The faces of the spectators who fill the city’s last cinema every evening often show bewilderment and curiosity when they see the young, unassuming man rise hurriedly to leave his seat just as the lights go down to signal the start of the film.
They watch him with questioning glances as he disappears behind the curtains separating the auditorium from the entrance. They wonder why this stranger has paid for a ticket to sit alone in his armchair, seemingly indifferent to the film advertised on the poster, before quietly going back the way he came.
But no one can know that, for Daniel, the long, interminable wait that precedes the screening of a film is the most perfect part of an ordinary evening at the movies. Unlike the other impatient moviegoers fidgeting in their seats and chattering, he allows his imagination to carry him away during this suspended time, just as his mother had taught him in those distant childhood days, when they would slip together into the warm, comforting embrace of the cinema on their town’s main street.
###
As a child, he and his mother would admire the bright red sign and the imposing billboards on either side of the theatre’s entrance, flaunting their inviting appeal against the grey background of the old building. Daniel, his gait clumsy from the weight of the backpack he still carried after a full day at school, let himself be guided through the evening traffic, laboriously lengthening his stride to match his mother’s hurried pace.
She walked with the same confidence and determination with which she faced whatever life threw at her. The man who she loved at eighteen and refused to acknowledge the child, claiming she had betrayed him, showed no concern for its fate.
So, when she and Daniel walked the city’s streets, she stood tall in her heels, maintaining an air of defiance and determination. This was despite the fact that she had to stand behind the counter of the bookshop where she worked all day.
However, since her son was only about three feet tall at the age of six, she seemed incredibly tall to him when he stood next to her; he had to look up to see the back of her head. At that moment, she seemed distant to him, as if trapped in an inaccessible world of unexpressed thoughts, dormant sorrows, and hidden weaknesses; a world of forces that made her appear invincible to others.
Her inexhaustible energy seemed to diminish only when they found themselves in front of the transparent glass of the ticket office, behind which a man in his forties indifferently peeled off tickets. They recognised him from the first day. He was their shy and reserved neighbour, with whom they had always exchanged a few words and hasty greetings until he moved away.
“I’m sure you remember us, Alfred, don’t you?” his mother greeted him with spontaneous enthusiasm.
“Yes, of course, Mrs Clare,” he replied awkwardly. Her arrival briefly interrupted the monotonous rhythm of his work. His gaze brightened, and, as Daniel would find out sometime later when he turned to the young woman who had been his neighbour and whom he had fallen in love with, his heart leapt at the shy and confused emotion that took him by surprise.
As he watched her walk down the hallway overlooked by the various entrances, a look of regret spread across his face as though he had missed his chance to hold on to a moment of happiness.
Like all the other children in the room, Daniel began to fidget in the blue velvet chair a few moments later, persistently asking his mother when the film would start. Feeling apprehensive, he kept turning towards the small frame behind her, from which the bright beam of the projector would soon emerge.
“For us, it doesn’t matter when the film starts. Imagination is the greatest power of the mind, and a brief moment of imagination can sometimes be enough to make us happy,” she replied, twisting and tilting her body to bring her face near his. She brought her face close to his, close enough to put her arm around his shoulders and pull him close. The armrest of the chair prevented their bodies from touching.
Daniel concentrated on her words, on this speech that was still too complicated for him to fully understand, on those convoluted sentences that tried to explain how waiting was often considered an annoying part of the experience when people had to endure a long wait before the film started. However, in that moment of boredom, his mother was convinced that they could rediscover the pleasures of fantasy, imagination, and daydreaming, and everything that could awaken in their minds.
Pointing her index finger directly at the empty screen, she traced lines and shapes in the air with wide, sinuous movements, as if outlining her mysterious visions. She transformed herself into a mad director, orchestrating her ghostly troupe and assembling and reassembling the pieces of a world that existed only in her head and was uninfluenced by the ideas of others.
She wanted to teach him that in life, one is not always forced into sterile and useless waiting, but should instead seize opportunities to let one’s imagination run wild.
