Lisbon summers hardly ever rain.
The four o'clock sun still hung like a glowing coin over the Tagus River. Yellow trams climbed the slopes of Alfama's old town, rails glinting harshly in the daylight as tourists with ice cream snapped photos before the faded blue-and-white tile walls.
Elena lived in a tiny apartment below St. George's Castle.
She told friends the rent was cheap.
Only she knew the real reason: it was a twenty-one-minute walk to Martin's bookstore.
One point seven kilometers.
Not close, not far.
Just far enough to avoid suspicion.
She had never gone looking for him on purpose.
At least, that was what she always told herself.
She simply got used to buying breakfast at the bakery on the corner—the one that happened to lie on Martin's route when he took his daughter to school.
She simply liked the evening breeze along the riverbank—and his bookstore was only two streets away.
She simply passed the café now and then—and Martin happened to sit by the window every Wednesday afternoon, balancing the bookstore accounts.
The world is vast.
Lisbon is not small.
Yet she had shrunk her life to a three-kilometer radius.
Beyond those three kilometers lay museums, theaters, new restaurants, photography exhibitions friends invited her to, even a man named Lucas who once asked, after dinner, if she would like to spend the weekend in Madrid.
She smiled and declined.
That night Lucas asked, “Are you still waiting for someone?”
Elena thought for a moment.
“No.”
She was not lying.
She truly was not waiting.
Waiting means believing something will happen.
And she had long known nothing would ever happen between her and Martin.
Two years earlier they had been together.
Martin was not yet married, nor had he truly realized he would marry his current wife.
Their relationship began in the most ordinary way.
Elena, a freelance photographer, was shooting Lisbon’s old bookstores for a travel magazine. Martin stood before a precariously tall stack of used books, watching her raise the camera.
“Are you photographing the books or me?”
“The books.”
“You’ve already taken three shots of me.”
She lowered the camera.
“Because you keep getting in the way.”
Martin laughed.
Later they had dinner together, walked along the river, hunted for bars still open at two in the morning.
They never officially said “we’re dating.”
Nor did they need to.
Elena remembered the first night Martin slept in her apartment.
Not because it was romantic.
But because the next morning, while she was making coffee in the kitchen, he walked over barefoot and naturally hugged her from behind.
In that moment she felt an absurd illusion.
She thought she had finally arrived somewhere.
Only later did she understand some people are merely passing through.
Not arriving.
Six months later Martin’s father fell gravely ill.
He returned to Porto.
Three months passed without his coming back.
Their messages dwindled from a dozen a day to one a day, then to a single line every few days: “How have you been?”
Elena never questioned him.
Never argued.
She was even unpleasantly considerate.
She told him to take care of his family first.
She was fine.
Eventually Martin believed she really was fine.
When they met again, he had already returned to a woman he had known since childhood.
“She stayed with me through my father’s funeral.”
Martin said.
Elena nodded.
“That’s good.”
“Elena.”
“Really, it’s good.”
She even smiled.
That smile was probably the most mature and most foolish performance of her life.
A year later Martin married.
She did not attend.
Not out of hatred.
Simply because she could not imagine what expression she would wear sitting among the guests.
The year after the wedding he had a daughter.
She had seen the photos.
The little girl had large brown eyes and slightly curly hair.
Very cute.
Elena once stood a long time in a children’s clothing store, gazing at a yellow dress in the window.
In the end she did not buy it.
Because she suddenly realized she had no right to give a gift.
That day she understood for the first time that the hardest thing in the world is not losing someone.
It is still knowing every detail of his life.
Knowing what time he goes to work.
Knowing which kindergarten his daughter attends.
Knowing his wife likes to place white flowers on the bookstore windowsill.
Even knowing he recently got new glasses.
You know everything.
Yet none of it has anything to do with you anymore.
Sometimes Elena found herself ridiculous.
She was thirty-four.
She had work, friends, her own apartment, and had visited more than twenty countries.
She could photograph starscapes alone in the Moroccan desert or haul ten kilos of gear up Italy’s Dolomites.
Yet on her life map there remained one place she could never leave.
A three-kilometer radius.
Like an invisible circle.
With Martin standing at its center.
That August Lisbon suffered a rare heatwave.
Temperatures reached forty-three degrees.
The city issued repeated heat warnings; tourist numbers halved.
Elena received an assignment.
A French magazine wanted her to photograph volcanoes in Iceland for three months.
