One car horn. Two. Three. Ten. Twenty-four. Fifty… There could be three thousand. Every morning the same. Three thousand deafening horns drilling the air in unison. Three thousand horns attached to three thousand exhaust pipes that gave me chest ache with their smoke. Certainly, the cigarette I just lighted didn't help my lungs.
That is the beginning of my daily odyssey to work. Luckily, my walk through the smog is short. Just a couple of streets until I turn left and my stick impacts with the fence. That sound, like a Chinese gong, is the sound of the complete serenity. A paradise on Earth, an Eden shut in a bubble of quietness. No traffic jams or angry people. I don’t know if I could even wake up every morning without that park on my way. It's like going back, for five minutes, to the summer camp for blind children. To the countryside. With Sergio…
I should go through that metallic fence one day and enjoy a morning with no preoccupations. Only the Sun warming my skin, the sound of birds, the smell of grass and wet soil. But I always have a thousand things to do. And the park passes by in a flash. In fifteen steps. Ten. Five. Two... And I am back to the reality of the city.
Someone touched my shoulder. ‘Can I help you?’ she said. A smell of ammonia and mothballs reached my nose. Another old woman doing her good deed of the day. The truth is I could cross the street on my own. I only have to wait until hear the beeping sound for the blind of the traffic light. But I let her do what she wanted. It's nice to help other people to feel useful.
When the beeps of the traffic light stopped, the roar of the traffic flooded the air again and the woman said goodbye. She should go to the shoemaker. One of her heels sounded like if it needed some reparations.
Alone again, I walked the five remaining steps before I had to turn left. Five, four, three, two, one... my stick hit another fence. But this was not around a park and the aroma had nothing to do with flowers. A hole in the ground that smelt like rotten eggs it's everything that fence had to offer. Of course, as anyone knows, blind people love doing tightrope walking along unstable wooden walkways over ditches two meters long. It would be nice to have an old woman near at that moment. She could have done a really useful good deed and save me the complains of those that were behind me. I wished I could go faster too, but I can't without breaking something. So everyone (me included) have to wait patiently (some more patiently than others) until I reached the end of the unstable wooden walkway. It's a great relief to have again solid ground under my feet.
What a way to start the day. Fortunately, I only had to cross one more street and I get to the office. However, I also could turn around. Go back to the park and stay there recalling the countryside. Remembering Sergio. Listening the singing of the birds instead of complains. It would be nice. But I was too close to the office and I felt that I couldn't go through everything again. I couldn't return to the wooden walkways, the stinky ditches and the old women with stench of mothballs and ammonia. Not again. Not even for Sergio. I crossed.
In front of the building where my office is, I was received by a fresh smell of lemon and rosemary. According to The National Geographic Magazine (in the same issue that also was recreated the fragrance of the queen Cleopatra) that were the principal ingredients of the cologne used by Napoleon Bonaparte. How I know that? Because one person felt so fascinated by the smell of the French Emperor that, after some experiments mixing scents, made his personal aroma. That person was Marc Rossels. My ex boyfriend.
The book will be available on Amazon from 15 September 2016.
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