A Troubled Man by Eugen Oniscu
A Romanian man looks back regretfully on his cruelty to his first wife and daughters.
Early in the morning, Florea Ivașcu was already at the market, carefully arranging his goods on the stall and rubbing his hands with satisfaction as he waited for customers. He sold fruit and vegetables according to the season. At sixty-two, nothing kept him from being among the first market vendors to arrive and among the last to leave.
All the produce he sold he bought from villagers who came into town to sell wholesale, then hurried back to their work in the countryside. Florea was not one of those farmers who worked their own land and sold what they themselves had grown. He simply bought at one price and sold by the kilo in order to make a little extra. Sometimes, when he ran out of stock, he would take his van through the villages, visiting certain growers to buy more produce.
His world was there in the market, behind the stall, chatting with customers and other vendors. Sometimes, in the middle of the rows of stalls, he would fall into thought, watching people and taking an interest in their concerns. And so his life went on, day after day and year after year, with joys and sorrows like any other man's.
Florea's life, up to the age of sixty-two, had been full of trouble. He had not known what anyone would call a good life. In his youth he had run wild, keeping company with a rather notorious crowd and treating his first wife harshly, though she was a decent woman, respected by everyone. He had abused her verbally and sometimes physically; worse still, he had treated their two daughters badly as well. In those years, no one could stand in his way. He had done only what he pleased.
When one daughter was twelve and the other fourteen, Florentina, his wife, fell ill from what ordinary people call a broken heart, and she died. Her sisters took the girls away and raised them, unwilling to leave them in the hands of "such a debauched man," as they themselves said. So his daughters were brought up and educated in the Protestant faith, because Florentina had come from a Protestant family.
For some time after his wife's death, Florea went on living the same pleasure-seeking life. Then he brought Sorina into his apartment, though in truth he had already been involved with her while his wife was still alive. Sorina bore him a daughter, Lucia, and with Lucia's birth Florea began to grow more responsible, especially since he also had to support the two children Sorina had from an earlier marriage.
Time passed quickly, and after trying several kinds of work, he devoted himself to selling at the market. The money was not much, but at least it covered life's necessities. His daughters from his first marriage grew up and started families of their own. The younger one left for North America with her husband. Ioana, the elder one, remained in the same town, working as a seamstress.
Ioana resembled him greatly in the face. She was a strong, hard-edged woman, much like him in that respect, but she minded her own family and had no respect at all for her father. In fact, she would not even speak to him, bitter because she had lost her mother through his reckless way of life.
Once, Florea tried to approach his daughter and speak to her, but Ioana fixed him with a merciless look and said:
"Have you no shame for what you did? What had my mother ever done to you, that you drove her into the grave? You took my mother from me when I needed her most, and now you come trying to make peace with me. Aren't you ashamed?"
Then she walked away in outrage.
Those words struck him hard in the heart, and they stirred pangs of conscience that he kept buried deep inside, without saying anything to anyone. He also noticed that the people around him, those who knew him, looked at him in much the same way Ioana did. He realized that whatever he did, however he behaved, people would still talk about him in exactly the same way. And the town was small; everyone knew everyone else.
Even so, he did not want to move to another town. He had been born there, and there he could still earn his living, so he decided to stay and fight it out in that place, no matter what people said, though it hurt him that no one would ever count him among decent men.
As time went on, Lucia grew up, and Florea became more and more attached to her. He granted her every wish. She was his reason for living, the one thing that gave meaning to his life.
When she was in her final year of high school, Lucia had a conversation with Ioana, whom she had met before. Ioana told her everything about their father, especially how vilely he had treated Florentina.
When she came home, Lucia told him all of it, tears in her eyes, and asked:
"Is it true, Father? Did you really behave like that?"
Florea was shaken by the fact that the sins of his youth were still following him through life and were now about to destroy the best thing he still had: his bond with Lucia as her father. After weighing the matter for a moment, he answered:
"You have to understand, Lucia dear, that I made mistakes in my youth, but I'm not the monster your sister makes me out to be before the whole world. The truth is, that daughter of mine is fierce. She never lets up. She speaks badly of me everywhere, never missing a chance to drag my name through the mud. After all, I'm still her father. She might at least keep quiet and be satisfied with having said everything to my face."
And though their father-daughter relationship went on, he noticed that Lucia now held something back from him, a hesitation, a doubt, and he realized that no matter how hard he tried, he would never manage to erase it from her mind.
On the other hand, his life with Sorina was far from ideal. In time, he came to understand that she had ruined his first marriage, yet he put up with her because she was the mother of his youngest daughter and did not behave badly toward the girl.
The way I behaved toward Florentina was disgraceful, that much is true. That's how I should have behaved toward Sorina, because she was the one who deserved it. If only I had treated Florentina at least the way I behave now, what a wonderful life mine would have been, Florea sometimes thought.
But he knew that no one could ever bring back the years he had had with his first wife, and that the chances he had once been given in life to do good were lost forever.
One winter evening, after coming home from the market and having dinner with his family, Sorina told him they had all been invited to her brother's house for his birthday. And though Lucia urged him to go, Florea did not want to. He knew that some close, well-ordered families would be there, and he was well aware that his own household was not really a family. He was living with Sorina without being married to her, not even in a civil ceremony. The two children from Sorina's earlier marriage were now grown, and he had the feeling that all of them together looked very odd. He did not want to go.
