As soon as Nicole found out that the apartment with a nailed down bedroom went on sale, she decided to buy it.
“First offer is always overpriced,” real state agents tried
to dissuade her, but she remained deaf to their appeals.
“Money isn’t a problem,” she responded in a subvocal tone
and gazed into the emptiness with petrified attention. “This apartment has to be
mine. I have already waited far too long.”
Nicole moved in the same night the apartment went on sale.
“You’re the first client I’ve ever closed the deal with so
quickly,” the real estate agent said with a beaming smile. He rubbed his hands
and foisted her a poorly designed business card. “If you ever decide to
purchase anything else…”
Nicole nodded at him absently. She had long forgotten about
his presence and it annoyed her greatly to discover he was still there.
“If you allow me,” he insisted ingratiatingly, “there’s
another apartment, adjacent to this one. It’s been recently renovated.
Furnished… Great price! I’ll give you a good discount,” the agent hurried to
add, afraid of missing on a rare opportunity, “We can have a look at it now, if
you wish to.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Nicole scolded him with her
poised icy look, trying hard not to spill the overflowing annoyance.
“Of course. I understand,” the agent said sheepishly and
backed out.
Nicole was left alone in the apartment with a nailed down
bedroom. That night all the walls of the house buzzed feverishly with tireless
talk. Nicole’s new neighbours felt uneasy about this whole shady story. They
found it difficult to grasp why a young woman, who, judging by her looks, was
no more than twenty-eight, would be interested in this apartment. But what they managed with
greater difficulty was not talking about it. And everyday they failed to. Even
when attending to their daily errands they still expressed their indiscreet
curiosity, bombarding her with unwelcome questions.
“You’re not going to live here alone, all by yourself, are
you?”
“I bet your husband will be joining you soon?” they asked,
pointing at the rock on her finger.
Nervously, she’d hide her hands behind her back, trying to
keep her reserve.
Other neighbours, however, made it look like they barely if
ever noticed her presence, pretending they were disinterested in the new owner
of the apartment with a nailed-down bedroom.
The talks began to subside after a month, when Nicole began
receiving post – a real proof that she actually resided in the apartment with a
nailed-down bedroom. Neighbours were still closely scanning her unremarkable
life with the same dismay as before, while she occasionally endowed them with
the distant smile of a moon fairy, before disappearing behind the
cream-coloured door of her apartment.
“It’s your business, of course, but the entire building is
talking behind your back,” the postman told her once. His voice rang
unpleasantly in Nicole’s head.
“Did you know the man who lived here before me?” she asked,
lifting her eyes from the letters. She appeared distracted by her own thoughts,
as if all this cheap gossip had absolutely nothing to do with her.
The postman knitted his brows together, but failed to
remember anything at all.
“Well? Tell me!” she ordered him bossily.
“I’m sorry, miss, but I’ve only worked here for a month,” he
said, backing out selfconsciously, fearing an accusation of something he hadn’t
done.
From that day on, the gaunt postman made sure not to engage
in potentially-long têteà-têtes with Nicole. He limited the small talk to a
polite, “Good day, miss. Nice weather, isn’t it?”
Months passed, but the question“Why did this girl purchase
the apartment with a nailed down bedroom?” remained an unsolved mystery to all
Nicole’s neighbours. Everyone knew that the former owner was a paralysed
seventyyear-old man who had hardly ever left the place.
No one could say with any degree of certainty how he came to
live in this village, or how long it had been since he was injured, or why the
bedroom window was nailed down from the inside. All because the old man had
resided here longer than anyone else. Those who knew him as a young man had
either moved away or departed to the better world. Reason why, after all these
years, it was particularly difficult to put up with the thought that he was
essentiallydying all alone,in the apartment with a nailed down bedroom.
But why would such a young and pretty woman as Nicole chase
this mummified rest of the past? And why such hurry? There were no other
buyers.
“What if she’s a spy hiding from the government?” one of the
neighbours suggested.
