13

02:14

It's funny how civilization triggers the need to exchange experiences, the desire to share thoughts, to maintain close bonds with other human beings. It's funny how few can be alone in the world, not speaking to anyone, not keeping in touch. It's funny that the saddest form of loneliness is drinking alone, looking at oneself in the mirror, or eating alone in front of a TV screen and finding consolation in the net of people who don't really see each other but feel that they have something in common.

When Gemma went to N., Adam felt as alone as one can possibly feel in the world. He felt heartbroken like a pet left by his owner for an unspecific amount of time, and even though he was instructed and told what is the reason for the beloved's departure, he spoke a different language and couldn't understand. Adam was that much alone. His loneliness started to be tiresome and exhaustive, the shed they built together remained a promise of something not likely to come true. He knew that she would come back, and she promised to come back more often than once a month, but he would go painfully lonely and needed the contact with other human beings. After what he had been taught and after what he had seen, he didn't want to spend his life on his own but wanted his life to be full and stimulated.

He went to one of the institutions, those places where they grouped children wandering around the streets without guidance. They welcomed him heartily, assessed his age as entering the adulthood or, possibly, late teens on the verge of maturation and, as he had no proof either on paper or in the corners of his memory, he entered the world of grown-ups. And the grown-ups had tokens of the maturity. He was given a pair of shoes, a pair of trousers, one shirt, a warm winter coat and a mug. He was located to one of the buildings and a bed in the room full of more or less twenty beds was given to him as the substitute of all material possessions.

The first night was tough, as he missed both Gemma and his shed which, despite its hollowness, had more space for him than the mentioned bed. But he knew that Gemma would be coming back and he knew that he will be coming back to the shed, so the idea of not resigning from it altogether was somewhat consoling.

Next few days proved to be cheerful. He was relocated to another room, this time comprising eighteen beds, a job in the preservation of food was given to him and he made new friends: boys similar to him in age and posture. They had common interests and they thought about the world in the same way. Adam felt a part of the group and, as a result, he felt a part of K. N. seemed somewhere far away, too far for him to comprehend it, even though he had first-hand information about what it was like there and what could be seen in the place he could never in his life visit.

It was then that he realized that Gemma was special. When he looked at other girls, he knew that her figure and her face were out of this world, and possibly belonged to N. from the very beginning. Boys and girls he met were rather lanky, haggard, grayish, as if they had genetic predispositions not to be attractive at all. It wasn't that they were utterly ugly. Their appearance was rather mediocre. Some were bigger, some were fatter, some slimmer and taller, but when he compared them to Gemma there was something missing. A quality they didn't have. Something small like an atom, but when missing, it made all the difference. And he knew perfectly that he belonged to this atom-less group just fine. If there was really a division between people from N. and from K., it was K. he had to treat as his motherland. In K.'s woods he wandered alone as a child, K.'s fruits were his meals and K.'s soil gave him both warmth and protection in summer and cold and threat in winter.

Sometimes when the boys were sleeping, he tried to recall Gemma's looks, her smell and the taste of her body. When boys were talking about girls, he felt silent and didn't want to say even one single world about her. He kept her a secret, a lost treasure he didn't want to share with anyone, especially those who wouldn't appreciate her being as he grew to appreciate.

He first knew when he was in love when she disappeared for a longer period of time. He missed looking at her and couldn't wait for her return from the unspecific place on earth.
Then he started to be afraid of death. He never cared about his life, he survived terrible conditions, hunger, colds, and dangerous weather. But when she appeared in his life he started to be careful. He didn't want to fall sick and die and he didn't want to be killed by anyone. Suddenly he started to value his life and all those moments they spent together. He also didn't talk about her in front of anybody, as if profaning her by speech could do her harm.

From time to time he came back to the forest to check whether this old man was still alive and whether the house she used to live in was still standing, but he knew that K. was devoid of one single bright ray of sunshine. And that made him more mature than all the tokens that he obtained by K. authorities. The bed didn't matter. What mattered was his newly received isolation.