She arrived when the rain was pouring down.
Sharp drops pierced the asphalt, immediately bouncing off in different directions and falling in splashes into the puddles. The gray sky dissolved between the buildings, turning them gray as well. Leaves glistened, rustling, reflecting orange lights in the wet mirror of the road, and everything rushed by outside the window. The tram hurriedly ran, its melancholic clatter echoing within.
A green trolley, like a loud grasshopper, ran somewhere, presumably where there was no rain. Tiny human figures emerged from trolleybuses and trams, also beginning to run somewhere, shielding themselves from the water with the shiny hats of umbrellas, and after a fleeting moment, disappeared into the depths of shops and residential buildings. I stood by the window, watching the quiet acceleration of the world caused by the rain through the transparent streams running down the other side of the glass.
I noticed her immediately because she disrupted the wet haste of the weary street. She fluttered like a white cloud from the tram platform to the sidewalk and found herself on a wet island surrounded by puddles from all sides. She didn’t open her umbrella, didn’t put on a transparent rustling coat, and didn’t rush to seek shelter from the raging elements. She remained standing in the same place. The tram stop was right across from my entrance, and nothing prevented me from observing her.
What struck me the most was that it seemed like she had no intention of leaving anywhere else. A date? But who arranges a date in the open air in such weather? Immediately, the thought came to me that the date had been arranged in advance and she didn’t want to disappoint the person who was supposed to come here too.
But looking at the clock, which was illuminated with hands not far from the stop and noticing that it was almost eight twenty, I marveled at such punctuality and obligation that I hadn’t encountered in women for a long time. Five minutes passed, but she was still standing at the stop, and despite the fact that her outfit was completely soaked, it remained amazingly white.
The little island she stood on was increasingly surrounded by puddles. But during these five minutes, she never once looked at the clock, didn’t glance around, didn’t search for anyone in the crowd rushing past her. It seemed like she wasn’t waiting for anyone.
She stood there, beautiful and wet, and looked straight ahead. She was looking at me. And as soon as I realized it, she moved. I even feared for a moment that she might leave altogether, and I would never know her name. She stepped into a puddle, took a few steps, still looking in my direction, then smiled with the corners of her lips and walked on the water straight into my entrance.
I already knew where she was going. I rushed to the door, grabbing a terry bathrobe from the hook in the bathroom on the way, and unlocked the lock. My heart pounded at least a hundred thousand times until I heard the elevator door open on the landing and the light footsteps tapping towards my door. She opened up, and in the darkness, white silk glistened, and a little wet creature appeared in my hallway.
For a few moments, we stood in silence, then I approached her, draped the bathrobe over her, and took her by the shoulders. She looked me straight in the eyes and smiled. And then I heard her first words:
“Hello, it’s me,” her voice seemed painfully familiar, although I could swear I had never heard it before. All I could respond to that was:
“Hello, you’re beautiful!”
She smiled again, and the evening lights sparkled in her eyes. She touched my collarbone with her forehead, and I felt the scent of linden and roses from her chestnut waterfall of hair. She was glowing and trembling in my arms, like a raindrop in a storm.
“Rain is running down your face,” I said, and kissed her eyes with my lips.
“But the rain is no longer running in my soul,” she replied, and looked into me again, making me suddenly shiver. And then a miracle happened: suddenly, as if I heard some voice. Or, to be more precise, I now knew. I knew that the one who came to me in the rain was called Lee. Not Lisa, not Ellie, just Lee. That was her full name.
“Stip, do you have candles burning every evening?” I startled because she also knew what my name was.
“No,” I answered honestly, and immediately realized that I lit candles today because I was waiting for her. The delicate flame flickered as the heavy silk touched the floor.
For the first time in my life, I understood what it meant to love. I couldn’t explain it, but I felt it, I knew it. It was in my entire being, in every cell, in every breath, in every glance. She touched me, and we fell into oblivion.
Since then, she appeared at my place every evening. I already knew she would come, and at seven, I lit the candles, and when she came, intoxicated with the scent of roses and carrying that scent herself, she fell into my arms, I lifted her up, and we spun around.
She never talked about herself, and she never asked. I never talked about my past and never cared about how she lived before she met me. We felt we didn’t need it. We understood each other with a glance, with a single breath, and hardly spoke. She came in the evening, stayed overnight, and left silently in the morning, while I was still asleep…
Every time I woke up, for a moment I thought it was all a wonderful dream, that it never happened, and it couldn’t have, but as I buried my face in her pillow, I inhaled her scent – one I had never known before. And only then did I realize that it wasn’t a fairy tale, and I wasn’t going crazy. I waited all day for the evening to come, for her to rustle through the hallway again, and, swirling again in the candlelight, sit next to me and say:
“Hello.”
We spoke with our eyes again and only sometimes whispered names into the night.
We had one amazing and incomprehensible pastime. We loved rereading the yellowed pages of our favorite novel, “The Master and Margarita.” She read some chapters, and sometimes asked me to read, and then, running her fingers through my hair, she asked my opinion on what interested her. And one day I said:
“This is true love.”
Lee, for some reason, pressed her palm to my lips and whispered:
“Don’t speak of true love,” and immediately, not letting me speak, she kissed me, and then continued, “Maybe I’ll disappoint you, but Mr. Bulgakov himself believes that he simply invented a beautiful fairy tale about true love.”
