Context

In the spring of 1970, my life was moving from a phase of transition and maturation toward a more stable course, at least professionally. Since March 1970, I had begun teaching as an assistant at the Polytechnic Institute and, at the same time, I was in my third year at my second university, the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Bucharest. At twenty-six, I was a studious young man, passionate about classical music and cinema, but still shy and uncertain in sentimental relationships. I devoted most of my time to study and work, yet the thought of a stable relationship had been following me for a long time. I wanted to find a partner who would complete me, with whom I could resonate intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, according to an ideal of harmony that included, perhaps without my realizing it, the old aesthetic models of Greek civilization in which I had been formed. I knew, however, that this was not an easy search.

Those years seemed to carry a diffuse optimism in the air. After the opening of the late 1960s, many of us believed that life in the country might follow a promising trajectory. The general atmosphere gave the impression of a relative relaxation, in which hopes did not seem entirely doomed to failure. We shared dreams, nourishing a moderate optimism, while remaining aware of the uncertainty of the times in which we lived. In my circle of friends, we met at tea dances, dance halls, restaurants or, in summer, at swimming pools, but everything belonged to a routine that nothing seemed able to break.

Mamaia

At that time, I belonged to a close group of friends with whom I often went to tea dances and also on trips, especially to the seaside. Thus, the four-day bridge around May Day — which fell on a Friday — was the perfect opportunity to step out of the daily rhythm: an eagerly awaited escape, a chance to recharge our batteries. We were a group of about eight people, male and female friends, all unmarried.

We all checked in at the Doina Hotel, hoping to spend a few sunny days on the beach. But the weather was not on our side. Cold rains and spring winds scattered any hope of getting a tan. Instead of lying on the sand, we spent our time shivering in the hotel bar, talking and joking without great expectations. When it was not raining, we went out onto the deserted promenade to enjoy the sea breeze. On one such day, the cold and rain outside were to bring me the encounter that would change my life.

The Encounter

After a purposeless walk, I returned to the hotel to change for lunch. Leaving my room on the second floor, I headed toward the elevator. At the end of the corridor, on one of the sofas near the lift, sat a young blonde woman with a distinguished bearing, calmly reading a copy of Stern. From a distance, I noticed the contrast between her honey-blonde hair and her blue angora sweater, which created an image of captivating simplicity. She radiated relaxed elegance and a nonchalance that immediately attracted me, so I felt the impulse to approach her. Politely, I asked permission to sit on the sofa opposite her.

“Of course,” she answered, lifting her eyes for a moment.

I could thus observe her better. Her face had firm lines, a noble and distinguished air, and her eyes — those large, dark green-blue eyes, with shades of grey and amber — instantly reminded me of the eyes of Marie Laforêt, the French singer whom I greatly admired. They conquered me at first sight. She was wearing tight black corduroy trousers, which perfectly completed the image of an unusual yet captivating beauty. She had a discreet, irresistible elegance.

I tried to start a conversation by asking her, somewhat awkwardly, since I did not know German, about the magazine she was reading.

“What does Stern write about? I have never read it.”

To my surprise, she smiled slightly and answered kindly, a sign that my presence did not bother her:

“Interesting articles about culture and current affairs. I like to keep up to date.”

A few jokes immediately relaxed the atmosphere, and the conversation began to flow naturally. I explained why I was in Mamaia, then asked her:

“Are you here on holiday?”

“Yes, I’m staying for the whole long weekend, until Sunday. I’m here with some friends and their daughter,” she replied, closing the magazine.

Her voice was calm and melodious, and her gestures had a natural elegance. As we talked, I discovered that we shared a passion for music. She told me that she greatly loved “Le Métèque,” the famous song by Georges Moustaki. I was surprised, because I liked it very much too. By a momentary trick, however, I confessed that I did not know it.

“Really? Then I should hum it for you,” she said, and began to sing softly, looking into my eyes.

Her voice had a special warmth, and the movements of her delicate hands strengthened my impression of refinement. After a while, she looked at her watch and said:

“I have to meet my friends for lunch. But I enjoyed talking to you.”

“So did I. Perhaps we’ll see each other later?” I asked, with a slight hope.

