I hadn’t been doing much more than hanging around and all the time I felt like getting back on the road again Various hellhounds were on my trail and the discontentment blues stared back at me every which way I turned, churning deep inside with a howling and a growling that just left me plain old unsatisfied. Them restless blues that do a man no good and even worse to the woman he’s with– they make him unreliable, shiftless and unsteady, so that the only thing he knows how to do is to rock and to roll and to reel around with awful mean things upon his mind

Marianne wanted me to come with her to a wedding party in the countryside but the romance was becoming sticky and I felt it was time to leave. When Saturday afternoon arrived however, I started to move my bags out of the door to the inner courtyard on our third floor level and ominous peals of commanding thunder suddenly broke out, causing the windows to rattle. We exchanged glances and laughed only to be drowned out once more by the resounding claps of great hands in the sky

"Maybe the gods are telling you not to go!" Marianne suggested hopefully, wanting to show me off to her friends at the party. I could not help but submit to the poetry of the occasion and consented to come along to this wedding thing, which was at least in the right direction towards Romania

But pretty much from that moment our relationship ended in any meaningful sense. I began to drift away into my travelling dream world where none save the wind can find me. On the train journey, I stood in the corridor gazing out the window at the diminishing Hungarian countryside, leaving Marianne to talk with her gaggle of friends in the cabin. The clack-a-clack of the carriages told me I was being unfair but it was none of their business I stared obstinately out into the fields and forests, so far from the sea

They all elected to hit the village pub before arriving at the country-house of the newly-weds and again I left them to booze it up indoors, whilst I went to sit on the grass and dig the August evening. I mooched with the melancholy meditation of getting back on the road and was already beginning to miss the comforts of the settled life in which I had indulged this past week.Tomorrow morning there would be no pair of nipples to nibble at and no fresh cakes baked for me in the afternoon!

Changes, changes, I told myself and decided to centre my mind with some Tai Chi movements on the lawn. Pretty soon, the attention of the locals was aroused and they wanted to know if I was completely loco or what–quite understandable, really, considering that even practising yoga got people into trouble in the communist times, thus all of the esoteric arts were strange and new to them. Three young men came up to me and uttered some throaty greeting. I stood on a stone to reply (for Hungarian yokels are all enormous):

"Anglezi"I told them with that half-crazed, self-excusing smile, common to all English abroad–Ahem! Which way is it to the beach? Do you speak English? You people just don’t try, do you?

The youngest of my new friends moved forward, wanting me to teach him how to make the movements, so I grabbed his beer bottle and began to raise it to my lips with an exaggerated slow-motion concentration. That convinced them that even if I was a weirdo, I was also a good sport and they left me alone

The country-home of the newly-weds was large and impressive with wide, lounging gardens and pear and plum trees amongst the casting shade. Very few people seemed to speak English and I couldn’t really be bothered trying to make conversation, despite Marianne’s attempts to introduce me to various groups. The only two that I knew did speak my language were a beautiful blonde Estonian girl, whom I carefully avoided and a New Zealand guy who had learnt to speak fluent Hungarian from his girlfriend in Budapest He was as much as a social oaf as I and once he was sure that I wasn’t the kind of self-righteous ‘spiritualist’ that he couldn’t stand, we got on famously - our mutual appetite for gluttony bringing us together as we devoured beef, beer and cakes throughout the evening

I was saved from having to participate in smalltalk by the dancing frolics of two small girls, who pranced about in carefree fun to the music playing from the large speakers. In no time, I joined them and found playmates far more on my level of sophistication than the society of the adults who sat in small groups with large wine glasses

Dinner was traditional cow and it sat heavy in my usually herbivore stomach. Everything was going fine until after the dessert, when the Estonian chick sauntered by the opposite side of the grand banquet table and flashed me a quick, inviting glance. A minute later I found myself talking to her at the far end, making use of the obscuring shadows there

Her name was Ciscelia and she was a 19 year-old studying to be an architect. She was on a seven-year university course in her home town in Estonia, a country bordering the icy Baltic Sea She was in Hungary for the summer holidays and was not having such a great time, as her host was a languid bore who tired her with his sticky amor. He clung on past all conceivable hope–I’d heard him say to her in English earlier:

"The only thing I seem to be a master at is annoying you!" That kind of playtalk shows real desperation and he must have been fuming as he saw me with this pristine goddess who was saying::

"I don’t mind telling you that I think you’re very handsome!" She spoke quickly and with a bold blush that endeared her to me straight away. I almost turned around to see if she was addressing someone standing behind me. Her eyes were wide and new-morning blue, her skin dripped with melting butter and her hair draped in fine golden threads across an elegant, slender neck and bronze shoulders that ought to have been the subject for every sculptor in Europe. Though graceful and long, her legs were oddly muscular and I wondered if she lived at the top of a hill–I’d climb it

She spoke with sharp intelligence and perception, yet with the purity and innocence of a child as if she were about fifteen seconds old. Our hearts leapt into each other’s mouths at once and our eyes met constantly, seeking reassurance that the feeling was mutual I boasted about my travelling exploits to milk all the admiration I could get from this angel who fixed me with an adoring gaze I could scarcely have deserved

I tried to understand the significance of our meeting at this time–Surely someone had misplaced the pages of the script! I was in the middle of the Character-Making Epic Voyage movie. This was no time for the Irresistible Girl Of My Dreams theme to come along!

