Fragrance (novel) [36]
Pr. Dr. Dorin Octavian Picioruș
Fragrance
(novel)
*
Last announcement: Due to lack of funds, but also of imagination – some would say of practical training – he was not caught. And the thief also had a mother!…His mother, the poor, his poor mother, like him, in fact, the poor thing he was, said to guide him from a young age on the path of his ancestors. And she, the poor thing, taught him to steal! From the subway, from the trams, what did it matter if they were communists, democrats, from other states, State stealing…For, in fact, we know him as a swindler…Now, Mr. Prosecutor, State wants us to tell him that he’s a roma, that he comes from the eaves of old Bâzu, who used to steal sheep from romanians, but we know that State is a gypsy, because that’s what we called him for a lot of years, until the law came that all gypsies should be called roma or rroma. Because, they say, rroma means man[1] to them. But to be a man with you, you must be a man with me. And to be a man with me, you don’t have to rob me on the highway, you don’t have to rape my girls, you don’t have to rob me of my produce.
So, and?!…And we know him, point, Mr. Prosecutor! He puts on his balaclava, in the end, and now he’s sneaking around the apartments, because he’s ashamed of us for not beating him back to the command. Because if we catch him, roma, ursar, farrier, whatever he is, we’ll beat the shit out of him. Now we know that violence, that laws, but the law of man is only one: to be a man and to live as a man. Because not everyone can make their own law, as they want, but people, since the beginning of the world, have lived with the common sense in the cheek, because man is afraid of God. Can you fight with God?! You can’t! Because He is great and you are an ant. And a hailstorm, a storm, an earthquake comes and kills you in the house, on the road, wherever you are going.
And the author, alas, the author really likes the popular theology! When a man learns from his life, from his sins, from what he hears and what he sees. When he learns the will of God from what happens to him. That you don’t have to be a great scholar to understand that if you steal you don’t feel good and if you rape, you don’t feel good either. That you steal what isn’t yours, and that’s not love, it’s sexual violence. When the woman looks into your eyes and is full of you, because she understands you, then her coming to you means filling you with love. And you talk to her, kiss her, hug her, promise her a future, that is, you put her next to you, so that we can walk on this good, beautiful path that we choose. But she doesn’t walk, if she doesn’t understand you! If he doesn’t trust you, he stops somewhere, stops and goes somewhere else…And you struggle in vain, you regret in vain, because love means always understand in two, moving forward together, knowing how to move forward together.
The theology of each man is his life with God. For God teaches each of us the necessary minimum, whether we want it or not, which we can always increase through the Divine Tradition of the Church. And just as He teaches us life and its joys and how many things there are around us, so He also teaches us who He is in our life and what life we should have. And if you don’t want to know more, stick to this minimum. But if you want to rejoice with God and for Him to rejoice in you and dwell in you, to know Him means to sanctify yourself unceasingly with Him. And to sanctify yourself means to rejoice unceasingly, because each of your days is an unspeakable joy. And this novel, like all my others, speaks from the midst of joy with God and people, and therefore can speak in everyone’s language.