Besides, that day he felt deeply depressed. He had seen Ioana in the market with her children and her husband, and at one point the little boy had cried out, "Mama, look, Grandpa..." But Ioana had stopped him and pulled him back to her. Through Lucian, Ioana's husband, he had managed to get close to his grandchildren and make himself known to them. Lucian did not object to the children knowing their grandfather.
That whole incident in the market had upset him and reopened the wound in his soul. That was why he wanted to be alone, to brood over those sad memories from long ago.
He sat on the sofa in the living room in front of the television, paying no attention at all to the program flickering on the screen. His thoughts were far away, back in the years of his youth. At length he groaned aloud:
"How could I have behaved so vilely, just as Ioana keeps reproaching me?"
He let out a long sigh and sank once more into that lethargic state of inner suffering.
Suddenly the doorbell rang sharply, breaking the chain of his thoughts. He got up heavily from the sofa and went to the door. When he opened it, he was a little surprised. Ticu stood there, another market vendor like himself.
"Hello. Am I bothering you? I've got a small problem."
"Hello. Come in, please."
Ticu was around fifty. He had a fine family and was what people called a decent man, well thought of by everyone. On top of that, he had several hectares of land on which he grew melons, which he then sold at the market for a fairly good profit. In winter, though, he also did the same kind of trading as Florea, buying produce wholesale and then selling it by the kilo.
Unlike Florea, Ticu was cheerful and full of life. There was an energy and appetite for life in him that showed plainly in his face and in his blue eyes. He lowered his solid frame into an armchair opposite the sofa where Florea had been sitting. For a few seconds he glanced around the living room, at the furniture and at the television program, then, after Florea had sat down again, he said:
"I like you, Florea. First of all because you let me call you tu - we've talked about that in the market before. And then because I can strike any honest deal with you, since you don't go back on your word, even when it leaves you out of pocket. But in the deal I'm about to propose, you won't lose anything. I found some farmers with five hundred kilos of first-grade potatoes. I'd like you to take half the quantity too, so we can move them quickly. In a few days I'm getting apples and pears in large amounts, and I don't want to be left sitting on the potatoes too long. What do you say - are you in?"
"Yes, of course. Need you ask? You're a trustworthy man. Tomorrow we'll go pick up the potatoes."
Then they talked a bit about price and agreed on what they would offer the farmers and how much they would sell the potatoes for at the market. After that, Ticu began commenting on the latest political events and the protests in Bucharest. When he had finished, he looked closely at Florea and said:
"You seem a bit down today. Is something wrong?"
"If my life had been as pleasant as yours, how good that would have been. But mine is full of complications. I live as if I were buried alive by people - or rather, by my own daughter. But to make you understand, let me put your life next to mine. You have a harmonious family, your children respect you, and after so many years you're still with your first wife. And more than that, I've noticed that people respect you. Some even love you for the way you are with people. There's something about you that makes you likable. In fact, I think you're a decent man. While I'm a man who in the past behaved in a deeply dishonorable way. Now do you see the difference?"
"You shouldn't let the past darken everything. And I believe Ioana too will come, one day, to understand that there's no point in clinging to such a harsh attitude. I know both her and her husband quite well. They've been to my house a few times, and my wife thinks highly of Ioana. What can we do to turn the past back? Nothing. But we can live now in a way that repairs the wrong, as much as that is still possible, and we can try to enjoy one another."
After a stretch of silence, while he reflected on Ticu's words, Florea - whose face bore the pain and remorse of a man who deeply regretted the mistakes he had once made in life - said:
"What you've just said is wonderful, and I know it comes from your religious upbringing and from the fact that you go to worship with your family. But above all, because you read the Bible, you were able to speak that way. And yet you should know that Ioana is largely right. I behaved very badly toward her mother, toward her sister, and toward her. But let me tell you something else. I learned something very important from this whole night of life I've walked through over the years. To have truly human feelings like the ones you just expressed so beautifully, you need to read the Holy Scriptures. Without that Book, we human beings sink very low indeed. We lose what is human in us. And in the middle of this chaotic world we live in, we no longer have any moral compass."
"Yes, you're absolutely right. That's how it is. And the sad thing is that we live in a society that's becoming less and less human. At every turn we're struck by other people's cruelty, and because of that, many in turn behave badly toward their fellow human beings. But on the other hand, it's heartening that in life you also meet exceptional people, people who make you believe in the value of goodness on this earth, and in spiritual beauty. We live our lives between light and shadow. We don't fully understand why suffering sometimes strikes us, and we rejoice when things go well, wishing that state of well-being could go on forever. But life teaches us that things are not always rosy."
After listening carefully, Florea said:
"You concern yourself with good and evil, but not everyone does. I, at least, have lived among such people, and truth be told, I wasn't far from them myself. Shortly after my youngest daughter was born, I was working in a factory. And after work, several of us used to gather in a garage to drink. I remember one evening, while a number of us were there, a Lipovan called Ivan - who dominated all of us by force of personality, and especially because he could hold his drink better than anyone else - started telling us how he had come home with his mistress while his wife was there. Then he began beating his wife while the mistress laughed, and he told us he found the whole thing wonderfully amusing, while his wife begged him not to humiliate her in such a way. And all the men in that crowd I used to keep company with laughed there in the garage, delighted by Ivan's exploit as he told it in every detail.
