Four square walls. 

Flaking yellow paint. 

One small window.

A red geranium and a wooden door with a white porcelain doorknob. 

The cast iron single bed was empty.

Only the overbearing shadow of the ancient wardrobe with the pock marked mirror filled the bed. 

The starched linen sheets were otherwise unruffled, untouched. And the pillow was a virgin pillow, a lonely pillow, without the mark of the human head when it buries itself deep into the serene fragrance of freshly laundered linen.

There was total silence in the room.

An eerie, pervasive, haunting silence that instantly fills the mind with the sound of feelings of all kinds.

Even the repulsive smell of a persistently full commode had left the little room.  The geranium scent reigned supreme now ... having gently purged away the scents  and smells of  the fragility  and humiliations of human  existence.

The yellow walls had shared a life with the occupant of the cast iron bed. They had watched her mother crushed by labour pains as she struggled to give birth to this child who refused to be born. And they were witnesses to the tufts of black hair that reluctantly burst out into view to the chorus of exhausted screams of a mother being born by giving birth.

So had the thick chestnut door and the white porcelain door knob. They guarded the beautiful naughty child with the  black stubborn tufts of curls. They laughed with her and cried with her and couldn't bear it when the black curls turned grey and lifeless and the little girl was transformed into  a wizened frail old lady , with sunken eyes and cracked lips, forgotten by many, visited only by the few.

The yellow walls, the door and doorknob had lived through many loves, many lives, many moments of human strengths and weakness, triumphs and crushing defeats. 

And so had the pock marked mirror on the magnificent wardrobe which had proudly housed the finest silks, plushest velvets, finest wools and coolest linens! 

How it missed those luxurious gowns, the delicate Maltese laces and those exquisite satin shoes with matching evening bags resplendent with the most intricate embroidery.....what wouldn't the pock marked  mirror give to see Missy in her red velvet frock with matching hat , black curls framing her lovely features , one more time......

But Missy was gone now. Or rather her old mangled body had been taken away in a box and lowered deep into the earth out of sight and out of mind.

But Missy lived on in a different form, in the memory of those with whom she had shared the stories of her  own childhood , her mother's childhood and her grandmother's childhood who had in turn entrusted  her with the memories of her home, her beautiful village by the sea, the rolling terraced fields  that changed colour with the seasons and were framed by the most  exquisite rubble walls which themselves changed hues according to the moods of the mosses and lichens that bejewelled  their limestone skin...

Missy knew all about the grand forts and coastal towers that protected the area from pirates and villians that made for the villagers again and again. She knew the salt pans and the sweet turned foetid smell of the precious salt as the sun scorched it into the tastiest of nature's crystals...  And she could still feel the urchin spikes digging deeper into her heels when she decided to brave the wild rugged terrain that led her into the most interesting part of the beach where the seaweed tasted like bitter heaven and the crabs were enormous and the limpets thronged each other mercilessly in an attempt to smoothen the razor rocks with their pearly shells....

Missy remembered everything, even the sojourns into the caves that were visible only from the sea at Zonqor Point.... She couldn't possibly forget the picnics with her family... the lazy summer days on the challenging beach or the sweaty races in the red fields....

She was glad that her body burdened her no more, that her lightness and agility had returned ... She could now watch her nieces tear around her massive house, jump over the rubble walls, steal the odd fulu from the friendly farmer who pretended not to see,  brave the waves.... taste the fresh salty air... smell the freshly turned soil....