Four Doors and Other Stories

by A. G. Billig

  “You have six months to improve your performance. Then, we’ll have a new meeting and draw a conclusion. I believe in your talent and I also know that everybody has bad days every now and again,” concluded the boss.

  You bloody corporatist, she thought. He doesn’t give a damn. He does not even prepare himself, he just takes a five-minute look at that crap written by others and poses as a good guy, giving me six months to come to my senses. In case the idea of asking for a raise was crossing my mind!

  She felt both guilty and exposed. She admitted that she had had her head in the clouds lately. She would come to the office, lacking excitement and dedication, do her job mechanically and rush out the door as soon as working hours ended. Those times when she stayed until late, her eyes in the computer screen, adding final changes to elaborate power point presentations, were gone. She seemed to have lost it.

  “There is something else,” the human resources woman broke her musing. “You are late every day. It seems to me a lack of respect for your colleagues.”

  Hearing this, the general manager stood up and excused himself, saying he had to attend another meeting. It seemed like the conversation was turning into a girl quarrel and he avoided being part of it. It was typical for someone like him, who had always kept a distance and was being a bit awkward in her presence.

  “Maybe they don’t mind but I take it personally,” the manager-woman went on, after blandly saying good-bye to her superior. “Especially considering that I have a husband and a child I take to the kindergarten every morning and you don’t!”

  Sure. You also have thick legs and a weak mind. You wear cotton underwear, three sizes bigger than my mother’s—and my mother’s are XL. Your husband must have been probably dead drunk when he got you pregnant, she was thinking while stating out loud that she understood her point of view and that she didn’t ever plan it. Being late, of course.

  This time she felt humiliated. It was as if the other woman was bragging about the wonderful family she had despite her poor looks, while pointing at her, so beautiful, so gracious, with perfect abs and round, hard buttocks and yet a failure in her personal life, yet unmarried. Under such circumstances, the only way to be accepted and absolved by society was to serve the corporation as good as she could, with all her might. To work from dawn until dusk, from Monday to Friday. Sometimes, even Saturdays and Sundays. Go out and get wasted every weekend. Until she would have injured her spine, her belly would swell big with too much junk food and her butt sagged. Bleah!

  That very instant, she knew what she had wanted to do that moment when she woke up earlier. As soon as she left the meeting room, she filled up the application for holiday leave and put it on her colleague’s desk. It was barely noon but she got into her car, without even checking her emails, and drove away, smoking her tires. Back home, she grabbed a few things and put them in a bag. She scribbled a few words on a post-it—Off on a business trip. Possible signal loss. Don’t know when—but then she crossed the word “when” and wrote “if,” if I get back, and placed it on the fridge door. She smiled imagining the bewilderment on his face while reading this note. He took her for granted; it was the right time to make him come to his senses. Not going back to him, this would have been a surprise.

  As soon as she entered the highway, she forgot about her boss, her lover and even about the human resources manager’s huge underwear. Her future was uncertain. Most likely, she would lose both her job and her man, but God it felt wonderful. The simple and yet so complicated gesture of making a decision, based on an inner impulse, made her feel empowered and free.

  She reached the anglers’ village at dusk. She pulled near the edge of the seawall, so near that one might have thought she planned to ditch the car by pushing it into the abyss.

  La Prison was quiet and empty. Nobody would normally visit on a Monday off-season. She was standing still, next to her car, leaning against the driver’s door, her eyes wandering up high. In fact, not that high because the sky seemed to have come closer, almost at an arm’s length, splashing bright, shiny stars on her.

  A street lamp lightened behind her and a shadow came forth, to the middle of the main alley.

  “Are you the city lady I spoke to this afternoon?” a deep voice asked.

  “That would be me!” she answered with a smile, walking away from the stars to her regret.

  “I thought you would never get here!” the shadow said, revealing itself bit by bit. “We’re not used to receiving guests at such late hours.”

