1001 Nights Cast

She stretched under the bright orange cover and looked at the patch of sky through the window: from the dull light she could tell it was going to be another grey day, when the sun seems to have been buried in some deep region, hidden to the ordinary inhabitants of the city. She knew it was going to be one of those long overcast Paris Sundays, when nothing much happens and one has to invent one’s own life all over again, to start from scratch as if speaking a totally foreign language, and the city itself is as silent and muffled as if it were covered in snow. She recognised the feeling, a mixture of boredom and restlessness, when she felt it necessary to make something out of the day, against all odds, and would end up in some gallery looking at black and white photographs of strange landscapes, thinking all the time of him and his own gaze, the unique way he had of looking at things, details, images, faces, streets, lights…

The bed was warm, but she felt more strongly than at any other place or time, the absence of the man, the friend, the lover, the companion with his feet rubbing against hers (when they slept together though, she resented his easy, profound sleep, while excitement and joy and pain kept her awake for hours, sometimes throughout the night—the next morning, she felt sore but the tension would dissolve in the dazzling summer light and they would go for an early swim together down at the beach).

She got up, urged by the need for a cup of tea, the pleasure of preparing it, this everyday ritual that helped her through the difficult task of being awake, active, responsible. Opening the window, she let in a chilly air, and the perfect stillness of the Paris Sunday morning was only broken by the sweeping of a broom, the green man dreamily holding it being the only person in the street at that hour.

She went out onto the balcony and peered at the sky, searching for a blue patch: ‘Spring is so long in coming’, she thought, looking at the few plants that seemed if not frozen, somehow stopped in their development, their leaves still and bleached in the grey light. March had been so mild that they had truly believed winter was over, with its bleak, cold, humid weather. But April, as often, was acid and cruel, with a bitter wind coming from God knows what far away corners of Siberia.

But she knew, because she was not a little girl or a moody adolescent anymore, that the weather was not really to blame, nor the dead city below, that everything was just a reflection of her own emotions. ‘It’s him I’m waiting for, him who’s so long in coming, like Spring.’

The kettle started to sing and whistle, and she poured boiling water on the fragrant black leaves: the day could start, a slow, dull, grey April Sunday in Paris. She put on an old record that belonged to her grandfather and listened to ‘Overcast Sunday’, the melancholy and yet joyful song by Tsitsanis, that so well expressed her mixed feelings; she hummed along in Greek.

She was not in a hurry, after all. She had all the time in the world. She could wait.