Front Matter - Part 02

He did things for me in an indirect way; he would hand me a ruler, even though I hadn’t asked for one, or he would sharpen my pencil, he would protect me when I was teased by my friends, or when we played volleyball in the yard, he would ask me if I’d thought about it before answering a question in class, he would also remind me to pay attention in class. I was happy with all that, it filled me with warmth; and again with a kind of peaceful silence. At the same time I let him know that I knew he cared about me and even more… I let him know that it wasn’t just an ordinary care, not the everyday kind of care.

Then something insignificant happened which somehow separated us. It was insignificant indeed but a big deal for me in those first daring flights.

During the break between the two hours of class time, one of the boys in my class put his hand inside the boy’s bag, pulled out a picture and raised it up high while running around between the desks. After seeing that, the boy ran after him and with his utmost effort tried to bend his arm and take the picture from him.

At first I didn’t pay any attention to it but I felt that the loud class laughter had something to do with me, that it was about him and me. Then I realized that there was no one else in the picture but me. I couldn’t believe it. Where had he gotten my picture?

I was embarrassed because of how my class reacted not only towards him but also towards me... How had he allowed that, and even if he had managed to get my picture somehow (of course he’d stolen it from one of my friends) he shouldn’t have taken it to class in his bag, much less let anyone see it.

I was furious. There was no point in telling my friends that I hadn’t given him that picture, that he hadn’t taken it from me, it had nothing to do with what they thought. I felt it wasn’t possible to change their impression. I felt like something perfectly pure, his and my secret, had been made public in a careless way, where its purity and tenderness couldn’t survive.

He was all confused and helpless. In fact, he was troubled because he’d done this to me for whom he would have done anything to please. But he’d ruined it with his carelessness, and perhaps also because of his friend’s mischievousness.

Days passed. Even though I felt that it wasn’t possible for something so insignificant to interrupt the beginning of a perfect friendship. But I was afraid it had. I was really dreading our breakup. Even still deep inside of me I felt it was necessary for us to find each other again. Then one day our eyes met again when I felt that he was looking for my gaze, to cry out to me, to express how difficult it was for him without even my silent presence, to beg me to forgive him.

Going to the cinema to watch a movie alone was a great pleasure for me. I felt comfortable in the dark where I was free to shed tears or laugh, to look at what was shown on the screen or to freely follow my thoughts.

I was in a good mood the next time I went to watch a movie alone. I wanted to be alone.

I was startled when I saw him with one of our classmates at the counter buying movie tickets so I decided to give him my money for him to buy the tickets, it was only logical. I didn’t hesitate to go with them and watch the movie together. This was a big event for me and for him. It seemed that one bold, decisive step on my part pulled us together again.

His clear blue eyes didn’t hide his boundless excitement and joy at that chance of us meeting. Even in silence we managed to cross the space that kept us at a great distance.

We sat in the big dark theater trembling with excitement. It was the first time we’d sat so close, next to each other.

We loved the film but feared even the most accidental touch in the dark. We didn’t speak. I felt our faces were red, burning in that world that we were powerless to master, where we had to learn the game.

I don’t remember the title of the movie, just the picture. This was the first step in our lives, in our youth that we took to allow our hands to touch in the semi-darkness. We were both trembling with tenderness, with restlessness while secretly holding hands.

No one was allowed to know about this... not even his friend who sat next to him. Everything had to remain a secret, and why? Neither he nor I knew, maybe that’s why, so as not to disturb that perfect miracle of ours.

We slowly walked home. At first we felt uncomfortable from the bright light that greeted us outside the cinema... Then we were afraid to look into each other’s eyes. Man is freer in darkness, is it because of the self-deception in which he hides?

The other boy, feeling like he was a third wheel, apologized and walked away with quick steps, leaving us alone.

I wanted to hold him, to grab him, but I didn’t. That other thing in me was stopping me.

We walked side by side through the alleys of the half-dark park, anxiously expecting something unusual to happen. The mournful willows with drooping sentimental branches suppressed our last resistance.

At one point I felt heat on my lips. It was his lips on my lips. It seemed like everything had turned red, the leaves, the trees, the sky and the night. Red like joy, like happiness...

I will never forget the unmatched tenderness of those inexperienced hands holding me in an embrace, the first and only, and the night that helped keep the inaccessibility of those moments in our eyes.

