FICTION: ONE NIGHT IN LOCARNO

He never slept well these days. The burden of too many years and too many thoughts.

It was early evening. He had meant to lie for only a little while in the late afternoon where the sun shone wanly through his panorama window high above Lago Maggiore. But inevitably he had fallen into a sound sleep.

As ever he only vaguely recalled his dreams when he awoke. Only the usual chaotic melange of emotions remained.

Locarno

He missed the piquant eroticism which had once informed his life. He missed the sight of those elegant, long-legged ladies who had graced the Locarno promenade in the evenings of his youth.

He missed too the cool solemnity of the village churches he had frequented then. Like San Gottardo in Intragna where he had been forever transported by the sound spirals of Bach.

*

The lights on the opposite hill across the lake were starting to flicker on now, giving a false but welcome air of gaiety to the scene as their reflection danced upon the tranquil evening waters.

Ľubica would have left his meal at the door by this time. What would he do without her, he wondered. She kept his mirage of a world earthed just enough to keep him sane.

She must have been beautiful when she was in her twenties he mused. She still had those stunning blue eyes that must have broken more than a few young hearts in her time. The eyes never change. This thought always made him sad, bringing with it as it did the notion of innocence, experience and inevitable loss. Yes, she must have been a real beauty back then he mused. If only...

Ascona

Lidia ran the flower shop across from the train station in Ascona, beautiful arty, breezy Ascona. She kept open house for any passing waifs and strays or... beatniks who passed her way. He had been invited to a party at her place but afterwards he hadn't passed on his way. He had stayed. For three sun-filled years.

But it had been Bea, not Lidia, who had captivated him...

Bea had been studying at the nearby Verscio ballet school and working part-time flower-arranging in Lidia's flower shop basement. She was a diminutive five feet tall with a cheeky French-like face and willow-slim body. They had taken a restored peasant's cottage in Verscio and had had enrolled in the tiny Dimitri college there.

Their favorite pastime, apart from making love, had been to wander down Verscio's shady summer avenues to the Melezza with its broad base of white shining pebbles and turquoise waters, to their secret place where they bathed naked as the day they were born.

**

He pulled himself off the bed and ambled through the french doors and sat on the old bench which, with the years, had become his best friend. His fingers knew every crack and crevice on its arms. They now absent-mindedly stroked those familiar places as he gazed across the waters to the lights of Vira and Magadino.

His mind was filled with memories and his eyes with moonlight. He had nowhere to go. He wished to go nowhere. Only to be here. And to remember...

Vienna

He didn't care for Vienna. Something about its well ordered efficiency offended him. Still, he found himself here and so made the best of things.

Wandering the night streets of Vienna aimlessly he sank to his lowest point in many years. His life seemed to hold no meaning. Though he cared deeply for his family they were far away and he felt no warmth of connection to them here. Oh, they wrote and for a brief few moments he felt cared for and this feeling nurtured him as long as he read their words. But soon enough the grey, and to him barren streets of Vienna, blew this feeling away as if by its impersonal, icy November breezes. He felt lost. Uncared for. Caring for no one but those so far from his heart in distance that his mind could not hold them.

He was an isolated pair of eyes, gazing at Vienna ever from the outside, never from within. He rode the tram round the Ringstrasse each day. He didn't know what he was looking for. Was it love, he wondered? Some reminiscence of home to warm him?

Whatever it was he sought; he found Anke.

He'd got very drunk at a friendly little heurigen in Stammersdorf. He'd found some warmth there at least, and music. The Viennese seemed to reserve all of their openness and friendliness for such places, keeping their everyday faces cold and aloof to some possible perceived threat. They called it Gemütlichkeit, and seemed to dole it out to order only when the occasion demanded. But he was glad of it all the same. And the glasses of wine he drank in his corner of the Mayer certainly helped as the evening wore on.

Was it something in his eyes she had recognized? Did she take pity on the helpless loneliness she had seen there? Later, he wondered how many such opportunities had he missed by keeping himself so much to himself. In any event his eyes had met hers and in his part inebriated, part desperate, fully lonely state, he approached her.

She seemed the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Oh, he knew he was drunk and what that did to perception, but still... She seemed an angel to him. Plaited long blonde hair, blue-grey eyes, interestedly, if a little fearfully, gazing into his. She was stereotypically Germanic, and despite his previous strong inclination to avoid such creatures, he felt helplessly drawn to her.

They had done the everyday, usual things together. Trips to the Prater and a ride on the great wheel. Walks through the gardens of Schönbrunn and Belvedere. Coffees by St. Stephansdom. Treks in the Waldviertel.

The burden that had lain so long upon his heart lifted and it soared through a Vienna sky which had suddenly and miraculously changed for him from a most drab to a sublimely wonderful shade of delicate grey. He longed now for the snow to come and to make everything perfect.

It was on the very first day they awoke in the tiny flat he'd taken on Paulusgasse that the first flakes fell.

She'd giggled at the door when she first entered on seeing the shop window mannequin he'd placed there, complete with feather boa and dark glasses and little else. She'd loved the ramshackle bohemian life he lived, the faded portraits on the walls, the mattress with its gay patchwork of a quilt, the antiquated sink with its old-fashioned taps which creaked when they were turned.

That night he had felt his life perfect. They sat in the light of a few small candles he'd found in the nearby supermarket and sipped the best red wine he had been able to find. He felt he had entered heaven itself.

Looking back he could recognize the familiar sequence where the dream of such happiness was realized only for it to be snatched away in an instant. It was never good to feel like this, to feel so very good. Too good to last they said and it was sadly true.

But much, much later he still held those moments dear in his heart. That night and the morning after when the first snowflakes had fallen.

He ached to think only of them.

And not of the snow-deep night when her husband arrived like a storm to drown everything between them in shame.

***

He gazed up at the moon, where it hung like some ghost's eyeball so very far above him. The night sky was clear except for a few luminous clouds high up in the stratosphere. It was the same moon which had looked so baleful in the times past he had just been recalling. Now, in this moment his heart ached to see its beauty and a serene calm filled him. He felt in exactly the right place. And he knew he had not a single urge to change anything of this moment, or of the past.