My Neighbors in a Foreign Place

Directly across the courtyard from me lives a middle-aged woman, the ringleader of the building. Sometimes she and I open our windows simultaneously and look at each other for an instant in shocked surprise. When this happens, one of us looks up at the sky, as though to see what the weather is going to be, while the other looks down at the courtyard, as though watching for late visitors. Each is really trying to avoid the glance of the other. Then we move back from the windows to wait for a better moment.

Sometimes, however, neither of us is willing to retreat: we lower our eyes and for minutes on end remain standing there, almost close enough to hear each other breathing. I prune the plants in my windowbox as though I were alone in the world and she, with the same air of preoccupation, pinches the tomatoes that sit in a row on her windowsill and untangles a sprig of parsley from the bunch that stands yellowing in a jar of water. We are both so quiet that the scratching and fluttering of the pigeons in the eaves above seems very loud. Our hands tremble, and that is the only sign that we are aware of each other.

I know that my neighbor leads an utterly blameless life. She is orderly, consistent, and regular in her habits. Nothing she does would set her apart from any other woman in the building. I have observed her and I know this is true.

She rises early, for example, and airs her bedroom; then, through the half-open shutters, I see what looks like a large white bird diving and soaring in the darkness of her room, and I know it is the quilt that she is throwing over her bed; late in the morning her strong, pale forearm flashes out of the living-room window several times and gives a shake to a clean dust rag; in housedress and apron she takes vegetables from her windowsill at noon, and soon after I smell a meal being cooked; at two o’clock she pins a dishcloth to the short line outside her kitchen window; and at dusk she closes all the shutters.