  She finally saw a short but well-built man. He was wearing a white shirt, made of thick cloth, and a pair of deep blue corduroy trousers, adorned with braces. He had a scarf around his neck and a cap on his head, pulled over his eyes. His round, pointed, stumpy shoes were more appropriate for the rough tracks on the mountains than the fine sand of the beach. While helping her with the luggage, she also noticed his sunburnt arms.

  “Are there any pirates around,”she tried a joke.

  “There were, once,” he answered bluntly, in no mood for talking.

  The house had nothing in common with a prison. Except maybe, for the barred peepholes in the massive wooden doors of the chambers. The hallway walls looked like they were built of heavy river stone that kept coolness even during unbearable heat. She had a sea view room. It was not too large, nor too small, painted white. The closet was cast into the wall. A sailing vessel was trapped in a bottle and stood on a shelf. A cream-coloured paper shade was softening the lamp’s light.

  “How long will you stay,” the man asked her as soon as he put down the luggage.

  “I have no idea. This time, I did not plan anything. It just happened.”

  She had never met such a grumpy host before, a man who was so visibly displeased with strangers coming by.

  “I love this house,” she said, because this was how normally she was getting by in her job, gaining other people’s sympathy and approval. “Are you the landlord?”

  “No,” he answered briskly. “Goodnight! Moreover, please, bear in mind that we don’t serve breakfast. If you want to grab a bite, you have to go down the main road, turn right and, a few meters away, there is a small general store.” In other words it was like he was saying to her: “From now on, you are on your own. Stand on your own two feet and leave me alone!”

  She was too happy to mind his attitude. In addition, she thought that it would change, once he saw her in the daylight.

  “I almost forgot, the key,” he exclaimed, retracing his steps. “Anyone is free to come and go as one pleases!”

  Big deal! Everybody does, of course. They were paying customers after all. Moreover, they were paying good money and a little more kindness would do. She would have a word about it with the property owner as soon as she saw him. She had made up her mind: she disliked the man with the scarf. She waited for the noise of his footsteps to die away, rushed outside into the yard and greedily inhaled the air that smelled like seaweed. The display of her cell phone, abandoned in her room, was lighting up frantically, flashing on and off, the name “Darling.”

  The man had locked the gate with a key he had forgotten to give to her. Luckily, she had long legs and easily jumped over the small fence. She headed to the left, along the dusty path on the edge of the seawall. All the houses were in the dark. Now and then, a dog suddenly awoke from his sleep and started barking. They were the only ones to break the perfect silence. Even the small waves were rippling noiselessly. The pleasant wind made her shiver and tangled her long hair. She stopped on the highest spot on the shore, where the road was winding. She opened her arms, imagining herself on the top of a mast of a big ship, and gave a warm embrace to the sea. There she was, jumping from one rope to another, being on the watch for the Spanish ship they were planning to plunder. Bored with a noble’s life at the Royal Court, she had disguised herself as a man and enrolled on a sea rover’s ship.

  However, those heroic times were over. The lights she was seeing now in the distance belonged t
o either a merchant or a cruise ship. Nowadays, sailors had uniforms and graduated universities. They had their own cabins, with showers. They used napkins and covers during their meals. She felt regret for not being born three hundred years ago instead of into the modern world. Still, she was lucky to be there, almost touching the sky, breathing the fresh air, while other people were sleeping, locked in their concrete and brick boxes.

  The next day, with no help from the alarm, she woke up before dawn. She was going to see this show for the first time, seated in the front row. Dressed as the night before, as if he did not get any sleep, her host was already outside, watering the La Prison’s garden. Just seeing him was enough to make her heart sink. He saluted her with a short nod, without interrupting his work. The small gate was open, inviting her to take a stroll. Seeing the man’s nasty attitude, she would not have been surprised if the gate closed behind by itself with a clang and turned, fence included, into fortress walls. If so, what would she lose? A few rags and a cell phone that the so-called “Darling” had tried to reach forty-nine times.