"I looked at those people's faces, swollen with alcohol, marked by brutality, eyes empty of the human feelings every person ought to have, and I was horrified. I was afraid I would become even worse than they were. In those moments I felt like a man standing on the edge of a precipice, with the next step meaning a fall into the abyss, complete surrender to evil, my transformation into a man with no human impulse left in him, only a brute, an alcoholic. I had already done a great deal of harm by then, and I made up my mind to stop. I understood then and there that the road I was on was a road to ruin.
"From that time on, I never joined those gatherings again, and I tried as much as I could to behave differently so I wouldn't lose what was still human in me. Even so, the consequences of my reckless actions have followed me through life. I tell you, I did well to pull away. Now when I look back at what became of my old drinking companions, it fills me with horror. Some died because of alcohol, and those still alive have become pitiful wrecks. Their whole lives were marked by nothing but shadows, to tie in with what you said a moment ago. I believe we human beings were created to do good so that we could be happy. But instead we grow used to hurting one another, and from that comes all our unhappiness. That is certainly true in my case. Oh, what I wouldn't give to tell those who think themselves so grand, those walking the same road I once walked in my youth, that it is a road to ruin. I very nearly destroyed myself completely, after destroying my wife."
"From everything you've told me about your life, I understand even better than before that life is an unending adventure of learning."
"We live too short a time, and it's a pity that we waste the best years of our lives doing harm to others, only to beg desperately for forgiveness in old age. It would be wonderful if, in the most beautiful years of our lives, we lived beautifully and with dignity."
Florea fell silent. In his green eyes there was a faint glimmer of light alongside the pain reflected in his face. His body trembled slightly; he was deeply agitated. Ticu realized that he had never seen him in such a state of inner turmoil, and as best he could that evening, he tried to calm him.
Sometimes in life certain decisive moments appear, moments that will shape our existence for better or worse. Some of these moments we know in advance will come in the near future, and we try as best we can to prepare ourselves inwardly for them. For example, a meeting with someone we may have waited for a long time, preparing our souls for those moments. But it also happens that such moments of trial, of hard testing, or of great victory come upon us suddenly, when we least expect them. And most often our triumph or our failure depends on the attitude we have in those moments and on the way we act in them.
Such a moment arose in Florea's life when his sister told him that in two weeks Ioana and her family would be coming to her house. She invited him too, saying that she would help him make peace with Ioana.
The news struck Florea like a thunderbolt. He thought long and hard about whether it was wise to go or not. He had believed that everything would resolve itself with time, and now suddenly he had the chance to meet Ioana in the house of his sister Lidia. He knew that both his sister and his brother-in-law would support him. And yet he hesitated, thinking:
But what if it all ends in failure? Wouldn't it be better to wait longer? Isn't everything happening too quickly? Maybe Ioana isn't ready either, and she'll be taken by surprise when I appear.
On the appointed day, he set out for his sister's house with his heart clenched tight. He carried himself like a man going to fight an important battle in his life. But at the same time he knew he had very little, very little chance of success.
He walked the whole way through the snow, among the few people out at that hour of the evening. He paid no attention to anything, not to the people he passed, nor to the large white flakes falling softly onto the snow already lying on the ground. Several times he thought of turning back, of giving up, convinced that it would all end in failure.
But who knows, perhaps a miracle will happen tonight. Because knowing Ioana as I do, only a miracle could make her look at me differently now...
He stopped this inner monologue when he reached the front of his sister's house. It was a large, beautiful house with an attic, built in a modern style. Florea opened the gate and went in, then pressed the doorbell by the entrance. He could feel his heart beating hard; he was deeply emotional.
The door opened and Lidia appeared in the doorway. She greeted him, took his coat, and winked at him encouragingly. He gathered his courage and stepped into the living room. Everyone was seated at the table, except for the children, who were playing in a nearby room.
"Good evening..."
"Hello, welcome to our house. Please, sit down," said his brother-in-law Nichifor, smiling like a man who knew the whole plan Lidia had set in motion.
Florea sat down and looked at the people around the table. His eyes met his daughter's, and Ioana's face changed at once. He could see indignation rise in her. She turned to her husband and said:
"Lucian, I'm going to get the children ready. We're leaving."
"Wait a little, Ioana. You can't always go on like this. He is still your father. You can't live forever cut off from one another," Lidia broke in.
"Aunt, please don't interfere. No one knows how much suffering my father caused me. Don't ask the impossible of me."
"Ioana, I am your father. I know I behaved in a shameful way, but now I regret everything, and I want, as far as possible, to repair the harm I did. Please let me do that."
"Oh, so now you want to repair the harm you did? How wonderful. What noble deeds you're about to perform. But when my mother begged you to do that, why did you laugh in her face and go right on with your escapades, the ones you know perfectly well? I don't think I need to list them for you here. So why weren't you moved by noble feelings then? I'm amazed to hear that now you behave differently with the woman you live with and with Lucia. At least that much, it seems, you managed to do in this miserable life of yours."
