-What color is what you feel?

Asked a voice, slow and worn by the years.
She was stunned, her gaze lost, and paid no attention to the voice. She didn't even notice the exact moment an old man with an inscrutable gaze had sat down beside her on that park bench.

-What color is what you feel?

The man asked again, patient and without turning to look at her. At first, she felt annoyed; she was entirely absorbed in herself, in the cataclysm unfolding within her universe. She simply didn't feel like talking, and although the question would have startled anyone, she ignored him anyway.

"What color is what you feel? You crazy old man!", she thought to herself, letting out a huff.

Even so, the question kept buzzing around her mind like a curious bee. She grew even more annoyed upon realizing she had been distracted from her chaotic state. How could a damn bee possibly have more gravitational pull than the storm raging in her life at that very moment?

The old man, knowing he had startled her enough and without having received a "mind your own business", released another little bee.

-Is it really that difficult to answer my question? An ordinary person might find it quite hard. But you are not ordinary... You know the language of colors, don't you?

And he looked at her hands—her hands, stained with oil paint and ink. In a reflexive act, she looked at her hands too; it was true, the solvent hadn't done its job properly.

Wait, she didn't want to leave the whirlpool she was trapped in. She stood up, blinked several times, looked at the old man, and didn't know what to say or do. Before she could walk away, and without turning to look at her, the old man made her a deeply intriguing offer:

-If you tell me what color what you feel is... you will never feel the same way again.

The offer pierced her logic like a panicked arrow. The proposal was absurd, illogical... but what in that moment was logical to her?

-Never?

She replied, caught by intrigue, as if the offer could possibly be legitimate. For a fleeting second, she tasted in her mind how extraordinary it would be to rid herself of that wretched storm in her chest. She needed, she yearned to hear nonsense like that. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and, still without turning around, prepared to grant her credulity just like that.

The last thing she cared about was the how or the why; if anything, she clung blindly to the why not. She sat back down in the exact same spot; the metal of the bench was still warm. She didn't even grant the old man a glance. She moistened her lips and swallowed hard, as if promising herself not to shed a single drop of pain through her eyes, no matter how much it cut her throat.

The old man pulled a small crystal vial from his coat. With trembling hands -partly from the years, partly from the cold-, he removed its cork stopper and placed it between them, right in the middle of the bench. It was an ordinary, everyday vial. She, feeling somewhat calmer, wanted to believe in the offer, if only for a moment.

-Ok, let’s assume for a moment that you aren't crazy. And you assume that I’m not crazy for playing along. Just answer me one thing before I answer your question: what do you plan to do with whatever you catch in that vial?

The old man made no gesture and didn't rush to answer. He let the silence make itself interesting. He breathed, and the warm vapor exhaled from his cracked mouth turned into a brief, warm mist. It was November, the trees were bare, and it was cold.

-Imagine I am deaf from birth. That I have never, ever heard the tiniest sound.

At that precise moment, all sound vanished for her, as if every noise in the world had suddenly slipped away. Naturally, she felt utterly strange. She knitted her brows: nothing made a sound, nothing. There were no engines running, no hurried distant footsteps, no birds returning to their nests, not even the sound of her own saliva trickling slowly down her throat... nothing. And what was worse, for an instant, she couldn't even recall what a sound was.

-Did you feel that?

The old man asked. She felt a profound relief just hearing again. What had that been? What had happened in that moment? Could it have been purely her imagination?

Assuming she would grasp his point, the old man asked:

-How would you describe the sound of the wind to someone who is profoundly deaf?

Without yet fully understanding the old man’s argument, she played along. But how do you describe sounds to someone who cannot hear them? Or to someone who has never heard a thing? She was creative; a few solutions crossed her mind, but none seemed like a good answer. She sat thinking for a moment and suddenly had an idea. She tucked her hair behind her ear, leaned in slowly toward the old man, and gently blew against his cheek. The warm, ruffled air swept happily across the wrinkles on the old man's face. He recalled the sweetness of a sea breeze caressing an old meadow. The old man simply closed his eyes. She returned to her seat, and the old man lingered for a few seconds enjoying the sound of the wind.

-You did well, child, very well. Thank you. You translated one sensation using another sensation, as if they were different languages, but the message remained the same. You made me hear the wind with my skin.

Then the elderly man turned to look at her for the very first time since their conversation began.

-You see, I have never felt what you feel. I have never felt what people feel. Emotions are to me what sounds are to a deaf person, or colors to someone who is blind... I have learned to feel through other sensations. I have learned to feel through colors. Watercolors, oils, pastels, it doesn't matter. Everything I know about feelings, I know because I am an expert in the world of tones, of nuances, of light and shadow.

It was only then that she realized the old man's gaze was not ordinary. It was a neutral look, perhaps serene, yet no expression could be deciphered on that wrinkled face. Nothing in his eyebrows or the furrows of his forehead; nothing in his drooping chin, his cheekbones, or the bags beneath his eyes. His ears didn't twitch. His breathing sounded tired, as though trying to express something, but failing.

It wasn't that his gaze said nothing; rather, it was impossible to tell what it said, much like the sign language of someone deaf who lacks a spoken tongue yet desperately wants to express what they feel.