No, we didn’t have the courage to repeat that touch of lips, we just held each other’s trembling hands, gently crying from happiness, from beauty, not knowing why...

When I ran home I felt like a criminal who must not show himself in front of anyone.

I went into my room quickly, silently, like a breeze, without turning on the light... I danced in the dark like a fictional creature from that wonderful feeling that had taken me over which, even in my thoughts, I was afraid to call love. I lay motionless with my face turned to the ceiling and everywhere in the darkness floated the purest blue of his warm eyes and his mouth, glowing like the most beautiful poppies.

I would give anything to stay alone in that room, in that darkness. Not to go to dinner, not to have to turn away even for a moment from the beauty of that new feeling that ruled me. What’s more, I was convinced that I wouldn’t be able to hide what had happened to me from my mother and father, even with the most skillful acting. My mother’s keen eyes would pick up on the slightest flicker of my face.

For a long time no one called me. They didn’t know I was home of course, so I was grateful to be able to enjoy the things that I carried in my soul that night.

The next day I found out that I’d fallen asleep and that my mother didn’t want to wake me up. Now, however, it was easier for me to keep my composure and find an explanation for my absence. I quickly ate, grabbed my school bag and ran out into the street.

The most important thing for us now was to find enough strength to cross the threshold of our classroom. We solved that problem by avoiding looking at each other. This was the first time since I’d begun to attend school that I was unable to follow a single word the teacher said after teaching for several hours. I felt my soul was already full of everything I needed and everything else was superfluous, something that would somehow reduce my joy.

Fortunately, that didn’t last too long because we were almost at the end of the school year. Every class, however, was important and decisive for my final success.

After that everything that happened between us was wonderful. We did everything together; studying, walking and enjoying life. We even agreed to wear similar coloured clothing.

It seemed to me that everyone was happy for us when they saw us together, probably because of my own sense of happiness related to our love. This went on for months and months.

I believed in the goodness of love the way it was portrayed in the movies and books I’d read… In that ecstasy I expected miracles and great feats to take place. It seemed to me that in the future I too would be creating grandiose works…

Eventually the end of the school year arrived.

We struggled for a long time between the desire to stay together through the summer, not to be separated, and the feeling that we needed to go to summer camp after school ended.

He stood pale-faced next to the train that was supposed to take the girls of my class to summer camp. This would be the first time, even for a short time, that he would be without me since our relationship began. At that moment something was squeezing my soul, my heart. However, I was aware that it was my duty to do this. I had to make the sacrifice, I couldn’t separate myself from what the majority of our class wanted.

I wasn’t going to allow myself to cry, no, because of my mother who was standing by him, maybe not even thinking that he was there for me, just because of me, her “little” daughter.

We weren’t allowed to be together because my brigade was an all women’s brigade. He and his brigade would go to another camp in two days. That’s how things were organized.

The train moved slowly, almost with uncertainty. I smiled at my mother and immediately at him, at his... eyes, lips, unique hands...

That last moment, as I boarded the train car, he looked at me like he was going to lose me forever.

The first days at camp passed very slowly. There was no mail for me for several days...

I didn’t reveal the pain I was feeling to anyone. I pretended it didn’t exist. I don’t know why, whether it was egoism, a desire to preserve everything that was beautiful or what. I quickly became distrustful of my friends. But they knew me very well and knew what made me keep quiet.

I ran from the camp to the shed to get my towel and go wash up. I was hungry and wanted to get to the dining room as soon as possible. At the same time my friends surrounded me and, in one voice, informed me that a letter had arrived for me. A blue envelope had been placed under my pillow. They’d put it there. I stood there motionless afraid to open it and was unwilling to do it in front of them. I wanted to hide somewhere all alone with his letter.

My eyes quickly went over the lines, swallowing down every word to the smallest comma. It seemed to me that no other lover had ever written such beautiful words to his beloved. I kissed, hugged and caressed the letter and jumped for joy.

It was clear to everyone, the trees, the leaves and the birds... I was happy and in love. I almost cried out loud... I love you.

Then I wrote him a letter and again impatiently waited with much anticipation. And every day stretched into infinity – until his new letter arrived.

