Ages ago (not when Michael the Brave entered Alba-Iulia, not that long ago!), there was a street in Cluj called Sunset Street (note: not Sunset Boulevard, Sunset Street). I have always been fond of its name, since it had a strange, poetic, out-of-the-way ring to it. It invited reflection. I liked the name, but not the street. There wasn’t much to like, either. A street beset by absences. Overrun by absences. If you ever wandered about, you were sure to cross nobody (maybe some housewife in her dressing gown, dropping by another housewife in her dressing gown or her union suit, according to seasonal dictates; that was pretty much it). Some yard dog would bark at you, feigning dedication to canine purpose. Oddly enough (depending on the direction you were headed, of course), the street lead towards… sunset. No, not even after learning that this was the street where there lived (as a tenant) my wife, before being (my wife), in her undergraduate years.
What could have possessed you to roam this street!?! Nothing. Not a thing. No stores in sight, no watering holes to be found, and private enterprise was inconceivable back then (“Back then,” that’s, well, 30 or 40 years ago, close to 1.500 days ago; can you imagine that? 36.000 hours! Minutes? A clockful of them.) Again: what drove you to come on this street? Relatives (not in my case), dames (never saw any), wonders of human architecture (not a chance!), the shade of trees extending over the sidewalk (there weren’t any trees, and not much of a sidewalk, for that matter)… What, then? Well, a duty call (for instance, if you were a mailman, policeman or bailiff – again, not my case) or wanderlust (my case). Let me explain:
This street was so much a-part from others, that I have often, often visited it (and, to be sure, I had only 1/3 of my age today), only to walk from Orient to sunset, or from sunset to sunrise. It mattered little.