Sab lived in an elegant, aristocratic-toned block at the other end of Florence. Oscar was waited for five o’ clock tea. Sab’s street descended to the boulevard and the rest of the city. On the left side a perimeter wall, some buildings, trees and lateral deviations.
There shouldn’t be many blind living alone. Oscar waited at the white door after the bell had rang two tolls, little more than barely audible for a standard human being. Sab had different parameters. Oscar had tried her hi-fi system once. Sab had devoted an entire room to it. Every two, three months she had some component replaced with a more advanced version. All of her computers had been strange one-of-a-kind assembly works, and had faded from one to the other as components had been updated. There had been Braille keyboards, Braille terminals and, more recently, vocal commands and audio data reading. The kind of equipment that made you think it always was custom-built (it really just was custom-assembled). It was a ball to watch her have long conversations with web pages.
Sab opened smiling. Black shades, blond hair, white chamber dress.
The first thing waiting for you in Sab’s apartment was a feeling of misplacement. White behind the white door. No reference points. No frames, ornaments, magazines left around. Everyone left around some magazines. |
