Fragrance (novel) [45]
Pr. Dr. Dorin Octavian Picioruș
Fragrance
(novel)
*
It’s in the house, on the parquet floor. The little insect, coming from I don’t know where, is the intruder. I’m stalking her from above, like the FBI, from my desk, while she looks for her food. Or maybe love…Thousands of kilometers away, in one of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, on the 88th floor[1], a man between two ages, with a short haircut is just opening an online page. And, I suddenly jump, because it was our platform, it was Theology for today! Like when you’re shown your own face, in someone’s drawing, and then you find out that you’re also receiving it as a gift. You didn’t know that you were being seen, that you were being drawn so close, but his gesture deeply moves you. Because we are moved by everything that truly touches us. And that man writes to me, right at that moment, and tells me that what I preach, glory to God!, has also reached him. Are you a christian? No, not yet! I am a catechumen, but one who aspires with all his being to receive the true faith. And I rejoiced greatly for him, for his sincerity and good thought, which must necessarily become a deed. Because entry into the Church is made through Divine Baptism, through Divine Chrismation and through the Divine Eucharist and not just through faith. Your faith must become a deed, so that you become a man of piety, a real member of the Church. And the sacramental entry into the Church is divine, because God Himself makes you His son, by making His dwelling in you through His glory.
The insect soared like a tiny helicopter, while I was wholeheartedly rejoicing in Andika[2] (now our brother in Hristos, who received the name Nichiforos[3] at Baptism), and it went out the door, whirled through the kitchen, hit the door a little, exited my balcony through the left window and transformed from a banal, but suspicious insect into what it was: a spy object. Who sent it?! What did it want to see?!! If Βελισάριος[4] were in my place, with his endless appetite for conspiracies, that good things are done by others, he would have said that the occult is monitoring me, that they want to do my bidding. But I, on the contrary, considered that entering my house was a stopover, a respite in the search for the real bad boys of the planet, just as Chelios[5] stops, has another hard drink, and continues to kill. Or, in many films, the villain, chased by agent 1079, enters people’s houses in desperation, devastates their house, and then jumps out the window into a freight car. And away he goes!…with all the monitoring we don’t need.
Online shortens distance so amazingly that the message reaches you almost instantly. Find out what happened in that bookstore in New York, where my friend providentially met Father Stephen and told him that I liked his book of contemporary testimonies. And Father Stephen, to convince me that this is how things are and that what he conveyed to me through him is great friendship, sent me three of his books, autographed, telling me that he also reads me with joy and that he is glad that I have finally started preaching in english. Because, if I have made romanians happy with my writing for so long, now I am also making everyone who reads english happy. Then I wrote to him, when the books arrived, and I thanked him for being close to me, because, obviously, we don’t feel like real pleasantries anymore, but only long silences. Or counterfeit words, if we achieve something at the work of words. But, from words in words, the woman told me (who?), that it wasn’t me who was targeted, but my neighbor, the one with three children, who, when he gets into the elevator, gets in first, then calls them, instead of the other way around. And the insect came into my house to hear through the neighbors, as was once practiced with the jar, placed against the wall and to the ear at the same time. That you had to write, to give in the throat, to receive a monthly sum, one that would be considered ridiculously large even after the NCSSA[6] deconspiration.
But, at 92, grandpa Anghel tells his grandchildren that honest work made him prosperous, not the systematic casting at the Securitate. Rewriting personal history, post-factum, is another identity card, one as worthless as the entire imposture. But the woman, with a moldovan accent, from Bacău, assured me that the smeared line is the lack of partisanship. I myself agree with her more than one hundred percent, because I have seen how ridiculous partisanship is through newspapers and journals. When nothing has happened, the one who believes or mimics partisanship writes to you that ein staatsstreich[7] has happened, that we are in the air. When the coup happens, the paid ones are silent and laugh under their mustaches, because any profitable coup is ein blitzeinschlag[8].
[1] Cf. https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnurile_Petronas.
[2] To be seen: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/andika.
[3] Idem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikephoros.
[4] Velisarios. To be seen: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belizarie.
[5] To be seen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_(film).
[6] National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives. To be seen: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consiliul_Național_pentru_Studierea_Arhivelor_Securității.
[7] a coup d’état.
[8] a lightning strike.