In this town , where fog rules, a woman lies down on her bed next to her dead husband . He is given makeup and gets perfume every day by his widow, his eyes are half closed . This makes her think that he is about to rise . With a kiss on the forehead, she says goodnight. Scrubs his face with a silk handkerchief, to clean makeup. Leaves the scarf on her bedside table, along with cosmetics and closes her eyes. Suddenly, she feels a breeze on her face and remembers that she should close the window. Autumn is the cruelest time around here. Walking slowly to the window, the sound of a violin appears loudly. She could hardly see a few feet outside her window, she sees a shadow through the density of weather. She knows who is there. Her young lover. A boy a few years younger, standing at the foot of a bluff. Playing the violin with all his soul, the song that he dedicates to his impossible love every night. He doesn’t care that she has aged so much in so little time, nor that she goes out less and less tidy on the street. She goes only to spend their wealth in makeup and perfumes for her late husband. She knows that this young man is gonna stay another hour playing for her and then he goes to the bar to mourn between drunk fat, anorexic whores and tired thieves.
If in this town love is a sin, beauty is a crime. That is very clear in the bar, and that you can not be picky with prices. The bartender has a shotgun under the counter. Although, is well known to be very cowardly to use it, he likes to clean it in front of all, to demonstrate who controls the place. But this bar has a clear king, the Desolation, musicalized by a blind accordionist who is lying somewhere, but nobody can find it. No one is looking either. He's just the leftover of a famous musician who spun old town after town, until went blind in the first minute in this town. A blow to the head some say, others also say he drank so much that he went blind. Nobody cares to ask. He sings about a forgetful heart. He wonders why they can not love as they did before, and always ends by saying that "The door has closed forevermore, If indeed there ever was a door." His voice is the voice of a land with thousands of years of war and it doesn’t cause the same intrigue in women's bars. It only fills them with weariness. Some of them wear red, with tattered clothing, with cigarette brands and the smell of too many men. Those women who still think that the end isn’t near, dark circles makeup to attract some distracted man that will spend his coins earned in the cotton field. They, who have already lost their charm and their touch one too many autumns behind, approach directly and invite the men to go to one of the upstairs rooms .
After asking the bartender for the key, she comes up with her customers by plaintive stairs. A combination of its chirps with the blind man’s accordion, shakes even the bravest of thieves. Those who are planning the bank robbery. Robbery never happens because at the end of the night they will be so drunk that they will not remember anything. They go off as the whiskey is ticking. The only thing that waking them is the terror of creaking of the stairs made by the steps of the couple down. She, with a disgusted face, gives the key to the bartender in exchange for a glass of cold beer. The distracted customer goes down as usual, no even a smile, simulating air greets and leaves. He has to go back to sleep in a bed, not a furniture without form like in a bar's bedroom.
The way back from the bar always concerns the workers. In the mist the sounds of the accordion or violin are mixed with the wind blowing through the old trees, waking up some owl or some creatures of the night. Each movement could be anything, and alcohol creates images in the shadows. The drunk man says his prayers up to his bed with the well locked door. Just now he can sleep. The next day he expects another hot day in the field.
And the widow, well, she closes the window without the slightest gesture. Of course, the morphine doesn’t make her feel many things. She returns to her bed, to her dead one, to her denial. In this town the good and evil live side by side.
So you know, if you come to find your lost woman in this town , first read carefully the sign:
"SCARLET TOWN.
Mourning is useless."
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