Cavatina Andante, Allegro, Presto

Édition Hirmann

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Cavatina Allegro, Andante, Presto

Allegro

The bus stopped along a long straight road running on top of the coastal dunes. Its door opened with a dry sneeze and the driver craned his neck back, searching for the man he had promised to deposit at the spot. He spotted him a few rows further back, impassively staring out to sea.

‘Oi!’ the driver called. A neighbour had to nudge the man to make him take notice. At last he pulled himself together and got up, clutching a picture postcard in his hand. He came forward and held the card to the driver’s face. The driver nodded emphatically and motioned him to get off at last, pointing to the open door.

The man clambered down stiffly and then waved a polite thank you to the driver. The door slammed shut and the ancient bus pulled out into slow moving traffic.

Scrawny, neglected looking, perhaps in his late 70’s, the man stood for a while, slowly taking in a strange scene unfolding before his eyes. He found himself on the edge of a long straight, narrow road fringed by occasional palm trees and scrawny bushes. It was like a scene from the Vietnam war: thin smoke drifting across the road from invisible fires on either side lower down the slope of the levee carrying the road.

Along its length as far as he could see a slow thin stream of people was straggling towards him in disordered little clusters – women mainly, small children padding alongside, mostly barefoot, keeping close to the dusty verge of the road. Most of them, children included, were lugging things, hampers and baskets and rolled up sheets and blankets festooned with objects of gaudy plastic. Most adults wore straw hats or had one hanging on their backs; they wore not much else apart from a sarong or shirt tied at the waist….the children were practically bare.

He half expected fighter-bombers to swoop down from the sky and drop napalm to scatter the straggling line and force everyone to seek safety, running down the slope of the levee into the shelter of trees. Nothing of the sort happened, of course, it stayed peaceful – it was just a late summer evening by the seaside. He watched for a while, then shrugged and turned around.

Opposite the straggling file moved a slow stream of cars heading home from the beach, stopping here and there by the roadside to pick up a family and load them into a car already overstuffed with beach kit and kids, squeezing the living into dead spaces left between their disordered kit, anywhere where room could still be found. Kids started to howl, too tired at the end of a long hot day even to feel relieved.

The man stood still for a while, watching the strange scene unfolding and waiting for some sort of inspiration for taking action or for something dramatic to happen to galvanize him into it. Nothing did, the tired traffic just moved slowly on in almost total silence – the odd shout or cry did not penetrate his fuzzy consciousness. Then he glanced down on the postcard still held in his hand, examined it more closely and looked around in search of the scene depicted.

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Behind him was a battered banner stretched across a crudely made arch of rough hewn timber. It formed the entrance to a campsite situated in the floodplains lower down, well below the level of the road running on top of the levee.

He held up the picture….the similarities were obvious but so were some vaguely unsettling differences – the text on the banner was the same but the lettering was curiously different and the arch was of a more sturdy construction suggesting that the previous one somehow failed the test of a few harsh seasons of winter storms. He stood still for a long time, trying to figure out the meaning of it all and to find some new bearings for himself – it all seemed very confusing.

He had been there before, he sort of knew that, but beyond that nervy feeling of déjà vu lay an unsettling penumbra of uncertainty – when, why, how, and what was the point of it? The answers escaped him – the fluffy shapeless stuff in his brain refused to shift or coalesce into any recognisable meaning. With a shrug he put the postcard away, stuffing it into a breast pocket of his windcheater.

He looked around and then crossed the road and walked up to the campsite’s pitiful arch and leaned against one of its legs, still trying to puzzle it out. He found himself standing on a little timber platform forming the top end of wooden stairs leading down the steep side of the levee to scattered clumps of trees. Down there, under the trees, were tightly packed large tents and a few parked cars sheltering under the trees’ ready-made camouflage. Blue smoke was curling from dozens of charcoal fires, filling the air with alien smells of the paraffin used to light them – just napalm by another name, he thought, no doubt dreamed up for more effective marketing.

As his head emptied of the shuffling noises of slow moving traffic behind him he became aware of snatches of conversation: distant parental calls, a babble of indistinct music and a host of domestic noises of things being moved or chopped or flattened, spilled or dumped. They provoked evocative but unsettlingly elusive feelings in him.

