The window I never saw anyone in

Written in Batumi, May 2022. Typed up today.

The promenade went on for longer than I expected. The wind off the water was the only thing that made the heat bearable.

Batumi in May was almost empty. I had come from Tbilisi, where the radiator neighbours had kept me up most nights, and I wanted quiet.

The hotels along the front were shut. Not closed for the season — shuttered, with plywood over the ground-floor windows and padlocks on the gates. I counted eleven in a row without one light on.

The sea was close behind them. At night I could hear it hitting the rocks below the wall, and in the morning the concrete smelled of salt. A dog slept under a bench the whole time I was there.

I walked the promenade after dark each evening, once the air had cooled. One night I noticed a window on maybe the eighth or ninth floor, one building to the left of where I usually turned back. One square of yellow light among all those dark ones.

The next evening it was there again. Same window, same floor. I walked past that building for two weeks. The light was on each time. I never saw a shape behind the glass, or a curtain move, or a hand reach for anything.

Just the light, on after dark and off by morning. Someone was living up there in a shut hotel. Or someone had left a lamp on a timer. I never worked out which.

An old man sat on the wall outside the building next door, drinking coffee from a glass. He never looked up when I passed. A woman sweeping the steps nearby got a nod from him once. I think he lived in the lobby, though the lobby had no door.

On my last evening the light was on earlier than usual. I stood below the window for a while. Nothing moved.

That’s all I wrote down.