“God forbid! What do you mean?” she asks puzzled.
#Pecunia animal driver#
“Are you kidding me?” the driver adds, somewhat annoyed. “Take it all, you’ve been good to me! Even quenched my thirst! God bless you!” The woman takes out her five thousand note. Near Gura Lotrului, the car turns left on the road to Voineasa and stops, parking in front of the factory in Brezoi. The distance is covered quickly, mile after mile. “What a stroke of luck The sun and the thirst had almost gotten me.” “Well, same place,” the man smiles slyly. Where are you going?” she asks curiously. What does it matter? The water is hot, but it’s water. She can’t believe her eyes and drinks in gulps, water trickling down her chin and neck. Smiling wryly, he hands her a half-full bottle. “Sir, I’ve about to die of thirst in Ramnic, what a scorcher!” Untying the bag, she takes out the five thousand note and stands up, walking toward the saleswoman. This is nothing to joke about, she is so thirsty it hurts. Someone stops by the kiosk and buys a bottle, drinking with gusto until the last drop. No cars stop and the feeling of thirst will not leave her alone. It is way too hot and the sun burns overhead. She puts the note back and sits on the sidewalk, waiting for a car to pass. How cold is the water in her well! And how good! It’s not like she will die of thirst until Brezoi. Untying the bag, she pulls out a crumpled five thousand note and smoothens it, her eyes fastened on the colored bottles.
She is about to go, but thirst doesn’t let her go. How much does it cost? Three thousand the bottle. “What if she stopped in Brezoi, where her daughter is married. All that’s left is barely enough for the way back. It went all to the lawyer, so as not to lose the trial. Not enough to buy the bread, tomatoes, and cucumbers she wanted. The burning sun and the thirst torment her. She asks the saleswoman for a cup of water, but the woman only laughs ‒ she has only soda. She has eaten nothing else than a piece of bread, but she’s not hungry. Teodora descends the steps of the courthouse, overwhelmed by worries and needs. The peasant looks his best in poetry, in paintings, lying on the raw grass, or in Romanian, Ukrainian or Belarusian folklore, even more so than a king seated comfortably in the affairs of the country, whispering lies at the table.Ī fragment from the novella Teodora, The Irretrievable Strange as it may seem, the peasant always learns to adapt on the fly to poverty and wants, always yoked to the plow with his companion, the ox. Then, hunger-stricken, he takes a break, swallows a lump of polenta with an onion broken in his fist, and a piece of curd from a shabby towel, as the sweat dries on his rough shirt. The peasant wakes up in the middle of the night, caters to his animals, and hurries empty-stomached to his field, where the sun beats down on his head until sunset. Nor does he take his lunch at twelve o’clock or French leave by fifteen hundred, so that at seventeen sharp, after a well-deserved nap, he can go out for a walk, a beer, and ten mititei. He doesn’t start his work at nine in the morning with a coffee.
#Pecunia animal Patch#
If his house or patch of ground collapses during an earthquake, flood, or drought, no one will give him compensation. He has never heard of holidays at the beach or in the mountains. He is a kind of nobody, with no position, no medical or rest leave. The doctor comes to his village once a year or not at all. He’s slow, he barely gets by, he’s always duped by corrupted politicians during elections.
Nobody offers him a job because he has no qualifications. The peasant is not a denomination, he has neither wants nor at least an identity. In an increasingly disunited and confused European Union, the peasant seems to me to be the only certainty, because he has never been of interest to anyone.
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