Neighbors

They observe us, and we them. What else have we to do?

Our homes stand close, close and on top of each other. Close enough to hear each other’s music, to catch whiffs of conversation, of cigarettes. Theirs is a weathered communist-era bloc, ours is elegant pre-war. Looking out, we probably ask ourselves the same question: better to be in the nicer place, but with a view of the lesser? Or the other way around?

We have our higher ceilings, and they their balconies — which taunt us in the warmer months: tables are set up, and drinks or morning coffees are had in the sun. The aspiring model on the fourth floor even used to sunbathe topless from time to time, and we in our cooler shadows pretended not to look; when the sunshine left at the end of summer, so too did she and her boyfriend, the one who never wore pants, who used to grin and wave. They left their furniture but took their plants. A few weeks later a bearded painter moved in, or at least he seems to dream of painting: he set up an easel in a corner but only ever seems to look at it, ponder it. Otherwise he ponders outside, ponders while smoking and slowly pacing that same balcony where a girl used to lie naked. Then he goes back inside and watches cartoons.

In the apartment above him: an elderly woman and her adult son. The woman there lives for summer sunning, too: methodically she sets out her lounger, an umbrella, a magazine to read and something cold to drink. She also lays towels out across her balcony railing to shield us from further peeping, then goes inside, changes into her bathing suit and tiptoes back out, disappearing for hours behind those towels. Her skin becomes leather. Her son, he’s got white hair and pale skin and couldn’t care less about the sun, though no one savors an evening cigarette more than he. Sometimes in the darkness you can see only the red dot of the burning butt.

Next door: the sweet elderly couple with all those plants. In the winter and spring, the crows use the hanging pots for their gathered water, for wetting their food and also their feathers. But then comes the fresh soil, the buried seeds and finally the sprouting, and by midsummer there’s a magnificent hanging garden with even ivy along the back walls. I want to thank those people for this, for bringing this hint of nature into view, into this blocks of boxes.

On the 1st floor and also the 9th: Pride flags, fluttering there in the wind. On the 10th, 11th and 12th floors: satellite dishes for more television channels — how many are enough? And on the 10th: a porcelain statue of a dwarf.

For some of them there, a balcony is a respite. For others, a place for hanging laundry, or for storage — bicycles with flat tires, dirty mops, old light bulbs.

The artsy couple down on the third-floor corner set up some bamboo and artificial grass for a kind of tropical oasis for them and their small kids. In the evenings and as a family they gather round the television and do exercise videos together, following along with whatever is on the screen.

A woman on the 5th floor wears a wig. A woman two flats over is in a wheelchair.

And up on the 6th, we have that curious case of the racist birdist: yes, every morning and afternoon the lady there sets out seeds on a windowsill and then watches from within. The sparrows are welcome. The pigeons with brown or white feathers, quite welcome too. But the more common pigeons, the ones dressed in blue or gray, uh-uh, no way: she bangs on the glass to get them to shoo, and when they’re slow in going or try to sneak back over she comes out swinging with a broom. Let’s not even mention how she feels about the crows.

And so I feed them. I’ll put out what I can for the unwanted birds: watered oat flakes or pieces of bread, maybe a tortilla. And they fly over cautiously, they look in, they cast their own judgements upon me and then they, too, take what they can get. Sometimes the favor backfires: I get claws clattering out there in the early morning, and voices chirping at me to wake up.

We’re all the same, really.

The days go on. This pandemic rolls on. Only the birds seem untethered, able to fly away from it all so easily. And we in our little boxes keep wondering who has it better, who worse. And we wait like this. For some answer, for a spot of sun, a seed of hope. For some exhale, or for our own replacement.