What Do I Know?

"If walls could talk...", said our priest as he walked out of the church, after the confession of a 77-year-old woman that had just left. I noticed that she was more upright than before. I guess that the weight on her shoulders and in her chest was less, after having shared her greatest secret with Father Faedon.

Poor Father Faedon... He can only confess to God. He does it frequently. What he doesn't know though is that I too listen to him when his inner world comes outside with his voice as a vehicle. Or, maybe he does know it. Otherwise, he would say "If walls could listen", instead of "If walls could talk"... Is it possible that he knows? I am not sure.

What do I know? I am just a wall, after all.

The woman's confession is still echoing in here, as if the events that she narrated are trying to find their place, now that are free. They cannot calm down. They cannot find the way to manage freedom; a difficult task. When you live in a person's chest for over thirty years, the open space is considered a field outside of your comfort zone. And those thirty years, were marked by unseen contradictions in Mrs Claire's life.

Mrs Claire is much respected in our community. Many articles of the local newspapers include her name next to the words "philanthropy" and "altruism". I have heard many people talking about her in here, mentioning her beneficial action, her loving behaviour, her initiatives that led our community from poverty to benevolence within seven years from the day she moved here.

She owns six of the stores in the centre of our beloved area, Vari, and she runs a small business as well; a bookstore. She rents those stores at a price so low, that the renters make jokes, saying that they are going to leave only dead, or extremely old. That's how content they are.

She is member of organizations that support people who deal with cancer, she organizes events about the equal rights for men and women that work in the area's businesses, she has founded places that help working moms, offering psychological and financial help, and much more.

I know that many of the families were able to support financially their children's private education and studies, only because of her. Many people that pray loudly in here have come to thank God for sending her to their lives, because they couldn't raise their kids properly before her arrival.

Wow! Isn't this ...too much? Did you also think of that while reading her story so far? Doesn't this exaggeration declare an inner need that isn't just altruistic? It is possible. I am not sure.

What do I know? I am just a wall, after all.

Moving on, the best ...artists of gossip used to discuss with each other the great mystery of her fortune's origin, but this only lasted for a few weeks in the beginning. They were perfectly OK with the information they had been given later; she was a widow. No mystery in that. Death is the only sure thing in life; along with unexpected events, and change.

At some point, someone had heard that she was married again-before her life with the husband that had died-, but that first man had disappeared during a journey that included dangerous hiking, in a village far away from Athens. She discovered a letter of him in which he explained that he knew the risk of his attempt, but he was willing to take it. He was known for his love for hiking and his fearless spirit in his community, so, after the research of the police, he was considered dead without any suspicion or other theories about his disappearance. They hadn't found his body, but the location's morphology could definitely permit the explanation: "the body must have been eaten by wild animals".

Today, after having listened to her confession, I wonder: Is there an animal wilder than the human being? Mrs Claire revealed to Father Faedon that when she arrived at our area, Vari, the only things that brought with her were suitcases with clothes, and a large fridge. Vari is in Athens, but not in the centre of it, and at that point it was still an area with open fields and just a few houses.

She had bought a huge piece of land with a small, two-room house in it. At that point, there were no other houses close to it. Her intention was to expand it, and she had already assigned a company to do the job. Before that though, a really deep digging was done by her workers for weeks; that fridge had to be put somewhere where no one could find it.

When she started saying what was in the fridge, I sensed Father Faedon's breath in my bricks. I am sure he suspected the information he was about to hear. Mrs Claire had killed both of her husbands, and she had put their bodies in that fridge after cutting them in pieces. Her voice was very calm while talking about this, but a pause of two minutes followed.

She wasn't interested in referring to the reasons of those murders. She didn't want Father Faedon's opinion either, as she explained. The only thing she cared about was getting that off her chest, having felt extreme exhaustion from the fact that she only discussed it with herself for all these years.

She said that everything she has done for helping so many people in the last thirty years, never managed to lighten her chest. She realised that, in a way, she was trying to offer so much good in order to compensate for the bad she had caused. She didn't say "I regret it", but didn't she say it in a different way? I think that Father Faedon has the same thought as he is driving toward his house now.

Here I am, then; alone with this electrifying and heavily charged atmosphere. How can an unseen and intangible thing weigh so much? Maybe this is one of the reasons why us walls are so heavy; we absorb the consequences of people's confessions-whether spelled in churches or somewhere else-, becoming more and more dense. Maybe this is also the reason why we become eroded, too. Or, is this just because of time that passes? I am not sure.

What do I know? I am just a wall, after all.