Just a brief preface to this post:
I lived abroad, in Italy, for the best part of 5 years, and during my time there as a solo traveller and foreigner I had many wild and wonderful encounters that I’ve always wanted to write down. This, the first of a new ‘Strange Encounters’ series, is without doubt the most profoundly memorable and meaningful of these encounters. So without further ado, here it is, Strange Encounter #1: The Man on the Balcony.
~~~~~
I’d slept in late that June morning. The air was thick with Mediterranean summer heat, and I began to rouse from sleep.
‘Aiutooo!! Aiutoooo!! (Help! Help!)’
At first I thought I was dreaming it. Or better still, some kids were just messing around outside. But then the cries came again, this time with bangs and I simply couldn’t ignore them.
Dishevelled and still half-drowsy with sleep, I stumbled to the front door of my apartment, opened it, and poked my head out to try and locate the source of the sound.
My apartment, like many in a typical Italian palazzo, faced onto a courtyard, and was joined to my neighbours by a connecting balcony and walkway. As I moved further over the threshold to locate the noise, I noticed that the window of the apartment next to me was ajar. Following my instinct to investigate more closely, I crept cautiously up to the open window.
Before me lay a small, sparsely decorated studio apartment; the bed neatly made with white and dusty yellow bedding, nothing particular out of place. The noises had stopped then, and as I scanned my eyes from right to left across the room, I noticed him.
Stood behind a solid glass door at the back of the apartment, was a slender young man, a look of utter desperation in his face. It was then I realised what was going on – he had trapped himself outside.
Spotting me, the man began shouting, gesticulating at me in Italian through the glass;
‘Try the front door?!,’ he suggested, pointing violently between me and the front door to my left and miming the gesture of turning a door handle. I tried it. It only opened from inside!
‘Call the landlord?!’ I suggested back (in broken Italian, I might add), mirroring his mime with the universal gesture of a telephone at my ear.
‘Can’t!’ he responded, pointing with desperation at a spot within the apartment. Following his finger, my heart sank as I saw his phone lying on the table on the wrong side of the door. We exchanged a look of panic. ‘The window?!’ He pointed once more, this time at me, a pleading look in his sweat-drenched face.
Then, quite to my own surprise, I suddenly found myself springing into action. I didn’t know this man. I was half awake, slightly delirious, and looked a right mess. But it all meant nothing in that moment.
Rushing back into my apartment, thinking fast, I grabbed a nearby chair and dragged it out and under the open window. Taking a deep breath, I swung my first leg over the cool stone windowsill, then the next, collapsing inelegantly with slap on the ceramic tiled floor. After speedily composing myself and brushing myself off, I darted across the apartment and within seconds I’d released the handle on the glass door and with it the man into the apartment.
He burst forward, looking so thankful and relieved. It was only after examining more closely the place where he had been trapped that I realised not only the reason for his panic, but how serious the situation had actually been.
The glass door had led to a very cramped and modest balcony, but the balcony didn’t face onto a street like they usually do – it was surrounded on all sides by three solid walls and a tiny courtyard several metres below. Had I not been there to hear him, there was no way he could have got anyone else’s attention. What’s more, the temperatures that day were forecast to hit at least 40°C; had he remained out there on his own for very much longer it could have gone really badly for him.
It was in that moment that everything caught up with me and I thought to myself; ‘Did I just save this guy’s life?…’
It turns out that he and I had a lot in common, and, bonded by this remarkable moment, we became fast friends. I shudder to think what might have happened if I’d woken up earlier or returned late.
But as thankful he might be to me for being there that day, or – in his words – ‘the girl that saved his life’, I am equally, if not more grateful to him for showing me a part of myself I hadn’t seen for a while, if ever. A part of me that wasn’t the usual daily worrywart and procrastinator, but one that knew when to act and did it with total conviction and confidence.
I kinda liked her.
The Kaleidoscope Room 