing breath.

He smiled at her.
She understood there was no need to tell the story. Somehow it was already told and her problem was already solved.

She waited a little, then stood up, placed her hands together in the prayer position, bowed her head and took a few steps backward.

Outside the shadows had shortened, only the water still plashed gently, continuously, as if it coud never stop.

Healing, she thought, has no words.

For Fran, encountered in a Hairdresser’s in Pinhao, Portugal