Someday Crossed My Path

A tall thin guy with a long Ron Wood-like hairstyle looked me in the eyes and asked "This is class 1, isn’t it". I said "Yes". "And you are in it, right?" I said "Yes". He got his back bag off and placed it on the desk and sat down a bit far from me. My friend sitting on my left side whispered "***k". I asked "Why? What is wrong?". "Why have you answered him that politely? He is mocking you. He knows it is class 1 and just wanted to play around". I said "I did not see it like that". But then in a second thought I did not exclude that the tall guy, known later as H, decided I looked mockable enough to act the way my friend explained. We were in the very first days of our freshman year in the university.

Along the university years nothing linked H and I together. We were in two different groups of friends. It was later and during the first stage of the military service that we found each other within the same circle of conscripts who felt the need to get together in the new military environment. In a strange world, thin similarities overshadowed differences.

Cynicism and sarcasm were quite felt in H’s character. The bony white face, that resembled a mummy, was not strange to the cold attitudes he sometimes took in different situations. His character’s other features included solid disbelief in god, hate for his country, a definite desire to migrate to the USA, and taking calculated sharp reactions. I could see him, in a cinematic scene, walking the street, getting out a knife from his pocket, stabbing an enemy while cursing in a low voice, calmly hiding the knife back, spitting on the ground and then walking away.

In that incident when we were first stopped by the guard, H seized an opportunity in a nanosecond to just walk away before the guard realized his disappearance. He risked being arrested for running away without much thought. Ironically the guard later feared of being questioned for H’s disappearance and preferred not to mention it during the investigation.

Last thing I heard about him was that he inherited a good size of fortune after his father’s death, and got married to a nightclub singer, which came a little bit unexpected given his conservative family background. But did he leave for the States as he adamantly wanted? I did not know and I did not seek seriously to know, but he remained one of the persons who crossed my path someday and reserved a place in the memory.