The camp was boiling like a hive. New acquaintances were made and lives were connected. It was all passing by me so fast. The only way to pass the day quickly was to become involved in my work, of which I wasn’t afraid. Perform a kind of mechanical movement and at the same time think about what made me happy, what was close to me and of when my new life had begun, when I’d met and gotten to know my first love.

My thoughts were closed off to everything outside of that. I was re-experiencing everything that was going on between the two of us, and I was happy. That was all.

I didn’t know what to do with my joy after reading the letter that separated us for only a few days before our reunion. He had written the exact day, hour and place where we were going to see each other again. It was a beautiful place in the great City Park, which we had found before. That place was ours alone, and whenever we found another young couple in that bush-enclosed place, we regarded them as uninvited guests. However, we had to be patient until they left willingly before we would go to our beloved corner.

It was a real joy for me to see one of his best friends, who had just come from my friend’s camp. I loved to listen to him telling me stories in which my friend was involved, telling me details about the conditions at that other campsite, how he, my friend always talked about me until late at night, dreaming about us being together and about our reunion...

This friend of his, an art student, went to the camp to draw sketches of objects present at the campsite where my friend was.

I believed that I had already bored him with questions, although he convinced me otherwise, as if he himself wanted to show me, and again confirmed the details to me, and I listened, silent, happy, transported to his camp, to the shed where he would sleep that night.

It was evening. We sat by the campfire, which lit up our faces with a blush and gave the whole region a kind of fantastic appearance, power, defiance, brilliance. Behind it was impenetrable darkness. There was a merry dance and then a dance.

Even the stars had given way before that gleam of the beautified youth and, with a drowsy twinkling, had retreated into their dreams.

I was sitting on a stone, hunched over and overcome with warm sadness. It seemed that only the fire with its flash could penetrate the dreams hidden in my eyes, and the happiness for what would be tomorrow during the reunion.

It seemed that his friend, that little artist, fantasist, had been calling me for a long time without getting an answer, so he was forced to pull me by my hand.

I laughed. He asked me to dance. I don’t know why but even that slightest expression of fun without him, my boy, seemed beyond my wishes and feelings. I didn’t get up to dance. Everything that wasn’t him, my love, was too much for me... in some sense it didn’t exist.

* * *

Even now I don’t know how long I managed to say hello to my mother and father, but I know that an hour earlier I was at the meeting place.

I didn’t wait long. He came towards me through a long alley lined with dead yellow leaves. I was trembling. I ran with the lightness and speed of a doe and crawled into the bushes, not to deceive the hunter, but to attract him to me.

As far as I could see moving at that speed, he was wearing the soft burgundy blouse that I loved so much. His blond strands of curly hair fell over his eyebrows accentuating the blue of his eyes, even more pronounced against that chocolate colour of his tanned face.

My heart was beating so hard that it seemed like the loud beats would reveal my position and any moment now I expected him to grab me, hug me and carry me in his arms.

Because of my excitement I didn’t even have the courage to raise my head and look at him.

Suddenly, more subconsciously, I felt that he had passed by the bush where I was hiding with a calm, measured, even slow step which was getting further and further away.

At first I thought he was only pretending not to see me, and I expected that any second now he would laugh out loud, roaring with that unconquerable laugh, the kind only he could laugh, and run back to spread the bushes and discover me.

When I got to my feet his silhouette was barely visible at the end of the alley. I couldn’t believe what had happened. He probably didn’t notice me, but why was he going there when our meeting place was actually here.

I ran and soon caught up with him. When he turned, I saw that it wasn’t my beloved. It really wasn’t him and I couldn’t understand how such a close resemblance was possible.

It all seemed so unreal that, to this day, I sometimes think it was just a hallucination.

After some time, with a sad face and barely audible steps, I walked on the dead, yellow leaves agitated because of what had just happened. I had a bad feeling that something had gone wrong. I didn’t even know how much time had passed or how long I’d stayed there… in our place... He still didn’t show up, even later in the evening when I was returning home, alone, without hope, like those fallen yellow leaves.

I lay on my bed in my room in the dark with bitter tears of despair in my eyes feeling sad. What could have happened...? Was there something that had prevented him from coming to see me...?

Then I suddenly jumped up filled with energy and hope. I had a thought, it was a positive thought – perhaps his brigade hadn’t arrived yet. His friend, the “artist”, would know that.

