Sometimes the evening will be chilly, a spatter of rain falling in the courtyard when you come home tired from an afternoon of errands, and you will want nothing more than to close the door behind you and settle in. You might turn on the radio—France Musique, a program devoted to Debussy, alternating Afternoon of a Faun and Claire de Lune with letters he wrote to Mallarmé, a flow of words you can almost, almost understand while you move instinctively to prepare comfort food, cutting and buttering and sugaring a stale baguette, adding raisins, milk, egg, for bread pudding. This is an evening for shutters. For being sheltered, cozied.
To close the shutters is a clear physical act. You must first open the window, then reach around and grasp the heavy wooden wing where it rests against the outside wall, and swing it toward you.
While you are doing this you look across the courtyard to a neighbour’s window, its lace curtains and the two iron cooking pots hung outside and her abandoned plant, and you say, in your mind, something like a friendly good-night to this neighbour whom you do not know. Then, having pulled the slatted boards together, you are enfolded. This feels quite different from pulling down a shade: you have reached out into the evening, and drawn your portion in.
Some of the wider night leaks between the peeling white-painted louvres, where after supper you lay your book and glasses, your cup of tea, on the window sill.
When you have read late and the sound of the rain has stopped, you may open the shutters again, to gaze at the moon.
No comments:
Post a Comment