the duvet.
The card was full. As I was flicking through the photos to
see which ones I could remove for more space, I suddenly saw the
actress and the soldier standing in the open doorway. They had
their coats on. I didn’t know how long they had been there. The
hall lights weren’t on. I held my camera and looked at the sleeping
composer, then pulled a duvet over his lower body.
The actress stood in the door but said nothing. She looked
at me, then at the unconscious composer, and turned to go to her
room. The soldier followed after. Through the door I could hear her
telling me to go to bed. ‘You’ve got a flight tomorrow, haven’t you?’
I didn’t reply. I was scared our conversation might wake up
the composer. I shut the door. For a while it was silent, but after a
short time I started hearing two repetitive sighs coming from the
actress’s room. I switched the camera on in the darkness, removed
the Paris photos and let the video roll. The pale glow from the
window mixed with the bitumen shadows.
I watched the video yesterday for the first time in years. It’s impossible
to see anything on it, but I know the composer is there. Last month
I read about a boy in China, born with an ability to see in complete
darkness. For an outsider, and for anyone except this Chinese boy
perhaps, my clip is just two minutes of grainy black, with a turgid
breath somewhere very near and faint sighs further away.
Illustration
END
Vivian Calderón Bogoslavsky is a Colombia native born to Argentinian
parents. She holds a bachelors in anthropology with a minor in history
and a postgraduate degree in journalism from Universidad of Los
Andes in Bogota, Colombia. She has studied art for more than 13 years
with a well known Argentinian art master and studied in Florence and
Italy, and fine arts and design in USA. Today she is in Madrid, Spain
exploring her art. Visit her website at www.ArteCalderon.com.