Originally posted at http://travelsmake.tumblr.com/post/96738099230/211.
You look up from your phone. 211. This is the place. A tall, three story building of brick and flaking plaster. There is a small courtyard leading up to two nearly identical doors. 211 is the one on the left. Before the courtyard is the most useless iron fence ever constructed. A cat could walk through it. A large dog could force it open. It even has two halves, each held in place by a small piece of metal that swivels up and out of a small notch. You open it, hear it complain in the crisp winter air. The seasons have begun to turn. There are few leaves left on the broken tile floor leading up to the doors. Some are missing. Others shift too easily beneath your weight.
211. You ring the doorbell. You shuffle uneasily as the sound of footsteps make their way toward you. Your bag feels heavy in one hand. It finds itself in the other. Another creak. “Hello,” the old man says. His hair is white. His back is bent. His clothes seem stolen from another era. “You must be the one who emailed about a room. Come in!” His voice is clear. Sweet, even. You step through the threshold. There is no winter here. The radiators have held it at bay, and the scent of something wonderful trickles from the kitchen.
“Your room is over here.” The man leads you inside. There is a table with old mail on it against the right wall. Offers for credit cards. Offers for car insurance. A pair of keys. Leaning against it is an assortment of canes, some of wood, others metal. And an old, gnarled walking stick. You can’t tell if it started out so grotesque. There is a narrow staircase beyond it, also on the right. It seems too steep for the old man. You follow him past it, eyeing a study through the first open door to the left. There are books inside, and some paintings. A bench.
“This one’s yours,” he says as he motions to the next room. It is sparsely decorated. A bed. A sofa. An end table. A dresser. And shelves full of even more books. They all look old. You drop your bag near the bed, and make yourself at home. “There’s soup in the kitchen if you’d like to join me.” You shake your head. He continues on with the tour. A bathroom. The kitchen, full of fruits and vegetables lining the countertops. “There’s a garden in the backyard,” he says. A clock with a large pendulum. More books. Plates on shelves in the open air. A table cut from a tree trunk. Pictures on another shelf. A man and a woman, each to the side of a painting of another woman. You stare. Perhaps too long. “My son and daughter,” he starts. “And my wife.”
He invites you up to the second floor. He explains that the third floor is being rented out, and that the entrance is through the backyard. A frightening mask greets you at the top of the staircase. You see a grin appear on his face. “A gift from a friend in Africa.” He shows you the bathroom on the second floor. “The shower’s broken. I hope you don’t mind having to take a bath.” You don’t. There’s a workshop toward the back. Paintings. Not all of them complete. They line the walls, some on easels, others hanging from the wall on a makeshift rope and pulley contraption to hoist them up. In the middle is a table full of supplies. Oils. Brushes. They are all neatly organized, as if they’ve never been used, though the stains on the table, and the floor, say otherwise. He waits for you outside the room as you wander through it. “My bedroom is across the way.” Toward the front. He gives you a key to the door, bids you a good afternoon, and slowly walks to his room.
You don’t know how you ended up here. You were traveling. You needed a roof over your head. You can’t recall if it was Couchsurfing, or Craigslist, that brought you here. But the old man responded. Attached pictures of the house, and the room, in his emails. The house matched the one on Google. You’ve certainly had sketchier dealings with hotels.
The evening returns you slightly inebriated to your new accommodations. You stumble with the key as you open the door. You decide to walk into the study. It is full. Paintings of people. Pictures of London, and Paris, and Cairo, and Tokyo, each with two people in the corner. There are stacks of tapes, the ones that used to play music, and records. Toward the front, where the windows are, is a statue of Buddha. You touch it. Try to move it. Bronze, maybe. Or iron. Too heavy to lift off its table.
As you prepare to take a bath, you notice a light from the workshop. Cautiously, and perhaps too clumsily, you peek into his bedroom. A bed too big for one person. A vanity, with various trinkets neatly pushed into the corners of its surface. A dresser. More paintings. A record player. The old kind, with the large cone-shaped speaker attached to it. Phonograph? Gramophone? The name eludes you. You hear a cough from across the way, and return to your destination. A plug in the drain. A rush of hot water. You feel the warmth soak into your bones, and close your eyes in the bath.
You recall your studio. How little there was. A sofa. A TV. A few bookshelves. No paintings. A few posters. No pictures. A table. A bed. A desk with a laptop on it. Clothes on the floor. Last week’s pizza sitting in the fridge. This house is a monument to this man’s life. What a life, you wonder. You wonder about your own.
As you return to your room, you notice a light from underneath the old man’s door. As you make your way to the bottom, something haunting fills the air. A soft tune, scratched and aged, like vinyl. Something sweet. Something sad. You hear the tapping of footsteps against the floor, and continue on your way.
In bed, you listen to the footsteps through the ceiling. A pattern. The song goes on. A dance, but without a partner. The music stops, and so does the sound of soles against wood. You look at the books in your room. Their fabric or leather is worn. You feel you can relate. Turning your head, you notice a sepia portrait of a man and a woman, taken long before you were born.
You wonder if you could be half as lucky to have a house like this when you grow old.