Some Memories of Days Past

As I walk by this girl I try not to think of my rather low opinion of their group. Somehow it seems to me that she’s different but in what way?
I smile as I look at her dainty figure in the strange purple leather jacket. We head for the crossroads where the Kamenitsa factory is. I look at the ugly enormous building with half of its windowpanes broken but my spirits don’t sink. I have everything I need to keep them high: the pleasant autumn day with the autumn just stepping into its own and a bewitchingly smiling purple-jacketed girl walking next to me.
“Mariana said you bought cigarettes for her yesterday”, she says suddenly”
“Yes, I did.”, I say.
“She bragged about that all day yesterday and now everyone knows it.”
“Well, so what?”
“They think you fancy her. Is that true?” she asks and frowns a little.
“Of course not. Because of two very strong reasons: in the first place she’s not my type of girl and secondly I teach her. Having an affair with your students is strictly prohibited, you know.”
She gives me a distrustful look and says:
“Don’t think that because I’m a first year student I don’t know that there are a great many exceptions to that prohibition you mentioned.”
Now it’s my turn to be really dismayed.
“How do you know about that?” I ask realizing that denying a seemingly well known fact is more than foolish obstinacy.
“I’m not blind you see. And there’s another thing. Why did you speak of her not being your type of girl first and only then of the prohibition.”
I’m disarmed and have to ask for truce.
“Well, I admit I tried to conceal a fact from you hoping that you’d learn it later in your graduation, or better still, never learn it. Why, you’ve barely spent a month here.”
She is silent and we approach Captain Raicho street with all its vulgar display of still life. There are hundreds of street sellers making it difficult to pass through with their stalls cluttered up with anything you can think of – from household appliances to shoes, boots, jackets, refrigerators and cassette-players.
“Are you going to the rectorate?” I ask hoping to restore the conversation we were having.
“Yes, I am”. She’s not smiling at me any more.
“That’s my way, too.” I say cheerfully.
We still walk in silence. I’m not that depressed by it any more. I start looking at the things and people around and past us. Here we are already at the doors of Restaurant No10 as we used to call it. Actually it is nothing but a canteen for the ever hungry students. Opposite is the rectorate and next to it, on the left, is restaurant No5. Another canteen as you must have guessed. We cross the underpass and there we are in front of the rectorate itself. Many feelings are boiling inside me and I’m trying to cool them down. This is the time of parting. Now we both will take our separate ways and we’ll see each other well… I dare not think of that. It’s two days from now and during that time, what am I going to do?
A most difficult question indeed.
We start walking up the stairs before the entrance when she turns to me:
“Well, I have some more classes.”
I look into her eyes. They speak frankness. An impish bewitching twinkle suddenly flashes. That tells me that there’s more to it. But was there really a twinkle there or did I just think so in the red glow squeezing through a slit in some distant semidetached houses.
“Good bye then”, I say trying to suppress the heaving sigh in me.
“Bye”, she says and disappears behind the door.
I watch the door which keeps opening and closing letting garish young people through. Some of them must be hungry and are sure to head for the canteens, others are smiling probably thinking of their dates tonight. It is going to be another dateless night for me. I’ll be surfing the net as usual trying to dig up forgotten lore concerning all the girls I’ve lost. I’ll try not to make the same mistakes with the girl in the purple jacket if I am given a chance with her. The word chance clicks a lyric into motion. I think of a song by Queen where Freddie Mercury sings: “Whatever happens I leave it all to chance. Another heartache, another fair romance,” and I realize that it has to necessarily be so. I’ll always be agnostic in the realms of love. As I think of this I also feel the all-too-familiar growl in my stomach and start walking towards restaurant No5.