I was already on the street. I rushed down the road hoping in my heart filled with fear that his brigade hadn’t arrived yet. That’s what must have happened?! The first thing that petrified me after I’d found his friend was something I couldn’t understand at the time, he avoided looking at my face.

I made him swear to tell me what had happened, thinking the worst, even an accident.

He was silent for a long time. I became aware that I was pulling him by the hand. I was rough, even violent with him. I had a single desire; for him to tell me something immediately, anything… to just speak to me.

The first thing he said was that my boy had come back with his brigade and that nothing had happened to him. This blocked my brain. From what the “artist” said I interpreted it to mean that my friend was angry with me about something, that he had probably heard from someone, something to do with infidelity, and that he couldn’t get over it. In that confusion, if I understood correctly, it was about my loyalty to him.

I couldn’t believe it. Anything but that...! How dare they tell him that?! I wouldn’t allow it! The flow of tears prevented me from walking. I dragged myself like a wounded animal, like someone had taken my heart out mercilessly and I was living my last moments. There was no longer a sign of the restless doe that was hiding in the bushes moments earlier.

The “artist” started to worry about me and ran after me. I ran away from him in all directions. I couldn’t, in all my being, accept that terrible and unjust accusation. Everything was turning inside of me. The arrow that shot me was too saturated with poison.

I kept repeating to myself, a hundred times over, “how is it possible for him to think such a thing, to believe such a thing…?” At the

same time I kept shouting at everyone “this is impossible...!” Not him... I will open my chest and show them all – I love him; I love him more than anything, more than myself, more than life! No, don’t take him from me, and in such a low and sneaky way... Who was it that defiled me, defiled my infinitely pure, perfectly crystalline feelings for him? I beg you, I humble myself before you, be generous, spare me... just leave him to me, leave that which so recently, not so long ago, was born in me, something irreplaceable... Give me back my love. Don’t you realize that you are raising a hand against me, against my very young life? Don’t destroy me...

His “artist” friend kept pulling me, shouting, begging me to go with him, “we will go and see him, I will get him for you” he kept saying. “We will talk... Let’s talk…” Those words kept piercing my brain.

“The conversation isn’t over... There is still plenty to talk,” he added. “But he condemned me... he only heard one side and condemned me. In his eyes, I wasn’t even worthy of a conversation, an explanation. Why should I go to him then? He closed his heart to me...” I replied.

Still, I went with the “artist” being pulled subconsciously by that little thread of light, that little hope. I became completely hopeless; I had lost even the smallest possibility of resistance because of this stupidity of this absurdly untrue accusation, and of course because of that, a great absurdity, I had to prove, to refute that untruth. Most of all, the bitter realization that he, my dear, believed a lie… A terrible lie!

“Where was I, my character, your feeling for me to prevent you from accepting as truth that blind lie?” I felt like saying to him. It was an undeniable fact that no matter what I felt and thought all of this was the way it was. I felt that it was useless me going to see him... something in my subconscious told me not to do it, not to go to him, it kept me back... But still I went...

“What should I say to you if you come out? How do I dissuade you... me, so powerless, with my small words. Maybe you will read the truth in my eyes... you used to always look for it in them…” I thought I would say.

In the few moments, until the “artist” went inside the house where my boyfriend lived, to ask him to come out, I didn’t feel my existence. It felt like every part of my body was going to explode.

I literally froze when I saw the “artist” coming out alone. I get it... he doesn’t want to come out. I wasn’t sure if I’d heard the last part of what the “artist” said, but I ran so hard down the street that it was impossible for him to catch up to me.

Why do I still exist... why don’t I disappear... Life continues to lose meaning for me... I dreamed... of being together... for my whole life... I don’t want to live my life without him...

Where do I go? Home? Like this? I couldn’t, I shouldn’t... however home was the only place where I was protected from all the looks and noises... It seemed like this was the end... I felt cheated, robbed... they’d taken the most sacred thing from my life. “Did you believe them when they slandered me, darling? Were you fooled so easily? You don’t know, and maybe you will never know, how bitterly you have been lied to...” I felt like saying to his face.

“Did you fight, my love? Did you try to preserve anything of what you and I experienced, that carried us on wings...?”