“Yes, she does look suspicious to me,” echoed the voices of
other blasé female residents of the creamy-yellow house, framed by white
pillars and adorned by cappuccino-brown Italian balconies.
But none of this was serious talk.
How could one seriously consider that the house that struck
one as an example of elegance, was inhibited by a spy with a shady past?
“And you? Did you know the former owner of the apartment?”
they asked each other with annoying insistence. They whispered and pouched
their lips with an air of artificial indifference.
“I know nothing about it,” they’d say.
And so it was until one day when something unexpected
occurred in the apartment with a nailed down bedroom.
“You’re never going to believe it,” a neighbour living under
Nicole said, breathing heavily into her expensive large dress.
“I noticed that the window that used to be nailed down is now…open! And I saw his shadow,” she smiled smugly, delighted at having managed to attract everyone’s attention so eloquently.
“I noticed that the window that used to be nailed down is now…open! And I saw his shadow,” she smiled smugly, delighted at having managed to attract everyone’s attention so eloquently.
Barren horror, spiced up by a certain romantic interest for
the new neighbour, enthralled all the residents of the building. With an
insatiable appetite familiar to discoverers of new continents, they began to
swarm in their guesses, voicing the most incredible and scary versions. In an
instant their hands were up in the air, along with their loud voices.
“The window was wide open. And somewhere at the back of the
room I saw his silhouette,” the woman blabbed, short of air.
“Oh, God! Did the old man hang himself in there?” someone gasped
with horror.
The room shivered.
“No. It was much worse than that,” the woman said with a
self-indulgent feeling of superiority.
“So? What was it then?” others begged her impatiently.
“The old man was walking!” she whispered and stared at the listening
public with a possessed expression.
“And his shadow was dragging after him on the ceiling,” she
added a moment later.
“Nonsense. Utter nonsense,” said a spectacled neighbour in a
gray suit. He had the appearance of a professor who would have people listen to
him.
He slapped the empty space before him.
“The old man drew his last breath inside that apartment and
was cremated afterwards.”
“You don’t believe me?” the woman stared at him in amazement
and shook her head.
“Do you really think anyone is going to believe in these
tales about life after death?” he added snidely, and ranging eyes around, he
abandoned the meeting, leaving a veil of doubt and scepticism behind himself.
Little by little everyone came back to their senses.
Suddenly ashamed, they had nothing else to do but go back to
their own uneventful, mediocre lives, so characteristic of the upper middle
class.
That night, the walls of the house filled up with blessed
silence. Darkness fell upon the city with its heavy blanket of burning stars.
At intervals someone would interrupt this silent ballad of the night with
either deep throat snores or indistinct murmuring under their noses. And yet
there was perceivable intimacy in that multi-vocal chorus of sleep. The whole
neighbourhood fell in the abyss of quiet loneliness.
The cream door of the apartment with a nailed down bedroom
was partly open. Through a narrow opening a delicate aura of exposed young
flesh was oozing. It was enhanced by the blooming sunny narcissus and delicate
white lilies. With the step of a graceful gazelle she reached the bathroom and
sank herself in the tub. She poured a glass of cooled Veuve Clicquot, and
closed her eyes, letting bubbles tease her mouth.
“Here’s looking at you, kid!” she said with a bitter smile
and toasted to the invisible someone across from her, “You promised we’d be
celebrating it together.”
Rebellious tears escaped her eyes, flooding the tub. She set
the glass beside her and with a dazed look inspected the bathroom.
His white bathrobe was still hanging on the door. His
shaving foam and perfume were still standing on the marble table beside the
basin.
Dripping, covered in foam she approached the basin and
stared into the mirror, regarding her statuesque body.
She loosened the belt around the bathrobe and slipped into
it. Gasp. Tingles cruised along her moistened skin, flowing rhythmically from
her bosom to her head. This is how it would feel to have his arms enfold her.
She pressed the soft fabric tightly against her chest and drew in the subtle
aroma emanating from it. A smile settled on her full lips. Nicole wiped the
tears with a towel and sprayed his perfume on her slender wrists.
