Aunt Elena's eyes, Lenuca, then, in the Mangalia station, the most romantic station in the world, the smell of sun-baked tarpaulins and her arms straining to open the compartment window, to see from Constanța onwards if it gets crowded, anyway, once the train starts, there's a draft and it cools down, and she laughed, life hadn't defeated her, she was returning to her conjugal hell, I knew nothing then, that's all I'd been told, Grandpa had told me, Crin, you take Auntie to the station, I have to be at the factory, Ceaușescu is coming to the shipyard and they say he'll also stop by us to check on our five-year plan, I left the house through the front door, between two white Etruscan columns, a kind of imperial door that only opened when someone important arrived or left, Grandma breathing heavily with her heart disease and asthma in the doorway, and the road to the station along the railway that descended towards the lake, bouncing from sleeper to sleeper like a child, those clear eyes and smooth, long hair, falling heavily over restless shoulders, and the causeless laughter at every step, then she shooed me out of the compartment, 'come on, get down so it doesn't start and you stay on the train, I already have three girls at home and I don't need a fourth child, get down,' the long, empty platform, and just before the train started, suddenly, a salty mist descended over Auntie's eyes and she whispered as if from a tomb, with cold, frozen words, 'take care of Nicoleta.'
It was the first time she didn't smile while saying something.
It was the last time I saw her.
The train carried her towards her destiny, towards her own atrocious death, which she swallowed in one gulp, to pass quickly, like a medicine far too bitter.
Much time after that, in another century, rummaging through Venice, I looked for the holy and Christ-loving Empress Elena; I had arrived late at the church door and it was already closed, I stayed a bit longer with friends, smelling the lagoon, and when we were about to return to Cannaregio, suddenly, 'hey, I'm not coming anymore, see you tomorrow morning for breakfast, I'm staying here,' I took out my sleeping bag and survival foil from my backpack and curled up under some dark green bushes, I do this sometimes, when my soul sheds the world like boots heavy with mud, and that night I dreamed of a train and Aunt Lenuca laughing heartily with her beautiful hair ruffled by the wind.
Have a good journey, aunt, Nicoleta is fine and her daughter's name is Elena, just so you know.
Rev. Crin-Triandafil Theodorescu
Photography by Atlantic Ambience / pexeles.com