The Window.

“Do you remember the apartment I had when I came back from Brazil?”
“The one with the big window?”
Indeed I would never forget that window. It took the whole length of one of the walls of what my daughter used as her living room and study combined. Not at all the kind and size of window one would have expected in that sort of an elderly building. Standing in the room you felt totally exposed to the eyes of everybody living across the street. And there were no curtains in the beginning, because there was no contraption to hang them up.
“Yes” she said, “Do you know what happened there?”

Chatting with my daughters from time to time like this I always wonder about how many stories they have to tell about the times when they first lived on their own, and sometimes I am glad I didn’t know then. This story seemed to belong to that kind when she continued:
“There was this man in his apartment across the street. Often, when I looked out through that window I saw him sitting there on his sofa, just sitting and staring at me.”
Not very nice for a young woman used to walk around freely in her place and not always fully clothed, and with no curtains.
“Of course I was upset. But he didn’t react to my angrily staring back. He stared as if it would be the most natural thing to do.”
“What a nasty kind of a voyeur.”

This was hard to hear for me from my daughter even though it was from years back. I am a rather protective kind of a father and not always up to the fact that my daughters are adult enough to handle that sort of intrusions from the nastier part of my own gender in their life as women.

“One day when I left the house I saw him stepping out from the door on the other side of the street.”
“And you went and told him off?”
”I was about to.”
“And you didn’t?”
“He locked the door behind himself and then turned around in my direction. I just wanted to go over to him. But then I saw him hesitating and fumbling around with something in his hands, a kind of a stick.”
“That could barely have hindered you from telling the man what you thought about his behavior, or did it?”
“Now listen: The stick was a telescopic contraption that he extended to its full length as a walking stick. Then he hesitated again, staring now in my direction.”

She gave me an amused smile when she continued:
“He tapped his stick on the pavement twice and then, slowly, walked away, tapping along with his blind man’s stick.”