An Episode

For many years we lived in a typical five-storied house aside one of the main city streets. The location was favorable due to the crossroads, transport stops, shops and a wide alley for walking. Our yard, like all the nearby ones, was attractive for homeless who spent the days at crowded places and came to check rubbish containers and then sit under the trees talking in their harsh voices. They could sleep sometimes behind the garages in self-made beds which they constructed from things found in rubbish. The homeless… They are like illustrations of life’s common philosophy that is “no one is safe against becoming a prisoner or beggar”. Nobody could make them stop coming. Sometimes people called the police, our illegal guests were loaded into a patrol car and transported somewhere but a few days later they returned, in the same number or even with new companions. I guess they met them in the bullpen and invited to join the profitable district community. We began to recognize their faces and even know some by names, the most helpful of us donated clothes, pillows, blankets and food to them and an old man from our house shared cigarettes and liked having mutual conversations. He tried to talk them into working and becoming descent citizens again, they agreed, smoked, laughed and the next day started without any changes.

One late autumn we noticed a newcomer. She attracted our attention because women were rather rare among the homeless. A thin pale woman, she looked about forty of age or maybe was even younger but had changed after living in the street. She was courted at once by all the homeless men in the neighborhood and in the evening usually sat with a glass in one hand and some food in the other, surrounded by her retinue, but she never shouted or even laughed loudly, keeping her face calm and rather emotionless. I often wondered what kind of surroundings she could have had before, if she had had a job, family and what could make her change her life so drastically.

Winter was coming and our “yard residents” occupied an old club in the same area standing empty for considerable time since some of the local businessmen had bought it but hadn’t done any reconstruction or use of. So the homeless moved in, in the evenings they made a fire and burnt something for eating, it’s better not to guess what, drank and shouted as usual. I noticed that the woman began sympathizing with one of the men, about her age, tall and bony. They were usually sitting together near the entrance to the supermarket, talking and begging for money. It got colder and colder, snow fell on the ground and the nights were freezing. One day I met an acquaintance of mine who lived in the house opposite the old club. She said that during the night they heard a woman’s cry. She cried out: “I can’t stand this pain anymore, I can’t!” Someone called the ambulance and the homeless woman was taken to hospital. They said her both legs were frostbitten and had signs of gangrene. Time went by and winter came to its end. We saw the homeless men but the woman wasn’t accompanying, either she had died, or stayed at some asylum?

And then one day I saw them. I was sitting on a bench in the sunlit alley watching the cars and pedestrians, children and parents, birds and cats. The tall homeless man was carrying the woman in his hands, her legs amputated, and she was holding him by the neck. He placed her on the bench in the shade and sat beside her but she still held him. They were watching each other and smiling. And all of a sudden they… disappeared. In their old and shabby clothes, with their dirty hands and matted hair, they disappeared. He was in armor and she was in a puff-sleeved gold cloth, he wore a tailcoat and she wore a satin ball gown, his jeans and T-shirt matched her mini skirt and a colorful top… times and epochs mixed up. After all, what does this world mean, what do these multiple casings which contain our souls mean? And who can predict when, where and in what form a genuine shine may appear, either sunrays or crystals or human eyes?

During the spring months I saw them several times more. The man carried her to the bench in the alley; she was sitting or sleeping for hours there till he controlled the supermarkets and other popular places for money and food. In the evenings he returned for her and carried to some place of the night lodging. For the summer the homeless community moved somewhere closer to the main city dump where they were said to have their own small settlement. I don’t know what happened to this couple afterwards. They got lost as many others did and never appeared in our area again. Their story was an episode, maybe illusion, maybe reality. Life is an instance only or it can turn into the infinity… And stay in memory for ever.