The Costinesti Encounter.

Tuesday, August 14, 2001..

Another diversion , so quickly am I overtaken by events
On the sixth Of this month, I was, we were, Cynthia, Laura and I at Costinesti on the Black Sea, a place quite comparable to Pattaya…

7.30 a.m. Glorious , hot.
In the chalet next to mine, a older man sitting on the step with a can of beer , looking rather the worse for life. A early starter, I thought . Hardly took any notice . Cynthia came out , immediately greeting this gentleman,

“Oh ! Hello Bernt !! “

“ You know him??” I said, curious.

“Yes , of course”

“ Is it the Belgian man ?”

‘No, it’s the German Man’

“What German man ??”

‘You know.. the one who ran off with Aura! “

Looked at him , looked at Cynthia. Aura..!! German !! did not recognize him.. seen him once or twice before, but he had aged considerably. Looked at him ………
asked the $50 question… ??

‘Where’s Aura ??”

“I left her…” He said deceptively.

Smiled at this, thinking, that’s alright, satisfied..…
Wondered what he was doing here in Costinesti ??

‘Leaving now ..do not like the heavy music “ he did have a point… music??! Decibels… ! twenty four hours every day.

Said to him ‘It’s cheap…”

“Money is of no consideration to me’

Well, I thought . lucky you. Aura gone.. God knows where .. He here… Peter not really thinking too clever..

Laura sitting idly watching all this, taking it all in.. swinging her body to the music plugged into her ears, looking so delicious in her topless nothing, long hair to the waist, skin the colour of bronze.

He looked at her ..looked at her again.. looked at me and disappeared inside his little wooden hut, popping out again with a small child and his junk ..all packed.

Asked whom the child may be ? he quite glib, saying it belonged to the woman he was with, naturally I assumed he had picked up someone with a child.. odd.. but my mind still engrossed on Aura.

He looked at Laura again and announced he was leaving immediately, now.

Laura played it up to the hilt pouting at him… crossing her legs provocatively.

A child came out fully dressed and this woman stepped out after it.. She slightly overweight… dressed.. no one dresses in Costinesti, It is a situation of undress.

She had a green two piece suit on, black, low heel shoes, hair, immaculate, as if she had just stepped from the saloon, only the briefest glimpse of her as she quickly turned her back and strode off ……..”up the garden path”, so to speak.. and they were gone …

Thought to myself “That’s a funny turn out”

Anyway, ten minutes later he comes back, breathless, quite apparently agitated, some pretext, it being he was looking for his watch , told him it was on his wrist.

Could see he was very confused, see he wanted something, other than the watch….

He rushed into the room banged about for a few seconds and came out, obviously having made some decision.

Actually I am married to Aura !!.. been married to her for two months !!:

I, Quite shaken.. very shaken.

‘Was that her who walked out ??”

He said “Yes”

Immediately blew my top

“Why the fuck didn’t she say Hello!! After all I did for her?? She is entitled to say hello.. not simply ignore me”

“Well.. she does not want to speak to you “

“Typical of all of them , none want to say thank you, everything that woman is , irrespective , is what I made her, she was a nonentity, now quite obviously, she is a something, a something to be reckoned with.

He thought it was going to develop into trouble, but I calmed down..

He, seeing the change, became fatuous.. Uriah Heep.. said quietly:

“ Could I ask you a question??”

“Can if you want”

“Did you have sex with Aura ???”

Looked at him straight in the face.. I don’t believe this.. what has Aura told the silly bastard

“Did I have sex with Aura !!!? ”
When did we ever stop having sex!!…What a question…

“To be perfectly fair, now that you are married to her I really cannot answer “

He persisted “Do you have any erotic photographs of her ???”

“Only the one you stole from my apartment…”

Forgot to mention she was the most photographed, most filmed, most fucked, most erotic, most sensuous woman I had ever met .

He was not happy .

Asked where she may be? said she was sitting in a taxi up the road ..Suggested he had better go. He hardly wanted that , he wanted more, more about the woman.. the woman he had so blithely married, a whole barrage of questions which I demurred at..

Eventually he came up with…

"How is it I find $100 bills and 50 mark notes in her pockets ?"

Parried that one saying "Perhaps I gave them to her..”

“No this was after you”

What a stupid bastard..
Aura is obviously still “At It” and she is extremely clever at the ‘game…’ I never knew what was going on until I was told.. The last to know.. Even when the woman in Enescu screamed at her for being a ‘Prostitute” a countered angrily by saying she had made a “mistake!!” never for a moment thinking otherwise.. Men are both blind and stupid when it comes to the other sex, when it comes to the very edge of the precipice.

Clever woman, Aura, loves her occupation, as so many do....
When his back is turned .. same as when mine was.. in England, grinding away on the streets, she in Bucuresti, grinding away on a bed or anywhere, actually.

