Everyone wanted it, knowingly or not, but rarely got it or had it. Beauty was born rarely and unexpectedly. The real one, the one most suited to the description ‘God given’. Such beauty looked really as if given by God, His generosity towards the mortals. That grace asked not about merit, nor cared about acres of land, riches measurable by money. Beauty was born wherever blind-folded destiny had intended, in a daub house or with a silver spoon in the mouth, with no interest in good bloodlines or poverty-stricken ancestors. It appeared quite unexpectedly. During growing up, at one moment, a child, neither more nor less pretty than other children, would wake up crowned with beauty. Nobody knew where to, but gone were the upturned nose, the freckles, the broom-like hair, disproportionately big or little ears, unremarkable face, all disappeared without a trace. In their stead beauty came, as if something had descended from heaven and awakened it, sleeping somewhere inside until then, waiting for its moment. The child would disappear as if it had never been, and there was beauty that did not care if it belonged to where she appeared. Sated or hungry, it lived as if defying space and time.

Along with breathless admiration it left behind wherever it went, that beauty also provoked hidden fear. It was its very rarity that brought it together into the same order with other things that rarely happened and were hard to forget because of the ugly ending most of them met. That was why those who had walked the earth for a long, too long time, feared beauty, remembering all the stories and songs tragically told and sung about such beauties. They shook their heads, made doubt-filled clucking sounds, foreboding in their whispers that something like that had never turned out well. It never occurred to them, they never recalled, how many good endings many of the beauties had, because people were quick to forget the beautiful and the good, remembering only that what should be feared and guarded against. They also said that beauty came and went, that it lasted for a while only, that time would not spare it, had no mercy for it. It would vanish as suddenly as it appeared, it was not to be counted on, it was treacherous and fickle. And also that beauty was not for the poor ones, but for the gentry and fine life, because hard life crumbled it and wasted it.

Despite that and everything else, the beauty named lepuška walked the world to which she was born, leaving in her wake sparks in the eyes and the breath of wonder. She was learning to live with that unexpected gift, getting used to the distinctiveness and uniqueness gifted to her. Mirrors were removed from her so she would not get vain, so that she would not expect too much, so she would not give it all out to the accidental gift that befell her. But there were windows, puddles, every drop of water that gave beauty its face back – the image of a unique destiny. Each time she wondered at the reflected image, as if she had seen someone other and not herself, forgetting that her beauty, just like any other, did not count on anyone being able to get used to it.

Beauty could still surprise, no matter how many times it was seen, even the one carrying it. But even more than to surprise, despite all the fears and superstitions, beauty was there to instil faith in better things. Wherever it might be and no matter how rarely it appeared, beauty is the vision of all that might be more beautiful. As with many other things, only the rare ones might decipher it, see its essence, and grasp that regardless of its transience, its appearance sends a message. Beauties walk this world like its more beautiful, desired image.

One of those who were capable of seeing the essence of every beauty, every tree and flower, every cloud and the sky, a star long gone, of recognising the beauty of human soul and of lepuška, the beauty of the good and of the existence, life itself, was the one gambling with life – Fyodor Mikhailovich, better known as Dostoyevsky. That is why his Prince Myshkin said: “Beauty will save the world”. For in beauty lives hope.

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Lepuška* – beauty in Serbian (colloq.), diminutive from lepota, n. or lep (m.), lepa (f.), lepo (n), adj.