  “I, I’ll follow you into the sun...la, la, la,” she was humming while going down to the beach, a song that she had listened to on the radio so many times that she actually heard it in her dreams. She wore a straw hat with a large brim, and a fuchsia tunic. Under her arm, she was carrying a beach towel that had a red bull drawn on a black background. A few loose locks of hair were dangling on her shoulders. The sea had eroded the shore until it had turned into a narrow strip of sand, full of stranded, brittle fungus. These were the seaweed that, as a child, she took pleasure in gathering and planting in a small bucket full of water. She looked for the cleanest spot and laid her towel. She sat, her eyes on the horizon, waiting for the miracle. It seemed like birds and water and wind were all holding their breath, feeling impatient. The sun showed up suddenly, unexpectedly, like a symphony that starts forzando. The shiny orange stripe, parallel to the horizon, was altering shape in front of her eyes, turning into a curved line, then into a semicircle, an arch and finally, into a yellowish-orange, coppered disc, blazing in all fiery colours, that rose above the water. Seagulls screamed in triumph while dolphins accompanied them from the depths. They rose to the surface of the water, into a revival dance, displaying their shiny backs and their bead-like, black, round eyes.

  Enchanted, she forgot to blink. She was wondering how she had been able to live her whole life away from this fantastic performance. And how only an image on her computer desktop was going to stand for all of it after returning home. Everything around her was shining. The water, the sky, the sand, herself and the marine creatures were united in a pleasant twirl where nothing and nobody had a beginning or an end. The dolphins came closer to the shore, making friendly signs. She went into water up to her knees, enjoying the cooling waves. Two of them delicately seized her toes with their round muses, tickling her and making her laugh.

  Come on, take heart and come with us, they appeared to say.

  She went forward into the sea, up to her thighs. The margins of her tunic were floating above the water. All of a sudden, in an inexplicable way, she found herself on a dolphin’s back. He took her far beyond the buoy. He plunged into the waves and swam along groups of copper seahorses that were graciously waving their tails and banks of lively rainbow fish. Along lazy medusas that the current made, by their speedy passing, turn upside down. Anyhow, it seemed that turning the jellyfish upside down, with their top facing towards the sea’s bottom, was their preferred amusement. Each time the dolphins would swim past one, they would put more strength in their movements. They would slow down as soon as they were moving away.

  Only a few minutes had passed and she already knew how to ride the animal. Completely free, she had raised her arms in the air and cheered:

  “Huraaaayyyyy! This is beautiful!”

  The salty water entered her nose, her ears, her eyes but it didn’t matter. She closed her eyes, to stop the burning sensation and opened them up when the turmoil quietened. Here she was, soaking wet, back on her beach towel. In the distance, she saw a black and shiny back above the water.

  Was it a dream or was it real, she asked herself. She had read somewhere – she could not remember where, that the human brain cannot tell the difference between imagination and reality, generating similar body responses. She tried this theory on herself once during a posh event, seeing herself doing abs exercises. As soon as she got back home, she took off her clothes and looked in the mirror. She had been concentrating for almost an hour with minor interruptions but the result failed to manifest. Nada, nothing! She had given up.

  Is it so important if it was for real or not, she said to herself. It was an awesome experience. One that my colleague with panties as big as a truck cover, shall never live!

  The noise of smashed shells broke off her train of thought. An old man with greasy garments, stinking of fish, came forth.

  “You’re not from around here, are you, girl?”

  A girl, really? She, who had come into the full age of her thirties, who was a hotshot in an advertising agency, who wore only famous brand clothes and had all-inclusive holidays. Leaving in a rush, she had forgotten her whole stock for painting her face. Thus, the freckles on her cheeks and nose, usually hidden under a thick layer of foundation and powder, were now displaying in the daylight for everyone to see.

  “Noooo, I’m not,” she answered, playing the spoilt child she had suddenly become.

  “That’s why you are sitting here when the storm is coming. Go and get some shelter, it’s something you don’t want to mess with. At least if it was a lightning rod somewhere around,” he said, pointing to a formation of dark clouds that was already taking bites from the sun. He knew what he was talking about, the old man.

