The garden man
He had women’s lips on a beautiful face, the garden man. He walked calmly in his elegant suits, even in the driving rain and with the raging wind. He loved his garden, all gardens in fact, as he told me one day. He said he preferred the outdoors to the monotony of rooms, that he loved solitude more than any other woman and that he wrote for the cinema in his downtime, sometimes after his walk in the garden.
 “Why does a man with your qualities condemn himself to solitude?” I asked him one winter afternoon, as the spicy aromas of a herbal tea met our reddened faces, perfuming our hair with its scent. He said something about the winter colours and stayed silent for a while.
He asked me why I was in that immaculate living room where endless rugs in warm colours welcomed the tentative steps of a visitor. I went back to looking at his lips, then also his chin. His profile looked like the delicate and heavy drapery hanging from the walls.
The wind howled around his garden. We stayed with our eyes glued to the window to steal its secrets, to hear it getting stronger.