Doing up her chestnut ringlets, which flipped out from the heading, she charmingly smiled and said: “Hello, I am Marie. Is there a place for me by the fireplace? I’m awfully frozen!”
The ring of the broken glass that dropped out of Jean’s hands seemed like a prothalamion. And when the eyes of these two met again, I swear that in the whole drawing room, we could hear only the beating of hearts; and we literally could see how Marie’s and Jean’s eyes met somewhere in the middle, giving a rise to the biggest electric wave that flew up and burst into multicolored fireworks.
This love story can have a magnificent continuation, and let it never come to an end!
We really enjoyed Luke’s company. He was an elderly Frenchman living in the hostel for the third day. And if he was at his best every evening, brimming with various stories from his life, today he was simply irresistible. It is probably because today, his company was shared by a young blonde girl: slender, pretty, giggly and, contrary to popular opinion, definitely sensible.
Luke was about sixty years old and homely: average height, with some excess pounds and some gray hair on head and hands. But his eyes and his charm could captivate any woman. He had an exquisite sense of humor, tremendous talent for mimicry, and a constantly positive temper. That all made him the pet of society and one of the favorites of our “sit-round the fireplace” routine. It seemed that the atmosphere became warmer and nicer with him around. At once, we wished to share our thoughts, feelings and experiences.
That’s why nobody was surprised when we saw a young nymph-like lady in his company, about 25 years old with a model’s appearance, and who seemed to be absolutely fascinated by the elderly gentleman. They looked so perfect together that nobody felt jealousy or scorn, or desired to give Luke a lecture about good morals or anything regarding his family hearth, which he had mentioned several times before.
Hey, yeah. Luke was married. Unlike many others, he had a lucky marriage, as he told us himself. He loved his wife, with whom he had lived about thirty years already and who (again, according to him) was a real godsend and perfection. And here, against the background of those telling their stories, we watched Luke, who slightly embraced his young companion at the waist, and made an absolutely crazy tea mixture from a set of herbs. He listened to our talk, occasionally inserting a remark or laughing with his slightly hard baritone.
It was strange, but it had never come to our minds to suspect him of infidelity – he was so sincere in describing his wife and his feelings. None of us could even think of reproaching him about obvious adultery. It was evident that he wouldn’t put the beauty in a taxi after all, being limited only by talks at the fireplace.
At that time, we were discussing the story of Yen and Olga (the Russian girl) when the door of the hostel suddenly opened, and a Fury appeared on the threshold. No, not literally, of course. It was a beautiful woman; but at the peak of rage, she was unearthly! My French is not bad; I can talk without barriers. But the tirade of this madam was so calorific and fast with a truly Italian temperament that even I, with my knowledge, could understand only the essence of it and imagine the possible aftereffects: a visitation of God and other measures of punishment which will be applied to her husband immediately.
