The Shadow

It’s believed, and it is true, that I’m nothing but the projection of an opaque body over the walls and floors of this city full of tragic disenchantment. Sometimes short, sometimes long, depending on the hour or the quality of light, and in the lack of it, abandoned to others’ eyes I remember the years when I was not this. I was once a young woman, I walked with firm steps, with no fear of life, not ugly, or beautiful, rather plain, and somehow quiet, and with an impetuous interest to be different. I wanted to live, and dream, and I spent endless hours creating and recreating dreams, with a profound avidity of knowledge, of experience; took all in: every detail, every person in my path and made them mine in the depths of my soul, in my favorite place of memories, which I retraced often to relive my own and unique little oasis of stories. And so wanted life for me to meet him. One more traveler, for my imagination, the wondering knight of my childhood castles… and between the remembrance of so many hours with my father drawing princess and dragons and my passion for the exotic filled his eyes with an unknown color. I left from all I knew, without knowing the destination, or the sailor in whose hands I placed my destiny, but in loved. Of the traveler or love itself? It doesn’t matter now. And in exile I encountered for the first time the word “foreigner”. It was a word, by it’s context and tone, so offensive and so close to me, who always felt strange in my own land, and yet never imagined what it is like to feel rejection, scorn and though the color of my skin is the same as theirs, the racism. I learned that a smile is not always corresponded with another if you don’t belong to the same flock. In the beginning I tried to smile to defeat the gray faces, day after day with no success trying to plow in the sea of their bitterness. Until my lips started to loose the cheerful flexibility and every time it became harder to find reason to laugh at my fate. I ended up forgetting how to arch the muscles of my mouth to express pleasure. I didn’t smile again. That was my first defeat. The traveler engrossed in his thought didn’t mind the lack of happiness, that sometimes annoyed him, being himself one of them. Bitterness was not enough, the sound of my voice was also foreigner. The moon language, difficult to learn, was not within the reach of a foreigner like me, I tried to learn it, and succeeded some advances in the knowledge of it, but perfection was demanded. No one understood what I said, even in their own tongue. The accent, clearly, told that I was not a part of the group. I tried to participate of the meeting and conversations, but no one understood, or even tried to listen and I started to hate, little by little as much as they hated me. Even though it took me longer because I was not born hating the ones I don’t know. And him, the traveler that took me from my home some times I loved him madly, but others, so many, so many more, the resentment for this hell of silence they were subjecting me made me detest him, but I needed him to survive, he was my only link to the living world. When I least expected it, I grew tired of trying to communicate with them and I began staying silent, in a corner, observing their pale and absurd faces. The vocal cords without use became atrophied till I couldn’t produce a sound. The traveler, quiet man, appreciated the permanent mute that exempted him from all conversation. And silent, as a trained child between repressive grown ups, I followed him everywhere, but I still observed, their tough characteristics, their sour gestures, their lack of movement and imagination, and that too offended them, the secret smile of a glance that seeks some sympathy in their eyes, a little compassion, mercy or any other human feeling. We foreigners have no right to see them either, not even to wander with the lost sight amongst the objects. And exhausted, silent, sad and distant, I closed my eyes forever. The traveler held my hand and took me everywhere, and so that way I still go: walking without knowing my destination, just following him. No one takes my existence in account, as if I were not, and sometimes I, myself, wonder if I exist, if all is gray and colorless, when in the dark no one sees me and I can open my eyes and see that I am too old already, the traveler is dying and when he is gone, I shall be gone too, or perhaps no? We shall see...