The Smile of a Woman

That's funny. That's funny:

From the Grand Canyon, I remember mostly squirrels hirsutes that came up to our feet, us tourists and passing people.

The smell of ketchup too, in the air.

Wind that didn't blow that day.

I was there, in the middle of Nevada, to meet a painter who lived in the desert and on the day I arrived at her house, at the threshold of her house (it was the word she used) she told me that now that I was there, and that I had come all the way to her, if I wasn't going to see the Grand Canyon, I was going to go to the Grand Canyon, it was because I had been there for a long time. And stubborn.

So I went to see him on a two-seater plane from Las Vegas.

That's all I can say about the Grand Canyon.

The first night I arrived at this woman's house, she walked me around the landlord and let me move into a rudimentary room upstairs, whose exposed beamed walls had become raspy over time.

There was a thin layer of dust on the ground.

Later, during dinner, we talked about purpose, vocation and enthusiasm. From his lips, the words came forward and illuminated the half-light of our table:

As far back as I can remember, and I have memories that seem to me to go back to prehistory, not without laughing, it even seems to me to remember my birth, but it must be the mind that plays tricks on me - a doctor once told me that it was impossible, totally impossible to remember so far.
Anyway, when I was a kid, really small, I knew I was hungry for only one thing and that thing was the truth.
I didn't necessarily know what that meant, it was after all the speeches and words came.
But that, I knew it, it was clear like rock water, that it would give a face to my life.
Later, much later, I started painting.
When I paint, I don't paint what I see, what you see, or what we see.
I do not paint with my eyes, I paint with my hands and, at the very least, I paint with my heart.

The color.
You know, I really like color, really.
It is the only border crossing I know of: it has no end, no beginning.
It's my light and I let it pass from hand to hand.
Anyway, since you're traveling, you know what I'm talking about.
At my age, you don't travel with your feet anymore.
I travel with what I paint, with what I write, I also travel when a young man, it can be you for example, comes to see me, knocks at my door and asks me: Where are you?
What do you want me to tell him?
I'm fine. I'm fine.

I lived and passed through the century like a woman. It didn't kill me.
I've seen some nice ones.
You know the game of the last sentence before you die? Or the last sentence you left on your grave?
I'll leave a very strong sentence.
Or full of wit and kindness.
At the same time, I asked my friends to burn my body.
Go put a sentence on wind, ash and dust.
Then I don't know what I'd say.
Nothing, maybe nothing.
And that will be my truth."
The next day we were chatting about her life choices, the deep and unconditional peace that she felt in her when she painted, when she looked at the rock here (not but you saw this ochre, look, look!). Also: When she made room at home for a stranger.

Staying with her all those hot days when we were crushed by the heat outside, I listened to her with a perpetually attentive ear.

It seemed that she had a story for each and every thing and that it kept in her eyes that special flame of childhood.

At his side, I learnt that when I chose to hold the helm, to be true, to fall, to stumble, to stand up and to drive the dust out of his clothes, there was no half measure, no small negotiation possible. To be true, in his mouth, necessarily went through the path of an interior requirement that does not put us at fault and does not judge, but encourages, encourages, encourages, encourages, not to pretend, not to live with a little sadness and indifference. No. No.

At his side, I learned that one could say and support (and go through life itself) by repeating that this world is unjust and dangerous, that life is long and full of anguish and that one could live this very concretely every day: injustice and anguish.

At his side, I learned that there is a majestic river which unites us all and that, in this river, we all come to wash our souls among the waves. And all, so soaked and dampened by the same reality, we can see, and feel, little by little in our flesh, that we have never been far from each other, never separated.

Wherever I go, I know there's a time to arrive, a time to leave.

The right moment.

That moment had come: the moment when it was time to leave, to continue, again.

She prepared me a dish of red beans and onions in sauce, put it in a glass jar with a plastic lid damaged by use.

Then she grabbed my hand and said goodbye, wrapping my palm around my palm with her fine, clear fingers, stained with colours and light.

In his eyes: all the warmth of the world.

As I left her house to rush into the desert, I remembered the sentences she had said to me, the important - and passionate - words.

I don't know what his last words will be.

I also do not know whether, when she is gone, when her body is stiff and dead, she will have or will not have a grave above her head with a proper epitaph.

What I know: long after, when I decided to return to my lands, when I decided (when I felt) that my journey, my wandering rather, had ended and that it was time to go back, to come back (and that I discovered that going back was so hard and, even, almost impossible) came back to me in memory this sentence:

"You know, Valentin, there are some things I wish I'd heard earlier. Things I wish I'd learned when I was younger.
Maybe it would have exempted me from taking monumental slaps at a regular rhythm in my life, even though I know that dozens of paintings and dozens of new ways of loving came out of each of these slaps.
So, what did I want to tell you?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
You'll see:
Life is marvellous and uncomfortable, and the more marvellous it is, the more you will learn to make your bed uncomfortable, find rest and the desire to continue in uncomfortable.
Yes, that's what I want to tell you: keep knocking on doors, keep asking.
All the wealth of the world is in your legs, in your mouth - in your smile.
Then keep walking."
That's all I had left of her, all I kept in me.

That's how I remembered her benevolent presence, the absence of make-up she wore as her only beauty and the wrinkles all around her mouth, similar to an old, bent wind instrument.

I thought back to his smile, a smile in which death itself had found refuge and stood there, quietly, patiently waiting.