TE23 Double Feature

Tomas Espedal

The Year

a long and incomparable dialogue on the nature of love. The Canzoniere comprises 366 poems one for each day of the year from the sixth of April to the sixth of April. Today Sunday the sixth of April I’m taking the train from Nice to Avignon to walk the road to L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue continuing on foot towards Fontaine-de-Vaucluse where Petrarch managed to build a house he could retire to and write. I flew to Nice got a cheap room near the railway station. The room resembled a prison cell a greyish-blue little room with a bunk that folded down from the wall a washbasin a window overlooking the backyard. When you opened the window steam 126

and fat fumes from the hotel kitchen entered the room and after a few minutes the walls were covered in small black flecks they kept moving sometimes they flew through the room towards the naked light bulb above the washbasin or they settled on the wrist or behind the ear of the man attempting sleep. The unmistakable sound of mosquitoes I tried to kill as many as possible swatting the wall with a folded newspaper the black spots turned red small blood-red smudges above the bed it wasn’t my blood whoever the blood belonged to man or woman her blood would soon be mingling with mine. It was impossible to sleep in the small room I lay listening to the traffic rumbling in the night in the city the sound of cars and motorbikes 127