The editor asked, “Can you go?”
She looked at the screen.
Almost without thinking.
“Yes.”
After hanging up she sat in the apartment for a long time.
Someone was playing guitar outside the window.
The old lady next door was taking in her sun-dried sheets.
Suddenly she stood, grabbed her keys, and went out.
Twenty-one minutes later she stood outside Martin’s bookstore.
Through the glass door she saw him wrapping a book for a customer.
He looked a little thinner than two years ago.
The ring on his left ring finger flashed in the sunlight.
Elena did not go in.
She simply stood across the street.
A few minutes later Martin looked up.
He saw her.
He paused.
Then smiled and came out.
“Long time no see.”
“Long time no see.”
“How have you been?”
The same line again.
Two years ago they had become strangers with exactly these words.
This time Elena truly smiled.
“Very well. I’m going to Iceland next week.”
“Travel?”
“Work. About three months.”
Martin nodded.
“Sounds like something you would do.”
“What?”
“Keep running to faraway places.”
Elena looked at him.
She almost said, Not really.
I haven’t been running far away.
These two years I’ve been everywhere, yet after returning to Lisbon I’ve always lived twenty-one minutes from you.
I know which streets will let me meet you.
I know which cafés will let me see you.
Even when I changed apartments, I never left this area.
In the end she said nothing.
Martin asked, “When will you be back?”
“I don’t know.”
“After three months?”
Elena lowered her head and smiled.
“I mean, I don’t know if I’ll still live here.”
Martin fell silent.
A tram rumbled past, its metal screech slicing the brief quiet.
“Moving?”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
Elena looked up.
For the first time she found the question faintly amusing.
Why.
So a person can truly have no idea how much effort another has spent simply to stay near him.
She shook her head.
“Nothing.”
Martin watched her.
“Elena.”
“Hmm?”
“Did you ever hate me?”
She thought for a long time.
“No.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She paused.
“I just hoped, for a while, that you wouldn’t be quite so happy.”
Martin froze.
Elena smiled.
“Pretty awful, right?”
“A little.”
“But it passed.”
She looked into the bookstore.
Behind the counter hung a child’s drawing: three matchstick figures—father, mother, child—and a very large sun.
“Later I truly hoped you were well.”
She said.
Martin did not answer.
Elena suddenly understood that some loves leave behind not possession, but an extremely awkward kindness.
I cannot be part of your life.
Yet I still hope nothing goes wrong in it.
I do not need you to turn around.
But if one day you fall, get hurt, or lose something, I will probably still feel sad.
This is not deep affection.
At least Elena refused to call it that.
She felt it was more like a residue.
Like the slightly lighter patch on the wall long after the furniture has been moved away.
Proof that something once stood there.
“I have to go.”
She said.
Martin nodded.
“Safe travels.”
Elena turned and walked a few steps.
Martin suddenly called after her.
“Elena.”
She looked back.
“What?”
He seemed about to say something.
In the end he only raised his hand.
“Iceland is cold. Bring extra clothes.”
She smiled.
“Got it.”
That was the last time they met.
Three months later Elena did not return to Lisbon.
She went to Paris, then Prague, and later took a long-term job in Copenhagen.
A year later she gave up the Lisbon apartment.
The landlord asked if she wanted the map on the wall.
She stood in the empty living room, looking at the city map pricked with countless tiny holes.
She had once marked the bakery, the café, the riverbank, the bookstore.
All the marks together really did form an irregular circle.
She smiled faintly.
“No need.”
The movers carried out the last box.
Elena closed the door for the last time.
Suddenly she remembered many years ago, Martin standing barefoot in that kitchen, hugging her from behind.
Back then she thought loving someone meant wanting to be close to him.
Later she learned it was not.
The day you truly let someone go is not when you finally stop loving him.
It is when you finally walk out of his radius.
No longer detouring past.
No longer pretending it is on the way.
No longer treating “nearby” as a form of company.
Many years later Elena still thought of Martin occasionally.
Only then she could no longer say how many minutes it took from her home to his bookstore.
Once a friend asked.
“Where does that person live now?”
Elena thought for a moment.
Then shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Only after she said it did she realize she felt no sadness at all.
Outside the Copenhagen sky was already darkening at four in the winter afternoon.
She lifted her coffee and watched the unfamiliar streetlights one by one come on in the distance.
The world suddenly felt enormous.
And she was finally no longer living inside anyone’s few miles.