It was an early morning hour when soft light crawled up the
banister, creeping behind someone entering the apartment with a nailed down
bedroom. Slowly, lumbering footsteps approached the bathroom door.
Breathing heavily into the humid air around her, Nicole
opened the door, part of her still hoping to find him standing there.
“You must be Nicole.” It was that spectacled man in a gray
suit, who, judging by the serious look on his face, must have been a
professor.
“Yes, it’s me,” she replied and looked down at her bare feet
in disillusionment.
She didn’t appear bothered by this sudden intrusion.
“You knew him,” she remarked sourly, inviting him to sit
down.
Still wet in her bathrobe, Nicole got cosy on the sofa, with
chin resting on her knees.
“You must be Michael,” she said.
The professor nodded and sat down on a chair beside
her.
“Yes, it’s me. We spoke on the phone, when…”
He looked away, fazed.
“He talked a lot about you,” Nicole said after a minute’s
pause, and noticed how a visibly unyielding man was gradually letting go of his
armour.
“I see you have found the ring,” he said, eyeing the
princess-cut diamond on her left hand. “I tried to dissuade him, you know. I
didn’t believe he could grow so fond of someone he never even met… Then he
showed me your photographs. All of them, actually. And I thought to myself: she
is too damn pretty. Of course, how could he not fall in love with her? But you
know, one is always sceptical about such things. A love story of a seventy
year-old man and a young beautiful woman. Wouldn’t you be concerned if it was,
say, your father or your friend? But then I found out that you received that
award… I’m sorry for mentioning it. I hope you don’t consider it an intrusion –
all the papers wrote about it at the time. I read all your interviews. I know
you dedicated your award to him…” he said, transfixed by her radiant face, “I
didn’t believe you existed. By the description he had given me, you sounded too
ephemeral, too good to believe. And then I saw you receiving that award. You
looked so out of place… A crowd of impeccably dressed people, all baring their
unnaturally white teeth…and you, so effortlessly beautiful with your eyes
sparkling…and completely alone.”
“I am all alone now. He was the best friend I could ever
wish for…,”Nicole whispered, “He saved me in all possible ways.”
“I wish I was there when he needed me,” he said, suppressing
the overwhelming tears.
Nicole turned, gazing into the dark corridor that led to the
nailed down bedroom. One by one she stretched her long graceful limbs and let
her golden curls fall down on her shoulders. In that moment something arabesque
transpired in her aspect. There was in her an exquisite delineation of African
fallow deers and ghepards and magnetic fluidity in her countenance, most likely
inherited from her blue-blooded ancestors. He imagined her smeared all over the
room. Warm waves of her delicate femininity were washing all over him, taking
his thoughts away. Nicole turned her head.
With a soft smile she approached the professor and took his
hand. “I want you to see what he left for me in the nailed-down bedroom.”
Unsure whether he wanted to, the professor followed her with
a quickened breath. He could distinctly feel Romain’s scent on her. Mingled
with the delicate fragrance of white lilies, the heavy wood base of Romain’s
perfume created an electric cloud of temptation. Subtle eroticism was following
Nicole wherever she went.
“No wonder he fell so madly in love with her,” the professor
thought, watching Nicole turn the key in the lock.
He considered telling her how much pleasure it would give
him to stay overnight. Simply in the same room with her, sensing the aura of
peaceful happiness that was emanating from her.
Suddenly he knew Romain never intended to have this girl as
his lover. No, no. It would never come down to just sex. He would be unable to
be with her the same way he would be with any other woman.
Naked or not, in the moment of pleasurable death, Nicole
would need a lot more than simply his seed. She would need an ultimate
confirmation of his love, his total dedication. His soul. And the professor
didn’t doubt it now – Romain would give his soul willingly.
Nicole flung the door open, expecting the professor to
follow her.
“Here we are,” she said gazing at him from the darkness.
Slowly, as he progressed inside, the contours of the
mysterious nailed-down bedroom began to come forth.
“I cannot believe this,” the professor gasped. His cemented
eyes reflected one of the greatest scenes he had ever seen in his life. A beautifully arched Japanese bridge was
flung over an artificial pond full of waterlilies, mirrored in the still water
surface.
