The evening appeared to be cold, but the weather promised the following day to be beautiful. The last sparks of the colored in the purple shine of the sunset sank beneath the horizon. Soon as I aligned from the bus after finishing work I walked going home lost in my thoughts for tomorrow. I wore black trousers, blouse, long coat, black shoes, and handbag so I did not felt cold. The fresh air was filled with the scent of the flourishing of the approaching spring. I was thinking also that I belonged to this land among these fields, mounts and hills, to the swamp, the river and her bridges along her way, right away to the see. I have spent a big part of my life in other places. I lived in a family where I grew partly in one city, I was started studying preliminary school in another city and graduated from the university learning finance and macro-economy in one another city, where I have settled. Regarding the past, I cannot comprehend how now I am living without visiting the theatre, ballet, and opera. I enjoyed before attending a musical theatre, classical and rock concerts regularly.
There are inevitable surprises of the life. The road seemed lonely, and the bewildering noise of quickly passing car pulled me out of my thoughts and sharpened my senses. Walking slowly as I felt tired, suddenly, I have heard quiet footsteps just behind me. As I felt all alone in the falling obscurity, I was wondering who my follower is. The night was coming slowly. I crossed the road passing over the other sidewalk and left behind the other passer-by.
He was a heavily built man, not overweight as he was stout. His outfit was sportive in the dark tones with trembling yellow high visible worker’s vest along old brown trousers, black jacket with fur neck-piece, black boots, and big black bag. He has hastened his steps and out-walked me, stopped for a while glancing at me unfriendly. I spot that he was a little bearded and completely unknown.
Against me approaching car moving fast making noise in the silence of the coming night. It was no illuminating streetlamps along the way. In that short moment, I was thinking in a retrospective way for what was happened in my life. I remembered for the high-school years when I met a lot of people surrounding me at the present. I recalled for my youth, clearly memorized every word and every face, most of them looking the same, as the time has stopped his impact over their appearance.
‘’Surprise!’’ I told to myself. ‘’It does not matter what he was, or he was not. It is a bad thing to cause similar emotions to whoever it is. Some cold shivers went down my vertebrae. I felt frightened sudden and quickly and I tried to walk away without to do any noise. The harsh sound of a nearly passing car fell away into the air. I could sense something of wasted life in the sticky leaves translucent to the last. Also, I had the sense that something went badly wrong for me. I intended to say: ”Why you embarrass me?” But these are less than word, they just hang flat in my thought, before I even completely re-thought them. So I did not. The stout figure walked away, and I sigh with relief. I don’t know how I got into it.
Among the trees from the stiffness, too narrow to be named a walkway but large enough to hiding someone, and out of the obscurity of the falling night a figure was emerging, and set to approach me, but shrinking in the remoteness as I walked away. I was not in the spirit for a conversation with a stranger this evening, but the curiosity blossomed like leprosy inside me and flourished like a summer flower. I soon apprehended to my own amusement along the gardens weedy fences that it could be not about me, but any other involvement. At the time of changing the seasons, it never happened to us to think to ourselves.
The houses along I passed had recent paint and like our own possessed flowering gardens. A fall of bush roses on the fence recollected to my view that I am approaching home. I fastened my walk and soon got inside the house tempting for a hot cup of tea.
Author: Louise Grammatico