Fatmir Terziu: Décolleté

Décolleté

Story

No one had laid eyes on her during all those four years of college. She sat like an abandoned doll, simply out of sight. More precisely, like a shadow that knew the wall she leaned against, but not the light that passed over her. In the auditoriums with wooden chairs and high windows, Loreta was always in the third row, slightly to the side, where voices became softer and where professors rarely stopped to look. Until that night, she was simply a girl whose name was read in the Student's Notebook. "Loreta K." Simply, a black line on yellow paper. Books, silence, books. This was the time she was known for, simply as a spiritualist. No stories, no scandals, no whispers in the corridors. Quiet walk, hair tied back, shirts buttoned up to the throat.

The Student City was a four-eyed city. She was observed from all sides. Observation had a meaning. The sign made it clear, placed at the entrance like a prophecy: “Beware! The Mountain with Potholes has many potholes.” Everyone laughed at that warning, but no one took it lightly, because they didn’t know who was making that joke, so confusing for those who were History-Geography students themselves. The potholes weren’t just on the asphalt. They were in conversations, in expectations, in glances. Loreta got through it all like a person who knows how to walk on water without leaving waves.

Then that evening came. It was the end of the academic year. A simple party in one of the halls of the Building 8, with lights hanging from wires, with music vibrating through the walls. The girls became beautiful like in old movies. The boys wore shirts that they rarely took out of the closet. When Loreta entered, something happened that no one had predicted. It wasn’t the black dress. Nor the thin heels that lifted her slightly off the ground. It was her cleavage. A simple, clean, calm line that descended with dignity and gave the face a different light. It was not deep, nor provocative. It was simply a small opening of a door that had been closed for four years.

And the four eyes of the Student City became eight. Conversations were cut short. A glass fell lightly on the table. Someone said: “Is it Loreta?” as if they had seen a character from a banned novel. Limi saw him. He was one of those who always stood in the middle of the noise. He laughed loudly, spoke quickly, knew how to find a way through every hole. For him, the Mountain with Holes was simply a playground, even during Professor A’s strict and very demanding lectures. But that night, when he saw Loreta, something in her stopped. It wasn’t just her cleavage. It was the way she carried her body, how she didn’t look for any eyes and yet kept all eyes on her. It was the contrast between four years of silence and that small opening, like the first sentence after a long-unwritten novel. Limi fell in love.

Décolleté

He fell in love in his own quick, careless way, like boys jumping into water without testing the depth. He began to wait for her in front of the library. To hold the door for her. To talk to her about things she had never thought about before, about books, about fear, about the province she came from. Loreta listened to her.

She didn’t talk much, but when she did, the words came out as if they had been washed in thought for a long time. Lim, for the first time, didn’t laugh out loud. He listened too. Student City continued to be a four-eyed place. Now the glances were sharper.

“Have you seen Lim?” - “What about Loreta?” - “Eh, cleavage works…”

The word “cleavage” became a kind of small urban legend. As if that line of fabric was the reason for everything. No one talked about the four years of silence. About the books. About the long nights on white sheets. One evening, Lim did not come. Loreta met him on the steps of the library, where he usually appeared with quick steps. The day passed. Then another. People began to whisper again, but this time differently.

One day he disappeared. Someone said that he had returned to his city. Someone else that he had quit his studies. Others saw it as a small piece of news that quickly fades, like any noise in Student City. Loreta did not ask anyone. She continued to come to the auditorium, again in the third row, a little to the side. The shirts were closed to the throat. The neckline remained in the closet. But something had changed. He was no longer simply a name in the Student's Book. It was a story that had touched the light for a moment and had paid for it with a lack.

Another evening, as she passed the sign at the entrance, she stopped for the first time to read the frightening scribble: “Caution! The Mountain with Potholes has many potholes.”

She shook herself but then smiled slightly. Because now she knew, the potholes were not in the road. They were in the heart. And the cleavage was not a line on the body, but a small crack in the protection of someone who had lived invisible for four years. And in that crack, for a short time, love had entered. She waited for him to one day bring her the message from beyond the borders, to where they had both thought of freedom differently. Unlike the cleavage of that night.

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