“Did you yell at them, tell them that it was impossible, that you, you knew me very well... and I would do no such thing… You remember how you met me in the beautiful silence, trembling while holding hands, being in the warmest and most innocent embrace, in shy love... No, my dear, you allowed them to deceive you... you had no strong arguments... You allowed them to lie to you… You allowed them to erase our beautiful love... They trampled on our love and defiled it... before your eyes, and you allowed them to do that. Why weren’t you strong enough to protect it…?” I needed to say to him.

I went in the house unnoticed. I went straight into my room. The darkness helped me hide my face… this time too, but not to run away from the terrible truth.

My mother came to see me much later, surprised why I had gone to bed so early.

“Mother, I wanted to jump up and hug you, tell you everything, prove to you that I am pure, that I haven’t sinned, not even with a small part of my thoughts, let alone physically. Shall I betray him…? That term was familiar to me but only from the shallow stories my friends had told me, which I didn’t like much. What is it... what does that word mean when you are in love... how it is possible... when he, only he and no one else, entered my soul and became my life. Right, mother, you believed me that only he lives in my heart... and no one else.

I didn’t say anything to you, mother. I thought, somewhat subconsciously, that it had been a long time since you could have experienced things like this, or something similar, and that you had moved away from all this a long time ago. I know you would understand, or maybe you would regret it if I told you that your little daughter was so unhappy... I wanted to save you from that trouble.

Mother... would it be so terrible if I died... No mother, I won’t kill myself, but if it was by accident... in an accident...” I thought to myself.

The dark hid my sobs and my pillow, which I kept putting over my mouth, stifled my gasps and yelps... I didn’t understand why this was happening to me...? What had happened in these last few days since his last letter?

That question rang in the air, everywhere in the darkness around me, transforming into various forms of apparitions, haunting me, driving me into frenzy.

“Why am I doomed, darling...?” I whispered endlessly, helplessly in the dark, running away, trying to get rid of the most beautiful memories of him, almost all of which suddenly came to me, as if to defy me because they became only memories, and not part of something that was built, that we lived.

I was going mad with the turmoil that was boiling in my head. I thought of getting up, going out into the street, wandering endlessly without stopping, walking like a crazy person. No, I couldn’t go anywhere; I couldn’t possibly escape from that closed circle of my terrible despair.

I felt stressed again, I was tormented by the fact… that he hadn’t even bothered to ask me if what he’d been told was true… that he hadn’t come out and talked to me when I went to see him… to tell me what his problem was... He just simply dismissed me like I was a disgraced person. He’d done that to me, the only love of my life. He, whose being I carried both by day and in my sleep, every smallest part of him, everything related to him...

I felt like shouting out loud, furiously rebelling because I knew with my whole being that I didn’t deserve this which, even unconsciously, he’d inflicted on me.

However, not once did I find harsh words in my heart to condemn him, believing that he was a slave to a delusion, which he would quickly find out for himself and ask for my forgiveness. There was a small possibility of me surviving... without having to defend myself. I was prepared to spare him the hardship that I’d endured had he come to his senses...

That would be my sacrifice for my great love.

Somewhere deep in my heart, I always hoped that it wouldn’t stay like that, and that things would change. The truth, the only truth I carried in my soul must conquer all lies.

Young people and all their naivety helped me believe that.

* * *

On the first day of school suddenly everyone, I don’t even know how, understood, knew there was a problem between us... Maybe because they missed our ringing laughter in class and all the riots of the eighth graders... maybe because of his important, dignified look, which escaped me, which seemed to contain an understatement.

The entire time I felt the urge to leave the class, to run away. How would I live in this same environment where the most beautiful thing associated with my youth began, at least the first step of it. Even the desks, windows, blackboard… the entire classroom was part of something warm and human that bonded us… It was an integral part of our love.

I was afraid that he might bring the person who’d slandered me to testify against me in class. …The person who’d slandered my purity, the impeccability of my feelings for him, the person who’d told that shameful lie. That would be too cruel. After that everyone would know the so-called “truth” of why we were separated and it would be a lie. How could I defend myself against that? By crying? Where could I hide after such an accusation which didn’t have a single iota of truth in it...? Where could I hide except in my own grief? I told only two of my best friends about my grief, about my revolt and undiminished love for him.

