The ferry left at five, and I reached the pier at two minutes to five.
The gate was already shut. The boat stood ten metres from the shore, and the people on deck looked at me the way people do when they are sorry, but not sorry enough to call the captain.
I sat down on the concrete and watched the ferry carry the mainland away with it.
There was no accommodation on the island. Not because I had not looked — but because in August everything is taken, and I had only decided that morning to come.
“There’s no more today,” said someone behind me.
I turned round. A man stood at the gate with a canvas bag on his shoulder, looking exactly as foolish as I did.
“Seven tomorrow morning,” he added.
“Wonderful.”
“Not wonderful. But at least we know.”
We laughed together. It was the first thing we did together.
The island was small: one street, one shop, one church, and a harbour where the fishermen set down their crates in the evening. The shop shut at six, so instead of dinner we found a bench behind the church, in the shade, with two bottles of mineral water.
His name was Gergő. He had been there two days and already knew the fishermen.
“Why did you come?” he asked.
“We’re not being formal with each other. And I came because I ought to have learnt to be alone.”
“Did it work?”
“So well that this evening I met someone.”
Gergő smiled and did not ask anything else. That was the best thing about him: he knew where to stop.
In the evening we went down to the water. The sea was as warm as the air, and so dark that you could not see where it ended. Only two lamps burned on the shore, and the fishermen’s conversation carried across the water.
We talked. Not about the things people usually talk about on a first evening. We talked about what we are afraid of, and about what we left behind, back where we came from. Gergő said he had a job he loved and a city he did not.
“Why do you stay?”
“Because everyone else is in the city.”
That sentence stayed with me all night.
At dawn, when it was already getting light, we sat up on the pier and waited for the seven o’clock ferry. We did not speak. We did not need to.
The ferry came in. We got on. We stood side by side at the rail and watched the island get smaller.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“Now we go into the city,” said Gergő, “and we drink a coffee. And then we’ll see.”
He did not ask whether I had someone. I did not ask whether he had someone. It seemed we both knew that question could wait.
We got off in the harbour. The sun was already burning, and the noise of the city came from every direction at once.
Gergő stopped and said:
“One thing. If tomorrow you decide this was only a summer evening, come for the coffee anyway. Because I’ll be there.”
“I’ll come,” I said.
And I went.
I do not know what came of it. I know that, that summer, my best decision was not that I travelled, but that I missed the ferry.
Sometimes the best plan is the one that fails.