He took a few steps down and then stopped to make room for some families coming off the road behind him, trailing their kit and kids. With every step down the stairway the hubbub of the campsite intensified and some discrete spikes of noise became discernible. There was even a snatch of melody suddenly becoming distinct, some tired hit from the 60’s, though he could not recall the words or its name.

He retrieved the postcard from his pocket once more for confirmation and satisfied, replaced it, then moved on to continue his descent into the thin blue smoke filling the undergrowth. At the bottom he halted again and then moved on slowly between lines of almost suburban tents hidden under trees, subdivided by rows of neglected bushes.

He stopped momentarily to watch a baby astride the edge of an inflatable pool and wondered who was looking after it. Then a woman emerged from the tent and grabbed the baby with one strong hand and then, holding it under one arm, disappeared behind the flap of a tent. Then he noticed a man, overweight and naked, lying prone on a deckchair…..the man had been watching him. Now he lifted a glass to him in acknowledgement of good intent…..and so he waved back, before moving on.

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The sounds surrounding him became more intense – these were social rather than domestic noises, relatively unrestrained and without any sign of serious concern over the possibility of disturbing any neighbours: loud working class banter, giggling, music and cross-talk in which you could no longer follow the thread of any meaning.

Then, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, he spotted her – he was quite taken aback. Finding her had not been in his mind, it had never been an explicit part of his plans, but when it did happen, unexpectedly, it somehow felt fulfilling, as if he had finally attained some distant goal after an arduous journey. But who is she? he asked himself.

She was naked, her lush dark hair pinned up in the back of her neck: a ghost from Gaugin’s Tahiti, skin tanned deep brown, jewellery around her neck, a sarong loosely tied around the waist. She was busy shifting and arranging cushions and mattresses around a little encampment laid out for a feast in front of a large tent. She was helped by three women, all of them more or less naked…. loud, giggly, full of chat as if they had only just met following a long absence.

He stopped some distance away staying in the shelter of a tree, trying to get things into some kind of focus in his head.

He watched some men unloading provisions from the back of a car and lugging big cardboard boxes into an enclosure behind the tent – middle aged balding men, their shorts supporting bellies grown fat from comfortable living beyond the vanity of youth. Then other helpers joined in from the tent next door – younger men, in much better shape, and stark naked.

‘A nudist encampment, that’s what it is….facultative rather than fanatical’, he mused to himself with relief. In places like that he would have preferred to keep on his bathing suit or a pair of shorts….only women look good in the nude, women and a few carefully posed Gods and perhaps very young boys and little children.

‘She…..now she always loved taking her clothes off,’ he remembered, ‘she liked to be seen by men and to be wanted by them – it made her whole; it’s always been like that. Women dress and go topless for other women but she took her clothes off for men.

She still looked beautiful, even in her full ripeness, as beautiful as he remembered.

She rearranged some cushions and then straightened up and turned and then noticed him standing under the tree. She glanced at him and turned away to carry on with her preparations for a feast but then stopped in her tracks and turned back once more and looked hard at him and then her face lit up, bit by bit, like a street scene as the evening lights come on one by one and then she came towards him, tentatively at first but then with quickening pace.

Amore! she cried, It is you? Where have you come from? What are you doing here?

She untied her loose sarong and fastened it around her body as she approached him across the dirt road and then stopped a few paces from him, arms held out to him and smiling with a mixture of warmth and uncertain amazement.

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Andante

It is you, isn’t it? I can’t believe it!

Then she stepped up and put her arms around his neck and gave him a kiss on each cheek….then she held his head away to examine his face, inch by inch, smiling tenderly.

What an amazing surprise. How did you find us here?

I don’t know…..I can’t remember now. How are you?

I am fine, but…..I know you have been unwell. Are you all right now? I have been unwell….he muttered, mulling it over. It’s been such a long time. I’ll tell you all about it, bye and bye, but first come and join us. Can you come and eat with us tonight? Are you free this evening?

She took his hand and guided him towards the encampment. The other women had stopped work to observe them and now came forward to meet him, hurriedly putting on some loose garments over their naked bodies…..it was time to cover up….he was clearly the outsider.

Do you remember Reinhard? she asked them, as they approached, ‘You know all about him. And you, Reinhard, do you remember my friends? You met them all….oh, three, four years ago, for the last time….do you remember? ...Annalisa…..Letizia….Barbara….

