138 / 180
138
The Yellow House
here in every settlement, in every little town in the interior
or on the coast, there is a yellow house; narrow streets,
paved alleys, and every sunset or afternoon spill their light
over this house seemingly more than over the others; it
glitters like a fine skin, although the yellow house is
generally poor, its eyes are bleary as if after a long night
from which it comes out a bit more burnt, steaming like a
pumpkin; its wrinkles, though, are deeper, those crevices
into which insects spill their mute eggs, something is
buzzing there, a lonely geranium, a budding shadow,
“…because it is fantastic, these yellow houses in the sun and
also the incomparable freshness of the blue”, and because
the first house that falls down in war is the yellow house, it
crumbles like thin parchment and the stars cannot read in
its palm anymore, but only hear it how it whistles in a
wooden shell; here the stone is cold, here the stone looks
towards the sea, beyond the olive garden, here the stone
closes in itself and ripens into stone; at their windows, the
windows of so many yellow houses, I have never seen
anybody, as if an invisible hand had drawn a wall: there was
nobody in the yellow house from Motovun, the one with a
giant painted on its walls, nobody in the house from Sveti
Petar (and you were dragging me slowly by the hand),
nobody in the house from Vrsar, so small and dilapidated,
although clothes were fluttering on the line, nobody in the
house from Novigrad, only a few thin and enigmatic
shadows like wooden hands were stirring at the window,