JUST FOR THE BLINK OF AN EYE

JUST FOR THE BLINK OF AN EYE

The large mirror, placed right in front of the window, on the opposite wall, framed the landscape that could be seen from the window : the expanse of fields and meadows , the lush foliage of the trees, the red roofs of the houses and, in the distance, the hills of the same color of the sky, sometimes blue, sometimes gray, sometimes it happened they appeared pink, since on the horizon there was a  pink light.

When she passed in front of the mirror, and it happened several times every day, Judy did not notice, did not pay attention to her image reflected in the mirror. She just glanced  at the landscape framed by the window, which was reflected in the mirror. The landscape she saw, even if mostly in passing, reflected in the mirror made her think not of one painting, but of many paintings, all portraying the same landscape but in different light for each hour of the day.

One day, passing quickly, as usual, in front of the mirror, she had glimpsed ( caught), with the tail of her eye, a glitter, a something which was just something, but never seen after in that landscape  reflected in the mirror. Something that had appeared and immediately after disappeared. In fact , when she had stopped and, standing in front of the mirror , had wanted to observe well, accurately, the landscape reflected in the mirror, that something fleeting, even if very colorful and shiny, had disappeared. Then she had gone to the window , trying to realize what it could be, where it could come from. That colorful and shiny reflection glimpsed for a moment in the mirror, one could not even say it was an image, rather it made one think of the fragment of an image.

The sun had already set, it was almost evening , so Judy had thought that glint of colored light, that something  undecidable,  that she could not understand what it was, could be the reflection of a light from the houses , or perhaps from the fields, or even, who knows, from the hills. She had been ( remained) in front of the window for a long time, looking at the landscape framed by the window, while the light went down, and lights were turned on in the houses, even on the hills, but she had not been able to identify anything corresponding to that colored reflection that had appeared and immediately disappeared in the mirror, that something which seemed the fragment of an image. Even if she couldn’t have said of what image. Perhaps it could have been a fragment of the image of a face, perhaps it could have been the fragment of the image of an animal, perhaps  of a bird.

Sometimes it happened to see birds in flight, also birds which were taking flight in the landscape reflected in the mirror. They, the unfolding of their wings, their slender at the top, appeared only for a few moments in the mirror.

Even when it was dark Judy stood ( remained) looking both at the window and at the mirror reflecting the view upon which the window opened, spasmodically waiting to see reappear that something colorful and luminous ( very bright) that had flashed to her for a moment, like a little piece of an image_____and, since she had seen only a small fragment of that image, she colud not understand what image it was. But perhaps it had seemed to her the fragment of an image because she had seen it, indeed glimpsed it , for too little time, she thought. Ah, if only she could see it for a few more moments.

Judy waited in vain to see that bright and colorful reflection reappear in the mirror.  At last, exhausted, she closed the window and went to bed. Even if she couldn’t help but think  that, who knows, that something, that colored reflection couldn’t reappear as soon as she closed the window, perhaps it was  appearing just now as she was closing the window. So several times, when she was closing the window, just at the last moment, before she closed it completely, she had reopened it, hoping to see, and what an uproar in her heart for that hope, that beard of colored light reappear .

The next day she took care to keep an eye, almost uninterruptedly, at the landscape reflected in the mirror, in front of which she paused for a long time to observe attentively, and, from time to time she also went to observe the landscape from the window. ( at the window). But she waited in vain to see that reflection of luminous colors , which to her had seemed the fragment of an image, although  she did not know what image, because it was as if only one piece of a puzzle had appeared to her.

Shortly after the glare of the sunset had gone out, more or less at the same time the day before

that…piece of a puzzle was again shining in the mirror. This time it  had appeared closer, almost in the foreground of the landscape reflected in the mirror, but nevertheless it was still only a small fragment of an image. And this time too it had appeared only for a very short time, too short to be able to observe it carefully. Even the day after that fragment of an image, that single piece of a puzzle appeared only towards evening, in that time between the dog and the wolf, it occurred to Judy, since when she saw that flashing colored reflection appear again in the mirror she heard barking. It was the barking of dogs in the distance.  Even in the following days that colored reflection appeared in the mirror always  towards evening, every time only for a few moments. But every day, every time it appeared again, it moved more and more, it danced, jumped in all the space of the mirror, indeed it seemedto be pawing, as if it wanted to get out of the mirror, as if it was about to get out of the mirror. Oh, it really came out of the mirror, at least she could look at it closely, she perhaps could figure out which image was a fragment of. But the colored reflection did not come out of the mirror and every time it disappeared too soon. So that she could not distinguish in it anything other than the very bright, intense, charged colors : yellow, pink, green, red, blue, purple…..That flash of colored light , which perhaps was the fragment of an image, each time disappeared too soon. As it seemed to have come out of nowhere, when it disappeared it seemed to dissolve, it was not possible to understand even where it went.

Then, after a few days, even if its appearance always lasted a very short time, it seemed to Judy that colored reflection was a little larger, although it was always just a fragment of an image. It seemed to her she could see something in it that made her think it might be the fragment of a face. Who knows whose face it was. Judy kept hoping that that fragment would grow even more, and she also hoped to be able to observe it longer.

One day, unexpectedly, what she had invoked to happen, really happened: that…colored reflection came out of the mirror. Judy heard a crack: that bomb of colors had broken the glass of the mirror and had ended up right in her hands. When she looked at it she saw that it was an eye.

She thought it was a glass eye, as she felt it hard in her hands. She looked at it more closely and she saw that it was a real eye, which looked like had just been pulled out of an orbit. And that eye in her hands continued to shine brightly with colors, like when it had been a reflection in the mirror.