The voyeur needed something to help him see into the distance. Her building stood like a sore thumb, a big purple tower of doom by the seaside, a tower of glass that looked fragile and stood alone, waiting for company. He had been casually using a pair of binoculars his wife had given him for birdwatching, and he had gotten rather good at lipreading, watching the occupants of these stories of apartments reaching to the sky. But now he wanted something stronger to see more clearly, a telescope to be delivered quietly so he could see more of her.
The telescope, with its zoom lens and camera, arrived. Now properly armed, he waited for her to return home. The woman in the apartment across the park in the glass tower. Late into the night he waited, wondering where she was. Darkness. Then the light popped on. Blue jeans and a white silken blouse, almost like her uniform, he mused. His eyes were glued to his new toy. Adjusting, adjusting. Could he get infrared? He saw her lips moving, talking to yourself again, missus, he thought, and he watched and he worked on his lipreading and imagined the sounds across the way. She did nothing special, ate and watched her television set like any ordinary city dweller. The apparent emptiness and monotony of her life comforted him. She had a small cat that, of course, sat in her lap as she watched the flickering screen. He had lost track of how long he had done this and why and why he started. There was a bald fat man who lived with his wife a couple of floors up in the tower, whom he became certain was part of organized crime. Another couple, who lived with their children, loved to fuck with the curtains open. Men choking it in the dark. So many others to choose from, but always he returned to her and did not bother to look at any others anymore. Her routine was a part of his own, and it felt like she knew he was watching. Each evening, home from work, feed the cat, delivery, something bland, classic film, and her repertoire was inexhaustible: Bresson, Visconti, all the films of that great cinematographer Pasquale. Cinema of a time long forgotten.
Then one day, something different. He thought she was retiring to bed, but instead she stood in front of her cream-white wall and crudely wrote “TENIET” in large letters, then stared at it for what seemed like hours, motionless. He watched. He could not remember when he fell asleep. When he awoke, she was gone. And this wasn’t the first strange thing. When had all this started? It broke the routine and was very disturbing for him. Why had all this strange behavior begun, he wondered?
His therapist’s office was in the center of the city in a partly maintained building, on a floor of little dusty suites. He felt that for what he paid, his therapist should be able to afford better accommodations.
The voyeur was in his usual chair facing the Jungian, a box of facial tissues within reach on a nearby table. They sat silently together, the Jungian an older, grey-bearded, white-haired, very thin man. A few more moments of silence and watching.
“What shall we talk about today?” the Jungian said.
“I feel fine. Not much on my mind, really,” the voyeur replied.
“Are you still having trouble stopping yourself from watching through your windows, you know the woman in the tower across the park?”
“No. It’s passed. I guess I’ve moved on. I can’t remember the last time I did that.”
“And the drinking, the smoking… the cocaine?”
“All under control now, I think.”
A few more moments of silence.
“What do you know about the word ‘teniet’?” the voyeur asked.
“Let’s see. Doesn’t immediately ring a bell. It could be Spanish, maybe Greek.” He repeated the word to himself: “Teniet. Could be Italian, maybe Latin… How is this coming up for you?”
“A dream. Don’t even ask, a dream I can’t remember except for that.”
“How is your wife? You haven’t mentioned her in some time.”
“She is the same, not getting any better. I asked her to see someone. She said, ‘Look how great therapy has gone for you,’ and I can’t really argue with that.”
“But you just said all the things you came into therapy for are under control.”
More silence.
The Jungian continued, flipping through his ever-present notebook, “Your wife—the way you described her: long brown hair, voluptuous but tall—that’s how you described this woman across the park.”
“You’re reaching now,” the voyeur replied sternly, fighting off an explosion. “Please stay in your lane and help me.” The therapist gave him a piercing look and sat silently. “Is it even possible to like your wife? I’ve heard it’s possible, but I don’t know.”
“That’s enough for today,” the therapist replied with a deep sigh.
Back at his telescope that day, the man noted that she appeared not to have left home. He had gone into the lobby of her apartment building on his way back from his therapist’s office. He learned that her name was Sofia. It was marked on her mailbox. He had rung a few bells randomly to get in.
Later that night, he watched her slowly strangle, then mutilate a man, a man he was sure was her lover. She licked his blood and painted her face with his blood. He wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was real or why no one else was seeing this. Everyone is always watching. He thought of calling the police. Then he saw her open the glass door and go out on the balcony to sit on the ledge, her feet dangling over. Without thinking, he leapt from behind his telescope and ran furiously through the small park, rang the random bells he had rung earlier and was at her door. He tried the knob and the door was open. He burst in to find her standing there near the entrance wearing only her bathrobe, a red left handprint on her face, the walls covered in indecipherable writings, and a headless corpse of a man over in one corner still leaking, the cat tasting. They stared at each other, the voyeur frozen. Then she said, “I know you.”
“Nōnne dominum tuum agnōscis?” she asked quietly.
“Domine,” the watcher replied, kneeling.
Some time later, he wrote a letter to his analyst with the words, “I’m cured.”