"Ioana, you have every right in the world to speak to me the way you have just spoken. But you must understand that if you hold on to this attitude, you will only hurt yourself, and you won't be able to be fully happy. Deep within you, I will remain there, along with the conflict between us. But if you forgive me, you will free yourself of the burden of an unforgiving heart, while I, with all my sins, will be judged by God. All I want is to draw close to you as a father to his daughter, and then to be able to walk with my grandchildren too, rejoicing together with you. Please, don't shut me out. Let me be near you. I'm a man who regrets all the madness I once committed in life."
"Ioana, I think you should make peace," Lucian said.
"Yes, Ioana, why let all this burden darken your life? This is a good moment for it," Lidia added.
"Enough. Don't speak to me anymore. The memory of everything my mother suffered, and everything we girls suffered too, makes me say no. I still can't get past all we went through. But because my father has said that God will judge him, and because he wants to make peace with me out of a Christian sense of things, and especially because I want to raise my children in a Christian spirit, I know that when they grow older, they will realize that I have been living with an unforgiving heart. I've also spoken with my husband about this, and Lucian has always urged me to forgive my father. All I can say for now is that I can't. But I ask for time to try to leave behind all the wrong done to my mother and to us girls, and I'm telling you, it isn't easy. You can't understand me, because it was my heart that was wounded, not yours. What I suffered because of my father, I wouldn't wish on anyone. I don't know whether I'll be able to rise that high and forgive, but at least I'll try. It's easy for the one who did the harm to come at some point and say he's sorry. But for the one who was the victim of his violence, it's not easy at all. So I'm telling you again, don't be too quick to judge me, because you don't know what it means to go through what I've gone through. And now I want us to go home. My father's appearance and this whole conversation have upset me."
"May God help you, Ioana, to make peace with your father. And I'm sorry for everything he did to you. I reproached him at the time and told him he was making a great mistake in the way he treated your mother and you girls," said Lidia.
"Ioana took a big step today. It's all she could do for now. And she's right in what she says. She has suffered greatly, and that is why at this moment she can't do more. Whether you manage to forgive or not, Ioana, we will feel the same toward you, and we will always value you because you are an exceptional woman," said Nichifor.
"There's no need for you to leave, Ioana. I'll go. And I promise that from today on I won't trouble you anymore. I'll wait, Ioana, and I'll give you as much time as you need to get past everything I did to you in my recklessness."
After speaking those last words, Florea rose from the table, greeted them all, and left.
Out in the street, he began walking slowly among the few people still out at that hour of the evening. At one point he raised his eyes and watched the snowflakes falling from above. That whole winter scene brought powerfully back to his mind the winters of his childhood, bitterly cold, heavy with snow, and he saw himself again in memory running off with his brothers to go sledding.
He realized that he had lost that old cheerfulness, because now he was a troubled man. The impression made by the snowflakes lasted only a short while. He thought his state of mind might change, but it did not. Instead, the image of his daughter's face returned to him with force as she spoke in pain of how much she had suffered because of him.
He felt drained in soul and body. That whole meeting had cost him a great effort, and on top of that it had brought back with great force all the terrible things he had once done in such recklessness.
But Lucia still remains. She's in nursing school now, and soon she'll marry her fiancé. Surely they'll have children, and at least in their home I'll be able to enter as a real grandfather, delighting in my grandchildren. Oh, but perhaps I ask too much of life - I, a poor wretch. Perhaps I don't even have the right to dream of so much happiness.
As he walked home, he began to watch the few passers-by at that late hour.
Perhaps among those walking past me now there are people with tragedies even greater than mine, suffering terribly and yet keeping up appearances. Or perhaps there are people who, like Ticu, live with a realistic kind of optimism, facing life with both its good and its bad. Ticu is a remarkable man. How else can one explain that on the evening he came to propose that deal to me, after I laid my heart bare before him and he understood what a scoundrel I had once been - and more than that, though he already knew my life story from Ioana - he still treated me with Christian kindness and tried to encourage me, feeling compassion for me? Oh, I believe only God could have given him such a merciful heart toward a great sinner like me.
Because what I deserve from everyone, and especially from my daughter, is nothing but contempt. Why didn't I see life in those youthful years of recklessness through the eyes of the mature man I am today? How much evil I would have avoided, and how much suffering I would not have brought into the lives of others. It is a wonderful thing that I am not treated entirely as I deserve... though up to now Ioana has indeed treated me rather harshly, and she has every right to do so, for I behaved terribly. Oh, but in this dark picture of my life there is still one bright point: I will see Lucia, and that is wonderful. And there is also the hope that perhaps Ioana may yet change her attitude toward me.
That winter passed and gave way to spring, bringing all of nature back to life. People seemed stirred by the fragrance of spring to live with greater cheerfulness.
For some time Ioana had been fighting intense inner battles. There were moments when she was determined to forgive her father and go looking for him in the market so she could invite him to her home, and there were other moments when she grew angry with herself for even having such feelings toward him.
And perhaps in the end she would have overcome herself and invited her father to her house.
But it was no longer possible.
That spring her father died, though he had not been ill and had complained of nothing. He simply died in his sleep of a heart attack.