And why that again... Because it was just mine and his alone, no one had the right to judge it. I was very bitter that he’d allowed others to have fun with our sad experience.

I didn’t have the courage to look my teacher straight in the eye. It was like I was starting to look guilty of something... or maybe I was simply afraid of sharing the great disappointment in my heart.

Then my story soon became an ordinary everyday story; for everyone except me.

I went everywhere he went for months, or where I could sense he was going, perhaps just to grieve in his presence. I followed him into the theater where we practiced student drama performances, in the literary society meetings, in the reading rooms…. In all the places where he was, showing his defiance and where our sad love continued to die.

Suffering silently, I couldn’t find a single negative word for him. I couldn’t find fault for the terrible way he made me feel, and for not

understanding the serious consequence of my devastation. I felt my whole being change in a negative way.

My friends, and even some of my teachers, treated me with care, like a person who was recovering from a serious illness but wasn’t yet sufficiently healthy. That kind of treatment hurt me even more.

Even my mother and father’s attitude towards me had changed. Poor them... I had no idea how difficult it was for them to experience all the changes they read on my face and in my behaviour. The reasons for this new state of mine didn’t remain a secret for them. However, they avoided talking about it; as usual one didn’t talk to a sick person about their illness, especially if it was something serious.

I was very sensitive so paying too much attention to me annoyed me... I felt like I was making myself miserable. Because of that, I consciously and persistently began to hide everything that was bothering me deep in my soul. I even gradually returned to the normal flow of school life.

I was very careful not to look at him even when we were in class. I falsely pretended to be defiant. Then I would look for him again. I even looked for him from afar.

I was sitting with my best friend in the gymnasium one day. It was during a dance but I didn’t want to dance because I had always danced with him, even though another girl was in his arms... and I followed his every move with my infinitely sad eyes and with them I caressed his hands, so familiar to me...

The greatest mastery was not to betray myself during those moments... not to allow my tears to cross the permissible limit of my eyelids and spill over onto my face, even when my eyes were illuminated by the blueness of my loved one’s eyes…and now in some way they weren’t my eyes, not even when I sensed the silent reproach of my beloved’s lips.

Suddenly the lights went out in the gym. I strained my eyes in the dark and continued to follow that tenderness, that pain and

bitterness. He quietly turned around, holding the body of my classmate in his arms.

At one point I felt my friend’s long fingers, wipe away the tears on my face, which were probably glistening in the dark.

I walked everywhere in the park where we’d made our best memories... “Our bench” sat there empty and in silence seemingly asking me why I was there alone... and where he was... This was “our place”, surrounded by lush bushes… it has been empty for a long time... It seemed like the bench, the herbs and the petals in that place condemned me... they looked for faults in me... so sometimes I would cry bitterly, at least letting them know how unfair and painful things were for me... Well, he was mine... he gave me life... people, why did you have to take him from me…?

I didn’t return my love to him... Perhaps our love was nipped in the bud too early, interrupted in its first opening of those beautiful but tender petals.

I was too young, filled with innocent feelings, and without the experience of life and was unable to fight for my love.

Coming home one day I found a letter on the table in my room. I was really surprised when I saw the name on the envelope. It was from the “artist”. At first I was trembling all over, I was very excited, hoping that maybe it was some kind of explanation for everything that had happened, or maybe, although I couldn’t believe it, even a plea for forgiveness from my boyfriend who didn’t have the courage to do it personally, so he tried to do it through his friend.

Unfortunately I lied to myself bitterly. The content of that letter completely threw me off… I was unable to accept it as the truth. Well, it was true alright! He, the “artist”, my boyfriend’s best friend, in a desperate way said to me that he was hopelessly in love with me, which he had been hiding for a long time and now it seemed he’d found the courage to tell me, to write me about it; not having the courage to do it in person, he did it with this letter...

No mention of my love for my boyfriend anywhere.

It was too much... it made me sick, somehow it seemed like a bitter irony, a mockery of my feelings that he, maybe only he, knew very well how it felt.

I felt completely disgusted by him. I despised him...

Wasn’t he, exactly he, an eyewitness, a witness to that immense love of mine for his friend, a witness to that boundless despair and suffering? How could he do that to his best friend! He shouldn’t, he shouldn’t have, it was wrong!

