Corona escape 02

 

The street is long and empty, deserted, a pleasant feeling. You look at space that leads somewhere and is not filled. The contrasts of the overhanging tree crowns are fresh and yellow, with dark areas. The emptiness is particularly striking and different from the hustle and bustle that usually prevails. Quiet, emptiness with birdsong in the high treetops: titmice, robins and a virtuoso blackbird opening up a range of sounds. The side roads are dusty and dry and scary. But the whole clear space of the cobbled road gives a view and an overview. Then I turn left into the birth forest: a contrast of pink trees in the background and wild greenery in the foreground. The wild shadows lie like long phantoms, ghostly spirits over the undergrowth. I walk through the eerie vegetation, flanked by thin trunks of the young forest. Oak, birch, elder and beech drum together in chorus and on the other side, blackberries.

Then I reach a fallen birch tree that closes off the old wild forest like a silver snake and where you can rest, contemplating everything at knee height. The silence and light fall like spirits over your skin. Gradually, I discern trunk after trunk, reddish, dry, vibrating, shifting from one to three, from straight to slanted. You rest and listen, and the forest moves over you, passes you by, lays its hand on your shoulders, and lets the silence and the song of the birds sink into you. Suddenly, a dark figure appears in front of you, beckoning and winking, leading the way and whispering and pointing. He walks ahead on the narrow, crooked path between the wild forest and the birth forest, which stands trunk upon trunk like strings, a choir of upright lines and soft foliage. The man with the red cap disappears into the distance, shrinking and waiting, clinging to a white branch that indicates a change of direction. Then the forest turns left over a dried-up ditch, between scratchy brambles and intrusive stems, overgrown, and turns right. The trees are now broken and hang half-split and smooth with their crowns facing downwards. Wood splinters protrude from the orange trunk. A network of white branches dives down and winds its way through the green growth. A tangle of lines, twigs, a rounded wickerwork of twisting nests, so wild, so jungle-like, suddenly becomes civilised. The plantings humanise, a deserted house emerges from the greenery. Where is the man who disappeared like a red dot? Does he live here? Everything looks deserted, with a semblance of habitation provided by the sun awning that overhangs by 50 cm. My eyes scan the windows, no sign of movement. The terrace is empty. The doors are closed. At the back, a swimming pool with trimmed boxwood, deserted, empty. A metal staircase plunges into the basin. I cannot see if there is water in it. The nearby garden is minimally maintained, except for the park itself, which, like the birth forest, shelters overgrown white-barked and torn trees and preserves Rousseau-like conditions. Strange appearance.

The driveway next to it shows no sign of movement. A pile of blue tarpaulins covers rubble and dirt, and a Mercedes SUV has not been moved an inch in weeks. It suggests a presence. But there is none. One day I see two folding doors, blinds like wings, surrounding the side door. There is silent movement. I walk along a wide driveway full of grass, the full length of the park to the dead-end street. There is a small container outside. So there is someone there after all. Is it the man with the red cap who inhabits the house like a forsaken insect? 

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)