Florea's life went out like a flame that had burned for a time without purpose.
from FICTION on the WEB short stories https://ift.tt/EjVvloZ
via IFTTT
 |
| Image generated with OpenAI |
All the produce he sold he bought from villagers who came into town to sell wholesale, then hurried back to their work in the countryside. Florea was not one of those farmers who worked their own land and sold what they themselves had grown. He simply bought at one price and sold by the kilo in order to make a little extra. Sometimes, when he ran out of stock, he would take his van through the villages, visiting certain growers to buy more produce.
His world was there in the market, behind the stall, chatting with customers and other vendors. Sometimes, in the middle of the rows of stalls, he would fall into thought, watching people and taking an interest in their concerns. And so his life went on, day after day and year after year, with joys and sorrows like any other man's.
Florea's life, up to the age of sixty-two, had been full of trouble. He had not known what anyone would call a good life. In his youth he had run wild, keeping company with a rather notorious crowd and treating his first wife harshly, though she was a decent woman, respected by everyone. He had abused her verbally and sometimes physically; worse still, he had treated their two daughters badly as well. In those years, no one could stand in his way. He had done only what he pleased.
When one daughter was twelve and the other fourteen, Florentina, his wife, fell ill from what ordinary people call a broken heart, and she died. Her sisters took the girls away and raised them, unwilling to leave them in the hands of "such a debauched man," as they themselves said. So his daughters were brought up and educated in the Protestant faith, because Florentina had come from a Protestant family.
For some time after his wife's death, Florea went on living the same pleasure-seeking life. Then he brought Sorina into his apartment, though in truth he had already been involved with her while his wife was still alive. Sorina bore him a daughter, Lucia, and with Lucia's birth Florea began to grow more responsible, especially since he also had to support the two children Sorina had from an earlier marriage.
Time passed quickly, and after trying several kinds of work, he devoted himself to selling at the market. The money was not much, but at least it covered life's necessities. His daughters from his first marriage grew up and started families of their own. The younger one left for North America with her husband. Ioana, the elder one, remained in the same town, working as a seamstress.
Ioana resembled him greatly in the face. She was a strong, hard-edged woman, much like him in that respect, but she minded her own family and had no respect at all for her father. In fact, she would not even speak to him, bitter because she had lost her mother through his reckless way of life.
Once, Florea tried to approach his daughter and speak to her, but Ioana fixed him with a merciless look and said:
"Have you no shame for what you did? What had my mother ever done to you, that you drove her into the grave? You took my mother from me when I needed her most, and now you come trying to make peace with me. Aren't you ashamed?"
Then she walked away in outrage.
Those words struck him hard in the heart, and they stirred pangs of conscience that he kept buried deep inside, without saying anything to anyone. He also noticed that the people around him, those who knew him, looked at him in much the same way Ioana did. He realized that whatever he did, however he behaved, people would still talk about him in exactly the same way. And the town was small; everyone knew everyone else.
Even so, he did not want to move to another town. He had been born there, and there he could still earn his living, so he decided to stay and fight it out in that place, no matter what people said, though it hurt him that no one would ever count him among decent men.
As time went on, Lucia grew up, and Florea became more and more attached to her. He granted her every wish. She was his reason for living, the one thing that gave meaning to his life.
When she was in her final year of high school, Lucia had a conversation with Ioana, whom she had met before. Ioana told her everything about their father, especially how vilely he had treated Florentina.
When she came home, Lucia told him all of it, tears in her eyes, and asked:
"Is it true, Father? Did you really behave like that?"
Florea was shaken by the fact that the sins of his youth were still following him through life and were now about to destroy the best thing he still had: his bond with Lucia as her father. After weighing the matter for a moment, he answered:
"You have to understand, Lucia dear, that I made mistakes in my youth, but I'm not the monster your sister makes me out to be before the whole world. The truth is, that daughter of mine is fierce. She never lets up. She speaks badly of me everywhere, never missing a chance to drag my name through the mud. After all, I'm still her father. She might at least keep quiet and be satisfied with having said everything to my face."
And though their father-daughter relationship went on, he noticed that Lucia now held something back from him, a hesitation, a doubt, and he realized that no matter how hard he tried, he would never manage to erase it from her mind.
On the other hand, his life with Sorina was far from ideal. In time, he came to understand that she had ruined his first marriage, yet he put up with her because she was the mother of his youngest daughter and did not behave badly toward the girl.
The way I behaved toward Florentina was disgraceful, that much is true. That's how I should have behaved toward Sorina, because she was the one who deserved it. If only I had treated Florentina at least the way I behave now, what a wonderful life mine would have been, Florea sometimes thought.
But he knew that no one could ever bring back the years he had had with his first wife, and that the chances he had once been given in life to do good were lost forever.
One winter evening, after coming home from the market and having dinner with his family, Sorina told him they had all been invited to her brother's house for his birthday. And though Lucia urged him to go, Florea did not want to. He knew that some close, well-ordered families would be there, and he was well aware that his own household was not really a family. He was living with Sorina without being married to her, not even in a civil ceremony. The two children from Sorina's earlier marriage were now grown, and he had the feeling that all of them together looked very odd. He did not want to go.
