An inch of sky

There are men who spend what feels like forever inside one inch of sky.

I met one of them. He was restoring the ceiling of an old church in a nearby town. The church was no longer used for worship, and they were turning it into a music hall.

He worked lying on a scaffold, with his face only forty centimetres from the plaster. A very fine brush. A magnifying glass. A lamp that was too hot.

He knew that blue better than anyone else.

He knew it came from a stone brought from Afghanistan, ground into powder and washed seven times. He knew where, centuries before, the painter had pressed harder with his brush. He could even see the exact point where the painter had stopped, where the colour had dried and left a thin layer.

He knew that small corner of sky deeply.

Six months like this. Every morning he climbed up. Every evening he came down with dirty hands and an aching back. And the next day, he started again. His whole day was inside that small space.

Then they took down the scaffold.

It took three days. Pipes, wooden boards, dust slowly moving through the light. He stayed at the back of the church, leaning against a column, waiting.

He looked up.

There was a woman with black hair, olive skin and gold earrings. A gypsy. A point of light cutting through the endless blue and bringing warmth to it. Like the trail of a comet across a sky deliberately left empty, without stars. A sky where everyone could imagine their own star.

And when the light moved, the fresco seemed to change. But it was always beautiful.

His blue was somewhere inside it.

The restorer stayed in the church until evening. He walked around, moved a few steps away, then came back. He looked for his piece.

It was there.

But he could not find it.