Last
hours of the week at school,
I decide to stay in to work on a syllabus,
I'm
alone in the teachers' room, it's late,
the air is luminous outside, full of
midday silence.
I start working in the usual mess
of broken drawers, papers
missing, lost forms
and a computer, as I have just discovered,
the memory
of which doesn't work.
I curse the world when I realized
my files are all
gone.
Nothing to do. Nobody to ask for help.
I look absentmindedly outside,
the
wind is bright, wide gusts,
the sky a piercing glance.
I am switching everything
off when I hear
a voice at the door, a small child saying out of nowhere:
"I'm
waiting for mum here, as she told me,
you know, she is working upstairs."
Well,
I am not the only one, I think
while he asks: "Is this the big room,
where
you decide about all the boys' final grades?
The room where you have all your
important meetings?" He sounds serious, solemn, reverential almost, his voice
could well have echoed in a temple.
"Not
exactly" I answer, "the meeting room
is even bigger, it's over there
at the end of the hall."
He looks where I
have pointed and stares at me
and doesn't say anything, he seems entranced
as
children often do, lost in their thoughts blue.
And the mess around me all
of sudden
looks like any other thing bathed in the sunlight from a window.
I
look at him while he fingers
the frames of the drawers, one by one.
The
room filled with his silence.
The red floor empty and new.
I
take my bag, I smile and leave
patting him on the shoulder. Outside,
in the wind's blossoms
the sky is another question
hanging open and cleansed.
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