Happiness in the evening
Just before dusk, we finally finished our hike along the hillside and made our way down to the little town, where we found a café. Fortune was with us: a table beside the window happened to be unoccupied. We asked the waiter whether we might sit there.
“Please, of course.”
We set down our heavy rucksacks and sank into the deep, half-upholstered chairs, trying to make ourselves as comfortable as our tired bodies would allow. We decided to stay there for a while, have an aperitif, and then dine.
My friend ordered a German beer; I chose a wheat beer. We drank slowly, without a word of haste, allowing the evening to unfold before us.
The café stood beside a lake. Through the window, the water stretched away in a sheet of trembling gold, and at once our hearts seemed to grow lighter. The willows along the shore cast long, wavering reflections upon the surface. Golden sunlight spilled across the lake, breaking into countless flickering shards of light, while the clouds above and beyond it had caught fire, their reflections staining the water a deep and glowing red.
Almost at the same moment, we turned our eyes toward the west.
The sun was sinking, slowly and majestically, toward the horizon. Its immense red disc seemed less like the sun we knew than a richly painted sphere of crimson, as though some master of oil painting had laid the color upon the sky with a heavy, almost extravagant brush. It appeared far larger than we ordinarily see it, and infinitely gentler. Its light had lost the fierce brilliance of midday; softened by the approaching night, it became something almost tender, and we could look directly at it with our naked eyes.
We continued to sip our beer, watching the mellow sunlight stream through the window and fall across my friend's face. In that strange and beautiful light, his face took on the color of burnished red earth. I imagine mine must have looked much the same.
How fortunate we were.
In Belgium, an evening such as this is a rarity. More often than not, the sky is either raining or preparing to rain. And so, to find ourselves, on such a clear and luminous evening, seated beside a lake in a quiet café, at a table facing west, with the sinking red sun before our eyes, while cool, refreshing beer rested in our hands—
what greater gift could life have offered us at that moment?
We said nothing. There was nothing that needed to be said.
The lake was glowing. The willows were trembling in the fading light. The sun was descending, slowly, into the west.
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and then Add to home screen.