The Fantasy Door, March 13th 2011

My neighbour smells of old spice and walks up the stairs with a limp. He is old, but how old?

He has big brown framed glasses with thick dirty lenses that make his dark eyes look ever so tiny but ever so smiley. I like his demeanour, his features and his mannerisms. Round faced, always well groomed with a hat, trousers held by braces and pressed shirts.  From his clothes he looks like an A star pupil who moved on to be an A star student and later a successful and honest breadwinner. He seems out of a book, out of another Century. If he were out of a book, he would be the romantic passionate lover, tortured by his love interest.

Nothing is known of his marital status.

His door is always open behind the Iron Gate, music blaring out. From our lounge, we hear his music, old salsa and sometimes Charles Aznavour in Spanish coming through the walls.

His flat is the only other one on our floor; we share the staircase and its broken light.

Painter, English teacher, salsa dancer, bookworm…he fascinates me, because he is a stranger, yet so close, yet so far. I don’t know him but I see him everyday and everyday we exchange the same words without getting to know each other. I don’t think the conversation will ever change, and I don’t think he will ever address me in his native Costenhol. Polite and teacher-like he greets me with a strong American accent, comments on the weather, the time of the day, the lack of light, the crooked key that fails to break inside the lock. Polite and student-like, I greet him and approve on his comments.

When I see inside the apartment I feel transported in the Cartagena I read in Garcia Marquez. I can only see the dark entrance with dark pictures framed on the walls. The corridor leads onto the lounge, I can only guess after that. The floor is tiled and covered in places by thick rugs, which is pretty uncommon for a beach apartment. On the left hand corner there’s a comfy, worn out armchair. I can’t see beyond that, it becomes brighter as the lounge must have a bay window; the room is in complete contrast with the dark entrance. From the draught I feel from the doorstep I can guess that the windows are kept open.

When I stand there for too long, I feel a tall, slender woman will walk towards me, swaggering and asking me what I’ve come for. She’d have a husky voice and a slight cough from the humidity. She’d lean against the door frame and fan her face with a piece of cloth. Every time I walk out of my door, I catch a glimpse of that scene. Walking passed the fantasy door my imagination pulls me inside and I’ve to answer to the tall slender woman. I’ve no answer to give; I’m drawn by the nauseating smells and the plopping noise of food being cooked, the light and the curtains flirting with the window frames. It’s a sickly smell, of meat being boiled, hot oil and of the gasoline used to clean the floors and prevent from cockroaches. That’s in the mornings, in the evenings, it smells of the day’s sun on concrete, iron and wood, it’s heavy but comforting. The fresh and  light evening breeze coming from the opened windows pushes me back into reality.

At our door, my back turned to the fantasy door, I dig into my bag, find my keys, make them tinkle against the iron gate, drop the padlock, pick it up, pull the gate open and push hard onto the heavy wooden door, I’m in. Fantasy out.

Love and fantasy to all