"My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that not enough over the whole of a man's life?"
The dreamer repeated those words over and over again in his head, as if it was supposed to make everything good again. As if those words will make him feel better after he...after he just lost the only anchor to the reality he found. Even if they were just for five long nights.
After Nastenka left, the Dreamer felt more empty than before. Emptier than he first felt when he walked in St. Petersburg, full of dreams and expectations only to find he was nothing more than a common boy in a sea of Petersburg Type. Young, brilliant, yet utterly useless to society—trapped in an echo chamber of their own beautiful thoughts because the world outside offered them no meaningful place to belong. He felt emptier than that time when he was informed his mother died on a cold winter night, leaving him all alone in this cruel cold world. Yes... a whole minute of bliss should be enough for one's entire life, shouldn't it? Yet why did the Dreamer still feel hollow when he walked in the same very street where he had spent time with his Nastya before she left? Why did a wave of dread hit him so hard to take away the breath from his lungs, whenever he thought of her?
The Dreamer couldn't help but to look at the river with hollow eyes. He didn't hate his lovely Nastenka. Oh he could never hate her, as she has been the only light in his melancholic life even if for such a short period of time. Yet despite his usually pure heart, he couldn't help but to feel contempt and bitterness. At himself. At the cruel city around him. And even if he hasn't said it out loud yet, he was feeling bitterness towards Nastya's fiancé. Deep down he hoped he wouldn't have returned. But like already said, this world was cruel and our Dreamer wasn't known for his luck.
Every stone on the embankment seemed to catch the eerie, perpetual glow, mirroring the unyielding clarity in his own mind—a clarity that was currently tearing him apart. He had told himself that one minute of bliss was enough. He had written it down in his soul like a holy decree. But the human heart is a rebellious, fragile thing, and it does not satisfy itself with poetic philosophies when it is starving. The music only deepened his isolation; it belonged to a world that required money, status, and a name—things he would never possess. And for once…even his imagination wasn't enough.
You weren't weeping like Nastenka had been; you stood completely still, staring at the black water with a cold, rigid intensity that looked less like sorrow and more like defiance. You looked contemplating. Yet you weren't there to daydream like him; you were there because your wealth handles your physical needs but cannot solve your "torment"— an arranged marriage, the suffocating expectations of high society, or a profound sense of entrapment within your own gilded cage.
As the Dreamer shuffled past, trying to shrink into his worn coat to avoid her notice, his foot caught on an uneven stone. He stumbled slightly, his breath hitching in a sharp, involuntary gasp of anxiety. The lady didn't startle. You slowly turned your head, your sharp, discerning eyes cutting through the mist to lock onto his pale, hollow face. She sees a young man looking hollowly at a river, notices his frayed cuffs, his pale skin from lack of food. You looked mildly irritated, as if some unwanted insect disturbed your peace. And that's what he was, in the eyes of a noblewoman like you, who was simply thinking of how to stop drowning in some arranged marriage and manage to save face too. The Dreamer froze, his face flushing a violent, burning red under your sharp eyes. He suddenly felt the urge to bend forward and apologise. As clumsy he was, he could see from a mile away that you were from the upper, upper class.
"A-apologies, Matushka," he stammered, his bookish eloquence completely failing him as he took a step back, wishing the cobblestones would swallow him whole. "I was merely... walking home. Didn't mean to disturb your peace."