I tried to understand him and to find reasons for his actions. It was true that this could happen to anyone. Someone could fall in love with someone else but according to all human rules, like in our case for example, he should have remained mute, profoundly silent...

I didn’t tell anyone about this, it seemed so drastic to me, and hid the other two letters that followed. And maybe I would never tell anyone, ever.

A few years later an intimate friend of my boyfriend’s, from our school, dug into our past wanting to find out what had really happened to that perfect flight of ours which suddenly, fatally and sadly crashed... Even today I still don’t know what motivated him to do that; to return to our mutual life and examine what had happened. Was it just curiosity or did he want find out what exactly went wrong with either me or my boyfriend.

If I understood him correctly, the secret, the key to the whole case was hidden in a well-composed letter from the same “artist”, which he’d sent to my boyfriend in the last two days from our campsite... It was maybe a naive letter but in it he accused me of things I hadn’t done, placing doubt on my chastity and my love for him.

I guess the unfortunate “artist,” who had fallen in love with me, wanted to destroy me, ruin me, so he wrote that fateful letter falsely and hypocritically telling my boyfriend to leave me because my behaviour in the camp was too free and prone to cheating…! He even accused me of cheating! He wrote the letter with the sole

purpose of keeping me “free”, hoping that maybe I’d fall in love with him and love him just as much!

Had he no shame? Was he not ashamed and horrified at what he’d done to me when he took me to see my boyfriend. Couldn’t he see how helpless I was? The boundless pain and despair I was feeling trying to prove my innocence? Oh, how he lied and bitterly deceived me...? Unaware I prayed to him for help while he was digging my grave trying to bury me.

Even then he didn’t have the decency to go any further... to stop and, if it was still possible, fix things... This was supposed to be for love? What kind of freakish, deformed and distorted feelings did he have for me? What he did was hideous and raised him to the extreme limits of egoism...

This is why my dear boy rejected me; trampling the most beautiful bloom of my feelings when the whirlwind of happiness was bestowed upon me and my youth...

Why did you blindly believe him my dear, without wavering even for a moment? Was I that far away from you that you couldn’t even check with me? Again I found and still find justification in your youth, inexperience, in the first steps of a more serious life. Of course, the devotion of your friend and the trust in that friendship didn’t allow you to think more deeply about many things at that moment. You simply accepted what you were told as the undeniable truth.

Perhaps even without the letter, something would have happened to us later in life which would have destroyed that beautiful glow of our most beautiful first feelings, as I later found out. The purest and true kind of happiness somehow seems to be condemned in advance and only lasts a short while. However, I couldn’t reconcile what had happened to us in such a callous way. The most terrible thing for me, as unimportant and naive as it might be, was that it undermined the entire course of my life, and perhaps his too.

Learning the truth of what had happened from his fellow student, which brought me back several years, I blamed myself for not

having overcome my feelings and gone to him, begging him very much to explain to me what had come between us, after loving each other so immensely. Maybe I would have freed him from suspicion; maybe I would have told him the truth with my eyes, with everything I had, if he didn’t believe my words...

It was too late for all that now. I no longer hated the girl that took my place in his heart. But I loved him and still love everything that was beautiful for him, was his happiness from which I was thrown out mercilessly because of the still completely unformed egoism of the other boy, the “artist”, whose victim I had become… And not just me but also the boy I loved and loved me, as well as our love.

We were too young to resist and protect our love…

I could never tell my parents, who cared about me so much, much less confide in them about what I had experienced. Somehow I managed it all on my own and kept it where no one could enter or help. In any case, they were trying to indirectly let me know that these are ordinary things in life, which shouldn’t be taken too seriously. In reality, however, they had no idea but rather assumed, what was happening deep down in my soul.

I was grateful to my parents for being concerned, but somewhere deep in my heart I knew that these things that had happenеd to me were no ordinary things.

Eventually I stopped looking for him and following him everywhere in the city because I realized that she, his new girl, had completely replaced me in his heart. Looking for him, I always found them together, often so cheerful. So it became clear to me that my presence had no place with them.

There was a joyless, almost dull period in my life. The only world that filled the void in my soul was the world of novels, theater and movies. I wandered everywhere where I could experience something beautiful and then kept to myself for long periods of time walking the streets, deep in my own thoughts.

