"Not yet, Elena," he would say when she spoke of marriage. "First, I must finish the new barn. First, I must save enough for the winter cattle. We have time. We are young."
Now, as the accordion wailed the familiar tune, a young man sat beside him, complaining about his long hours at the workshop and how his girlfriend was upset he missed her birthday.
For the next sixty years, Andrei lived in the house he eventually finished, but it never became a home. He realized too late that the barn was full, but his heart was a drafty, empty room. Cine-n tinerete n-o iubit destul
The village of Valea Morii didn’t have many secrets, but it had Andrei—a man whose silence was as heavy as the millstones he once turned. Now eighty, he spent his evenings on a weathered wooden bench, watching the young people dance at the village festival.
The boy looked at the old man, then at the dance floor. He stood up, wiped the grease from his hands, and ran toward the girl in the floral dress. "Not yet, Elena," he would say when she spoke of marriage
He treated his youth as an infinite well, pouring his days into labor and his nights into exhausted sleep, always pushing Elena’s hand away when she reached for him to dance. He thought he was being responsible; he didn't realize he was being hollow.
"The work will be there when you are old and your back is bent," Andrei said, gripping the boy’s wrist with surprising strength. "But the fire in a woman’s eyes? That goes out if you don't tend to it. I spent my youth building a cage for a bird that had already flown. Don't wait until you're my age to realize that the only thing you take to the grave is the warmth you gave away." We have time
The villagers had a saying, an old song lyric that followed him like a shadow: "Cine-n tinerețe n-o iubit destul..." (He who in youth did not love enough...).