“Certainly,” she said, standing up. “I am Astrid,” she added, extending her hand.

“Luca,” I replied, delighted with my new acquaintance.

Although we had only just met, I already felt that this refrain had created a subtle bond between us.

On the Beach

The next morning, the sun timidly slipped through the spring clouds. We all put on our swimsuits and went down to the beach. The water was icy, but nobody thought of going in; we were content to enjoy the stingy rays of sun on the sheets we had brought from the hotel. At one point, one of my friends touched me lightly on the shoulder:

“Look, someone is watching you.”

I turned my head and saw Astrid, her hair in the sea breeze, wearing a blue one-piece swimsuit and smiling at me. I stood up and went to meet her, while my friends giggled discreetly behind me.

“So we meet again,” I said, stopping in front of her.

“It seems so. I’m also taking advantage of the sun, aren’t I?” she replied.

I introduced her to my group, then invited her to walk with me along the shore. Speaking about music, films and plans for the future, the conversation flowed by itself, and that short walk on the sand seemed revelatory to me. When the sun began to hide again behind the clouds, I suggested:

“What would you say to meeting at the bar later, to continue our conversation?”

“Of course. Shall we meet there in an hour?”

At the Bar and in the Room

At the appointed time, we met in the hotel bar. I had come, officially at least, to continue our conversation about music, films, and our plans for the future. The bar, however, had no regard for such concerns. The music was so loud, and the voices around us struggled so hard to rise above it, that we had to lean toward each other and speak almost directly into one another’s ear.

Astrid was sitting on one of the high stools at the bar. At one point, treating the difficulty as a purely technical problem, I lifted her from the stool and settled her on my knees so that we could hear each other better. I do not know what surprised me more: my own boldness or the natural ease with which she accepted it. She did not resist; she looked at me with amusement, as if my acoustic explanation were transparent enough, but still acceptable.

The solution proved highly effective. We could now hear each other without difficulty, although I am not sure we still needed to say anything quite so important. We nevertheless continued our conversation in all seriousness, as though our position had been dictated solely by the adverse conditions in the bar. Had anyone been watching us, they would probably have understood sooner than we did that our discussion about music had become merely a pretext.

The boldness of the gesture was all the more surprising because I considered myself a shy and inexperienced young man. It seems, however, that my shyness had its moments of inattention. Astrid, instead of recalling me to good behaviour, seemed entertained by this unexpected departure from the rules of good manners. Her smile confirmed that I had not overstepped a boundary, at least from her point of view, but had discovered a kind of complicity between us.

After a while, the bar no longer seemed the right place even for such a close conversation. We went out into the lobby, but all the sofas were occupied, as though the entire hotel had conspired to leave us only one solution. I accompanied her to her room. At the door, Astrid spoke with a naturalness that made the invitation sound almost practical:

“My friends are in Constanța, on an excursion I preferred not to join. If you like, we can continue the conversation in my room.”

Of course, we had to continue our conversation. That was the official reason, and neither of us seemed inclined to dispute it.

In the room, the quiet seemed almost unbelievable at first. For a few minutes we tried to resume the conversation where we had left it, but the sentences grew shorter and the pauses longer. The closeness that had begun in the bar had lost its acoustic pretext and could no longer be hidden behind the music.

We kissed for the first time. It was not the hurried gesture of a holiday adventure, but a moment of emotion, curiosity, and mutual recognition. Moments of warm intimacy followed, accompanied, however, by a restraint that did not lessen their intensity. Perhaps the very fact that we knew when to stop kept that closeness from remaining a mere episode in a hotel room.

When it grew late, I felt that I had to leave.

“Will we see each other tomorrow, before you leave?” Astrid asked me at the door.

“Of course. I very much look forward to seeing you again.”

I returned to my room with the feeling that something far more important had happened than I dared to believe. Looking back, the bar of the Hotel Doina also deserves a place in our story: its noise gave me a pretext, and Astrid had the kindness not to take it too seriously.