The first thing that came to my mind was to enroll in college and I did, but I was completely indifferent to the distant prospects in my life.

I attended classes at the university but rarely made new acquaintances. I was much too restrained.

One day while aimlessly walking the streets I met a group of friends from my school. We stopped and talked about our studies. Among the people in the group were also Dutse, Bedo and Miki who chummed together, they were close... They went by their nicknames, which someone invented for them or they invented themselves. At that moment a new life began and I was in it... the joy over the five and the crying over the two. All that was a small, tiny part compared to what was to come... fights and harmony, friendship and still young naive hostility. That was my first collision with what life is and beyond that, what class is... I loved that meeting so much. All of them, these boys of ours, were something that tied me to the most beautiful part of my life.

Probably losing patience with our long conversation, a boy whom I’d just seen, approached us and extended his hand to me to introduce himself. One of the others explained to me that he was also in their company and that he had waited on the side for them to finish talking. We met. He was a few years older than me and had an insistent, even slightly impudent look in his black eyes.

Not wanting me to part so quickly, one of my friends held me back leaving me with a happy feeling that somehow I was now part of a company again.

Mechanically answering my new acquaintance’s questions, I spontaneously slipped into a conversation with him. I became interested in learning more from him about how he dealt with the loneliness and boredom of every day life. This is what I was interested in.

He was much older than me and it wasn’t difficult for him to impress me, even to deceive me with some of his knowledge.

He was studying and nearing the end of his studies. Less than a year from now he would be a doctor. And that certainly impressed me. Not the profession itself but the fact that it was, so to speak, before becoming a graduate specialist.

I started to get used to going out for long monotonous walks with him. We argued about anything and everything, sometimes for a long time, as if wanting to verify our own thoughts in a mutual exchange.

I noticed that he insisted too much on accuracy, only on his knowledge, with a certain initially discreet arrogance. That didn’t sit well with me but I thought it might have to do with his self-confidence and even his character.

From an early age I had learned to have my own opinion on almost everything and express it freely.

I don’t know why, but even during my first conversations with that man, I didn’t dare insist that my views were correct and allowed him to think that he was right. Maybe I needed that, for the sake of creating some kind of authority, his over me. I knew that the moment I underestimated him, his presence would become overwhelming.

Our walks became more frequent. Either he would call me whistling from the street, or he would wait for me in some designated place. He started suggesting how I should dress and what hairstyle to wear. I wasn’t aware of why I did all that for him, maybe because of the need to be with someone, a stronger person, a man of course.

I have long since forgotten where and how he hugged and kissed me for the first time. I only remember that I didn’t resist, I did not resist. Perhaps we even walked the same sad paths where my first love had carried me on his beautiful wings.

This was a pale shadow of the past, a kind of imitation.

Why wasn’t I resisting, but surrendering to these new touches?

I was in ruins, and when in ruins it is neither difficult to enter nor to leave because there is no door and no windows...

My past love, my only great love, with an even greater illusion of a little girl – the love of a lifetime, was no longer there. So whatever came next... let it come...!

Habits were gradually acquired. First of his growing arrogance and then his nervousness, which at first I ignored by studying harder.

I used to go with him to the cinema, to the theater, with his friends and with my friends.

I was invited to his home to visit his parents. He should come to mine.

I began to accept his habit of rudeness, which kept surfacing and resurfacing more and more.

All that was somehow becoming my way of life, from which it would be difficult to escape...

I was closed in a circle, which he had been building around me for months in order to achieve the culmination of his influence over me by completely isolating me from any outside influences. I was never, not even today, aware of how I gradually lost all will to resist and completely fell under his obsession.

Soon I resembled a minor under his tutelage. I wasn’t even allowed to greet old acquaintances, which in some sense meant “staying within the bounds of morality” for him. He even reminded me with irony that I hadn’t spoken to “my own parents” knowing very well that I hadn’t only because he wouldn’t allow it. In the same way he forbade me to have contact with my acquaintances, even school friends, because he believed they were possibly my ex-lovers, which was too paradoxical for me to feel the need to respond.

A practicing behaviour like this had long since acquired citizenship in our relationship. Every time we met and after we scheduled our next meeting, which was unusually the next day, we parted politely,