The House

In the new house where I live I have an office on the second floor with a large wooden writing desk set up in front of the wide window, which I often leave open. The fresh air helps me think. The window looks out through the sparse branches of a tree in my side garden across to next door’s front porch. I haven’t yet found a chance to go over and meet the new neighbours. In truth, I am rather shy. Normally I would feel awkward spending so much time sitting and peering at someone else’s house, but in this case it doesn’t seem to matter as the house is truly beautiful. It gives the sense of being supremely comfortable with itself. It draws your eyes and lets them rest there, unselfconsciously.

It is large and old, well-worn without being shabby, and majestic without being grandiose. The garden is not wild, but slightly rambling, with a look of nature quietly going about its business. Vines twist their way around the carved wooden supports of a wide verandah. In the evenings, almost always, warm yellow light shines from the open windows, and the mingled sound of music, talk and laughter drifts out onto the street. I have lived in many places, but strangely enough, it is the image of the house through my writing-room window that crystallizes in my mind when I think of the word ‘home’.

It has been almost a month now since I moved in. Every day I sit at my desk in front of the open window, trying to put together another psychology research paper. But things that seemed so clear to me before - the scientific jargon, the convoluted piecing together of an abstract meaning, the satisfying and methodical way my brain worked through the complications - none of it seems to make sense any more. It’s as if I have suddenly forgotten how to speak a foreign language. The words run together before my eyes, and the next thing I know, I am gazing out of the window and twenty minutes have passed. My pen lies uncapped and dried out on the desk, abandoned.

In these many hours of unproductive gazing, I have begun to notice a certain strangeness about the house next door. The number of visitors, for one thing. There are at least four or five per day, often more. Usually they are single visitors, arriving at all hours, though occasionally there is a pair or a small group. Through my open window I will hear the now-familiar creak of a low front gate opening and then closing. I have taken to watching covertly every time someone walks up the garden path, even though peering through the branches of the tree while trying to remain unseen makes me feel somewhat foolish. The visitor will climb the few steps up to the verandah, walk to the front door, open it, and let themselves in, closing it behind them. From where I sit I can see the bell-pull beside the door, but I have never seen anyone touch it or heard the bell sound from within the house.

I do not mean to pry, but I am curious by nature. And in my profession, observing human behaviour has become merely habitual. This is what I keep telling myself as I spend day after day watching without meaning to do so. My mind trawls analytically through every explanation I can hypothesize; none of them fit at all. A club house for social functions? A private education centre? A discreet medical clinic, perhaps? No.

It is the visitors themselves who pose the greatest dilemma. I have never seen such a confusing variety of individuals before in my life.

A young girl, no more than ten years old, with no parents in sight. A teenage boy with his cap on backwards, skateboard under his arm. The most ancient man I have ever seen, with deep wrinkles on his brown face, wearing a bright orange monk’s robe. A competent young woman in business clothes, striding briskly up the path, briefcase in hand. A grandmother with papery skin and a walking frame. A figure dressed as a jester with a cap of bells and stylised tears painted onto his white face. One evening, just before the sunlight faded, I saw a teenage couple walk up the path hand-in-hand and enter together. The next morning, I could have sworn I saw the girl walk through the garden again, more slowly, alone this time. There was a gypsy in ragged skirts. A serious-looking man of middle age. A pregnant woman with a very young child in tow. Some walk up the path crying. Some dance. Some smile to themselves silently. Others appear aimless, lost, as if they have wandered to the house by mistake.

All enter through the front door.

Not once have I seen a figure leave again.

By this stage I am absolutely mystified, and helplessly fascinated. Gradually I’ve come to realise another oddity of this peculiar house and its multiplicity of occupants; every figure that I observe walking up that path is wearing or carrying a coloured flower somewhere on their person. Tucked behind an ear, woven into the hair, worn in the front shirt buttonhole, held loosely in one hand. Flowers of every shape, colour and shade, even some species I have never seen before.

Time passes and the flood of visitors continues. But then there comes a day in which I do not hear the squeak of the gate or footsteps up the path. I cannot help but notice the absence of my usual daily background noise. It is quiet and somehow the air seems to hold a brooding expectancy.

At twilight, just as I am closing my books for the evening, I hear a sound that immediately seems out of place; not the garden gate, but the front door, has been opened. Someone is leaving the house. I abandon my books on the table without a second thought and move to the windowsill to watch.

A single person walks out through the front door of the house. It is a young woman in a plain white dress. As she turns to close the door behind her I catch sight of a simple white flower in her hair. She stands facing her garden for a minute, with the evening deepening around her, a melancholy half-smile on her face. Then she walks down the garden path and out of the front gate. Something about her leaving makes me sad, and I have the urge to call her back. But at the same time, I feel as if she knows it was her time to go. There is a surety in her step as she walks down the middle of the deserted road, her white figure gradually being swallowed by the twilight. She does not look back.

That night, the usually lively house is dark and silent. The windows are closed. It radiates emptiness. I sleep fitfully in my bed, unable to stop my mind turning for long enough to achieve any deeper rest. This often happens to me when I come to the crucial part in a psychology paper that I can’t quite put my finger on. I know I will not be able to rest until I solve it.

The next morning I put on a nice shirt, comb my hair, pluck up my courage. I leave my house and walk next door, and with an eerie sense of déjà vu, I hear the garden gate creak as I open it, and walk with slow footsteps up the path. Scents from the disorganised garden mingle in the fresh morning air. There are clumps of wild-looking red rosebuds growing just in front of the porch. I hesitate for a moment, then lean over and pluck a small, tightly-folded rose, and carry it awkwardly with me up the front steps. Then I am standing in front of the door, and still not quite sure of what I am doing, I ignore the bell-pull and turn the handle. It is unlocked, as I somehow knew it would be. I walk in, and call out “Hello?”, even though I know already that no one is there. It does not occur to me to wonder where all of the visitors have gone.

There is a sense of profound emptiness. A small window faces me at the end of the entrance hall, beside a stairway leading up to the second level. The morning sunlight spills through and illuminates the dust particles spinning lazily in the air. I can hear the emptiness in the quiet creaks and tiny sighs that houses make when they think they are alone with themselves. The house seemed to be watching me, without malice and even without much curiosity. Just watching. I go randomly to the first door on my left and open it, to check.

The room is completely bare. No people, no furniture. There are slightly paler patches on the walls where pictures used to hang.

Methodically I look into every room of the house, upstairs and down, just to be sure. They are all exactly the same as the first. A few of them have small piles of petals scattered on the floor, long since dead and dried. But there is nothing else. The spirit of the house left last night, and now it is an empty shell, waiting for new occupants and new memories.

As I walk back down the front hallway, I notice there is a small side table against the wall next to the door, which I had not seen when I first entered. An elegant glass vase, half-filled with water, is sitting on the table. I look down at the rosebud I am still holding in my hands, and place it in the waiting vase. Then I walk out of the house, closing the door softly behind me.

In the quiet, empty house, the rosebud in its vase slowly begins to bloom.