BLACK ROSE

Olfactory memory

The girl on the train

I was on the train that was taking me home from a business trip when I saw a girl with beautiful black hair and emerald green eyes arrive. She sat down in the seat opposite mine and gave me a smile. Before long I found the courage to ask her where she was going. “To Florence,” she said, “I’m an architecture student and I’m going to graduate.” From that moment we talked for the whole trip and we immediately knew we had a strong empathy. One makes many encounters when traveling and never pays too much attention to the people on the route, but it happens, rarely, to find someone interesting, that time I found the rose. When we arrived in Florence, like a good knight I helped her with her luggage, and she, in thanks, gave me a kiss on the cheek, then said, “Spe- ry to see you again,” and I saw her slowly walk away. “To hell with it,” I thought, “I won’t turn my back on fate.” I got off the train and ran after her, I called her and asked her phone number, the train was about to leave, I still remember her smile and her green eyes as she told me the number. Back on the train, I wrote the issue on the page of a fashion magazine that someone had left on the seat next to mine. I still remember it because there was an advertisement for a perfume and a picture of a waterfall of flowers.

After a few days I tried to call her, but the number was ine- sistent. Had I misspelled it? Had she given me a made-up number? I would never know. I never saw her again. I was left only with the memory of that newspaper page that had the scent of a rose, cold, metallic, but also with sweet notes, like those hours spent together with her.