Besides, that day he felt deeply depressed. He had seen Ioana in the market with her children and her husband, and at one point the little boy had cried out, "Mama, look, Grandpa..." But Ioana had stopped him and pulled him back to her. Through Lucian, Ioana's husband, he had managed to get close to his grandchildren and make himself known to them. Lucian did not object to the children knowing their grandfather.
That whole incident in the market had upset him and reopened the wound in his soul. That was why he wanted to be alone, to brood over those sad memories from long ago.
He sat on the sofa in the living room in front of the television, paying no attention at all to the program flickering on the screen. His thoughts were far away, back in the years of his youth. At length he groaned aloud:
"How could I have behaved so vilely, just as Ioana keeps reproaching me?"
He let out a long sigh and sank once more into that lethargic state of inner suffering.
Suddenly the doorbell rang sharply, breaking the chain of his thoughts. He got up heavily from the sofa and went to the door. When he opened it, he was a little surprised. Ticu stood there, another market vendor like himself.
"Hello. Am I bothering you? I've got a small problem."
"Hello. Come in, please."
Ticu was around fifty. He had a fine family and was what people called a decent man, well thought of by everyone. On top of that, he had several hectares of land on which he grew melons, which he then sold at the market for a fairly good profit. In winter, though, he also did the same kind of trading as Florea, buying produce wholesale and then selling it by the kilo.
Unlike Florea, Ticu was cheerful and full of life. There was an energy and appetite for life in him that showed plainly in his face and in his blue eyes. He lowered his solid frame into an armchair opposite the sofa where Florea had been sitting. For a few seconds he glanced around the living room, at the furniture and at the television program, then, after Florea had sat down again, he said:
"I like you, Florea. First of all because you let me call you tu - we've talked about that in the market before. And then because I can strike any honest deal with you, since you don't go back on your word, even when it leaves you out of pocket. But in the deal I'm about to propose, you won't lose anything. I found some farmers with five hundred kilos of first-grade potatoes. I'd like you to take half the quantity too, so we can move them quickly. In a few days I'm getting apples and pears in large amounts, and I don't want to be left sitting on the potatoes too long. What do you say - are you in?"
"Yes, of course. Need you ask? You're a trustworthy man. Tomorrow we'll go pick up the potatoes."
Then they talked a bit about price and agreed on what they would offer the farmers and how much they would sell the potatoes for at the market. After that, Ticu began commenting on the latest political events and the protests in Bucharest. When he had finished, he looked closely at Florea and said:
"You seem a bit down today. Is something wrong?"
"If my life had been as pleasant as yours, how good that would have been. But mine is full of complications. I live as if I were buried alive by people - or rather, by my own daughter. But to make you understand, let me put your life next to mine. You have a harmonious family, your children respect you, and after so many years you're still with your first wife. And more than that, I've noticed that people respect you. Some even love you for the way you are with people. There's something about you that makes you likable. In fact, I think you're a decent man. While I'm a man who in the past behaved in a deeply dishonorable way. Now do you see the difference?"
"You shouldn't let the past darken everything. And I believe Ioana too will come, one day, to understand that there's no point in clinging to such a harsh attitude. I know both her and her husband quite well. They've been to my house a few times, and my wife thinks highly of Ioana. What can we do to turn the past back? Nothing. But we can live now in a way that repairs the wrong, as much as that is still possible, and we can try to enjoy one another."
After a stretch of silence, while he reflected on Ticu's words, Florea - whose face bore the pain and remorse of a man who deeply regretted the mistakes he had once made in life - said:
"What you've just said is wonderful, and I know it comes from your religious upbringing and from the fact that you go to worship with your family. But above all, because you read the Bible, you were able to speak that way. And yet you should know that Ioana is largely right. I behaved very badly toward her mother, toward her sister, and toward her. But let me tell you something else. I learned something very important from this whole night of life I've walked through over the years. To have truly human feelings like the ones you just expressed so beautifully, you need to read the Holy Scriptures. Without that Book, we human beings sink very low indeed. We lose what is human in us. And in the middle of this chaotic world we live in, we no longer have any moral compass."
"Yes, you're absolutely right. That's how it is. And the sad thing is that we live in a society that's becoming less and less human. At every turn we're struck by other people's cruelty, and because of that, many in turn behave badly toward their fellow human beings. But on the other hand, it's heartening that in life you also meet exceptional people, people who make you believe in the value of goodness on this earth, and in spiritual beauty. We live our lives between light and shadow. We don't fully understand why suffering sometimes strikes us, and we rejoice when things go well, wishing that state of well-being could go on forever. But life teaches us that things are not always rosy."
After listening carefully, Florea said:
"You concern yourself with good and evil, but not everyone does. I, at least, have lived among such people, and truth be told, I wasn't far from them myself. Shortly after my youngest daughter was born, I was working in a factory. And after work, several of us used to gather in a garage to drink. I remember one evening, while a number of us were there, a Lipovan called Ivan - who dominated all of us by force of personality, and especially because he could hold his drink better than anyone else - started telling us how he had come home with his mistress while his wife was there. Then he began beating his wife while the mistress laughed, and he told us he found the whole thing wonderfully amusing, while his wife begged him not to humiliate her in such a way. And all the men in that crowd I used to keep company with laughed there in the garage, delighted by Ivan's exploit as he told it in every detail.
