Perhaps I had returned at an unsuitable time, or perhaps I was truly outside of all time and had lost myself in the darkness of that summer evening... on that beach of the distant days of early youth, which we called by the strange name of the Railway Beach, simply because the railway line that connected Durrës with Elbasan and beyond passed very close to the seashore, right where years and years ago those three officers' apartment blocks, as they were called, had been built. I say three because at that time, in the year '66, there was also a fourth, but only in its foundations, waiting to be built...

In those foundations, once upon a time, we as little children would play out those imaginary scenarios copied from the film The Trojan Horse, in those fierce battles with wooden swords and shields fashioned from saucepan lids, in defense of Helen of Troy, who for me was the girl on the second floor of the building opposite... These battles never ended, because mothers with dishevelled hair would come out of the building entrances shouting, in search of their kitchenware, and we would run for our lives towards the seashore, which crashed its waves very close by... From these battles I still have a burn mark on my left leg caused by the flaming cardboard we used to throw... but that was nothing compared to the wound on his chin from the explosion of a tin can filled with carbide, which Ylli, the boy from the first floor, received. And yet those were stories almost erased from memory, except for the image of the neighbour with that strange name, Pandora, who for me in those days symbolised Helen of Troy, although she was not blonde like Helen; on the contrary, she was dark-skinned with bright eyes, perhaps to blame on the summer sun's rays and the salty seawater.

I was bringing these things to mind that late afternoon, as I stepped onto the fine sand of the beach after so many years... The shadows of dusk had begun to fall over the building of the Adriatik Hotel and the cabins of the Railway Beach... I had approached that pier with concrete legs that waded deep into the sea waters, where the pale red stains of the sunset were thrashing about.

Suddenly I thought I spotted among the large crowd strolling along the shore, exactly her, the girl of my former dreams, dressed in that thin and light dress, as if she had cut it to fit her body from the blue waves.

“Pandora...!” I almost cried out, and the oxygen ran out in the damp evening air. I remained motionless, my eyes fixed on the girl in the blue dress. She was bending over the waves, her hands outstretched, as if playing with the lace of the waters.

“Pandora...!” I called out again, but my voice died out like the flame of a match in the dark. I do not know what pushed me to run towards her. I approached her and pulled her by the shoulder... It was the same perfume that had left me with an intoxicating taste years and years ago...

“Pandora...!”

The bunch of black hair shook, and suddenly I was met with the dark-skinned face and the surprised eyes over which her two thin eyebrows clashed in irritation...

“Have you no shame!” were the harsh words that

echoed in my ears.

“Forgive me!” I murmured, unable to utter another word, as if the entire vocabulary of a whole lifetime had suddenly been wiped from my memory.

“I have nothing to forgive...!” she said, and tossing her hair over her other shoulder with a swift movement, she continued walking, stepping with bare feet on the shells of the shore, which broke with a painful crunch.

It felt as if the shore's waves were striking me relentlessly as her shadow was swallowed by the crowd of people following the coastline.

I had remained there, motionless, when I heard a voice behind my back that at first sounded to me like the rustling of the waves. I turned my head and saw a middle-aged woman smiling sweetly at me.

“Ah, the things we have lost never return, though the regrets remain, and only death can extinguish regrets...” she said, and vanished into the crowd of holidaymakers, which carried her away.