  “Thanks,” she said. And smiled as if this word she had so rarely uttered during the last years, had taken a load off her chest.

  “To whom do you belong? Am I right or this is the first time we have met?”

  “To nobody!”

  The old man looked surprised.

  “I mean nobody in this village,” she added in one breath. “I’m a tourist, I arrived late last night and I’m staying at La Prison de la Mer.”

  The wind was rising, waving the old man’s cheeks while he has scratching his head as if he tried to figure out something.

  “The first cottage on the sea wall. Up, there,” she said pointing to the abrupt bank...

  “Hum! Such a treat, what can I say!”

  The gusty wind had started to rise up the sand, whipping their feet. She wanted to ask him what did he mean, but he signalled her to hurry:

  “We’re running out of time for talking. We must seek shelter!”

  They left in opposites directions. He went towards some wooden shacks built on the breakwater edge. She started mounting the steep slope. It would have been difficult for her to tell what frightened her the most—the flash in the sky or the Prison’s taciturn keeper. The clouds shattered all of a sudden with a sonorous roar. She stopped by a concrete pole that was holding some wires in the air. The woman felt as if she played a part in this noisy show. She belonged on that stage. Nature would never do any harm to her because in doing this, it would harm itself. The last time she had taken time to watch the rain, she had tried to catch it in the small bucket she was playing with in the sand, at the seaside. She was a few years old and she had climbed onto a stool, leaning over the balcony’s edge, with her arms wide open. Her mum had shown up quickly and pulled her in. She had slapped her, telling her she must not do that again.

  The sea was getting rough, the waves foamed. Water drops, as thin as a pen’s nib, kept falling by tens of thousands—by hundreds of thousands. It was dark in the middle of the day, a dark thorn by flashes of light far away, in the offing. The universe was giving a percussion concert, marked by acute accents resembling screams coming out of the throats of some invisible, winged creatures. All of this, because she was standing there, as an enthralled spectat
or who was watching, breathless.

  The performance ended unexpectedly. Music stopped, clouds withdrew, making way for the light to warm and dry. The sand was moist, her clothes were moist. The angler was still hiding in his wooden shack. He had fallen asleep, probably. It was time to go back to her warden. Yes, this was exactly how she intended to call her host from that moment on. He really had a warden’s face, gestures, and everything. Still, such a deep repugnance for someone was unusual. Especially because he had not done anything particularly wrong. Maybe in another life, she thought. She had read an article run by UK Daily Mail that enounced the theory of a travelling soul that goes from one life to another, from one body to another, through different centuries. To her, the idea was bizarre but somehow credible. Being a woman during one lifetime and a man during the next seemed even odder. She enjoyed being a woman. She would not want any of the responsibilities of a man. Hunting and erection included. She may have been a man, too. All women were once men mentioned the article, because the soul would incarnate into a woman’s body only when it reached a certain degree of wisdom and comprehension. This was the reason for women’s complexity.

  The Prison’s yard was deserted. Some of the rose bushes had been flattened. The air smelled like crushed petals and the warden was nowhere to be seen.

  “He must have other things to attend to,” she told herself in relief.

  The storm had reached inside her room. One of the windows must have clapped against the wall until it broke. The curtain was damp. Outside, the light regained her kingdom, making the greenish seawater shine.

  “Everything is warmth, everything is colour,” she thought.

  She took off her wet clothes, wrapped a towel around her, lay on the bed and closed her eyes. She was a pirate again. In fact, a woman disguised as a pirate. She had been captured and locked up right here, in this room. A cold, unfurnished cell. She was lying on the floor, her joints captive in heavy chains, fixed into the wall. The jailer—now the man had a chestnut, soft beard and long hair, combed in a ponytail–had brought her water. She had seized the moment to speak to him with a soft, alluring voice. She spoke to him every time he came to bring her food or water. Until, one night before her hanging, she convinced him to let her go. The next day, it was he who was given the hangman’s noose.