Annalisa….yes, Annalisa…. Yes, and Letizia …. and Barbara – you must remember them; we have been taking summer holidays together for years and years, the four of us….you used to call us the ALBA Collective, the New Dawn…we were much younger then…and must surely have seemed so to you…do you remember?

Then she turned to him – suddenly the efficient manager, the axle around which everything turns when she is present, without anyone having to do anything about it: Make yourself comfortable here – we are having a party tonight and it is my turn to get the food ready so I am going to be busy for the next hour or so but after that, when we have eaten and the party is well underway, I will sit with you and we’ll have a proper conversation…..I want to know all about you, Reinhard, I want to know what happened to you and what brought you here. Come with me now, grab yourself a drink – here, take this one and come along…..come and sit here. I’ll introduce you to the others as they arrive, or perhaps once we are all settled down to eat.

She guided him to a deckchair and he sank down, clutching a drink she had offered.

He was introduced to some men as they came and went while the four women busied themselves with their preparations, sacred and profane. First to be introduced were two young lads; he tried to file them in his mind as Jim et Jules serving as mnemonic

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– he had no hope of remembering their real names. Then he tried to register all others as they were introduced, one after another: Meatball and Joker and Cowboy serving as aids to a failing memory – but in the process he allowed their real names to escape more or less instantly.

After that he was left alone. Everybody was busy lending a hand to the women in charge or phoning friends or broadcasting texts or consulting someone from the electronic ether or just helping themselves to drink and flirting with the women as the party mood warmed up. In the meantime he just sat still, careful to stay in the background, just contemplating the scene and trying to absorb its strange ambiance.

Then, unexpectedly, she came over to him and put her arms around his shoulders.

We are almost done, my love…now we are going to disappear for a few minutes to tidy ourselves up and put some clothes on – it will get chilly quite soon. Then we can sit down and chat – I want to know how you are – and how you got here…. With that, she disappeared inside the tent.

By then the little encampment had become quite crowded and he felt increasingly uncomfortable, even staying on the edge of the crowd….he wished he could climb into a tree and watch from above where he himself could not be seen. Who are all these people?....and what’s going on here?

She soon reappeared on the scene. By then she had a large flower stuck in her hair and she was wearing a flowing diaphanous gown with a shawl thrown over her shoulders held in place by a bright plastic ornament and she had a chain around one ankle but she was still barefoot in elegant sling sandals.

She came straight over to him, holding out her arms, smiling.

So, at last….let me sit down here, next to you. Are you all right? ….another drink?...No? So tell me, when did you get here? …only this evening?….and you came straight here….Have you eaten anything since you left? ….just a sandwich on the plane? that’s bad, surely it can’t be enough for you, it’s bad for you…..you look very thin. Anyway, we are almost ready to serve the food, it won’t be long now. Where are you staying? …you don’t know….do you want to camp out here?....we find you a mattress or let you use of a car with reclining seats. No?...Well, think about it…..

A young man then approached them. He had a guitar slung over his shoulder making him look like a ragged fighter from a long forgotten guerrilla war fought in some wretched forsaken corner of the world.

Her eyes lit up. ‘You made it! Bravo!….I am so glad…..and you brought your guitar!’

Then she turned to Reinhard. Do you still play the guitar, my love? – you used to, at one time, didn’t you?…. I did, I used to play…. She turned back to the young man.

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Perhaps you could share your guitar this evening and entertain us, the two of you – would you mind?

The young man shook his head in assent and looked over to the crowd milling around them. She gave him a playful push on the shoulders. Go, get yourself a drink and say hello to the others – you know more or less everyone here…leave your guitar here, with Reinhard and me.

The young man straightened up to remove the guitar from his back and then let it slide to the ground next to the deckchair where they were sitting. Then he apologetically muttered something about it being badly out of tune and disappeared in the crowd in search of better company.

Do you still play? she asked. No. No, I don’t think so…..I forget things. I think I can still tune a guitar. Do you think your Pablo would mind? His name isn’t Pablo for a start and I am sure he wouldn’t mind – he’d be pleased. He nodded.

How did you find your way to this place? she asked He thought for a while, then reached inside his jacket pocket to take out the postcard and handed it to her. She turned it over a couple of times, at first puzzled, then breaking into a broad smile. I sent you this!....years ago….from here, from this place!....and you have kept it….all these years….but you have moved in the meantime, haven’t you? You are no longer at this address. Yes….that’s right…..I must have moved several times…..that’s right, I moved several times.

