Afterwards when she was gone, he thought that their meeting wasn’t fortuitious at all, that it must have been a kind of rendez-vous, she coming out of the blue,  he being on the spot where he hadn’t thought of in the morning that he should have been. But however, it happened, as a lot of things happen in a lifetime. When he came out of the cathedral, he saw her, standing like a statue of salt in the middle of the St-Baafs Square, a still young, well-looking woman, cut out of Vogue. Dressed like a Madonna, in a long dark skirt that covered her whole body, a statue that started walking towards him, as soon as he came out on the square.

First he didn’t know if she came to him or to someone else who was behind him, but seeing how she moved and the smile on her face, as if she knew him, her long dark hair dancing in the wind, her left leg, naked till the knee, he was moved by her youth and how womanish – he didn’t want to use another word - she was.

She almost ran into him: ‘You knew it’, she said, ‘it is indeed you, I was waiting for’, she said. ‘I saw you down in the crypt, observing you how you looked at the things there, and I, and don’t ask me why, wanted to know if you were what I thought you were. I have waited for you in the square, if you came out, on the westside, where I thought you would come out, I would walk to you, if you went out on the southside  I would miss you and forget what I had thought of.

‘You’re welcome’ he thought but he didn't say it.

She looked at him , she looked straight into his eyes. He stood there, taken by surprise, as he had never been before.

‘I was curious to know you, curious to know if what I thought of you was correctly felt. I know it seems strange to you, but it is stronger than myself, I needed to know. Its not my profession, rather a hobby of mine.’

He looked at her, he looked into her dark, almost black eyes and felt overwhelmed. He saw the softness of her lips when she spoke, he saw how vulnerable she seemed as a woman, but also how steady and strong she was in her way of speaking.

‘Never mind’ he said, ‘you are welcome’, even very welcome, for this is a strange day, it is a happening, written down, years, centuries before, something we never could have missed, it had to occur and to occur at this very moment’. He felt very close to her, he almost wanted to touch her with his lips. She might have felt it.

‘May I, she said, ‘may I have your left hand, the hand of the heart?'

He reached out his left hand and she took it, the palm of the hand upside. She looked at it for a long time, following the lines in it with her finger. ‘The heartline is beautifully long’, she said, ‘and the number eightyone nicely readable for the Arabs, but I have no problem with the vertical lines in it. You are, as I thought, a man of words. you are a writer, but a writer of strange things, metaphysical things, you are a dreamer and a writer.’

‘Don’t be upset’, she said ‘but the dreams you are dreaming, will come true, if you can wait long enough’.

He looked at her. He looked into her beautiful, glittering black eyes and he felt totally lost.

She still held his hand, she was very close now, he could smell her, she was so close he could have kissed her moisty lips; he could have put his free hand in her neck, running it softly through her long hair. He could, but he didn’t move an inch.

‘It’s very moving what you told me’, he said, ‘It’s my lucky day’. People were all over the place, he noticed it, he saw a multitude of pigeons looking for grains or small pieces of bread. Should she feel what he felt? You are very beautiful, he wanted to say, but he didn’t say it, he couldn’t find the voice to say it.

But she read it in his eyes what he wanted to say: ‘It doesn’t matter if I am or not’, she said, ‘I am Armenian, my name is Kalilla, and I live in Ghent now.’

‘I am Ugo’, he said, ‘I am a very lonesome man today.’

‘Lonesome because of me, because of our meeting  here in this square?’

‘Yes’, he said, ‘this morning I didn’t feel being lonesome. But now everything has changed, for I am in love with the Mount Ararat.

‘For what reason?’ she asked;

.

‘O’, he said, ‘this is a long story’. ‘May I offer you a drink, a coffee, a tea, a glass of wine?

She looked at him for a long time, as if she was looking into the future, as if she felt - that was also what he thought afterwards – that she was going to fall in love.

‘No’ she said, ‘no’, it seems almost a fairy tale, it doesn’t seem propitious to accept, It is better as you are a dreamer to keep it as a possibility of what could have been.’

And after a while: ‘Better for both of us. Let it be as if it could have been, a possibility that we will probably never forget. Let us keep it as an unfulfilled possibility.

She kissed him very softly on his lips. ’Which way are you going?’ she asked.

‘That way’, he said, and showed the direction of the Donkersteeg.

Oh, she said then I am going in the opposite direction to the Geraard Duivel Steen : Maybe, one day, on a day like this, we will meet again’, she said.

‘No’, he said, ‘we missed the opportunity, today was the day.’ He stood there for a moment, passengers were moving left and right of him, a multitude of pigeons flew up, a streetcar named desire was passing by. He looked in the direction she had taken, but she was gone.

Maybe, he thought, maybe it was but a dream, it will be over soon. But it wasn’t over, up to now, it was still there.