Thought ..”Well fuck you, you stew in it” ….she has sucked him in and blown him out in bubbles.
Ignoring my initial outburst, had become quite calm. I taken so back , that this unglamorous woman I had just seen was Aura, evidently been partaking of the German cheese cake without consideration to her figure…
Dressed!! She hardly wore enough to cover her fanny when she was with me, Costinesti is a place where everything is let go… people are semi naked

He could see I was elsewhere with my thoughts . His final shot

“ What do you think I should do about her!!?

“ What do you mean? what do I think you should do..??? you married her.. who’s the child ??

“ Oh.. that’s Aura’s nephew”

Fucking Aura..!! she has married the man.. goes to Germany with him.. drags him back to Costinesti.. drags some kid round with her , no doubt to alleviate the boredom….. Auld lang syne!!!

Perhaps she wanted to rekindle a spark of the past, there certainly is not now the slightest spark in the man she married.. married him for what he could give her……..I smiled.. still did not say anything ..let the silly bastard stew in her juice, Done him up like a kipper… indeed she has.. She so clever as any Thai Lady. My best pupil……

Why I did not recognize him being, all the aggravation, the struggle he had with her, has simply aged him. Looked reasonable when I last glimpsed him in the photograph she showed me of them together, they looked the business.. but that was a year ago and time is relentless, remorseless. Infinitely without mercy.

Here was a man, married for thirty years, with three children Aura’s age, now divorced, up to the neck with alimony and Aura shackled to him.

I can only ask , as ever, why are men so stupid ?

Realizing I was not going to give him anything of the past .. he fucked off with a final look at Laura who had intently paid attention to this odd encounter

Quite honestly, once I took a deep breath and thought about it, I was really knocked, really knocked.

How can this be!!

Aura to me, in my eyes, was such a wonderful person, so erotic, so sensuous all the time. One man was useless to her, she was always suggesting her desire for more than one man, as with SOS who knocked off 23 men in one evenings’ entertainment, hardly think Aura has beaten this.. yet…without doubt she could, will …insatiable..

As he walked away, perhaps thinking out loud… said

“I’m going to watch her”

No doubt with reference to the mysterious money in her pockets…
What an attitude to take between what is a fact.. man and wife…

Here is a man married two months to this young woman, she blatantly back to her favorite occupation ..doing what she is best at and getting rewarded for it.. Fair enough…, I am unable to sympathize, I never saw her game, why should he have ?? Unable to sympathize with the man, any man.

Men are stupid when it comes to a woman. I know not one who has come out in front regarding a female.

Mesmerized.. indeed I was… But I, always aware, as written previously, that it would end .. the ending, how it ended, a very big surprise to Peter.. really underestimated what a brilliant strategist she was.

No, Aura disregarded what the man she married was, closed her eyes , wanted his being.. his access to the West, his identity , at any cost… even being a alcoholic, even that !
There were other things against him. His marriage , his children. He did have a good job with Lufthansa which helped. He was a German citizen, which is what she always wanted.. to go to Germany. To escape from Romania, as so many females.. All anxiously willing to stand up, or lie down, anywhere and obviously, with anyone… for a exit visa.

If she had waited one more year she could have gone anywhere in Europe without him……
So she achieved.. at a price.. So many of her uncertainties swept away by this strong move. Free of the University, free of the thought of semi starvation, free of Peter.. The two secure years she spent with me, the education I gave her. Her serious grasp gained of the English language.. all very sharp arrows to her armoury, Peter fully putting her on her feet, all this, no doubt, carefully calculated. All at a price.

As have said so many times, there is always a price and she paid heavily .

Now, sitting here , with my drink this calm Sunday morning, Cynthia at church .. I can only cross myself ….

Ace , King , Queen, Jack.. in numele, Tatalui si Fiului, si Sfantului Duh, Amin….. I, deeply sorry for her. The fact she had not chosen to confide in me, the insidious deception, the treachery, a bitter disappointment.

I have lost a great deal of the remaining hope, hope carried continuously throughout my existence, over this short, sharp, encounter.

The feeling I have about her now is that she is dead…

Dead inside me.

Smile to my face once it sank in she has come back here to Costinesti, a place where all her inhibitions and hang ups, she did have plenty…were thrown to the wind, with her clothes.

Our first time on the so secluded, languid, beach, I had to rip her bikini off .. after that she never wore anything, regardless of the of the odd man who casually walked so close to us .
Suppose she remembered all this, what other reason did she come back to the Black Sea for??

So far from Frankfurt.

What choked me is that she went back to Costinesti …Peter.. must have realized the odds were short, a good chance of meeting.. knows I am always there.. Now at the chance of the face to face ..she refuses..

To think it was only a few weeks ago I wrote about the remote odds of seeing her again.. and it has come up, like winning the lottery…and in the next Chalet !! there must be a couple of hundred, yet she was next to me… Fate played a wry card..


No answer to this life.
No answer to fate
No answer to the twists and turns between love and hate.
No answer to the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune.
No answer to Aura, or any other woman on this Planet.
Sunday, August 19, 2001……… 4:06 PM

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