How did you get here?

He again brooded for a while and then broke into a happy smile of recollection. ‘I just walked out. I walked out of that place where I now live…and walked into a travel agent’s I remembered; I had been there before when I was still working, they know me there….she greeted me by name and I gave her this card and said that’s where I wanted to go…..she asked me when I wanted to go and I said right now….and that made her laugh and she said I must be very keen…and then she asked me why and I said I could think of nowhere else I wanted to go…and so she fixed it up for me – a taxi ride to the airport, airline ticket, a bus ride and more buses….and then she even got me some money to spend. Here are her instructions’ he said, pulling a printed itinerary from his pocket and handing it to her.

Why did you come? He hesitated and then, embarrassed and trying to brush the question away, added by way of explanation: I found this card in a drawer….when I was looking for something else, I forget what, and I suddenly felt I wanted to come here….more than anything I wanted to do just then…

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So you remembered!….and you found this place!....how wonderful and how amazing! …..It is really wonderful to see you again, my love, you know that... She gave him a hug, leaning her head against his shoulder.

Do you remember any of it? The days when we were together…all those years ago? He looked at her but did not answer. Oh, it was wonderful….quite wonderful…..but….you said it yourself, back then….it couldn’t have worked, could it?....the age difference….and all those complications…it couldn’t have worked out….you said so yourself many times. I thought long and hard about it at that time….I weighed several factors…..unfortunately, my time by then was much more limited than when we first met…..in those days I could reach you at any time but by then, no longer, and it was difficult to get my dates to fit in with yours….and it all become much harder for me…..not to mention your situation which was becoming increasingly delicate….and so, in the end, I decided that I did not want us to continue any more, that it was better to stop there…..I am so sorry….Do you understand? Did you understand it then?

He nodded gravely: It was a ‘Dear John’ letter…..one doesn’t forget those things.

And now? What are you planning to do now, my love? How long will you stay? I don’t know…I need to get back – they will be very cross with me. Who will be cross? Who are ‘they’? The people….where I live….they are often very cross with me….I don’t know why.

He folded his arms, hugging himself, for comfort, in a form of feeble self-defence.

I don’t know. I no longer know how to talk to you….I’ve lost the knack…

Don’t lets worry about that now, my love….the main thing is you are here, with us… Oh – it’s so good to see you again!....

She gave him another hug and then, noticing someone beckoning to her from the tent, stood up suddenly:

Excuse me, darling, I’ve got to go now and see to things. We’ll be eating in about half an hour.

Presto

By then it was quite dark though still remaining comfortably warm. The cicadas nestling in the bushes all around were beating out a throbbing sound.

She disappeared in long shadows cast by lanterns set low around the centrepiece of the encampment. People were coming and going, bringing out dishes from behind the tent and arranging them in the middle of the encampment to form a large circle of cushions and dishes and stacks of paper plates, napkins, plastic cutlery and trays.

Then, quite suddenly she reappeared again from the shadows.

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Will you come and eat with us now? Come and join us! she beckoned.

He hesitated. No. No, I am not hungry. I don’t like food. I don’t eat when I am not hungry.

She looked at him, frowning.

You should eat something, darling, do try to eat. I can’t stay with you yet – must get back to take charge of things. But in the meantime….will you be all right here? Do try to get something to eat…

He nodded and she disappeared. Then he sat down on the deckchair and picked up the guitar. It was heavier than he remembered. He unzipped the case and lifted out the instrument, turning it around in the gathering gloom and watching the distorted reflections from its shiny domed surfaces. He shifted himself into a more comfortable position and tucked the instrument into his lap, getting ready to play. He fingered the frets and then gave the strings a tentative soft strum that remained imperceptible over the hubbub of the encampment.

It was badly out of tune. Flying on autopilot he started to tune it, methodically moving on, step by step. A cheap guitar, he thought,…but with quite a good sound… a very acceptable instrument….

He stopped when he felt it was more or less done, pleasantly surprised by what he had accomplished. Then he tried a few half-forgotten chords but he couldn’t feel any melody or rhythm coming to him – it all remained tentative and disjointed.

He gave up with a shrug but remained seated, just hugging the guitar in his lap and idly staring at the crowd in front of him.

What was it he used to play?....he used to teach himself….always start with scales…

He resumed experimenting, finding himself dredging up tonal sequences from some distant recesses of his failing memory – white noise, mainly, but not unpleasant.