-Are you a painter too?

She asked him, granting him for the first time the dignity of not assuming he was crazy. At last, they were simply two human beings from their

respective universes, conversing.

-Yes, I am one too. I learned to decode colors a long, long time ago... Colors saved me. You know, child? Colors are deciphered on a canvas or a sheet of Fabriano paper, the thick kind, of course... The texture of Fabriano is just like the texture of my hands, or so I believe.

She looked down at the old man's wrinkled, trembling hands, which were also stained with paint and ink. The old man was gazing off into nowhere; she looked at him and finally understood. He was telling the truth; he wasn't just some decrepit old man. Her heart filled with tenderness, and she wanted to do something for him, not out of condescension, but because what she would offer him was genuine and valuable. The bargain was legitimate and, what's more, it was fair.

-What color is what I feel?

She said, mostly to herself, as she found her way back to the chaotic state that had led her to that bench, on that cold November afternoon among bare trees in that lonely park.

-Yellow and ochre grays... -he said with a lost gaze-. Before your question, they were all jumbled together: the yellows and the oranges, tangled with ochre grays.

She allowed herself to be carried away by the thousands of shades reflecting in his eyes. For a few moments, she stopped blinking.

-There are many shades of yellow, leaning toward mustard. Like the yellows and oranges that pour through the large window of my studio just before sunset. All my books, my stretchers, my brushes, my easel, everything is painted in the yellows of dusk. I always leave the window open, especially on these rainy days, to enjoy the scent of wet earth. After the rain clears just before sundown, the most extraordinary yellows imaginable appear. There are a hundred nearly golden tones, but in truth, they are dusk ochres, caramel yellows, saffron shades that shine brightly amid the emboldened siena shadows. It is incredible how all colors dress themselves in the honeyed yellows of a dying evening.

The old man simply listened, expressionless. Inside the vial, a small whirlpool of ochre and yellow shades was taking shape.

-It's funny -she continued-, but the yellows of the afternoon are so different from those of the morning. In the morning, for instance, you know that blue, on one of those cloudless days, exists more as an intense, almost stark white-yellow. In the afternoon, however, if the sky isn't too clouded over, the yellows begin to blend with all the other colors; they always mix best with violets. And the more ochre they become, the more the gray wraps around them, and the gray and the shadows slowly begin to devour all those bright colors that desperately stretch out their hands just to catch the final vestige of some dying ray of light that might let them stay yellow, or ochre, or rust-orange. Finally, all those ochres, pumpkin and caramel oranges, all those honey yellows, petrify beneath the dense grays and fade away...

She paused and concluded:

-That is the color of what I feel. Discarded yellows mixed with dying autumn ochres amid the deep grays of nothingness.

She looked at the old man; she felt a calm so intense that, in reality, that calm was heavy. For an instant, her expression became undefined. Was it release or longing? The point was that at that exact moment, she felt something tearing away from her heartbeats, provoking a profound, unnameable void.

She could only knit her brows and touch her chest. The whirlpool inside the vial had settled. Left behind was a mini-ocean of yellows and ochres with brief flashes of orange and red, all suspended in a thick, uneven paint tending toward gray.

-Thank you, child, I could see it.

The old man said with his eyes closed.

-Now, my part of the bargain -continuing-: you will never feel the same way again.

The promise had been fulfilled, and it was irrevocable. Why did she feel like she had lost something entirely her own? Hadn't she wanted to rid herself of those yellow oil-paint swells churning up her diaphragm? (Her hand -her own hand- remained pressed against her chest). The memories were still there; the past events that had triggered all those shades throughout the two years and three months her story lasted were still there... But the emotions interwoven with those memories were petrified, like statues trapped in the inertness of stone or, worse yet, the inertness of gray.

-You must fill that empty space left behind.

The old man said, showing a genuine interest in the young woman. With a slow, trembling movement, he reached for the small crystal vial, full of yellows and ochre grays, tucked it into one of the thousand pockets of his long coat, and stood up slowly.

He looked toward the street and set off on his way. He carried only an old leather folder tucked under his left arm. Within his first two steps, she faintly heard the soft clinking of multiple small vials deep inside the old man's coat.

She still didn't understand what had happened; she didn't feel anything in particular yet. She blinked slowly and breathed slowly too. Protruding from the old man's folder was a loose sheet of paper, just far enough to catch the wind. A strange and opportune breeze snatched it away from the other sketches, and the sheet fluttered right down to her feet.
Of course, all of this happened before the old man's third or fourth step. She picked up the sheet: it was thick Fabriano paper. She thought that perhaps touching the old man's hands would feel just like this.

What lay upon that single sheet of paper was a masterpiece. Touches of ink in violet, coral, and amaranth pink tones, with subtle flashes of salmon yellow and cherry splashes, captured in delicate strokes everything a smile can evoke. Suddenly, she found herself smiling.

She looked back out at the world surrounding her, and it looked different. Her gaze remained somewhat nostalgic, but an optimistic spark began to swirl within her brown retinas. She took a deep sigh; the emptiness was gone. Her vacant expression shifted into a rich, aquatic violet. Optimism enveloped her spirit.

-Hey! -she shouted to the old man-. You dropped this!

The old man was gone...