"I looked at those people's faces, swollen with alcohol, marked by brutality, eyes empty of the human feelings every person ought to have, and I was horrified. I was afraid I would become even worse than they were. In those moments I felt like a man standing on the edge of a precipice, with the next step meaning a fall into the abyss, complete surrender to evil, my transformation into a man with no human impulse left in him, only a brute, an alcoholic. I had already done a great deal of harm by then, and I made up my mind to stop. I understood then and there that the road I was on was a road to ruin.
"From that time on, I never joined those gatherings again, and I tried as much as I could to behave differently so I wouldn't lose what was still human in me. Even so, the consequences of my reckless actions have followed me through life. I tell you, I did well to pull away. Now when I look back at what became of my old drinking companions, it fills me with horror. Some died because of alcohol, and those still alive have become pitiful wrecks. Their whole lives were marked by nothing but shadows, to tie in with what you said a moment ago. I believe we human beings were created to do good so that we could be happy. But instead we grow used to hurting one another, and from that comes all our unhappiness. That is certainly true in my case. Oh, what I wouldn't give to tell those who think themselves so grand, those walking the same road I once walked in my youth, that it is a road to ruin. I very nearly destroyed myself completely, after destroying my wife."
"From everything you've told me about your life, I understand even better than before that life is an unending adventure of learning."
"We live too short a time, and it's a pity that we waste the best years of our lives doing harm to others, only to beg desperately for forgiveness in old age. It would be wonderful if, in the most beautiful years of our lives, we lived beautifully and with dignity."
Florea fell silent. In his green eyes there was a faint glimmer of light alongside the pain reflected in his face. His body trembled slightly; he was deeply agitated. Ticu realized that he had never seen him in such a state of inner turmoil, and as best he could that evening, he tried to calm him.
Sometimes in life certain decisive moments appear, moments that will shape our existence for better or worse. Some of these moments we know in advance will come in the near future, and we try as best we can to prepare ourselves inwardly for them. For example, a meeting with someone we may have waited for a long time, preparing our souls for those moments. But it also happens that such moments of trial, of hard testing, or of great victory come upon us suddenly, when we least expect them. And most often our triumph or our failure depends on the attitude we have in those moments and on the way we act in them.
Such a moment arose in Florea's life when his sister told him that in two weeks Ioana and her family would be coming to her house. She invited him too, saying that she would help him make peace with Ioana.
The news struck Florea like a thunderbolt. He thought long and hard about whether it was wise to go or not. He had believed that everything would resolve itself with time, and now suddenly he had the chance to meet Ioana in the house of his sister Lidia. He knew that both his sister and his brother-in-law would support him. And yet he hesitated, thinking:
But what if it all ends in failure? Wouldn't it be better to wait longer? Isn't everything happening too quickly? Maybe Ioana isn't ready either, and she'll be taken by surprise when I appear.
On the appointed day, he set out for his sister's house with his heart clenched tight. He carried himself like a man going to fight an important battle in his life. But at the same time he knew he had very little, very little chance of success.
He walked the whole way through the snow, among the few people out at that hour of the evening. He paid no attention to anything, not to the people he passed, nor to the large white flakes falling softly onto the snow already lying on the ground. Several times he thought of turning back, of giving up, convinced that it would all end in failure.
But who knows, perhaps a miracle will happen tonight. Because knowing Ioana as I do, only a miracle could make her look at me differently now...
He stopped this inner monologue when he reached the front of his sister's house. It was a large, beautiful house with an attic, built in a modern style. Florea opened the gate and went in, then pressed the doorbell by the entrance. He could feel his heart beating hard; he was deeply emotional.
The door opened and Lidia appeared in the doorway. She greeted him, took his coat, and winked at him encouragingly. He gathered his courage and stepped into the living room. Everyone was seated at the table, except for the children, who were playing in a nearby room.
"Good evening..."
"Hello, welcome to our house. Please, sit down," said his brother-in-law Nichifor, smiling like a man who knew the whole plan Lidia had set in motion.
Florea sat down and looked at the people around the table. His eyes met his daughter's, and Ioana's face changed at once. He could see indignation rise in her. She turned to her husband and said:
"Lucian, I'm going to get the children ready. We're leaving."
"Wait a little, Ioana. You can't always go on like this. He is still your father. You can't live forever cut off from one another," Lidia broke in.
"Aunt, please don't interfere. No one knows how much suffering my father caused me. Don't ask the impossible of me."
"Ioana, I am your father. I know I behaved in a shameful way, but now I regret everything, and I want, as far as possible, to repair the harm I did. Please let me do that."
"Oh, so now you want to repair the harm you did? How wonderful. What noble deeds you're about to perform. But when my mother begged you to do that, why did you laugh in her face and go right on with your escapades, the ones you know perfectly well? I don't think I need to list them for you here. So why weren't you moved by noble feelings then? I'm amazed to hear that now you behave differently with the woman you live with and with Lucia. At least that much, it seems, you managed to do in this miserable life of yours."
