The seasons never seemed to change around the mountains of the valley, and neither did the people. Summers and winters came and went like the tide, and thus the passing of time was constant and almost intangible to the people inhabiting its step, rocky hillsides. They lived longer than most other people, and age hardly showed on the plain, sunburnt faces of the tired sunset town. With four seasons combined into one long, humid summer, people hardly noticed the passing of time, and perhaps thus simply forgot that it did. The only real difference was the rain.
Like a group of people chatting too far away for one to hear anything else than a humming, the sound of the market reached her long before the sight of it, and Marabella went straight for the upstairs café. While the price of bread was always up for debate somewhere along the faded facades of the market stands, this sizzling September morning seemed to be reserved for the discussion of what strangers were already referring to as “the incident”. Truth be told, she had come for the same. Even before reaching her seat by the open window facing the square, she could hear the fisherman’s wife below the window loud and clear. It was quite perfect. Exactly how everybody knew the details of Sr. Armando’s failed proposal to the youngest Sra. Taravella was difficult to say, but everybody certainly seemed to believe that they knew exactly how, and why, it had occurred.
The conversations of town squares and street corners were amongst the most intriguing in the region of Malabou. At the market in particular, the voices of vendors screaming for people’s attention seemed to perfectly shield, the lowered voices of individuals reporting on the misery of others from behind their stands, sharing details of universal interest. Stories of love and loss, longing and despair were openly considered here. During the late hours, world problems were solved by the clinging of glasses and a toast to life’s unbearable volatility, while love was loudly and sincerely expressed. For a silent but opinionated spectator, this was the perfect place to encounter a truthful testimony of the the world, a place to make sense of it all.
“She is a mouthful that one, has a mind of her own,” said the vendor selling oranges at the stand below the window, “pretty as a peach, but a mouthful for sure.”
Paying attention to the conversations of strangers had always been more of a remedy to her, than a deliberate attempt to sneak around in other people’s business. At least that was what she told herself. Although they sometimes seemed like a faceless mass, a foggy memory of the places she had been the day before, their conversations always reassured her, that her own despair was perfectly natural. Often times, they also seemed like the only constant in an everchanging world. Although the characters and the time and place would change with the narrator, the subjects discussed were always the same.
Despite ever so thrilling, it was not however always without personal expense. Had she not been listening to the girls sitting at the next table at La Cordillera two weeks prior, Marabella would never have given the size of her hands any particular attention. Now it was often on her mind. She had decided however, that risking the discomfort of an honest opinion about her own appearance while out amongst strangers was a risk, she was willing to take. Such incidents were rare after all. Usually, people would go about their day, chatting about anything and everything but her short appearance in it.
As she was sitting at La Piedra cafe, deeply emerged in the story of Sr. Armando, thrillingly told by the fisherman’s wife from beneath the window, a young woman was standing against the wall of the pharmacy at the corner of Bardiliano, her arm firmly placed around the handbag hanging from her shoulder. Unfortunately, her beauty was radiant as it was indisputable, and despite her modest clothing, she fooled none of the men passing her by. Desperate for her attention, they swarmed around her like bees to honey, starving for even the briefest taste of beauty, for a glance into heavens eyes. But as their repeated advances were just as repeatedly ignored, all compliments eventually turned to insults. The world was certainly strange.
“She isn’t going to find a better man in this town, that’s for sure and certain,” said the fisherman’s wife, her tone suggesting hopelessness rather than sympathy. “She is still young though, give her a few years and she will settle to the circumstances, just like everybody else." While waiving a shiny runner in the air, the fisherman calls for his wife from behind his stand. With a click of her tongue and a light shake of her head, she announced that she would be there exactly when it suited her. And not a second before.
As the spectator looked up towards the pharmacy, the young woman was gone. Just like that, her existence was reduced to the imagination of the spectator sitting at La Piedra that sizzling September morning. Just like Marabella, she would continue her life, left only with speculations as to the existence of everybody else. Just like the fisherman’s wife didn’t matter to the young woman outside the pharmacy, the spectator didn’t matter to the unfortunate Sr. Armando. None of them even knew about the existence of the others, except for the spectator at La Piedra, who knew about the existence of them all.