I could not get married. Anywhere I see an unknown woman her face appears, her body, her look. The look that was unknown to everyone. Nobody knew her and most of all; nobody knew how far she was able to see, and what she was seeing. Then my heart became weak … By the way, can I take some water, to take some medicine?
– Of course. Go ahead in the kitchen.
Viky entered the kitchen where a woman with the back at the door was standing.
– Can I have a glass of water!
– In a moment. Takes a glass and fills it with water, and Tita (because it was she) gives the glass to Viky … When Viky sees her he “gets the wind up” …he fells down. Tita throws the water at him, she opens his neckband …
– Unbelievable! Sir, he could have died! You were talking about love and he was getting close to death. Listen, Mister Buia, forgive me if I am wrong, the teacher was teasing him, but earlier we were talking about working men, about their way of being and about their rooting out. It seemed to me that you don’t really like them, or am I wrong?!
– Hmm … I have learned something else too. In fact, even in that boy’s event, that was going at work in that rainy day is given this advice: if you cannot finish something you are given or a word, its better you don’t start it! We were talking about working men and we moved on to other stories, so let’s continue.
No, I don’t hate working men, not only because I myself have over 20 years worked at the baths, so being a part of them, you still must have noticed something that I hate. That something is the false life of the working men.
For example, I think of a working man that has claustrophobia. He goes to work in his workshop, factory, mine. So, in barred places, vicious atmosphere … He is coming home – apartment house – again a barred place, phonic pollution and all kinds … Even if he “goes out” at a restaurant, movie, theatre, still in barred and man-made places they are.
Nowadays, my gentleman, this human kind, people, that had the biggest thirst for freedom from all the world species, managed to live only in barred places, degenerating that beauty and great dream of freedom. Let’s say that if he travels, he’s still going in a train „cabin”, car or airplane.
Arhiva pentru August 10th, 2009
You may say that what I just told you is of no interest. Maybe, but I see in a working man an educated man, to only answer to orders. I don’t know if the expression of controlled man is correct, but for many times you cannot make the difference between a robot and a working man: the alarm rings (first command) after which the sound of the siren for entering to work, then the other siren for breaking work (eating time), the siren calls, he gets back to work, the siren again, and he can get back home.
At the restaurant a romance was playing, you could eat, sing disco, dance. When the night news ended he goes to sleep, the alarm clock in the morning …
Maybe it’s not how I see it, their life, they might have got used to it and this ethics seems to be a modern man behavior! But these words don’t worm me up. Let’s take a man from the city and take him to the village, were no knowledge is being asked for a single handicraft, the same he was taught at the craft school from the city, nor it is asked to know thousands of handicrafts. Wouldn’t he die from starvation?
Does he still know those ancestral occupations of our grandparents through which he can built a home, a farm, what does he have to do with a cow that has eaten clover, so it won’t die, what does he do with a pig that doesn’t want to eat? Does he know how to treat affection with what he has in his house?
You see, under the quotation that I have lightened him, I have the feeling that in fact he has fallen into decay from the ancestral activities of man! Of course that some of them do these things better or worse. That every man has his capacities, but there were know and there were being done. On the same time the fact that are few left from those who still knew how to read a calendar, terrifies me. For many people the calendar is a sequence of numbers, an accumulation of days. Few are those who know that a calendar, and I refer at the orthodox calendar, means the history of ancestry, the time as a date and as a form of ethically and spiritually manifestation of a Christian’s life.
These seem to be just some palliative enumerations, but any interpreted calendar can a remarkable accumulation of knowledge for each one and that are a dispose to all of us.
Well, my gentleman, a working man is not aware of these things, further more with a few days ago or years, on this road these wagons with working men were not passing, but some carcasses with canvas and I will explain to you how this working men carriage was being done in those times:
In the morning I’m telling you about, it was a dreadful frost. Some said that it could have been – 35°C, others -40°C, for sure it was that the coldness was horrible. On our way to the place that the car was taking us we could hear how the firewood from the houses was cracking. By that time it didn’t exist any changing room at the mine. You had to go with your working clothes on, from home. This was convenient because it didn’t demand a third line of clothes, clothes which then, after the war, were hard to get. A huge inconvenience was that the dirty clothes didn’t keep you worm as the clean ones. The airless parts of oil or other dirty things stuck on you as an iron plate and still as a plate “kept” you worm. On our feet we were wearing water boots which, although I took as big, so more stocking will fit, kept colder than worm. I was taking a pair of stocking which I covered in a paper; these kept a part of the foot transpiration and our feet didn’t freeze anymore. Some preferred the wheat straws but I couldn’t feel any difference, in better, in relation with the paper. Most of us had a stoking from paper in those water boots.
At the place where the cars were, still nobody appeared. Maybe I was a little earlier. The clock from the belfry shows me I’m right, but usually when it was so cold, the drivers get late. The other mine diggers took shelter at the houses from nearby. From time to time we would rub our nooses and ears, and so that our feet won’t freeze we would scrape it continuously.
The drivers are here. We “rushed” to the car so we would take a safely place under the canvas. The car was old, from the time of the war. We set down. The “privileged” places were the ones from the middle. The ones that managed to get there were surrounded by a human “wall”. A warm wall! But in the middle didn’t fit more than 20 people, while the others were left to be the brick of that human construction. And like any other wall, this one was also almost undefended, after the many holes the canvas had that seemed to be clear. My feet didn’t warm up yet. I wished the car had spent more time in the garage so that we could “get” warmer. But no! Today we are being precise! The driver assures us that on this coldness the engine reduction is very good and the engine would “pull up” much better. The cold was “pulling” us up. I didn’t manage to get a privileged place. Through the canvas holes the cold seemed to rupture my soul. You could not do anything else than bearing ahead. Nobody was smoking.