Four Doors and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

his sleep and started barking. They were the only ones to break the perfect silence. Even the small waves were rippling noiselessly. The pleasant wind made her shiver and tangled her long hair. She stopped on the highest spot on the shore, where the road was winding. She opened her arms, imagining herself on the top of a mast of a big ship, and gave a warm embrace to the sea. There she was, jumping from one rope to another, being on the watch for the Spanish ship they were planning to plunder. Bored with a noble’s life at the Royal Court, she had disguised herself as a man and enrolled on a sea rover’s ship. 
    However, those heroic times were over. The lights she was seeing now in the distance belonged to either a merchant or a cruise ship. Nowadays, sailors had uniforms and graduated universities. They had their own cabins, with showers. They used napkins and covers during their meals. She felt regret for not being born three hundred years ago instead of into the modern world. Still, she was lucky to be there, almost touching the sky, breathing the fresh air, while other people were sleeping, locked in their concrete and brick boxes.
    The next day, with no help from the alarm, she woke up before dawn. She was going to see this show for the first time, seated in the front row. Dressed as the night before, as if he did not get any sleep, her host was already outside, watering the La Prison’s garden. Just seeing him was enough to make her heart sink. He saluted her with a short nod, without interrupting his work. The small gate was open, inviting her to take a stroll. Seeing the man’s nasty attitude, she would not have been surprised if the gate closed behind by itself with a clang and turned, fence included, into fortress walls. If so, what would she lose? A few rags and a cell phone that the so-called “Darling” had tried to reach forty-nine times.
    “I, I’ll follow you into the sun...la, la, la,” she was humming while going down to the beach, a song that she had listened to on the radio so many times that she actually heard it in her dreams. She wore a straw hat with a large brim, and a fuchsia tunic. Under her arm, she was carrying a beach towel that had a red bull drawn on a black background. A few loose locks of hair were dangling on her shoulders. The sea had eroded the shore until it had turned into a narrow strip of sand, full of stranded, brittle fungus. These were the seaweed that, as a child, she took pleasure in gathering and planting in a small bucket full of water. She looked for the cleanest spot and laid her towel. She sat, her eyes on the horizon, waiting for the miracle. It seemed like birds and water and wind were all holding their breath, feeling impatient. The sun showed up suddenly, unexpectedly, like a symphony that starts forzando. The shiny orange stripe, parallel to the horizon, was altering shape in front of her eyes, turning into a curved line, then into a semicircle, an arch and finally, into a yellowish-orange, coppered disc, blazing in all fiery colours, that rose above the water. Seagulls screamed in triumph while dolphins accompanied them from the depths. They rose to the surface of the water, into a revival dance, displaying their shiny backs and their bead-like, black, round eyes.
    Enchanted, she forgot to blink. She was wondering how she had been able to live her whole life away from this fantastic performance. And how only an image on her computer desktop was going to stand for all of it after returning home. Everything around her was shining. The water, the sky, the sand, herself and the marine creatures were united in a pleasant twirl where nothing and nobody had a beginning or an end. The dolphins came closer to the shore, making friendly signs. She went into water up to her knees, enjoying the cooling waves. Two of them delicately seized her toes with their round muses, tickling her and making her laugh.
    Come on, take heart and come with us , they appeared to say.
    She