Once upon a time, in an old town by the sea, a young doctor came to work and live there. This was where he once grew up. He brought with him his new wife, and proudly showed her off. The women of this town all had big hands and large feet, and the ever-blowing wind had made their hair yellow and their skin coarse. Life was hard here. The wife of the new doctor however was a dark, frail beauty with chocolate-brown eyes a warm smile for everyone. So the men were all slightly jealous, and slapped the doctor on his back. ‘Well done.’
But then the doctor’s young wife seemed to change. She withered and started to wander nervously through the narrow winding streets, for hours and hours. And one very cold night, after a long search by the townsmen, she was found sitting on the far end of the pier with her bare feet dangling in the icy water. Nobody envied the young doctor now. ‘Imagine that,’ the people said to each other. ‘Such a beautiful woman, to go raving mad like that,’ and shook their heads. Some tried to persuade the doctor to take her to some place, where they would look after her. ‘Let her go,’ they told him. But he would not hear of it.
Instead he started to buy up all the tiny gardens that bordered on his own, at the back of their house. And this way he made their garden grow, till it was large enough. Then he placed a high wall around it, and from the streets outside only the tops of the tall bushes and high trees on the inside could be seen. Now his wife could safely roam her garden, and she was never seen outside of the garden again. Sometimes she suffered bad days, as the disease would try to claw its way out through her skull. On days like that the people could still hear her cries. But there were mostly good days, when her spirit was at ease with the world. On those days the doctor would come home early, and take her for long walks in their garden.
And this is the starting point of a story I’ll one day have to tell, about this inner garden that I see from my window. This part was first told to me by the real estate agent, who continued by pointing out the garden on old maps of the town. Sure enough the architect of this new complex had followed the set up of the old days: it showed the garden, shaped like a piece of pie, surrounded by houses. It may have been a brand new house I moved into, but this is old soil that me and my neighbours walk and live on. And here the story continues.
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