Autumn. She
is cold autumn. With wind and dark sky. There's nothing warm about her. Cold,
strong, with no chance of getting the
sun through those grey clouds. She doesn't smile or laugh, always focusing on
something people don't really see or think.
On the
bench she moves her scarf covering her head and shoulders. Medals on the front
of her jacket. She was at the war. It is very strange, because no one think about
her being young or beautiful. “ She was young and very beautiful”- an old man
says slowly drinking his tea. Then he continues. “I was working at the place,
in the city, where people can rent horses for personal rides and deliveries. All
day feeding and cleaning horses. One day I went on the market to buy something
for our shop. And there was her, in a small shop selling berries. It was a side
where people from the local villages selling their vegetables and fruits. She
looked like a young woman from the city, not from village. Light skin,
fashionable hair and clothes. I was stunned, stood over there and only was
looking at completely forgotten what I had to buy. From that day I would go
every day to look at her. In a week I stopped at her small shop. “What would
you like?” – she smiled looking in my eyes. Her eyes were different like they
tried to look almost inside of my mind.
I wasn't be able to say anything and left, coming back again the next
day.
One evening
she asked me to help her bring her things, the one she didn't sell, to her
house. “It's far"- she smiled. I noticed, every time she was talking, she
would smile and open her eyes as if she was very surprised. We walked always to
the same place, close to the forest and then she would disappear into green
lines of trees. “Don't go with her,”- my mother told me when I was trying to
leave for a new date helping to move unsold things. “People think she a witch.”
We started to argue and I didn't listen, I was in love. Months went by,
meetings on the market and walking once in a while to the forest. “Let's get
married?” – I asked when we got closer to the forest. She smiled with the same
surprise in her eyes. “I cannot. I have to marry my own". I thought she
was talking about me working at the horse shop. We started ti argue and soon I
realized I was in the forest with her. I turned back, dropping her bags on the
ground. After walking for a white, I realized I was at the same place. I walked
again and I was at the same place. And again, and again. Walk in the same
circle. Scared a little, all I could think was old falk stories and their advices.
I turned my shoes different way and started to walk again.
She met me at the same place where we were standing. She smiled showing with her eyes to follow her. A ball of leaves rolled to her and when we were walking it would follow us. It was rolling close to her getting little bit bigger from peaking more small leaves or grass on it. Finally we got to a house standing on the side of a village. I have been at this village before, but I have never seen her before. “My relatives live here. Come in". Few children ran to us showing things they made. A family was sitting at the table and waiting for us. We had dinner without saying anything. Every one was quiet. On the way back, she walked with me back to the city, I asked who where those children. “They are not children “, - she replied with different tone of voice. Then slowly we started to see each other less and less. In 1941 I went to the Second World war. We met again when I returned back on few days off the army in 1943. She was in the military uniform. We walked together on the road to the forest. I was talking, it was warm evening, the sky, everything around was calm and peaceful. I went back to the war, she too. In few month I was captured by the Nazi and was sent to Poland to work as prisoner of war. And all that time until the liberation, in 1945, I would see her eyes in my mind, imagination. Her face was blurry, only the eyes, brown and serious, watching me. I returned back to my city, and never met her again, until I was already old man.
