November and February are months of torrential rain. In the streets near the river they prepared the houses against the flooding by nailing planks of wood across the doors. In another district, a tributary was also prone to overflow with the rain, and its waters spread out, flat like a mirror in love with the image it reflected, over the plain where the city stood.
One morning they came to collect him from school at an unusual hour. It had been pouring for days and days. The water, now flooding the park, would make it difficult for him to return to his home if they delayed any longer. They had to abandon the car. And the chestnut avenue he had covered so many times on foot had to be crossed in a boat.
The water covered everything. Down below, a lake had behind a thin row of trees. People crossed by bridges made from planks, confused and uncertain. But houses and people seemed now brief and intransient, as if the water, upon depriving them of their earthen base, made evident their true proportion and meaning.
At home, behind the windows of a balcony, he looked at the garden, protected by a wall from the waters. There, the lake, with its fragile little bridges, black lines without perspective under a flat grey sky streaked in white by the rain.
At night, there was no light. Posts and wires had succumbed to the downpour. In the candlelight, he listened to the wind outside, and to the torrential rain that fell hour after hour. He felt as if he was on an island, separated from the world and its boring affairs on a limitless holiday; an island rocked by the waters, cradling his last dreams as a child.
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