All that time they were busy around the encampment helping themselves to food, collecting cutlery, finding somewhere to sit, shouting pleasantries to each other across the dishes and proposing repeated toasts to the cook and her helpers.

The evening was developing nicely and with time it turned into a harmless sort of Walpurgisnacht: the lights got dimmer, the noise changed from conversational hubbub to soft recorded music and some of the women got up to dance, stepping around unsteadily on rugs rolled out over the uneven grass. Others remained seated, gradually becoming entwined in a deepening penumbra and then some couples began to slope off in the dark and disappear into tents, cars or the bushes round the encampment.

He felt tired…..it was getting late and cold and dark… but still he played on, regardless, strumming aimlessly….unnoticed and unconcerned.

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Then, slowly, it went very quiet around him and the last few remaining fairy lights began to flicker and go out one by one. Only a handful of people were left around the encampment, quietly talking to each other, just getting up from time to time to refresh their drinks.

In a sporadic lull in conversation one of the men suddenly became aware of his playing; he sat up to listen and then waved to him in friendly encouragement:

That’s good!.... Lets have a little night music, some quiet entertainment to wind up the evening! Go on!

He went on playing, his hands unconsciously coaxing vague suggestions of a melody from the vast entropy of random notes swirling around in his head…..yes, he began to feel that the notes belonged together, they belonged to the evening under the cover of trees shielding them from a blackening sky above.

He pushed his chair back, a bit further into the shelter of trees, and continued playing – very quietly, just for himself, taking no notice of anyone else, feeling himself in a sublime state of grace.

And then her voice rose from the dark, soft and clear – hesitant at first, searching for long forgotten words evoked by the music reaching her across the space:

….for it was so beautiful, knowing now that you cared; I will always remember…. moments that we shared…. …for it was so beautiful…. so beautiful for me now….

She went on humming and singing as he played, catching up with the melody and reassembling the long forgotten words that went with it:

She was beautiful, Beautiful to my eyes. From the moment I saw her, the sun filled the skies.

She was so beautiful, beautiful just to hold. In my dreams she was spring time, Winter was cold.

How could I tell her what I could so clearly see: though I longed for her I never trusted me completely so I never could be free.

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Then she stopped and watched him in silence for a while – then she got up and walked over to him and got down on her haunches to kneel beside him.

Amore, that was lovely…..but are you all right?....all on your own, here, in the dark, on the very edge of things. Wouldn’t you rather come and join us? There is lots left to eat…..you must be getting hungry by now….

He just stared out into the dark, listening to the melody still escaping from his fingers.

What are you thinking about, my darling? It’s been such a long time…and yet, hardly any time at all, hardly anything has happened since we were together….

Abruptly he stopped playing, as if waking from a dream. He shook himself.

Yes….it’s been a long time…..I can hardly remember. Are you all right?

Yes, my love, hardly changed at all, hardly anything has changed, apart perhaps from giving up some of my hopes and a few dreams and no longer making any plans….not even for having a baby….or anything else beyond arranging summer holidays…. but life is all right, in the end…..it just goes on…and I still have my friends and my work and my life…I am so sorry….

What about….what is there to be sorry about? Oh….never mind, darling, it is too complicated to explain; now is not the time.

He resumed strumming, responding to his fingers’ surreptitious initiatives. She put a hand on his knee and caressed him and he bent down to rub his cheek against hers without interrupting play.

Someone from the crowd then shouted her name, calling her to return. He went on playing with growing confidence and then, unexpectedly, the sound of the guitar took flight in the night and soared above the people lolling in the encampment and all around fell silent.

After a few minutes Pablo turned around and called out to him, in sudden recognition:

‘I know that tune! The theme from the Deer Hunter….that’s what you were playing!

‘That’s it!.....he called back with a relieved smile of recognition,…that’s right…the Cavatina….from the Deer Hunter…...by Stan Myers!’ he added triumphantly.

He played on, louder, all the while gaining in confidence but in his own mind he was watching a stream of refugees hurrying along the long narrow road with the smoke of napalm bombs rising on either side and children running along, frightened, crying; then suddenly being swatted away like little fruit flies by a gust of explosive wind, barely noticed by anyone beyond their fleeing families.

Abruptly he stopped playing and there was scattered applause from the little crowd.

