The big sadness was that having insufficient time we couldn’t afford, couldn’t dear to touch any kind of important discussion being incapable, in the time we had, to end it in a proper way. This lack gets us automatically at an atmosphere of doubt, incompletion, getting to discuss only the complaisance things, that just like everyone believes, were stereotype, but this is how our love was. In a completely different way things used to happen on Sunday. Yes, that was when we used to wallow for a while. We could benefit to go at a ball, to meet other pairs, we would watch a movie and I believe the most important thing was that we could clear up the arguments that have drag on over the week or that haven’t found the answers during the week. All this in quiet and peace, with no pressure of time and no fear like other sorts of discussions, that won’t find answers, which will bring suspicions and sadness in the coming days, will take place. So, even the discussions from this night, “short” arguments, ended like all arguments during the week “in a fish tale”. My contribution at this argument was only the physical presence, looking if it was possible, to calm her down if I couldn’t avoid the argument. With all these I got home in the middle of the night. After two hours of sleep, the alarm blew up my dreams, although the clock was only doing its job. I was worried about the lack of perspective. I could not see any type of improvement from this cycle of stupefaction enforced by life: change-sleep-household-love. Maybe if I would get married … And I wouldn’t think about it if I were older, but at 19 years old … not many marriages are made … Maybe just in … “Maieru”, not in here. Too soon to shut all the “doors” for the entire life … Lets not forget about the army that takes you away from near your young wife, that you will miss. I woke up from my bed broken-hearted as if I put my bones for “tenderize” a day before. All my body was in pain and I was lightheaded. I dressed up slowly and got out the house. As I opened the door I had the filling I was thunder-stricken, that’s how frightened I was. There was a downfall. It was raining hard and blasts of wind were raising the water in incredible places, from where all the exposed and less exposed things were being washed up. It was like even the air we had to breathe was gone leaving me breathless, looking for my future opened gate of breathable air. All these have frightened me unspeakably. This kind of enmity from nature was unacceptable. With my soul bent I jumped outside. After less than two steps I went back home. I was soaked. I changed my wet clothes and took others, for rainy days. I got the calcium carbide lamp ready. I fire the lamp when my mother wakes up.

She tells me something about being “careful”, while I reopened the door to get again in that wrathful weather. With nauseous-ness, protecting the lamp’s flame, I try to swim in the heavy rain storm, to the place where the car will take us and drive us to the mine. The wind calmed down a little and it seemed that less water was falling. I got in front of the solitary poplars. Through the catchy weather’s, pluralism of noises, you could discern other more … different. My heart endeavored to take the size of a flea. Sometimes, in this place I saw how a horse flesh threw its master in the yawn together with the cart. I don’t doubt the stories that were flowing as folklore of that unfriendly place. The strange noise, the noise that had distortioned in the storm, was starting to become clearer, stronger. I compared it with the noise of a man that would climb down from a tree in the way he would step on a foot board of which was hitting strongly his feet. God forbid us, who would be at four o’clock in the morning in a poplar on a stormy weather?! My mind went at … Satan, crippling all my senses. The noise that was growing high was obvious it won’t stop going on clearly above my head. I could not see a thing as I lent my body over the lamp’s flame so that the rain and the wind won’t fade it. I was exactly under the poplar and the close descent of the Evil one accelerated and it was closer and closer. The storm, darkness and lack of any other person around, the fact that not even the dogs barked, generated a fear that brought me to the verge of insanity. All the stories with the Evil one, vampires, genii, grumps, ghosts and all that man cannot clarify in a life, went through my mind like a flash and in stead of running from that place, in a fatality, I go under the poplar. I was so cold and I realized that if I did not know what it was, what “that” was, I could never ever go back to that place. “Its” descent was loud, with branch ruptures and also fed with other types of noises that made you believe someone was specially making all this, ahead framed, to get you out of your mind. In that moment I was hit in the head, right on my back, then I could hear a plump. Yes, my lamp faded. The water was leaking on my hands. Restlessness I drop match after match. Finally, I managed to light one. It might have been from pity. I light the lamp with the agony of a man that has to do something that he never wished to, I turned to see the Evil one. My loping glance was looking for something at the eyes level. Nothing! God, I hope you haven’t taken my mind away! For ten minutes, although I wasn’t waiting for him, I am determined to encounter my self with Satan. I have heard him and I won’t be able to see him? Behind, there wasn’t anybody.

Was I dead? I haven’t felt anything of a kind. I blink and I rub my eyes, it is impossible! At least a shadow or something, a steam, a whiff, a little something, that could justify my experience. Nothing! Totally bewildered, with my hands and feet “cold as ice”, absolutely disappointed and played-out, with an immense hole inside me, I get away, but my foot “clamps” into something. I wasn’t far from having a heart attack. I set the lamp towards the ground. On the ground there was a wet owl that climbed down as I told, getting me to paroxysm. On an instant, the animal instinct inside me hurled towards the owl to rip it away, that’s how angry I was, especially after her “landing”, but seeing her so small and helpless I took her carefully and put her in a hollow from the tree. I was hardly recovering from my human state. Although, my lamp faded again, I kept going ahead in the dark, getting my thoughts away from the momentary reality that suggested, that in case it would rain with the same force, downhill, at “Iobanel” and “Saveta’s” bridge, I would have some work with the bourns. I passed “Iobanel” but at “Saveta’s” bridge because of the dirty catch the alluviums obstructed, and the water that was coming from “Poderei” was divided in two. So, I won’t get my feet too wet, I thought which way to go, and heard under the obstructed bridge some gasping. Oh, my God, are you testing me again? It wasn’t just a simple estimation; the noises were coming right from under the bridge. How can this be, if the bridge if full of water, till above?!! Do I without any fail have to go insane in this morning?!! Please, God, don’t leave me! The moan and gasping didn’t continue. I “requested” again the carbide lamp light. As the sounds didn’t end I felt that my senses were leaving me. Not even a distance of a hundred meters was from those two places of challenging my mental health. As the noises from under the bridge amplified I had to get closer … With the strength I had left I put my hat on the lamp so that the wind won’t blow it. With a hard to hide sickening I lay on my knees in the clay soil from the lip of the bridge. I push the lamp forward, under the obstructed bridge and try to pull my self through the mud under the bridge. A little earlier seeing the owl I calmed down. Now, when I saw that scarecrow full of mud, a roar broke out from my being has covered all the storm’s noises on an area of two kilometers. Don’t believe I exaggerate but until that morning I haven’t seen people “dressed up” in mud in the light of a carbide lamp. I shouted out at “him” so that I would cover my fear:
– Who on earth are you?