“So lasting they are, the rivers!” Only think. Sources somewhere in the mountains pulsate and springs seep from a rock, join in a stream, in the current of a river, and the river flows through centuries, millennia. Tribes, nations pass, and the river is still there, and yet it is not, for water does not stay the same, only the place and the name persist, as a metaphor…”
– Czeslaw Milosz, Rivers, The Paris Review Issue 147
The Danube originates, like a fairy tale, in an ornate fountain, in a castle, in the heart of Germany’s Black Forest. From there, it flows through ten countries to spill into the Black Sea. 2,872 kilometers. It always has and will.
The river’s basin is said to have been the site of some of the earliest civilizations; its story is as great and long as that of humans. It flows through, along, and past the Neolithic Europeans; the ancient Greeks, then Romans; the warring fiefdoms and kingdoms of the Middle Ages; the Hapsburgs and Ottomans; the twentieth century and its real wars of abstract notions;
but tonight, a shorter story: Once upon a time, there was a river and two humans loved each other.
Once upon a time, two people drank champagne from a ten-euro bottle, by the banks of the Danube, in Vienna. A forgettable moment in the river’s history. A forgotten—if there was one—occasion. A forgettable, forgotten name on the bottle’s label, like those of the two people who drank champagne and loved each other.
The air was so cold, their fingers and toes and faces were numb, but he put her hand with his inside his coat pocket. And for ten euros, the champagne was good. And the sky was so frozen clear that the Danube was a mirror of stars and midnight blue and sparkling.
Maybe it wasn’t sparkling. Maybe it wasn’t champagne. And maybe they were not magical; only human.
The couple finished the bottle and threw it in the river. It disappeared. They parted.
The Danube has many names: the Donau, Dunaj, Duna, Donava… Danubius in Latin. The root, danu, is the same: to “run”or “flow.” And so it has, indifferent and beautiful, while people had come and gone and called it, seen it, wished it to be whatever they wanted: god, goddess, trade route, cruise line, demarcation, muse, waltz, poem, witness to wars, genocides, picnics,
and once upon a time, a short, true story: Two people loved each other.
Once upon a time, two people drank champagne on the banks of the Danube, in Vienna.
It was cheap champagne. It was the best champagne. It was a forgettable night. It was the most beautiful night in the history of the river, which was the same, star-studded royal blue as the sky.
The river flowed on, the water and moment and love unrepeatable.