Chocolate

She stretched out along the board and, putting her hands behind her head, looked at Adelard. And every time she looked at him, he was preparing his witty response to her aphorisms.

“You are a work of art, my dear. How I wish I could brag about you in New York. You would be a star there. The brightest star."

Adelard, hanging upside down above the water, slightly dipped the end of his hair and immediately lifted his head and combed it back. Watching his every movement, Suzanne could not contain her feelings and involuntarily said, "Maybe I should fall in love with you? What do you think?"

And he replied, “You’ve said that for the hundredth time. Perhaps you love me from the very beginning of our acquaintance."

"Here's my secret and it is revealed."

Straightening his back, Adelard picked up the oars and began to row. The waves were getting heavier from the wind.

"I am not pleased when someone mentions my beauty. When they say that I have a great appearance, I feel like I am no one. As if in this world there is only my appearance, a shell, but no soul. That scares me."

"My melancholic prince," she said, touching his knee. "But the truth is not hidden. You are beautiful and this is a fact, my dear."

Adelard noticing a boat not far from them suddenly saw the same sunny hair that fluttered in the wind. Blinking several times, he realized that it was only an illusion and that there was no boat.

But after a moment, a boat sailed before his eyes, and his ears heard a very familiar, dearest voice in the world. Her voice that repeated the name of some man.

Looking back, he saw a white lace umbrella and a thin outline of a hand holding it. Undoubtedly it was her. Still, he wasn't sure.

In whom he was sure was the man who sat beaming with happiness. But he couldn't see her.

White lace, cunningly sewn, cleverly concealed her appearance.

"Are you here, Adelard? Wake up!"

“I think it's time for us to get back," he said, quickly rowing towards the shore filled with people.

"Suzanne, I'm sorry of course, but today I am no longer able to keep you company. Tomorrow my colleagues will be waiting for me, so I need to think about how to tell them about my successes and maintain a small talk on the topic of business and the noble spirit of great people. So that's where we say goodbye for today," Adelard said.

“In that case, see you next time, my dear.

"When are you going back home?"

"In a week."

"Well, then we have a lot of time so that I can take you to the theater and read you Shakespeare's sonnets."

“Oh, you know how much I hate them. So banal and stupid that I start to hate myself."

Laughing softly, Adelard gently embraced her. Suzanne stood without any movements. Water droplets were still running down her hands and clothes.

"See you Suzanne," he said, and with a wave of his hand turned and jumped into the carriage with the grace of a lion. The carriage set off, Suzanne was left alone, but she still did not want to admit the fact that she was a little upset.

As he stepped onto the threshold of the house, Adelard wiped the sweat from his brow. The coolness that lived in the house gently enveloped his skin. The aroma of buns and flowers filled the whole house.

Adelard looked around him as if he had seen a house so familiar to him for the first time. High walls, columns that rose to the ribbed ceiling on which were depicted angels in the style of Michelangelo, the numerous vases with which his grandmother so treasured and a large round red carpet. There were shades of green and red around him. Nature and blood, nature that flows through his veins and nature that adorns life. Studying all this, he made a sad expression on his face, which testified to his habit of indulging in nastolgiya. Remembering all the times when this stately house was full of joy and happiness, he involuntarily shed one small tear, which, ideally, with a certain aesthetics, slid down and fell on the wooden floor, leaving a barely noticeable mark that disappeared at that very second.

Nastolgia had haunted him for many years. He lived in his past. He breathed the air that belonged to the past years. He carried happiness in himself, but this happiness did not belong to him, but to the past.

What makes a person indulge in nastolgiya? After all, there are so much suffering in the world. Isn't it enough for a human soul to suffer like this? After all, of all suffering, the past is the most frightening. But perhaps the reason why person suffers from his happy, unhappy past, is because he is not ready for the future and is not ready for the responsibility that the present demands.

Does this mean that Adelard was not ready for his future, and did not want to take responsibility for this moment?

Or his kind heart, a pure, untouched soul, sacrifices his peace only in order to continue making his essence as it is. His peace, in exchange for existence in the upper world, in an innocent world, where a person's foot rarely steps. And he pays by the fact that he carries all his past in himself, as if Atlas carries the whole world on his shoulders, he carries his world and does not want to fall and enter the human world.

"How was the day?" the voice of Nicholas sounded loud, interrupting the sequence of his memories.

Waking up from a light nastolgic sleep, Adelard stood up straight and looked at Nicholas. Without haste to answer, he nevertheless answered, "The day was flattering. I spent it with Suzanne."

"So she is here! I'm glad, because this means that within a week you will be busy with her cynicism and optimism and forget about your sadness."

"I think I should invite her to my house. Maybe tomorrow."

"Certainly."

"Nicholas, how was your day?" he asked as he approached him.

"My day was as usual. I followed the white rabbit with the clock and almost caught him but he ran away. Then I spoke to the fairies and they told me to give you this."

Having said this, he took a chocolate figurine in the shape of a bird that was wrapped in a golden foil out of his pocket.

Adelard, beaming with happiness, said, “I’m not a child anymore."

"For me you are always a child," Nicholas replied, holding out the chocolate.

“As a child, you always told me about the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland and about fairies. I believed in their existence. And it always seemed to me that you are from some kind of magical world and you have to protect me from all evil. And if I eat these chocolate birds, I will be protected. You've always been like this."

Nicholas put his hand on his shoulder and whispered with tenderness in his eyes, "You are forever protected from evil."

Unfolding the chocolate, Adelard remembered his childhood even more and the sweet taste took him to the distant lands of the past.