Intimissimi" chapter VII

VII.

The market square is magnificent in summer, especially in August...

It shimmers and shimmers in the sun, vendors shouting over each other.

The crowds are terrifying; you have to squeeze through people who are ugly, worn out, as if this market had sucked out all their softness, freedom of thought, and higher aspirations.

My gaze drifted over the hills of ripe apples, the stacks of sweet new potatoes, the pyramids of cucumbers with rough skin...

After a moment's reflection, I was almost captivated, concluding that a wonderful harmony governed this market and, so to speak, the sequence of fruits and vegetables.

After all, cool, fragrant strawberries are here in June, plump watermelons in July, moist brown and russet mushrooms—in September, the same minuet every year, everything is renewed, and flavors return to the human mouth. Now I must admit, this event gave me, seeking harmony in all things, a tremendous and almost reverential relief.

Nature doesn't move pieces on her chessboard so easily.

Am I sick, or perhaps they are?

All these healthy scents in various shades merged in my brain and sang some gibberish hymn to the heavens, higher and higher.

Driven by this melody, frayed like lettuce leaves (sometimes I create truly silly metaphors), I looked up at the façade of the tenement house adjacent to the market square, as if in a dream, bathed in the midday sun, immensely dreamy and soft, full of the sexy red of geraniums and the golden reflections of laughter and desire.

Then, on one of the balconies, I saw you.

You're so close and yet so far, you amaze. I don't want to feel ridiculous and talk about you too loudly; they'll hear me. Shh...

You, in your white t-shirt with flimsy straps, looking down, bored.

And that whiteness that harmonizes with your Hungarian tan!

I'd run up those stairs, bumping into passersby. Believe me, I'd run, I can do it too, I can do it too, listen, I'd run upstairs to quickly, without a word, peel my breasts, still warm from the sun, out of that white t-shirt.

I'm convinced again that I need you.

I envy you that view from the balcony because you can see everything clearly, the entire market, the seemingly insignificant interference of human movements, you hear that cacophony, you take it all in, Queen.

I turned to light a cigarette.

A moment later, she was gone.

The geraniums on the balconies sparkled in the sun and seemed even redder.