Back in Bucharest

Once back in the capital, we continued to see each other constantly. Our walks through the city’s parks became the perfect setting for increasingly deep conversations. I learned then more about her life: she had graduated from the Medical Technical School on Pitar Moș Street, specializing in medical optics, and worked in an optical shop. She had been married for four years to an architect from whom she had just divorced. I was deeply impressed by her sincerity and by the maturity with which she approached our nascent relationship. She was an independent woman, yet in search of emotional stability, while I was seeking the same authentic communion of souls.

Late in the evening, I would walk her home, in the area of Spătarului Street. Each time we stopped with a small detour before the gate, in order to preserve discretion toward her family. The house was an old building, in the style of early twentieth-century Bucharest, with a small front garden dominated by an imposing linden tree. It seemed a place where time had remained suspended.

One evening, after we reached the gate, she looked at me intently and said:

“Would you like to come in for a little while? I’d like to show you my albums.”

This first invitation into her world marked the beginning of our great love story. We spent hours talking, laughing and discovering her past through photographs.

Gradually, from those albums and from her stories, I began to understand the more painful side of her life as well. Left motherless at only four years old, with her father, a lawyer, imprisoned at the Canal because he had served, as a first praetor, in the Siguranță, Astrid and her two sisters had passed through orphanages, children’s homes and, finally, into the care of their maternal grandparents, elderly people unprepared to raise other children in their old age. Behind her elegance and calm there lay, therefore, a biography broken by history, yet borne with a dignity that impressed me deeply.

The passion accumulated during those weeks of walks gradually turned into a deep and stable bond. The garden with the scent of the blooming linden tree, my departures in the silence of the night, and the journeys back home by night buses became a routine full of charm, a dear secret that belonged only to us.

I gradually realized that this was not a mere adventure. My previous fleeting relationships paled before the complexity and depth of what I felt for Astrid. She had a sensitivity that attracted me irresistibly, and before long I gave up everything else, understanding that only beside her did I find true fulfilment.

Trials

Our relationship, however, also went through trials. Over seven years, we experienced periods of distance, moments of searching in which we were separated. The most difficult rupture came after our first year together, when I did not feel ready to assume the definitive responsibility of marriage. There followed a painful separation which, at the time, seemed to have brought our story to an end.

Yet destiny had other plans. By 1977, our paths had crossed again. When the devastating earthquake of March 4 shook the city, catching me in my mother’s house, my first thought, instinctive and lightning-fast, was to run to Astrid’s home. I found her alone, deeply frightened, in her new ninth-floor apartment, which had swayed terrifyingly during the earthquake. Holding her in my arms in those moments of crisis, I understood fully how much she meant to me and that my life without her made no sense. I decided to assume the future I had been avoiding, and a few months later, in August, we were married.

Since then, we have spent more than four and a half decades together, building a life full of fulfilments, strewn with challenges that we have always overcome shoulder to shoulder.

Epilogue

The experience I lived with Astrid showed me that there is a profound element of chance, or perhaps of providence, in sentimental life. You never know where and when the person destined to change the course of your existence will appear. Relationships that begin under apparently perfect auspices may suddenly fall apart, while a chance encounter, on a rainy day by the sea, may become the foundation of an entire life.

Looking back, I realize that what began then was not merely a momentary attraction, but the meeting of two solitudes, each in its own way seeking emotional stability. I came with my shyness, my anxieties and my ideals; she came with the maturity of an experience already lived and with the desire to regain trust in a relationship. Perhaps it was precisely this difference that drew us together: I found in her security, warmth and femininity, while she found, perhaps, in me a form of devotion still uncertain, but sincere.

Years followed, with separations, returns, hesitations and trials, but that thread begun in Mamaia never truly broke. The earthquake of March 4, 1977 merely revealed to me clearly what, deep down, I already knew: that Astrid had become part of my life, not merely a beautiful memory or a possible love.

Since then, time has added, over that romantic beginning, all the layers of a life lived together: joys, worries, achievements, weariness, trials, reconciliations and that quiet solidarity which, in the end, matters more than any initial exaltation. The meeting at the Doina Hotel, in a cold spring by the sea, has remained for me proof that sometimes destiny does not announce itself solemnly, but appears naturally, in a hotel corridor, in the form of a lady reading a magazine and raising her eyes toward you.