The warmth of shared loneliness

I padded up and down the main road. The muffled crunch of my boots on snow broke the clear blue and white silence. If there’s enough of it, snow makes anywhere seem like a dream with the volume turned low and in Cerna Sat - a tumble down village on a frozen lake in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains - the snow lay deep. I looked for somewhere to put my tent, but secretly hoped to be invited to share the warmth of one of the snug wooden cabins that lined the road.

I met a man wearing a sheep’s fleece at the crossroads. His thick bare hands gripped the axe, apparently immune or inured to cold. He was chatting to a woman, who was wrapped up in so many scarves only her eyes were visible. If it wasn’t for the sounds and the steam rising from somewhere in the scarf bundle I could have easily imagined that she had no mouth. I asked the couple if there was a shop, using one of my five words of Romanian. Cerna Sat looked too small for a shop, and I was expecting an unhelpful shrug but I had judged it too hastily. There was a shop and a bar the mouthless woman told me and I could sleep on the terrace if I liked.

In the bar I sipped hot chocolate next to a green porcelain stove with Luksa, the proprietor. He reminded me of my grandad; a proud and generous man with a quiet gravitas. I drank cup after cup of steaming hot chocolate to prolong my stay. The sun set outside the single paned window as we looked at the fire together in silence, both grateful for the other’s insouciance. When it was time to go back to the cold world outside Luksa poured two brandies and motioned that I would stay in his house that night.

We shared a plate of cold meat and raw onion before bed and looked at old pictures of his family. He lingered on a picture of his young wife and I pretended not to notice a tear fall on the dusty carpet.

As we sat together it became clear that our unspoken bond was loneliness. His loss was a clear and noble one, the simple heart ache of a widower who merged his life with another when he was young and then watched as half of himself was taken. Mine was the complex loneliness of a wanderer, the urbane heartlessness of a city dweller who loved everything but nothing in particular. I had the world at my fingertips but had nothing to loose. Both of us were solitary, he in situ, living in the same village for decades, me never settling but on a cold January night in 2011 our paths crossed and we warmed our kindred spirits next to the fire.”

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