“Did you hear the birds sing this morning?” he would begin his working day with a question that was meant to dumfound a woman’s heart.
Another morning, as dreamy and serious, he asked rhetorically:
“Yesterday, after leaving this sinister place, did you follow the migrant birds with your eyes?”
Everyone in the office could hardly wait for the morning question.
“I helped my folks pick the nuts yesterday—I can still hear the sound of wooden bells, the falling nuts.”
That was the sentence which finished Mirela off. She realized he could be her end of the line, the end of her solitary journey.
Victor had been a fisherman since his boyhood so he spent his weekends on the pond shore. His time was divided between poker, fishing, and his job, which of late he had taken seriously.
He had met Mirela again at a meeting with the general manager who wanted to know the young employees of great potential. He had asked her out for their second coffee together and insisted on getting her phone number. She had felt comfortable and flattered by his insistence so she finally gave in, let him know her cell number, condescendingly, as if trying to show him how gullible he was. She had smiled ironically seeing how anxiously the engineer was pressing the keys on his cell.
“From now on you’ll never be able to get rid of me,” he promised solemnly.
“In your dreams, maybe,” she laughed.
Hearing her voice, Victor had thought of the sound of nuts falling off the tree. In five years he had called her almost every day. Sometimes she answered. After fifty calls his patience had moved her and she had gone out with him for a walk or a coffee. But the thrilling date had not come yet. No touch. Just words. Smiles. Separate ways. When he could no longer bear it, he waylaid a woman, had sex with her, kept her for one month, and then drove her away. He rather did it for his body and mental health than for something else. Mirela was his obsession.
For five years Mirela had been Ionut’s slave. So attractive that high school female students could pin his picture on the wall, he acted like a highly skilled romantic. Surprising gestures, flowers that couldn’t be found at the florist’s, exotic perfumes, moonlight, sea sand, kisses under the trees, words impossible to resist. There was one thing he had never done, though. He had never asked her to marry him. Not that she had twisted her arm—she had just waited for it, like the shore waiting for the high tide.
Ionut had never raised the subject. The young woman had no idea what this man hid inside him or how much she meant to him. In his turn, Ionut was obsessed with his career and would have done anything to get to the top. Lately he had fixed his eyes on the general manager’s daughter who worked in the Marketing Department, patiently devising a diabolical plan.
In his manly self-pride, Mirela’s unconditional love made him feel so well. He liked her just enough to want to madly and unrestrainedly have sex with a blessed body, but he didn’t love her. He managed to fake his feelings skillfully. All the same, Mirela believed in him. Irrationally.
“I wonder if it’s good for me to almost depend on you physically,” she said to him after his being away for three days.
He had told her he would visit his parents in the countryside but instead he had attended a symposium where the general manager’s daughter had also been present.
“If it’s of any comfort to you, let me just tell you that all this time I’ve kept thinking of you,” Ionut lied to her, knowing that was what she wanted to hear.
Actually, throughout the symposium he had tried hard to make himself conspicuous in the eyes of the general manager’s daughter. Nevertheless, just in case, he had in mind several other good matches in the town. He enjoyed the old saying, “Don’t keep all your eggs in the same basket,” and kept Mirela for her body’s mystery only, as an erotic cure.
The engineer’s love, however, went way beyond the notion of orgasm. He loved everything that was related to her being, from body to spirit, and in order to conquer her he was ready to go through all Hercules’ labors. He knew, like everyone else, about her love affair with Ionut and, although it hurt terribly, he still hoped for the better. He knew patience was an extraordinary weapon. He loved and waited.
“Do you think a woman can love two men at the same time?” he asked Mirela during one of their rare dates.
“I think a man can love two women at the same time. But it’s not true love if you don’t make up your mind,” she answered without understanding his reproachful look.
The unavoidable had happened when Victor least expected it. One afternoon, after talking to Ionut on the cell, Mirela overheard a conversation between him and some of his friends. Having a couple of beers with his buddies, Ionut forgot to switch off his cell and carelessly put it on the table.
“This broad’s keeping track of me with her bloody phone as if she could really see where I am. She’s sick, this woman is, thinking I’ll shut up myself just because I feel great when I’m giving it to her!”
“I thought you really loved her. I’ve seen you both always leaving the office hand in hand,” said one of Ionut’s friends.
“What else can I do when she sticks to me like a leech so I can’t get away from her?”
They went on like that for a while, Ionut explaining to them nonchalantly what he wanted from life and why he would never marry Mirela. The woman was listening breathlessly to words which, under different circumstances, she would never have believed.
Nevertheless, she had had the superhuman strength and pride not to ask for explanations, she hadn’t made any hysterical scenes or cried in anyone’s arms. She hadn’t begged him. She had just walked away.
That had been Victor’s chance. He couldn’t believe his ears when Mirela asked him out for dinner. And when she proposed to him, he thought she was making fun of him.
“I know I’m not the man you love. If you want to take revenge on someone, don’t do it by ruining my life,” he warned her.
“You’ve been waiting for me for such a long time that I’m pretty sure you’re the man I need,” she answered honestly.
The wedding arrangements had taken only two weeks. They had persuaded the chief engineer to be their godfather in no time. Victor’s boss had laughed and said to Mirela:
“Do you really know who you’re marrying? A very talented but irresponsible engineer. Do you know what his latest trick was? Sunbathing on the roof of the rolling mill!”
Stealing the bride has always been the suspense of a wedding. If it takes place before midnight, it’s the godfather that buys back the bride. If it happens after midnight, it’s the groom that does it. Victor had been on the lookout all night trying to prevent that. He didn’t want, not even in a symbolic way, his bride to be stolen. He had managed to abort a few attempts but, in the end, it just happened. The bride vanished at about two o’clock in the morning. When they announced her kidnapping, the groom’s first reaction was to glance at Ionut—Mirela had invited all her colleagues. His table was deserted.
Victor didn’t panic. After all, he had to keep up appearances. An hour later he thought too much time had passed since the two had disappeared so he slipped out, got in his Ford and drove to town.
Ionut had stolen Mirela for fun, to humor himself. He had had one of his female colleagues invite Victor to dance and, while the latter was waltzing happily, he asked his former lover to run away together.
“Do you want to steal me for ever or just for the sake of tradition?” she asked smiling ironically.
“Both,” came his puzzling answer.
Ionut stopped his car at the edge of the forest and they made love there, angrily, wildly. Mirela’s wedding dress got all crumpled up. Then they drove to town.
Victor caught up with them a few miles