Chapter 67
We walked to number 10 of the corso – the street – up to a place which was not a bar, not a museum, not a shop, not a residential area but rather all of these at once. There was a court, which was somehow mysterious, although I couldn’t exactly tell why it felt so. There were plants, plenty of them, arranged in large vases and crawling along the old walls, and a ramp of stairs climbed up somewhere, while a bar stood half hidden behind a bamboo mobile wall and abstract sculptures.
“WOW, It was worth coming here!”, I exclaimed and Jack nodded, fascinated by the ambience, pausing his gaze on the stairs, following them up as far as his view could go
“What do you think is up there?”, he asked, moving towards them
“Let’s go and see!”, I exclaimed, humoring his renewed enthusiasm with my own hunger for discovery
We found a small room with some black and white photographs, framed in simple black metal. They represented faces and run-down places, beaches and bridges, and although the subjects were somewhat ordinary there was something disturbing and fascinating at once about the way they had been captured, or maybe it was just the atmosphere of the place that made them seem so. Dim light filtered through the thin glass of an old window and spread like fine sand on the wall, plastered unevenly and with sparse cracks creeping along it.
I went to the window and looked at the court from above. An elegant girl with high pumps and a pencil black dress walked out of the bar, swaying her hips and leaning on a guy’s arm, laughing languidly and tipping her head so that her curly locks fell sensuously backwards. Against the flirtatious flair of the girl’s curls lay the façades of the buildings surrounding the court, blossoming with flowers and flourishing with plants, which leaned from the banisters of small balconies like a kid’s unruly hair.
“Let’s explore what else is here!”, said Jack, turning to me with an excited light in his eyes
There was a bookshop around the corner of the hallway but it was closed, so we moved on till we found a terrace with a glass gazebo, under which sat a table with a mosaic top, crazy with multi-coloured patterns, harmonic in their chaotic essence. And there were statues, futuristic monsters and exotic species somewhat reminiscent of Gaudi’s art. I walked around, touching the objects, inhaling the smells twirling from the bar in the dusky warmth of the evening, listening to the voices and the giggles dancing at a distance, embracing the place with my eyes, all my senses soaked with what we were experiencing.
Jack had sat at the table, laying back on the chair, a tired and satisfied expression on his face. I sat too, and ran my finger along the smooth mosaic fragments composing the table’s surface. Jack’s smiling eyes had just met mine when I heard a male voice at my back.
“Hello Iris, I have been looking forward to meeting you”, the voice said