Bliss

I love this city! She leaned on his shoulder and watched the houses streaming by the window. Bricks, cement, glass, iron… everything clearly ordered, the pulsating traffic of the streets enclosing it all… I can live again. He thought of the little cottage they had to leave behind. On the lolling fields, the wide horizon, the straight line tying the solid ground under their feet to the dreamy heaven above. And in the middle of it all their tiny, warm home, their sanctuary, in which she with her feet on the ground, and he with his head in the clouds can feel at home. Our happiness knew no bounds! It was good to feel her head on his shoulder, her nearness, her warmth, and to dream of someday returning. This acceleration, this life and this energy of eternal movement, my elixir of life! Just the opposite of that unbearable silence, the emptiness as far as one can see, that we had to live with for so long. We were cut off from the world there, from people, from real life, as in a lethargic sleep. If he hadn't received that offer from the university, she would very likely have left him, but now the city, the people, the culture, the life on the pulse of time, a modern apartment in the middle of the city, so many possibilities… There must be a way to escape all this! He searched for her glance. Why can't I just look into her eyes forever and forget for always the picture of the metropolis that painfully cuts into my pupils, the noise that stabs into my eardrums? I don't want to go back to that sterile apartment! The apartment with the white, glassed in stairwell, the noise proof windows, an advantage he could appreciate, but not the picture they presented him, one that awoke the strong desire to pull the curtains shut. I don't want to spend the rest of my life behind closed curtains! My contract will expire in a year, then we can return and everything will be as it was before, the long walks, quiet evenings in front of the fireplace, cuddling up close, drinking hot chocolate. They would surely have a dog again. She had a hard time coming to terms with Napoleon's death, and here in the city they couldn't keep a dog. One more year. He saw her reflection in the glass window. Hopefully they'll extend his contract. The dean hinted at it the other night at dinner at the Cheré Pieré. She can't go back. Not to that wasteland, those hour long walks, those boring evenings in front of the fireplace and those incessant hot chocolates that made her sick every time. Surely he'd want to have a dog again. She'd been so relieved when Napoleon had ended it for her by running in front of that car. No, no way did she ever want to return… He looked at her as she raised her gaze to meet his. After all those years her big eyes still looked so mysterious and indecipherable, but trustworthy. Out of their glass-green depths he found the belief in himself and on her never-ending love to him. "Are you happy?" he asked her softly. "Yes, I'm happy," she answered him smiling and turned her gaze to the city streaming by the window, "I love this city."