"Ioana, you have every right in the world to speak to me the way you have just spoken. But you must understand that if you hold on to this attitude, you will only hurt yourself, and you won't be able to be fully happy. Deep within you, I will remain there, along with the conflict between us. But if you forgive me, you will free yourself of the burden of an unforgiving heart, while I, with all my sins, will be judged by God. All I want is to draw close to you as a father to his daughter, and then to be able to walk with my grandchildren too, rejoicing together with you. Please, don't shut me out. Let me be near you. I'm a man who regrets all the madness I once committed in life."
"Ioana, I think you should make peace," Lucian said.
"Yes, Ioana, why let all this burden darken your life? This is a good moment for it," Lidia added.
"Enough. Don't speak to me anymore. The memory of everything my mother suffered, and everything we girls suffered too, makes me say no. I still can't get past all we went through. But because my father has said that God will judge him, and because he wants to make peace with me out of a Christian sense of things, and especially because I want to raise my children in a Christian spirit, I know that when they grow older, they will realize that I have been living with an unforgiving heart. I've also spoken with my husband about this, and Lucian has always urged me to forgive my father. All I can say for now is that I can't. But I ask for time to try to leave behind all the wrong done to my mother and to us girls, and I'm telling you, it isn't easy. You can't understand me, because it was my heart that was wounded, not yours. What I suffered because of my father, I wouldn't wish on anyone. I don't know whether I'll be able to rise that high and forgive, but at least I'll try. It's easy for the one who did the harm to come at some point and say he's sorry. But for the one who was the victim of his violence, it's not easy at all. So I'm telling you again, don't be too quick to judge me, because you don't know what it means to go through what I've gone through. And now I want us to go home. My father's appearance and this whole conversation have upset me."
"May God help you, Ioana, to make peace with your father. And I'm sorry for everything he did to you. I reproached him at the time and told him he was making a great mistake in the way he treated your mother and you girls," said Lidia.
"Ioana took a big step today. It's all she could do for now. And she's right in what she says. She has suffered greatly, and that is why at this moment she can't do more. Whether you manage to forgive or not, Ioana, we will feel the same toward you, and we will always value you because you are an exceptional woman," said Nichifor.
"There's no need for you to leave, Ioana. I'll go. And I promise that from today on I won't trouble you anymore. I'll wait, Ioana, and I'll give you as much time as you need to get past everything I did to you in my recklessness."
After speaking those last words, Florea rose from the table, greeted them all, and left.
Out in the street, he began walking slowly among the few people still out at that hour of the evening. At one point he raised his eyes and watched the snowflakes falling from above. That whole winter scene brought powerfully back to his mind the winters of his childhood, bitterly cold, heavy with snow, and he saw himself again in memory running off with his brothers to go sledding.
He realized that he had lost that old cheerfulness, because now he was a troubled man. The impression made by the snowflakes lasted only a short while. He thought his state of mind might change, but it did not. Instead, the image of his daughter's face returned to him with force as she spoke in pain of how much she had suffered because of him.
He felt drained in soul and body. That whole meeting had cost him a great effort, and on top of that it had brought back with great force all the terrible things he had once done in such recklessness.
But Lucia still remains. She's in nursing school now, and soon she'll marry her fiancé. Surely they'll have children, and at least in their home I'll be able to enter as a real grandfather, delighting in my grandchildren. Oh, but perhaps I ask too much of life - I, a poor wretch. Perhaps I don't even have the right to dream of so much happiness.
As he walked home, he began to watch the few passers-by at that late hour.
Perhaps among those walking past me now there are people with tragedies even greater than mine, suffering terribly and yet keeping up appearances. Or perhaps there are people who, like Ticu, live with a realistic kind of optimism, facing life with both its good and its bad. Ticu is a remarkable man. How else can one explain that on the evening he came to propose that deal to me, after I laid my heart bare before him and he understood what a scoundrel I had once been - and more than that, though he already knew my life story from Ioana - he still treated me with Christian kindness and tried to encourage me, feeling compassion for me? Oh, I believe only God could have given him such a merciful heart toward a great sinner like me.
Because what I deserve from everyone, and especially from my daughter, is nothing but contempt. Why didn't I see life in those youthful years of recklessness through the eyes of the mature man I am today? How much evil I would have avoided, and how much suffering I would not have brought into the lives of others. It is a wonderful thing that I am not treated entirely as I deserve... though up to now Ioana has indeed treated me rather harshly, and she has every right to do so, for I behaved terribly. Oh, but in this dark picture of my life there is still one bright point: I will see Lucia, and that is wonderful. And there is also the hope that perhaps Ioana may yet change her attitude toward me.
That winter passed and gave way to spring, bringing all of nature back to life. People seemed stirred by the fragrance of spring to live with greater cheerfulness.
For some time Ioana had been fighting intense inner battles. There were moments when she was determined to forgive her father and go looking for him in the market so she could invite him to her home, and there were other moments when she grew angry with herself for even having such feelings toward him.
And perhaps in the end she would have overcome herself and invited her father to her house.
But it was no longer possible.
That spring her father died, though he had not been ill and had complained of nothing. He simply died in his sleep of a heart attack.
Florea's life went out like a flame that had burned for a time without purpose.
from FICTION on the WEB short stories https://ift.tt/EjVvloZ
via IFTTT
Comments
Post a Comment