Fragrance (novel) [47]
Pr. Dr. Dorin Octavian Picioruș
Fragrance
(novel)
*
The spy insect said incredible things about my neighbor. That he, while waiting for his bus to pick up his children from School, was bankrupting banks all over the world. Who could have believed something like this? Who would have seen a world-class thief in him, in this man who seems bored every day he lives? The female reporter from 10 FIX TV, who approached me when I was returning from shopping, asked me if I suspected who I was dealing with. As I had seen it done on TV, I pretended to know nothing about the situation, and said that he was a convinced family man, that he took his 3 children to School every day, and that I never believed in my head that he would be capable of such dirty things of such a global waistline. And she, a professional, takes me aside and asks me in grazing mode: „Come on, really no clue?!…”. And when I smelled the fine scent of her perfume, looking into her faded blue eyes, with iridescences of green, I told myself that it wasn’t the case, that I didn’t have to reveal and tell her what the female agent from Buhuși had told me, and I kept the professional secret. That the woman had only told me because I was a Priest, and her grandfather had been an Archpresbyter. And she knew that what you say to a Priest, as they say, doesn’t fly away like a leaf and everyone finds out. And I kept the professional secret, be- coming secretive or sandy or vaporous myself, because where the insect flew, there went the truth of the vicinity.
The good neighborliness is when you have a gate in the fence and you can pass from one yard to another. We would pass by our goddaughter Rița, she would come to ours, running to us to tell us something or to eat together…But when she died, the rapeseed fence turned into concrete and it no longer had a gate. Our block, a prison with open doors, has no real relationships. It takes a long time for us to knock on each other’s doors. And that’s precisely why, no longer knowing the natural conversation between neighbors, suspicions and silences go hand in hand, because you don’t know the other person’s truth. But when you know it, you don’t blame them either, as long as their life is hard…
Marinela was friends with Lia, the one who went to Spain and got married there or what she did, that she never came back. Some say she died at around 45, young girl, that her spanish or puertorican, what was he, got her on drugs and that’s why she died. But Lia’s mother, that what she brags with her!, tells everyone that she receives letters. Stamped letters and money online and Camel goes and takes them out. Now, Marinela, she had also taken hairdressing courses, like Lia, and it says it makes money. She lives with a guy with a big, suspicious nose, who supposedly also makes money. Where does this world make money, money and more money, when I see that none of them work hard?! That I, said Polina, I worked all my life for the communists, I got a pension of 2600 lei, and from this I draw to lengthen it and it does not lengthen. But Marinela, together with her lanky boyfriend, now has an import-export business, plus currency exchange. And now the woman is dressed that you say she’s a minister or something, but when she talks you understand that she’s a low-class person. But money, as footballers say, if it doesn’t make you a top scorer, at least it makes you seem special. But that’s as long as you don’t talk…Because when you come out of the „philosopher” state, everyone can feel the stench from you.