Cis told me about her family back home and the affection with which she spoke about them and her life there, made me want to throw my plans up in the air and go to huddle close with her throughout the pneumonic darkness of the Baltic winter

I’m still not sure that I shouldn’t have gone with her and if I had the money, I’d go and try to find her now, though it’s too many months later and it occurs to me that I only know her first name! These are the moments when the drifts of lives are determined and I could just as easily now be trudging through snow as I am presently writing this in the shade of a palm tree

The whole evening was made more complicated by the fact that I was still together with Marianne–you remember Marianne? And also by the jealous sulks of Cis’ host who hunched moodily over a growing pile of emptied beer bottles. I allowed the haze of the celebrations to blur my nagging guilt that we were walking on the wrong side of the fence But then as I was trying to persuade Cis to come to Romania with me, Marianne mooched over and tried to drag me off to dance with her. No way

"But you were dancing with the children, before!" She protested in a slurred voice

"Yeah but I don’t dance with adults–especially drunk ones!" I told her, my sympathies now captured elsewhere. I tried not to feel the looks that Marianne was throwing at Cis and it was a relief when she gave up, allowing me to feel like a hero again in the eyes of my newly-found beloved

"Hitchhiker in action!" Ciscelia declared as we watched Marianne walk sadly away. That seemed to be about the face of it and maybe that meant I was a bastard but gold is gold and only a fool would stay hanging onto the silver. I reached for her hand under the table and she braced herself for a kiss–but that would have caused Marianne too much pain and so we just sat talking until the early hours, trying to make the most of the time we had been given together. Fatigue eventually overtook us and we separated for sleep with both of us longing for what was not-to-be

Marianne left early in the morning and I stumbled up to see her off, hoping to leave a good last impression to smother the grief that she must have felt the night before. Thankfully, she didn’t cry and I did my best to say all of the right things before falling guiltily back on my mattress. I’ve not written to her since and I only hope she managed to round the whole thing off okay in her mind. Where did all my shining armour go?

After a few hours, everyone who had tried to sleep roused themselves from unconscious, drunken catatonia to join the mentally-absent hard-core of partyers who had stayed awake throughout the mosquito-swarming night. Cis and I could hardly look each other in the eye that morning, as our dreams could no longer hide under the sweet deceit of night The light of day left the situation bare and bleak. The obvious and depressing truth was that she would not be coming with me to Romania, as she had to rejoin her college in Estonia within ten days. It was clear also that I could not abandon my journey. I was signed up on a contract to blunder on East with no ticket to ride

The awkward atmosphere began to ease as the morning wore on and we realised that this would be a test of our maturity–To understand that in the true alchemy of love, the perfect will always keep its essence and find its place and meaning through changing tides of fortune Only that of transient worth could fade. But what did we know? We were just kids

"We should never have met!" She complained and I was careful not to drink in her expression too deep, lest I might never again emerge

I appeased her jealous host with some charming morning conversation and managed to arrange a lift with him and Cis into the next main town where I could hitchhike on. I clambered into the back seats on the 20 minute drive whilst he and Cis sat in the front. I continued to maintain amicable chat with him, whilst my real focus of communication went into my right hand, exploring the soft nape of Ciscelia’s neck on his blind side. My fingers contained the entirety of my soul as they probed her shoulder, smoothed the lobe of her ear and squeezed her free hand. All the while, my voice rattled on cheerfully, hollow of any attention or being

Finally, we came to a road where I could start to thumb lifts and the farewells were made. I managed to plant a soft kiss on her neck as we embraced but we pulled apart to maintain the illusion to her host that nothing was going on. The car drove off and I was left to stand alone by the side of the road in the heat of noon. Two bags for company and feeling very sad, I watched as my last chance pulled away

"Fuck! Fuck this! Why?" I shouted to no one in particular. A few mothers waiting for buses drew their children closer to them protectively. I didn’t care. I stuck out my thumb with an expression that would have deterred all but a blind man. I held my head in my hands and looked up at the sky for answers. But there was no escape there either and nothing could change the basic story: She was going North and I was going South