The last days of Spring/7

She is staring at us as we are coming up Puskins street towards the hostel. And after what seems like a brief moment of indecision, she looks away and has just scurried off through the crowd and into the hostel.
“Isn’t that your mulatka?”

The paramedics are carrying a stretcher out as I come up to the entrance of the hostel and I have to wait for them to pass before I can continue my chase. Where is she running to…what is she going to do?

I recognize the stocky frame of Barry on the stretcher, with a bandage tied round his trunk and muttering something about Kememu. What’s happened now and what is this Kememu nonsense he’s been saying of late? Behind the stretcher, a limping Omar is being escorted out by two police officers and it’s clear that both of them have had another fight and that Barry seems to have come out worse. I pass through the crowd and run into the hostel and head towards the stairs to the second floor.

I am not sure where exactly she has run to but I have decided to check Ugo’s and Eddy’s room seeing that her friends still came by there sometimes.
I have come up to room and knocking but no one is opening the door; I don’t know where else to start looking and I am thinking that I should go back to the ground floor and wait there since she has to come out of the hostel through that one exit. I am running down the stairs towards the ground floor and Adelaide is walking up…
“I just saw your…er…the mulatka” she says.

“Where did you see her?”
“She just ran out of the hostel…as if she was being chased by somebody…”
“In which direction…?”
“I don’t know I was already in the lobby…”
I ran out onto the street and look in both directions up Pushkin’s street but she is not there. And I don’t know in what direction to go…

She is gone and maybe this is the best thing to happen; may be it is best for us to end this way…I cannot give her what she wants and that is that. Yet…yet I am realizing that I do feel something for her and though I will be able to live without her I will want to see her again and to end properly with her.

Now I am free to go after Adelaide; I am even more convinced that it is our destiny to be together-why else would we both be left behind in Rostov, while all our friends are posted out? Why else would it be today of all days that Tanya chooses to meet us together, if not that fate has decided to intervene? We are powerless in the hands of destiny; we cannot change what is meant to be. Adelaide and I were meant to be-we have now only to confront our destiny.