The old man at the Lake
There was a lake in the middle of a forest. The lake wasn’t very big, but it wasn’t very small either. Tall trees grew around it; their leaves remained green every season. The waters of the lake reflected their beauty.
High mountains surrounded the lake. They were also covered with tall and faithful trees and the waters of the lake also reflected their beauty. Some were covered year-round with snow.
Among the trees lived a cat. Her name was Eliza. Eliza spent her days wandering among the trees; the nights she spent in a wooden cabin that lay a few minutes from the lake. The cabin had a green door and many windows and had been built many years before Eliza was born.
In the wooden cabin lived a man. He had been born many years before the cabin was built. He always wore shirts that were red and white. Some had only stripes but most had squares. He always wore brown pants and he had a big beard.
The old man slept cozily in his bed until the rays of the sun came through one of the windows in the cabin and woke him up. He would sit up and pet Eliza on her face exactly seven times. Eliza liked how he petted her, even though sometimes it was a bit harsh; she wished he would pet her eight or nine or ten times, but he always petted her seven times.
He would get up, put on his slippers, and walk out of his room into the kitchen. Eliza would follow him meowing, rubbing herself against his legs as he walked. After opening the windows to let some cool fresh air in, he would take yogurth out of the fridge and fix himself a muesli in a bowl. He would set the bowl on the table and take cat food out of the shelf, setting it on the floor in another bowl. The two would eat breakfast in silence.
After eating, he would wash his bowl and spoon in the sink and set them to dry. They only had two bowls, one for the man and one for the cat, but that was enough for them. The bowls were made of clay and had been made many years before he was born. One had the image of a rooster on the bottom and the other of a fish.
Eliza would watch the old man dry his hands on a rag, tug on his beard, pour himself a whisky and get to work. She knew that he would work for hours, so she prefered to jump out through the window and set off to explore the forest.
The old man was a painter. He spent his days working on paintings of landscapes, often with a lake, and trees and mountains.
Having worked for many hours, the old man would pour himself a second whiskey. He always drank out of the same glass, a thick glass, which had been made many years before the bowls.
You could sort them all by age: the latest painting, the whisky, Eliza, the cabin, the man, the bowls with the rooster and fish, the glass, the trees, the mountains.
He would change his slippers for green boots and set out, glass in hand, on a walk. Most of the time he would go to the lake, to sit on the same rock as always, and experience the serenity of the lake.
Sometimes Eliza would join him. But not always. She would come close to the rock where he sat and meow but he wouldn’t pet her. He would just take in the lake.
Sometimes flocks of birds would fly over distant trees and he would listen to their noises and watch how they reflected on the lake. But not always. Whenever this happened, he would take a sip of his whisky.
He could spend an hour or two just observing, before heading back to the cabin to work some more and drink some more.
☙
One time the old man decided to bake a cake. He opened the oven and set the mix inside, which he had prepared with eggs, milk, flour, and some purple fruits that came from a farm just beyond the forest.
The cake turned out to be very bad. The old man only ate a little —enough to confirm that it was, indeed, very bad— and threw the rest to the ducks.
The old man thought that there are two kinds of people. Some people, the first kind, would try to bake a cake again, and probably fail again, and try again, and again, and again, until eventually they would be able to bake a wonderful cake, again and again, and they would then bake a cake every week, maybe every couple of days.
The other type of people would never try to bake a cake again —they would accept that baking was just not their thing.
The old man never tried to bake a cake again.
☙
Despite Eliza’s company, the old man sometimes felt lonely.
Even though she would like it if the old man petted her more frequently, Eliza didn’t feel lonely; the old man and the forest were more than enough for her.
Sometimes the old man imagined how his life would be if he lived in the big city. He would probably live in a tiny apartment, not enough room to spread his arms. He would have to walk a few blocks over dirty streets to get to a park where he would sit on a bench and look at five sad trees, maybe six.
What kind of friends would he have? Maybe there would be a café or a bar where he would go and drink whisky and talk with other men like him. Maybe they would have interesting conversations. What could they talk about? Politics? The old man didn’t care about politics. Maybe his interesting friends would talk about other painters and maybe about writers and about movies.
Would he be able to hold his own in conversation, having lived in the country for so many years? Would they consider him too simple, not one of their own?
Maybe they would play sports on a TV in the bar and people would come to watch the games and root obnoxiously for their teams. He already knew he would find it annoying. Maybe the games would have a fixed schedule, so he would only visit the bar on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, or something like that.
What kinds of paintings would he paint if he lived in the city? Certainly not paintings of mountains and lakes. Perhaps he would paint large bridges over the river with the shapes of ugly buildings behind them. Maybe he would paint the theater and the opera house. He would probably paint people, perhaps cheesy stuff like children playing in the park, or a naked woman on a divan, or lovers walking hand in hand under the rain next to a busy street.
Even though he often felt lonely, especially at night, the old man knew that he would never move to the city. It was evident that he belonged in the forest, in the solitary cabin by the lake.