The Trap

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I am not of this world.

At least, that’s what people say. As if there were only one world.

I am standing in the big, empty dining room I never eat in, looking out the large window. It’s on the ground floor. You look onto the meadow behind the house, and the edge of the woods. Sometimes you see deer or foxes.

It is autumn, and as I stand here gazing out, I have the feeling I’m looking in a mirror. The colors are building to a crescendo; the autumn wind makes the trees sway, bending some branches and breaking others. It is a dramatic and beautiful day. Nature, too, seems to sense that something is coming to an end; it’s summoning all its strength for one last surge. Soon it will be lying motionless outside my window. The sunshine will give way to wet gray and then crisp white. The people who come to visit me — my assistant, my publisher, my agent (there isn’t really anyone else) — will complain about the damp and the cold. About having to scrape the windscreen with numb fingers before they could set off. About the fact that it’s still dark when they leave the house in the morning and dark again by the time they get home in the evening. These things mean nothing to me. In my world, it is exactly 23.2ºC, summer and winter. In my world, it is always day and never night. Here, there is no rain, no snow, no frozen fingers. In my world, there is only one season, and I haven’t yet found a name for it.

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