Outside the window a vast forest flowed incessantly. The sight had never changed since the last two hours of travel.
"We're almost home." His mother's happy voice forced him to look at her. She had those big innocent childish eyes that shone with love for that place. He felt nothing.
“I don't understand why you insist on calling it that. It's just a place. " He murmured in a low voice. He was sure it had been at least the twentieth time he had said those words. And as usual he received a disappointed look in return. Apparently only he found himself feeling slight hatred for the place.
“It is where I was born, I fell in love and married. And it is also the place where you, your friends and relatives were born." She suddenly looked at him seriously, and her gaze took on a wilder shade. "That's where we come from."
At those words he found nothing with which to reply. He went silent and returned to peer out the window. They had nothing to say or share. His mother was delighted with that return. He was just dejected for having to leave his home. He didn't know any of those famous friends and relatives, they were gone years ago, and he was really grateful. The fewer creatures like him knew him, the better he lived.
He closed his eyes, refusing to look again at the landscape all the same. He just hoped to get there as soon as possible, to be able to set up his bags and understand what he should do with his life from that moment on. He also hoped that the place was at least livable, the people not nosy. On one hand, he knew well that his were only vain hopes, mere illusions he had to have to find the desire to start again.
Only after that interminable half hour did the speaker announce their destination, the last one on the line. His mother and he, now the only passengers - if Biggie was not counted -, took their three suitcases and got off the train with some difficulty. It was a small station, and there was no one leaving that day. Teo, accustomed as he was to the city and its life, found himself at a loss for words. They were more in the nothingness than he had imagined. The quay was deserted. They seemed the only ones who had a minimum of life in that place. Teo looked around cautiously, analyzing every detail of that place. Someone could have put a gun in his forehead, and he wouldn't have found it so strange.
Then the smell struck him unexpectedly, so much so that he turned up his nose and retreated by instinct. His mother at his side cheered up and ran to the station entrance, leaving him with Biggie and the three suitcases. He stood still, disoriented and bewildered. The station seemed created just for a platform, so much so that there was only a bench and not even a billboard for departures and arrivals. The smell of wet woods still in the nose. Their smell, the one that stirred him, twist his bowels. So familiar and at the same time unknown that it gave him a slight headache. He just waited, caressing Biggie from time to time between the grates of the carrier, relaxing at the feeling the soft fur on his fingertips.
After a few minutes, in which he was seriously worried, he heard footsteps approaching. He immediately got up cautiously, recognizing the smell of his mother - a mixture of wet woods and lavender - but not that of his companion: wet woods, too much aftershave and mint. He wrinkled his nose slightly annoyed: too fresh smells had always irritated his nose.
After their smell, the first thing she saw was her mother's ash-blond hair, then a few steps away from her the brown hair of a man in his 40s. She certainly had many more, like her mother who, despite her 30-year-old appearance, was hiding already 46 years in her.
They stopped a few paces from him, and his mother made the introductions. His name was Thomas, Thomas Ghostwood. They shook hands, and inside, Teo hid a question that he would later ask his mother. It was he who escorted them to their quarters. His mother and Thomas seemed to know each other quite well, and this left him deeply surprised: his mother usually did not give confidence to anyone. But the reason for his behavior he already knew it, while the words that had been said to him first swirled in his mind, creating a small squeeze in the throat. That was really home for his mother.
With him, however, Thomas spoke little, partly because his answers were really scarce and listless, and partly because after the questions of the circumstance they no longer had anything that could be of interest to the other without leading to inappropriate questions. Silence had seemed the best solution for both of them.
Left to his mother the task of entertaining the man, he returned to observe the landscape. It was a small village, he would not have said more than 1700-2000 inhabitants, and rather dreary. Not because it had a dark or disturbing aura about it, but because the forest all around seemed to suffocate those small colored houses - none of them exceeded three floors - and the fog that hovered due to the high humidity gave a sense of spookiness. That it was late autumn didn't help improve his vision of the place.
They arrived in a few minutes. The accommodation turned out to be a single-family house on one floor, however, equipped with an attic and cellar. It was more than he could have hoped for. He glanced at his mother, somewhat bewildered. He expected a cramped apartment, given the speed with which they had moved to that place, certainly not something like that. Thomas helped him carry the suitcases into the house, and the first thing he did was free Biggie from his carrier. That poor cat had already suffered too many injustices for that day."I'm going to check if the boiler is working, so you can already heat everything." And taking the set of keys with which he had opened the door, Thomas headed for the cellar door. She was small and white. And above all it looked like the typical cellar door found in clichéd horror movies. He made a mental note to always leave it locked. It could be said that Teo was not the kind of person who had courage, nor that he was good at keeping up with strong characters. For him, the best tactic had always been to prevent and not risk.
He tried to turn on the light, but it didn't work. A glance with her mother was enough to understand each other, and she disappeared into the cellar to help Thomas understand where the electricity meter was. Teo limited himself to wandering around the little house, already furnished in a modern style with the essentials, and counting the rooms: a kitchen, a sitting room, a double bedroom, a second room that would be his, a bathroom and the attic. Surely he would have spent his entire life in the latter: it was a fairly bright place due to a wall - the shorter one facing east - transformed into a beautiful window overlooking the woods. He already knew that he would spend a lot of time sitting on that floor reading. It was a long time since he had enough time to read, maybe that place would help him a little on that side. During his thoughts on turning that attic into a little reader's paradise, he heard her mother and Thomas talking from downstairs. He went down too.
“Teo, Thomas is kind enough to take me to do the grocery. Do you need something?" At that question, his gaze swung for Biggie, and his mother understood. "You give that cat more love than to yourself." And telling Thomas something about how much Teo had changed since Biggie's arrival, they left him alone.
Not knowing what to do, he grabbed his suitcase and carried it into the room that would be his from that day on. Behind him Biggie followed, inspecting the house with cynical feline curiosity. It was a room, each side of three meter, with a window on the opposite side of the door. He had a double bed in the center of the room, a three-door wardrobe - too much for his meager clothes - and a small desk with a couple of shelves above it. With him he had only clothes, a couple of books and a family photograph; so those shelves would be empty for quite some time.
He went to the window, pulling back the curtains a little: behind the house a small bare garden, less than three meters long, played its small part in that house. He would make sure to decorate it for next spring, perhaps adding a bench or vases. He should have checked the basement if there was anything to move around the garden. Before closing the curtains he looked up and pointed at the house visible in front of him. It was on two floors, and appeared to be large enough to accommodate two separate apartments. The light on the second floor was on, and in order to not seem too intrusive he moved away from the window.
Listlessly he opened the suitcase and began to unpack it, first of all adjusting the few belongings he had decided to bring on the desk. And then he patiently hung the various clothes he had brought with him on the hangers, even though he was forced to keep a good half folded because the hangers were not enough. He also emptied the underwear - the wardrobe was equipped in the leftmost door with built-in drawers - and then withdrew the suitcase on the bottom of the only door left empty.
It had taken him exactly twenty minutes to do everything. Biggie had meekly fallen asleep, and he, having nothing else to do, decided to drop the phone on charge and take his mother's two suitcases into the double bedroom.
He returned and lay down on his bed, waiting for his mother to return, absorbed in the reflection of the light from the house in front of his. Now a busy shadow could be seen behind the glass.
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