“Don’t you see it? It’s a dragon!” she exclaimed excitedly. Daniel gradually reconstructed the invisible figures that her fingers were creating before his eyes. He allowed himself to be carried away by the tender enchantment of the moment, forgetting the film, the audience, and his anxiety about waiting. Overcome by the closeness of his mother, he felt that, in those fleeting moments, their bond had become unbreakable.
He wouldn’t have minded if someone had come in to announce that the screening had been cancelled. For a long time, he had felt drawn into his mother’s exciting world by her liveliness, joy and cheerfulness. Thanks to this new and seemingly unbreakable bond, their evenings at the small, cosy cinema in the town centre became a must-attend event — an almost obligatory stop before going home.
Until one spring, when Daniel had just turned ten. As the sun’s warm light washed over the city’s grey buildings, he realised that his mother had taken a different route to usual.
“The cinema’s on the other side,” he said, stopping in the middle of the pavement with a puzzled expression on his face. Over the past few weeks, Daniel had noticed a rapid decline in his mother’s enthusiasm. She would lean back in her seat and refuse to continue their imaginative play.
But in the days that followed, Daniel realised that something had happened. Without realising it, he saw that his mother was clutching the knitted jacket she wore over a light cotton dress, as if the fine weather could not warm the feelings incubating in her heart. The fabric clung to her thin body like an invisible barrier against her son’s insistent questions.
“When are we going to the movies again?” he asked repeatedly, displaying his tireless and naïve selfishness. After resisting his requests for a few days, one evening she confessed to him that she had lost her job at the bookshop, while sitting on the edge of her bed.
Those few words conveyed disappointment, bitterness, helplessness and a sense of tragic inevitability. Daniel felt the tragic realism of this dramatic news in his own small way, and his thoughts turned to the huge cinema screen that had never before appeared before his eyes in all its desolate nakedness — white and empty, like their new life.
“But you’ll see that everything will be all right,” said his mother, forcing a smile.
###
The following Sunday, something unexpected happened. The doorbell rang and, as she looked out of her room, Daniel heard the awkward voice of a man rise from the shadows of the landing.
“Alfred…” her mother said in genuine astonishment as the man stepped forward with the discreet manner of a guest who might otherwise seem intrusive. Daniel saw him reach out to her mother without saying a word and hand her what looked like two cinema tickets.
“I thought you might like to come to the screening tomorrow. It’s a nice cartoon. I’m sure Daniel would like it,” he said hesitantly.
“I… You’re very kind, but I don’t think it’s possible…”
In an unexpected gesture, Alfred placed the tickets in her hand, closing his fist around them as though they were something extremely precious.
“It’s a gift for Daniel…” His eyes held the expression of someone who knew. Somehow, Alfred had discovered that cinema trips would become an unaffordable luxury for them, to be added to the long list of sacrifices they would have to make in future.
“Thank you,” his mother replied simply.
###
Suddenly, the magic of their little cinema won them back with its unchanged charm. While they could do nothing but wait for events in the outside world, Alfred restored their serene confidence in the future by buying tickets at least once a week. He often left a rose on the chair that Clare usually occupied. As time passed, Daniel became aware of Alfred’s presence behind the hall’s awning — a swaying threshold from which he watched them, almost anxiously. He discreetly disappeared behind it when he noticed that his gesture had been appreciated.
His mother did not seem to mind the attention, and when Alfred finally proposed and she accepted, Daniel was not at all surprised.
###
Now that Daniel has grown up and his mother has been laid to rest in the quiet cemetery on the outskirts of town, he still meets Alfred at the old, declining cinema, which struggles to compete with the giant multiplexes in the new shopping mall. The sign has perhaps lost its lustre, and the billboards have become less appealing to young children, but Daniel doesn’t care what film is showing at the weekend.
He always sits in the same seat in the middle row, staring at the giant white screen. With nothing else to do, he projects memories onto it of a time that no longer exists, but to which he cannot help clinging.
Every night, in an almost ritualistic act, he truly believes that his mother is standing beside him, drawing arabesques of the past and future with her invisible fingers. For a moment, the light of memory illuminates his lonely life.
DoubleSpeak 