Fragrance (novel) [38]
Pr. Dr. Dorin Octavian Picioruș
Fragrance
(novel)
*
The light was taken away for two hours and they were all dead. Everything in my computer was a tomb, because I had no light. It’s useless to have light in the socket, if you don’t have the light of God in you. To write theology you must be filled by Him with His light. It doesn’t work with whims, it doesn’t work with jokes, it doesn’t work with gross fakes. If you don’t have it, you’re not. And that’s for sure! But his mother wanted to make him a Priest too and she did all sorts of things…and he ended up there. And after he became a Priest, he got bored. And he and his mother! So you can see, Auroro! Why, girl, are you sorry now?! Because I, she said, thought he would earn more, that everyone would see him well, but he only has problems…And the problems, in vain that you are a Priest, do not run away from you, but seem to keep coming towards you. And you are questioned, you are misinterpreted, you are accused, things are asked of you, you are provoked…
The culturnic[1] had sent Cati! She had heard that he was getting his PhD, that he needed peace, and Cati came to scream under the window for minutes on end. That she had fallen in love with him and couldn’t take it anymore, that the crazy ones of hers. He had sent her to take the train, to come, to find him at home, to tell him what he said and did, because he needed laughter. What to do, that’s the level! When you spend your whole life dealing with bad things, lies, intrigues, you bring them to the city with you, you export them. But you, no, you pretend to be a religious man, a good man, arrogant in your pride! You speak slowly, with a low voice, because that’s how you’ve seen it done. No one knows your ambitus as a batrachian, as a barker. But we, who know you, know what devilish eyes you have, we know how you light up like a crab, how you call them like Cotorga, because that’s you! And after playing her role, as if she didn’t exist, Katiușa became history, entered the insectarium of memory and there she remained, in her needle that holds her tightly in the white cork. And that he told him that he was plagiarizing, which many do, and he couldn’t admit it. He became fire and pear, turned his back on him on Facebook like a lady of company, after which they met at a book fair. And he looked into his eyes, but the translator (he translates anyone, that’s what!), burned by the look, turned his face away, so as not to say anything more.
But what does it mean to plagiarize, when you know nothing else? He who loves the truth, loves to eulogize. And the best eulogizing of someone is to cite their contribution to your work. But when you’re full of yourself, you don’t have time to appreciate, but to plagiarize, although both end in kids[2]. Kids of goats, but the good goat is the one with milk. And, when you walk towards the green grass of home like a leading plagiarist, you feel like an aristocrat of the moment. You think about how big you’ve become, how imposing, that „the commoners” around you don’t realize you’re an impostor. And what audacity, what an idea, to be able to lie so fawn, so sadly, and have everyone catch you in the act!
Manole came on stage and said that whoever doesn’t close the door will be taken out with a small bucket. He said it differently, but I remembered the essential. And when the actors and the stand-up comedians laugh at each other, something inessential comes out, because everyone is afraid to say their whole heart out. It’s the same when writers meet literary critics, school theology writers meet ghostual theologians, mothers meet daughters, street dogs meet yard dogs. They bark at each other, but not so ferociously. They speak their heart out at the corners, behind the scenes, in whispers. That’s why you shouldn’t take them seriously in public, in front of many people, but you should read with a pen in your hand, read and underline, take notes. Because people speak on under the words. What you need to remember is the foundation of the book, the style and the number of pages being unessential.
[1] The culturnic [култу́рник], the communist activist responsible for cultural propaganda.
[2] In romanian it makes sense, because apreciezi and plagiezi end in iezi.