The house by the sea

Literary Review, Summer, 1995 by Sophia de Mello Breyner, Alexis Levitin

The house is built of stone and plaster and its face is turned to the sea.

On the upper floor in front there are three windows and a veranda with wooden railings. On the lower floor there are three windows and a door. The door, the windows, and the railing of the veranda are painted green. In the yard, alongside the wall, runs a pebbled path that separates the house from the sands of the dunes.

Beyond the dunes, the beach stretches the whole length of the coast and its limits are only the limits of sight. From north to south, along the sand run three lines, dark and thick, of seaweed, conches, and shells, mixed with sea urchins, bits of cork and pieces of wood, the remains of buoys and of boats. Upon the wet sand smoothed by the high tide, the steps of seagulls leave fine triangular tracks, like a script from some ancient time. At the back of the house there is an untended garden, rough and wild, where the wind that bends the bushes drops down and dances around the circular pond. The ground is covered with little loose pebbles that squeak and leap up under one's steps. Pinned to the line, freshly washed clothes drying in the sun flap and snap like the sails of a ship.

To the north, east, and south, the garden is bounded by three rugged walls of unmortared chunks of granite. In the farthest wall, which faces the deserted street where the plane trees slowly dream their own shade, there is a small, wooden gate that endlessly bangs and swings and groans in the wind. It is falling apart, day by day, and when the hinges break, it will lie a long time on the ground without anyone bothering to pick it up.

To the west, where the days linger and glitter and crawl along, the garden advances toward the dunes and gradually merges with the beach, despite the granite posts that mark its boundaries. There one can make out, towards the south, far in the distance, down by the mouth of the small river where the coast gently curves, a city that comes to the very edge of the sea. Its outline is a bit obscured by the sea haze, even when the weather is radiant. Nevertheless, on certain days, the city all of a sudden turns extremely sharp, precise, almost geometric, and one can clearly see the narrow pointed steeple of the church. Then one knows that it's going to rain.

Between the house and the distant city, the dunes stretch like a huge, empty garden, transparent and unkempt, where the wind, bending the tall, slender blades of dry grass, makes golden hair fly before one's eyes. Out there grow the wild lilies, as well, whose intense fragrance, heavy and opaque like the scent of spikenard, cuts through the dry, vitreous smell of the sand.

Inside the house, the sea resounds as if within a shell. When I open the drawers, my clothes smell of low tide, like a clump of seaweed. Deep within, the mirrors lingeringly reflect the days. And outside the windows the sea glitters like countless broken mirrors. The furniture is dark and elegant, unvarnished, waxed. The floor is scrubbed, the walls whitewashed. Everything is inscribed with the cleanness of salt. The delirium of the sea inhabits the air. The house is open and secret, vehement and serene. In it, the slightest sound - the clinking of dishes, the creaking of a stair, the breathing of the wind, a train passing in the distance - can be heard. The house is alert to everything. Each new day gives it new life. The lightest cloud passing by casts a dimness on the mirrors. In this house, each day is singular and precious, as if it contained all of time. In the gleam of the table, the transparency of the glasses, there is a kind of calm intensity.

Entering from the back of the house, one finds oneself in a wide hallway with a large cabinet of dark wood, filled with dishes. To the right, beyond the pantry, is the kitchen, reigned over by a small woman in front of the fire. It alone is dark inside this white house. There, herbs are drying and the tea kettles moan and sob as if in pain. Despite the glistening freshness of the fish, despite the redness of the meat, despite the yellow of the lemons, the bright green of peppers piled up on the earthenware plate, despite the dew of morning still trembling on the tender firmness of the huge cabbages, round and closed shut, the kitchen, with its gleaming metal, its flames, its sharpened knives, its singing tea kettles, its smoke, its frying oils, its smell of almonds, fat, fire, and fruit, has something disquieting about it that accompanies the long catalogue of ill deeds, misfortunes, accidents, sicknesses, dangers, premonitions, and looming threats that the fearful little woman endlessly remembers in front of the fire.

To the left of the pantry, on the side of the house that faces the beach, is the dining room. In the middle stands a long table surrounded by chairs, and in every corner there are little wooden cupboards.

In the center of the table, there is a round fruit bowl with red apples sharply defined against the dark wood and the whitewashed walls. Polished and round, the apples gleam, seemingly lit from within, as if inhabited by the fire of an intense happiness to which the glistening of the sea, sparkling blue through the slats of the blinds, responds. And when the windows are open, the dry fragrance of the dunes mixes with the fragrance of the apples.