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But by then he was silently crying. The encampment remained silent. He put the guitar down, resting it carefully against the chair, and then rose to his feet. He looked around, uncertain, and then straightened up and slowly backed into the little copse encircling the encampment, in search of some privacy in which to regain his peace of mind…..to recover his lost state of grace.

Pablo rose to follow him but she put a restraining hand on him. Let him go…..I think he needs a rest……he needs to be left alone for a few minutes.

He turned and walked some 20 paces into the wood and then stopped. He felt all right again, the disturbing melody having seeped out of his hands, slipping into the night, no longer driving him on.

He walked a few more paces and reached the foot of the stairs leading to the top of the levee.

He started to climb, stopping every now and then to look back at the ghostly tents behind him, dimly lit from inside, with the lanterns and the few remaining lights left in the open casting long slim silhouettes across a softly illuminated foreground.

At the top of the stairs he stepped into a cool breeze blowing in from the sea. He pulled his jacket tight and tried to fasten its zip – it always gave him trouble, getting the slide to engage. Then he leaned against the balustrade and waited silently, just looking over the campsite and out to sea.

For a long time he stood motionless. At one point he heard faint calls, even someone calling his name, but paid no attention……what was there to say?

Then he looked up the road and noticed lights dipping and blinking in the distance, coming from the direction where the bus that had brought him had disappeared. A car was approaching from that direction…..then it slowed down and stopped for him.

Do you want a lift? He nodded and got into the back seat. There were two young men up front and a girl in the back.

Where to? one of them asked. The airport, please. I need to get home.

A whispered exchange followed up front and then they set off.

The airport is too far out of our way and anyway, it is closed by now. We’ll drop you where you can catch a bus in the morning.

They drove in silence, the two men occasionally exchanging whispered words.

After a while they reached a nondescript little town. It had been hurriedly planted in the unpromising soil of a swampy floodplain in some attempt at reconstruction during the chaotic inter-war years.

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Eventually they came to a halt in the town’s broad main square. It had originally been laid out to serve as market place on week-days, social hang-out at night and parade ground for fascist rallies on public holidays – now it was barely lit and by then totally deserted.

This is it…..this is as far as we take you. They all got out.

The men stood either side of him, the girl a little distance behind them. There was an awkward silence.

How about some money? said one of the boys, holding out his hand.

This, for some reason, struck him as wildly funny.

He suddenly recalled, as clearly as if it had happened only the day before, the routine of a stand-up comic on TV, a comedian whose conceit was to play an upper class twit – on that occasion recounting the story of coming face to face with muggers.

He tried to reconstruct in his mind the comic turn, but was forcibly interrupted.

Come on, we haven’t got all night. Where is your wallet. Let’s have it.

He ignored the instruction – too preoccupied with the memory he had managed to dredge up from long-discarded bits of the distant past. Then he even attempted a go, trying to reproduce the comic turn, putting on the plummiest voice he could muster:

I say, is this meant to be a mugging? I am awfully sorry chaps, but all my family’s fortune is tied up in property, bonds, shares….that sort of thing – terribly sorry about that – I carry no cash, but in the meantime, will you accept a cheque?

Delivery of the little monologue brought a self-satisfied smile to his face but provoked a puzzled look on the others’.

One of the men then suddenly lashed out at him, catching him on the cheek. He fell to his knees and was then given a hard kick in the small of his back that knocked him sideways and flat. More kicks followed, from different angles, the three of them taking turns meting out pain. Then one of them stepped in, rolled him over and lifted his wallet from his back pocket.

The show over, the three of them got into the car and drove off in silence, unhurriedly.

He tried to turn over but a sharp stabbing from his ribs made it too painful to move.

‘I knew, when I left home, that they were going to be angry with me when I got back, but this?...... why all the fuss?’

Then he passed out, blood seeping from a corner of his mouth.

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Cavatina

Music: Stanley Myers Lyrics: Cleo Laine

She was beautiful, Beautiful to my eyes. From the moment I saw her, The sun filled the sky.

She was so, so beautiful, Beautiful just to hold. In my dreams she was spring time, Winter was cold.

How could I tell her What I so clearly could see. Though I longed for her I never trusted me completely So I never could be free.

It was so, so beautiful, Knowing now that she cared. I will always remember Moments that we shared.

For it was beautiful, beautiful Beautiful to me now.