At The End Of The Corridor

When I close my eyes she appears to me and looks at me from the end of a corridor. She was waiting there for me to decide to accompany her, beyond the corridor and the park in the background to explore the rest of the neighborhood. I, indecisive, did not follow her, and she remained to wait without flinching with infinite patience. I remember her childish face with a serious expression; the sun shone on her long, dark hair.

It's as if I could still see her in front of me; she was staring at me with those sweet but determined eyes. I think of all the times she waited for me to come to him. It was when we moved to that place with my parents. Newly arrived, with no brothers to play with, I needed a friend. She was the first one to approach me, even though she was shy and wouldn't talk to me. She was waiting for me to make the next move. She had done the first one, now it was my turn. Eventually, I got up and talked to him. I don't really remember how it was, or what I said, but that's how our friendship began.

In that place, we lived in a small apartment in the middle of two others that faced a corridor. This one led to a park at the bottom of the property. She lived in a log cabin in that park. She always came in the morning and stood in the hallway without coming to my door. I'd see her through the window, warn my mom and go out to meet her. She would hold my hand, and we would walk down the hall to her house in the park. It was a wooden hut raised from the ground; a large tree house on wooden columns among the tall eucalyptus trees in the park.

Between my house and her house, there was a world created by both, half of me and half of her, pirates and sailors, cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers. When we were pirates, we would look out of the high windows of her house into the park, screaming and watching everything like old sailors. The park was the ocean, the house was sailing in the calm morning swell, I remember her smiling and quietly by my side.

But then winter came with its days of confinement and cold. The rain that seemed to never end was a wall that prevented our meeting. We stopped seeing each other for weeks while I missed her and waited for her. The few times that someone knocked at my door I ran hoping it would be her, but I was always disappointed. I was drawing on the floor to pass the time. In my drawings we were together, holding hands as always and escaping the cold, the rain, and everything else.

Many times I had told myself that we should go beyond the park in the background, to explore the big abandoned house on the other side of the block, but we never did. That dreary place terrified me every time I passed by it. But I was still drawing us across the fence at the end of the park, the one that led to the abandoned house.

The days passed, amidst the sadness and boredom I came up with a plan. I waited for a moment when the rain subsided a little and I quietly escaped from my house. I ran down the hall to the park and knocked on her door. She opened up and saved me from meeting her mom. I looked at her with determination, took her hand, she smiled at me and asked nothing.

She closed the door behind her, and we ran out holding hands as usual. I felt alive again, I felt that I had missed her with all my being, something was missing and at that moment I was recovering it. I took her to the manor house as the sun fell on the horizon behind the blanket of the cloudy sky.

I had planned to enter the fortress, which we always saw in the distance with fear and suspicion. That one with its high tile roofs and its big stone tower in front. We hurriedly crossed the back entrance and the abandoned park with its high pastures. All in a race without giving us time to hesitate, passing through the undergrowth and the sounds of the night that was coming.

We went around the house until we reached its front. We went up the stone stairs at the main entrance. We both looked smaller than ever in front of those two huge wooden doors. I took the handle and tried to open it, but it felt still and worn out in my hand. Without getting discouraged at the first problem, we look for another entrance.

We realized we could get in through one of the windows. We tried them out one by one as we walked around the house. They were all closed, boarded up with thick, mostly rotten, wooden planks. We found a window with its boards shattered by rot and saw that behind it was the glasses were broken. We pulled the boards and made our way.

We came in helping each other. Once inside the house, everything was dark until my eyes got used to it and I could see the inside of that old castle covered by long years of dust and cobwebs. there was furniture, lamps, armchairs, an old library stripped of its books, also a large stone hearth with old ashes on it.

I felt like I'd traveled back in time with her. We could hardly see anything in the dim light coming through a high window above the main door. We knew we had very little time before it got completely dark. She took me by the hand, we ran across the abandoned room and up the wide marble staircase.

On the upper floor, we find all the doors closed to rooms that held the last breath of other times. I imagined the faces of those who would have inhabited them, dead long ago, and thought about how the days and nights of their lives would pass there. Fearful, without letting go of each other, we surely dreamt the same thing, as we walked down that deserted corridor. Feeling something in the air, like we can sense the ghosts of the old residents. Everything was covered in mystery, in forgetfulness, in the nostalgia of days gone by.

We overcame our fear and dared to go down that corridor. That's how we got to the biggest door of all. One of two worn and unpainted leaves. Between the two of us and with a great effort we managed to open the two great doors wide and then enter the big room together.

There was a large bed with high wooden columns and a fabric roof that covered it with dust and cobwebs. In front of the bed, a big wooden wardrobe full of dirt and scratches. Old portraits on a chest of drawers and on the walls. Black and white photos deteriorated and aged after long decades of neglect. We saw with amazement strange mustaches, hairdos, and dresses. We look at each other and smile as we see that world so far away and unknown to our eyes.

In the shadows, the night came, and we looked at each other deciding at last to leave the darkness of the house. We clung to each other and I could feel her shivering in the cold of that room. We left the room, walked down the corridor, down the stairs, crossed the big living room while the ghosts of the house returned to their usual rest.

We crossed the park, went through the fence, and got back to her house. I left it on the door at night. Before I left I looked into those beautiful dark eyes for the last time that day and told her I would see her the next day. She smiled at me, gave me a big hug, a fleeting kiss, and closed her door. I could hear her mother's voice scolding her, then I went home alone.

It's good to be able to meet those moments again on this lonely night. I think it was a good idea that I dared to look for her and visit the abandoned house together. The one that years later was demolished to build a modern building and shops, in the same place.

A few months after that adventure I moved to another house far away from there and never heard from her again. But tonight I manage to tear precious moments from oblivion, she appears to me again and looks at me from the end of that old corridor. She waits patiently for me to go again, beyond the park, to explore the large abandoned house on the other side of the block.