A Story
The young woman had been sitting for several minutes in the café where they had arranged to meet. It was a beautiful café on Luvër Street; opposite stood a large church with frescoes, featuring exceptionally beautiful work in Catholic architecture. Nearby, very nearby, there was a small fountain where some children were standing. The scent of newly blossomed mimosas could be felt in the café’s surroundings. Salzburg is a major center and a renowned city in European culture and civilization. Shpresa had come from Albania with a group of women for an exchange of experience from the international association for the care and good treatment of family relations, and especially those towards women. This was also a special opportunity to get to know Fjalëmir up close, a young man or perhaps middle-aged, who had been living and working in Germany for several years. They had met electronically, had become friends on FB, and over time their friendship had taken the course of a river with a specific direction into the great lake of feelings. The young woman had been dreaming of such a meeting for a long time, ever since the day they had expressed their mutual fondness. Shpresa was waiting to finally hear his voice, to see the beautiful cage of his mouth, where his sweet words about their relationship and friendship chirped. To touch his hand, to see up close the beautiful arch of his eyebrow that she liked immensely. They were wide and sharply tapered at the ends, like the wings of a bird in flight, and the young woman liked flights very much. She wished herself to be a free bird in the skies of desires, where space would be endless, where she would search and fly all her life to discover other planets, so her soul would be gladdened by these flights. She sought and dreamed of building a warm nest, of laying the eggs of the future and building a dream castle in the celestial spaces, where love would reign. In Fjalëmir’s words, she saw and found spring, the blossoming of the season and her future, which was why this wait was unusual. Her thoughts sometimes unsettled her and sometimes calmed her. She herself felt that this wait was lighting an inner fire. Although she was dressed beautifully, had styled her hair in a special way to easily catch the eye, although the fragile shadows and the sweetness of her face and thick, curly hair made her look sweet, she still felt a desire to look at herself in the mirror again. She kept her gaze on the street, visually analyzing every passerby as if in a picture gallery. She was lost in daydreams and cast her gaze as far as possible, to give herself the chance to watch him for as long as possible, to savor his walk, his physique, and all his movements as he came toward her…
She felt a light hand on her shoulder and came to her senses. A breeze blew from afar and tossed the blossoms of the blooming mimosa onto her shoulders. Standing before her, she saw a middle-aged man who smiled. He himself realized he had caught her by surprise. He had been watching her from afar for a while; he understood that her eyes were searching for him approaching from somewhere, so he had come from behind. He had made this surprise to see her reaction, but also to see the change in her state of mind that his arrival would bring.
Shpresa stood up; her movement and her beautiful silk dress released a sweet, fragile rustle across the chairs, like the nib of a pen writing on a white sheet of paper. She was writing her soul into her book of impressions, consumed by a deep feeling that came from the lake of feelings and sailed toward the port of desires.
Fjalëmir took her hand and kissed it with utmost delicacy. The young woman felt that those lips were a flight of wings into the beautiful world of their April. It seemed the trees were pouring the season’s blossoming over their shoulders, along with the murmuring spring of the long wait for this much-anticipated day. She was silent; they only looked at each other, reading, savoring, drinking in the long-awaited hour. Both had flown from opposite directions to this small meeting aerodrome, simply called a café. A small café in the city of Salzburg, where they intended to weave a silken fabric with the knitting needles of their love. In that first glance, she understood that his sweet smile was an aesthetic pleasure for what she had seen and chosen in the beautiful forest where the roses of love bloom. She thought that, amidst this beauty called life, she had chosen the rose, the color, and the scent that suited her. Meanwhile, he looked at her as if searching for something special and precious inside her. She understood that he had the desire, the love, and the thirst to drink in the beauty of her being, which for several hours she had adorned and dressed with such care…
Fjalëmir reached out and took her fragile, white hands in his palms, like the two wings of a white dove. He wanted to caress them, to whisper to them, and then to give them the path of light for flights. He looked into her eyes and lost himself deep in the lake of her gaze, which resembled an innocent icon, like the very picture of the Virgin Mary.
Shpresa felt the caresses of his hands deep, very deep, down to the deep stones of the river of feeling, which she now saw was swallowing her up in its waves and pulling her downstream with a desire she had not foreseen. She wanted to give him those two hands, to make them a gift so he would always have them near, to caress them, but also to be caressed by them. She had long thought that from a woman’s hands in a family comes the beautiful season of blossoming itself. The clothes, the house, the feelings shine, and life becomes more beautiful, and the future more desired and more dreamlike.
“Where have you booked your hotel?” he asked, not letting go of her hand, as if he wanted to pass what he was asking into her body and soul through them.
“At the Grand Hotel,” Shpresa smiled. Her smile emerged like a bud of joy, which even she herself did not know where it sprouted from—from the depths of her soul, or from the much-loved tree of love she dreamed of…
“It is a wonderful hotel. I stayed in it for a few days. In such hotels, beautiful moments remain unforgettable memories.”
The young woman fell silent, pretending she had not heard him.
“What shall we order?” she asked. “We have been lost to our surroundings for a while; the waiter is waiting.” The young man in a beautiful tailcoat with a tray in his hand had been standing there for some time. He had not wanted to ruin their beautiful moments; he cast them a benevolent glance and walked away, thinking of the happiness and pleasure these moments gave them.
“We won’t get anything. We’d better go to the hotel; there we are far from the world, closer to our desires, and we can better enjoy our first coffee.”
Shpresa felt cold. It seemed the breath of his words held winter inside. Her long hair, tossed by the wind, seemed to her like ropes trying to tie around her throat and choke her. She took a deep breath, but felt there was no air to give life to her chest.
“Let’s drink something and then stay a long while, or we can go and visit one of Salzburg’s beautiful museums,” she changed the subject.
“I have my museum right here,” Fjalëmir smiled, “and I am afraid these two days will not be enough for me to visit all its rooms and beauties.”
The young woman shuddered; she heard a cold, rushing current of air coming from afar, then a crack and a noise. She pulled her hands away. Next to them, the wind had broken a large, blossoming branch of the mimosa. The young woman stood up.
“Don’t be frightened, it’s nothing, a branch broke!” He reached out his hands to calm her. “The mimosas have bloomed prematurely,” he told her sweetly. “Spring doesn’t come this fast here.”
“I see that,” the young woman spoke, her voice trembling like a guitar string that has been knocked out of tune and is strummed just to pass the time, but not to make music whose sounds you can enjoy. The young woman stood up.
“Stay, where are you going?”
Shpresa cast her gaze toward the fountain. The children were launching small paper boats. The wind blew again and overturned them. They sank and disappeared into the depths of the water.
“I am leaving,” she said. “Thank you for the meeting. As you can see, it is no time for sailing; the weather has overturned the little boatmen’s dreams,” and she pointed with her gaze at the children, who were crying for their sunken boats…
