Memoires of a Martial Artist - We were alone in the world.

(foto Živilė Abrutytė)

The Master had explained to me, without any apparent reason, that someone has funneled thousand of euros in that coffee shop, where I encountered him, to keep it open during the winter. In Vilnius to manage any local business was really hard in that season. There was a sort of depression in winter around the center. Few passersby, no tourists, no business, given the harshness of the winter…an unfortunate situation to run a shop in winter in Vilnius, because the weather was astonishingly cruel.
An Italian I knew used to say that in those days ci sono i lupi per le strade. He meant that the streets are so deserted that only wolves go around the empty gatvės (streets) descending down from the hills into the city and looking for food.
And I agree with his similitude.
Outside the road had disappeared without leaving any trace. The air was smoking with snow. The snowstorm had caught The Master’s sight. The Master seemed terrified by the roaring and howling of the blizzard. A whitness without borders was hiding the town. We, both, breathed the loneliness in which the snowstorm had precipitated us.
We were alone in the world.