On the morning of 10 May 1924, Oskar Serti was sketching the clothes which he had put out of his window to dry, when a sudden gust of wind shook the shirt which was before him. For a fraction of a second, he saw the eyes of a young woman in the window of the facing apartment staring in his direction. When he noticed that his sketch-book, placed on his knees, was the only thing visible from the outside, Oskar Serti understood that his neighbour was taking advantage of the fact that his sight was masked by the laundry in order to examine his drawings without his being able to sense her presence.
Oskar Serti was deeply moved to finally see another person leaning with such passion and discretion towards his work. Thus, from the next week on, he again hid his face behind the laundry and feverishly exhibed his sketches : after a quarter of an hour, a gust of wind revealed for a brief moment the engaged look of his neighbour between two shirts.
But soon, the desire to show his sketch-books became so strong that he no longer had the patience to wait for the next week’s wash and decided to sacrifice his clothes by leaving them continuously hanging on the line.
As the years went by, his clothes became so heavy and rigid that the wind wasn’t able to make them waver. Little by little, Oskar Serti thus lost the possibility of checking whether or not his neighbour was still at her window; but his need to show his drawings had become so powerful that he no longer even cared to know if he was being watched.