I didn’t know what to say to her. And at that moment, I couldn’t say anything. She, after a short pause, murmured:
“How beautiful is the sunset when you look at it from the shore. When the day is hot, and you hide in the shade, you know that the hands of the clock are moving down, and soon long shadows from cypresses will fall on the coast, the evening warmth will bring the scent of magnolias, and salty splashes will reach you. Then you will sit on the shore, picking
at the pebbles, while the huge white sun sets into the yellow-orange golden sea. The sky will be turquoise, and the sea will shimmer and dance. You will seize every moment of this wonder because you know that soon the sun will disappear, and the sky will turn black. You wouldn’t admire every glimmer of the rays in the water if you knew that this painting awaits you every time you want to look at the sea…” – Li smiled and kissed me again.
With each minute of her stay in my house, more knowledge came to me. I understood that she didn’t come here by chance. And I understood why she didn’t come to me right away. I knew she was looking for me specifically, and she found me. But only one thing troubled my soul: I felt that I didn’t know everything, that there was some secret that only she was meant to know.
One day – I don’t know why – I told her:
“You will always be with me,” and immediately realized I was wrong because she suddenly seemed to slump, the corners of her lips drooped, and her eyes filled with ash. She looked through me into the distance, sadly and – it seemed to me – resignedly smiled and, wrapping her arms around my neck, whispered softly:
“No,” – That word fell into my soul like a hot stone and nestled in its depths. From this, everything inside me flared up, and the white foam of the surf hissed at the shore. I turned her face to mine when she tried to bury it on my chest, and with my eyes asked her. But Li just smiled. All she said was:
“Stip… How I love this name. If you listen closely, it rustles like the wind in the mountains, and snow sparkles on the peaks. You remember that only paper can withstand what people have come up with about true love. Believe me, my wonderful Stip, that these candles will burn out, this rain will end, and these clouds will dissolve in the darkness of the night sky.
“But the stars will light up in the sky,” – I replied, – “and the stars are eternal.”
“But you can’t see the stars all the time. They are visible at night, but during the day, they are not there. Today is your night, and tomorrow the day will come.”
“Tomorrow?” – I exclaimed.
“Tomorrow,” – she replied.
“But why?” – I knew I shouldn’t have asked that question. I still hoped it was a dream, that today was just a continuation of that endless conversation we had – a conversation about love. But I already understood that I was losing her. She slipped through my fingers like a silk scarf that wrapped around her hair on the very first day. She was slipping away like rainwater seeping through fingers, she was disappearing like a breath on glass – and she couldn’t be held back by anything.
She still laid beside me, and her little hand warmed my shoulder, but I knew, I felt that she was no longer there. And I understood that what I always feared most was exactly this. As long as she was with me, I never knew what tomorrow would bring. I knew she would come when I lit the candles again and poured sweet wine into the bottom of two crystal goblets.
But I never knew for sure that she would really come. I scattered roses around our bed before her arrival because she loved their scent, but I never knew that today she would gather them into a heap again and press them to herself. When she did that, the thorns scratched her delicate skin, but she laughed and said she wished it was the greatest pain in her life. Then I would approach and kiss the little scratches on her chest, and then we would fall into the roses and into oblivion together.
“And now she held a flower in her hand and studied the curves of its petals. She didn’t answer my last question, but I knew she would if she wanted to. After a moment of silence, Li said:
“Stip, look how perfect this plant is. How amazing and unique its features are. Nothing can be changed about it, nothing needs to be added to it, nothing can be taken away from it. It is beautiful.”
“I would take away its thorns,” – I said, and immediately felt the fear that had settled in my soul driving me mad. I stopped understanding what was happening; I only thought about one thing – that I didn’t want to lose Li.
She looked at me with concern and sadness, and her head touched the pillow again.
“Do you hear the rain beating?” – “Don’t say,” she hurried to say, “Don’t say anything. Listen. I know you’re hurting right now. More than the touch of this thorn. Look, it touched my palm and went in. And it hurts me. It will hurt me if it stays in my palm. The longer it stays there, the more I will suffer. But now I’ve pulled out the thorn. Two bloody teardrops spilled, the wound will ache for two minutes, and tomorrow I will remember what a beautiful flower I held in my hand.”
She smiled, kissed me on the forehead, and, admiring, said:
“I will carry the scent of this rose in my soul. And in your house, candles will always burn in the evenings now. And one day I will come back to you. But you won’t recognize me; I will be completely different, I will have a different name, but I will love you just like I do now. And if I don’t come, then take a few of these amazing flowers and go find me yourself. Look into the eyes – only through them, only through them will you recognize me. Only my eyes will remain the same. Only eyes. You will give me the flowers and say, ‘Hello, I found you!’ Promise me you’ll look for me, Stip!”
“I promise,” I muttered. I didn’t know where I was anymore. It seemed to me that the flame of the candles had spun in the haze of roses, and suddenly it was dark. I felt a dress brush against me from shoulder to wrist, footsteps rustled somewhere, and everything fell silent.
When I woke up, the candles had already died out, and only the scent of roses remained. I jumped up and rushed to the window. On the glass, her breath was quickly fading away – her breath. I kissed it and felt it was warm. Outside, a downpour raged, and streams ran down the other side of the glass.
She left when it was pouring rain.
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