singer

singer
Through the half-opaque window of the emergency exit door, you can see the silhouette of the
nodding “opera singer.” You can sense that her mouth is wide open and her lungs full of air.
It’s time for her daily singing exercises. Every day, at the same time in the afternoon, you can find
her here,on the landing of the of the metal staircase at the back of this office building.
She sings to the non stop purr of an air conditioner, the noise of giant fan that wakes up
intermitternly with a great roar, in back,in the tiny concrete courtyard, and mettalic murmurs and
the vibulations of the trains that arrive,leave, arrive…at that Yurakucho station.
This is the kind of orchestra that accampanies her.
She has a very full, warm,lovely rises and descends the slope of the staircase to the sky. When
you’re surprised the snatches of melody, you stop in front of the door with a strange pang in your
hearts as you do when you arrive late at a concert, just at the beginning of a concert, which is a
solemon and magical moment.
The atmosphere is intense to the extreme on the other side of the padded doors. The thinned melody comes through miraculously,which you listen to with desperate eagerness,
almost with a pain in your heart. There will never be music as beatifull as what you hear, like a
stowaway,in the sumptuously empty lobby, which is so immearsurably vast, so unbelievably silent.
This is a lost nightingale. She doesn’t belong here. She’ll be on stage soon.
One day, the people at the office discovered with amazement that the face of the “opera singer,”
so beautifully, perfectly oval, had lost its brightness, as if a layer of silt had been placed on it; the skin was both streched and wrinkled…delicately; she was creased, hunched up, drawn.
Time had passed. She will never leave the office. And that perspective threw her colleagues into a state of confusion. Since that time…uneasiness has taken over the office, and silence.
But there has been no change in the habits of the “opera singer.” She is disappears at the same
time in the afternoon to sings of all her happiness. all her joy. And at the end, she bows deeply, her right hand over her heart to acknowledge the unbridled cheers of her imarginary audience
and to thank the orchestra that was accompanying her, and feels so happy,so grateful. And she
reterns to the tiny union office of the film company, which is the darkest and most sinister office
in the whole building. It’s in permanent disorder and often overflowing with freshly painted banners that occupy the entire length of the hollway, sometimes all the way to the elevator.
She takes her place again in the corner, far from the window. With a badly extinguished flicker of joy on her face, reddened by practicing, and the lights in her eyes into burning with too much intensity , she plunges back into the paperwork of a model employee, who is discreet and hard-working; fading into the shadows, she becomes a shadow again.