A few days ago I ran into my neighbor on the building’s staircase. I was going down to buy bread; he was coming up with a loaf under his arm, the top crust already nibbled. He’s a middle-aged man, with dry hair, yellow teeth, and a gaze that’s sweet but dim. It’s been two years now since he moved with his wife and two children to the fourth floor.
The conversation started with an update on our life situations, but he soon invited me to slip into the depths of his problems. I was surprised he wanted to share his private life with me, since he was the most taciturn and withdrawn neighbor in the building. Very few had exchanged more than five words with him, and I wasn’t one of them. Maybe that’s why I didn’t resist: his troubles awakened a genuine curiosity in me.
He told me about the emotional challenges of his married life and how hard it was to get up each day without the will to make breakfast for his little ones. He lamented not having enough time to smooth over the rough edges that had formed after years of fear, guilt, and damaging silence toward his partner, or losing his patience with his oldest son every afternoon when it was time to do math homework. I limited myself to listening and asking questions. These are issues I’ll have to face myself someday too, and that somehow I’ve already sensed.
I was pleased by the trust generated in that brief and unlikely confessional in pajamas, amid the intermittent flow of neighbors. I wasn’t so surprised by the fact that they were all dressed the same—as if they were going to fumigate the apartments—as by the fact that they greeted us without looking us in the eye.
Everyone has their reasons, I thought. You never know how your own neighbor woke up, which is why it’s important to never stop saying hello.
We exchanged a look of complicity and knew we were thinking the same thing.
Despite being quite a few and not greeting us, people didn’t interrupt our thread of conversation. We just had to press ourselves tight to let them pass; him against the wall, me against the handrail. But more and more bodies kept going up and down, and soon I could no longer hear what he was saying. My neighbor raised his voice, then his head, then his arms, waving them in desperation. Half of the loaf of bread he was carrying flew through the air and all that reached me from him were crumbs from his moistened eyes.
And then, a chemical scream I’d never heard before. My neighbor let out a voiceless howl with which he imposed himself over the mechanical noise of the crowd. Everyone stopped dead. They turned toward us and I felt dozens of gazes of profound disgust pierce my chest. I’d never felt so despised. I sought refuge in my neighbor’s wet eyes, because I too felt like crying, but his expression had changed completely. His anxiety had vanished and, in its place, remained a dry, calm, almost condescending gaze. As if he’d spent his whole life receiving that kind of treatment.
I wanted to hug him, though I didn’t know if it was more for me than for him. Impossible. The current of neighbors became a tide, and I could barely see his face. I dodged the hurried heads parading between us, but it was useless. All that reached me from him were his moans, increasingly faint though also more comprehensible. Like whispers in some Slavic language.
Desperate, I asked the neighbors to please let me reunite with what was left of him.
“Have you forgotten why you’re here?” someone answered, but the voice faded in the air before I could see where it came from. “Not much left now, you’re doing great,” said another, who seemed even more hurried.
The tide of neighbors pushed me to the building’s entrance. At that moment, I managed to see a furry ball slip into a darkened hole in the first step. I recognized my neighbor, because he still held a tiny piece of the loaf of bread, now almost nonexistent, curled in a dry tail that had sprouted from his rear.
The hooded crowd burst into loud applause.
It took me a few minutes to realize I was being cheered. Without giving me time to say anything, they kept pushing me with the same force as before, but this time giving me pats on the back. Soon I appeared on the street. I found three guards dressed in white with metallic masks who seemed to have been waiting a long while. They congratulated me on my work and entered the building rubbing their hands.
“Now it’s our turn.”
And then I remembered. I nodded to them without saying anything and walked toward the bakery, as if that hole in the first step had never been there.