Mellifluous larks sat on the branches of blossoming orange
trees planted in heavy buckets of Italian soil.
Nicole approached one of the trees and sniffed the blossoms,
instantly possessed by their pheromones.
The professor was frozen in utter amazement, unable to utter
a word. Anything he could say was simply unfit to express his admiration for
the magnificence before him.
It was Giverny. The exact replica of Claude Monet’s
enchanted garden, his hermitage and source of endless inspiration. It was the
place where Monet found his shelter to hide from the horrors of war. And while
the rest of the world was sinking deep in blood, he refuged himself on this
little isle of infinite peace and heavenly beauty.
“Romain and I dreamt of this. We often talked about
sojourning in Paris and going to Giverny for the weekends,” she said as her
eyes flecked with happy sparkles.
“And so he built this for you,” the professor said, sitting
down demurely with a glazed look, “He knew he wouldn’t live long enough to
travel there with you… so he brought Giverny here.”
“I close myself in this room everytime I need to escape from
the world,” she said, lifting the blinds.
Pale morning sunlight sliced between heavy autumn clouds,
braiding her wheatcoloured hair with its golden strings.
“Most people won’t get it, Michael. Our relationship was
undefinable.We were more than friends or lovers. We certainly weren’t married
because even that would confine us to something regulated and bureaucratic.
Romain and I were a little bit of everything. Surely, there was a significant
difference in age, but there was no difference of minds and hearts. I don’t
believe souls can be governed by the cold power of numbers and social rules,”
Nicole said, locking her gaze on him.
“I think my father was a very lucky man,” he said, looking
out at the rising sun, that was gradually setting the room on fire. “He had
long believed his life was a wreck, and then you came and gave it a meaning. It
was with you that her was most alive.”
“Are you going to stay here?” he asked after a pause.
Nicole turned to him. She seemed plucked out of some
parallel reality. “I am safe here,” she said looking around herself, “No one
can hurt me within these walls.”
“I am sorry he won’t be here to live this with you. I am
sorry he wasn’t healthy enough…young enough to endure,” Michael said,
struggling with suffocating fits of tears.
“It was an impossible dream Michael,” Nicole said with a
half-smile, “Do not be sorry. Because I am not sorry. I have spent the happiest
months of my life with a man I never met.”
She knelt before an open cabinet, took out a stalk of bound
letters and handed them to him.
“Here,” she said drying her tears with a sleeve of her
bathrobe. “Please take them.”
“But they are all addressed to you,” Michael said
incredulously.
“In all of these letters he wrote about you,” she replied.
They exchanged a locked gaze.
Trembling with passion, he leaned to kiss her but Nicole
stopped him instantly.
“You should be going now,” she said and looked away.
“Forgive me for my intrusion Nicole,” he said, swallowing
his humiliation, his fingers impatient to open to the letters.
Hesitantly, he reached the door and forced himself to smile.
Long silence separated them before he gained control of himself again and
withdrew.
Nicole exhaled a sigh of relief and turned to watch the
glazing sun crawl up her windows. At long last, her privacy was restored.
“Did he leave?” – she heard a deep male voice coming from
the corridor.
“Yes,” was all she could say.
“It’s just us then” – the voice was getting closer.
“Just like you wanted,” she said, turning her head to where
the voice was coming from, “I missed you.”
“I missed you too, Peaches,” the approaching voice chuckled,
“Did he believe you?”
Nicole felt his warm breath nuzzling under her ear.
Nicole felt his warm breath nuzzling under her ear.
“Yes,” she turned and smiled, “Now they all believe you’re
dead.”
“Good. That will stop all the gossip,” he said, admiring her
passionate eyes, “I’ll make you coffee, darling, and you better get back to
your novel,” he smiled at her cheekily, more alive now than ever before. “I’ll
make sure, no one is going to disturb you anymore. Remember, nobody puts Baby
in the corner.”
Copyright © 2018 by Anna Novikova
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods.