He was sitting in the garden, like the previous day and the one before. The warmth of the grass, soft under the soles of his feet, suggested that the morning was starting. The old man stretched his back and curled his hands on his lap. He was keeping his eyes half-closed, as he had always done since his childhood, with the carelessness of blind people.
The first workers walked in groups on the street that ran alongside the garden. The old men heard their voices, full of summer, and the slow strolling of girls, wrapped in their traditional shyness.
A little distance away, in the kitchen of the small wooden house in which he lived, his niece was cooking breakfast for the young ones, who were still sleeping.
The old man forgot the noises and once again brought his attention to his own breathing, inflating and emptying his chest like a minuscule sail.
It had never been difficult for him to forget sounds, the never ending chatting that accompanies youth in its first years. Perfumes did not have any hold on him either, when he was meditating. From his memories also, he was able to keep himself distant, like from good, old friends who know discretion. Rather, it was only one, tiny thought that, for years, or to better say, since always, trespassed on the emptied space of his mind.
However, even if he had known how to get rid of it, thanks to his ability and his decades of experience, still, he never really wanted to disperse it.
More than an idea, flying on the skin of his quiet, it was an ancient and deep secret, so important that it had never been revealed, not even during the periodic meetings with the monks, who used to visit him. Beyond his immobile position, it was only that question that, day after day, strengthened his desire to sit down and seek the inward calm once again.
After all those years, the old man still asked himself whether it was possible, from the pristine perspective of meditation, to see the light. Since the time when other people’s stories had spread like snow on the darkness of his childhood, he had heard about it. The light that gives life to plants, that lightens the hair and darkens the skin. The light, a blessing for the fields, the enemy of lovers, God’s eye on the world. So close, equally spread upon the bodies of the blind and of those who see, the light had never managed to make her way through his ill eyes.
The old man had never openly talked about it, but, in all his questions to the monks and to the lecturers of holy texts, that speck of hope had always been present, like a goad that encourages to ask and study more.
If everything is in everything, the old man said to himself, if every thing really is one single soul, if what is above is like what is below, and each speck of dust contains a universe in itself, then, somewhere, even in the dark heart of a blind soul, light must have its hiding place.
In the kitchen, his niece raised her voice and, like every morning, sang the rhyme of the awakening. In the next room, a pretended silence still covered the children’s reluctant awakening.
The old man observed his own breathing rising and falling, like a sailor controls the movements of the wind. Then, as he had learned to do, his attention stepped backwards and focused on his entire body, as if it wanted to contain the entire universe in one glance.
Beyond the garden, the workers’ steps had disappeared, quickly substituted by the continuous squeaking of the workshops. In the distance, the engines of military vehicles reminded the city of the constant presence of war. However, for those who were strolling along the narrow and tidy street, brushing against the wooden walls of the houses, the war still seemed something inconceivably far. In the golden peace of its fourth summer of war, the city of Hiroshima and its citizens were smiling, at the gook luck of not having ever received an air bombing.
When the air-raid alarms went off, from the top of the long poles installed in the city squares, the factories kept working for a few minutes. The workers put their tools back in the compartments and slowly left their positions, moving away in groups, as at the end of their turn. In the houses, the women had a quick look in the mirrors, before going out into the streets, where only the dogs’ barking was disturbing the dignity of that unexpected party.
From the kitchen, his niece moved into the children’s room and woke them up. She picked up the youngest one, laid part of the breakfast in a basket, and entered the garden, where the old man was sitting. When she saw him, the young woman stopped for a moment. Discretely, she moved closer to the old man, who looked as though he hadn’t heard the scream of the alarms.
‘We are going to the air-raid shelter, grandfather. Would you like to come with us?’
The old man heard and pretended he didn’t.
He hadn’t gone to the shelter even once, during those four years of war, and certainly it wouldn’t have been on that warm summer morning that he would have locked himself in a basement together with hundreds of other bodies.
Anyway, he was old enough to face the risk of dying.
The niece remained next to him for a few seconds, then she walked backwards with little steps, towards the entrance of the house. With a soft voice, she told the children to be quick, let one of them grab her dress and all together they crossed the only room that separated them from the street.
The old man had learned to appreciate the air-raid alarms. After the minute of screams, the peace that followed was priceless. It was as if the dawn was rising again, above the sleeping houses and the gardens, still fresh, humid of night. In those gifted moments, the old man loved to believe that it was easier to go down, in the depth of his meditation, seeking the place where his secret was hiding.
As his concentration became sharper, the old man’s breath slowed down, getting to a rhythm similar to sleep. Delicately, his attention moved over the top of his breathing, towards the centre of his forehead.
His eyelids raised a little, letting the azure, where his eyes were sleeping, become uncovered.
Over him, the wind made the cherry tree branches creak.
The old man exhaled deeply and waited for the air to abandon his chest completely; then, in that exact instant, he penetrated with no effort into the centre of his meditation.
It was not the first time he entered that path, along the slope that leads without vertigo to the bottom of meditation. He proceeded with no rush, lightening his steps. He recognised its darkness and its walls, while, at the bottom of the slope, the great door was appearing, the frontier of his attention, in front of which he had always had to stop. He moved close to it, with the instinctive carefulness of an animal of the forest. He smelled its thickness, tasted its glossy edges, felt its warmth, and stopped. Then, slowly, his concentration seemed to bend and to lie on one side, while becoming thinner.
At 8:10, on that morning in August, once again immobile in front of the border of his knowledge, the old man decided that he wouldn’t try anymore to force its secrets. In the darkness of the path, his attention kneeled in front of its own limit and humbly looked in front of itself.
With no sound, while a tear built up on the edge of his eyelid, the old man placed on the palm of his hand his question, the spark that had gone through all his years, and said
‘Even if you hide behind this door, in the most inaccessible heart of my soul, and you don’t want to let me see you, still you are mine, light. Because it is in me that you hide. I will not chase you any longer, as one chases a fleeting lover, but I will remain here, waiting for you, until you will notice my love. Only this, is what I can give you, and what remains of my time.’
At 8:14, at ten thousand meters of height, in the superhuman colour of the sky above the clouds, the light stopped for a moment. With the merciful glance of one who is beyond good and evil, the light looked downwards and, for the first time, saw him, sitting with crossed legs on the garden grass.
In the instant of one glance, she recognised him.
She let herself fall with no fear, with no regrets, accelerating to the limit of her possibilities, unable to wait any longer.
She slid along the precipice of the winds, with the impatience of first love.
Arriving at six hundreds meters of height, when the first birds’ wings drew ink-lines in the sky, the light looked deeper and saw the eyes of the old man, set into azure crystals.
She saw the opaque windows of her house, the closed fragments of her hiding place, the doom with which she had protected her shelter, inside the heart of the old man.
The light had a pang and desperately tried to wait a little longer, before letting her love, her nostalgia explode.
As for all the lovers, waiting was impossible.
Fifty-seven seconds after seeing him, an infinite time after having started to seek him, the light exploded in the sky over the garden of the old man, not being able to hold back her love, stronger than the houses’ wooden walls, than the frail skin of people.
At 8:15, on that morning in august, when finally he saw her, the old man only had the time to give her a smile.
Federico Campagna
