It was the first of December. I was turning 21.
That cursed winter had already started to bare its fangs. However, that year, winter was the least of my worries.
We were all at the table, the three of us.
“What if,” I said, smiling, “one day I bring a girl home and say, ‘Dad, Mom, here’s the girl I’m going to marry!’? Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Dad paused with his spoon in mid-air, then slowly brought it to his mouth. On the other side of the table, Mom raised an eyebrow and smiled happily at me.
“Why would that be nice, son?” Dad asked. “What’s so nice about that? Huh?”
“Well…”
“No ‘well’! Are you thinking about tying the knot at just twenty-one? Forget about marriage and finish school first!”
“Okay, but asking doesn’t cost anything!” I replied, swallowing hard. “It was a hypothetical question.”
“Hypo… what?” Dad said, looking at me with pity.
“Hypothetical. It means… it’s something that’s not certain, not set in stone,” I explained quickly. “It’s just a hypothesis.”
Mom took Dad’s empty plate and served the second course, chicken liver with mashed potatoes.
“Sweetheart,” Dad said, “open that hypothetical cupboard and take out that hypothetical bottle.”
Mom opened the cupboard, took out the bottle, and showed it to him. It was empty.
Dad clenched his jaw but didn’t say another word. He suddenly understood what hypothetical meant.
He finished his second course in silence, then got up from the table, put on his shoes, took his coat, and turned his head towards me:
“Want to go for a drink?”
It was my birthday. How the hell could I refuse a drink? I grabbed my coat and followed him out.
We walked silently. In my mind, I was trying every which way to find a solution to introduce Irina to my dad, but that day, my brain seemed not to function normally.
“No worries,” I told myself. “After a few glasses, people think differently.”
“But what got into you?” Dad asked suddenly, a few minutes later, right after downing a glass of brandy. “Aren’t you fine as you are? Don’t you have a home? Food? Does anyone ask you where you’re going or where you come from?”
“Well, didn’t you tell me to find a woman after coming back from the army? That’s exactly what I’m doing: following your advice.”
Dad gave me a long look over the brandy bottle, poured another glass, and said, almost to himself:
“And yet you’re my son. How the hell can you be so…”
He downed the second glass, placed it gently on the table, then slowly reached out and flicked my forehead.
“Tell me… if you need a glass of milk, does that mean you have to buy the whole cow?” he asked, looking at me with a gleam of amusement in his eyes. The brandy was starting to work.
I didn’t say a word. It wasn’t in my interest to contradict him.
“You’ve got your eye on a girl, haven’t you?” he asked, staring at me. “Do you have a girlfriend? Is it serious?”
“Be careful what you say, Tiberiu!” I told myself. “Tread carefully! The ice is thin. One wrong step to the left or right and you’re done for!”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I answered, smiling, “but I want to find one.”
“That’s the spirit, boy!” Dad nodded approvingly. “Now I recognize you, you’re my son! Don’t throw yourself in like a madman! Stay on the sidelines, look closely, think first. Don’t be like those other idiots.”
“What idiots?”
“You know. Those who marry the first girl who throws her pussy at them!”
I quickly took the glass off the table and downed it in one go. Dad poured me another.
“Cheers and Happy Birthday, son!” he wished me. “God, what wouldn’t I give to be your age again!”
“What would you do if you were my age?”
“Exactly what I’ve done so far,” he answered with a playful gleam in his eyes. “I’d live the same way. I’d marry the same woman, your mother. But I’d have a younger liver. Just for that, it would be worth turning back time.”
I don’t remember how long we stayed in that smoky bar, but I remember we both got drunk. The brandy in the bottle was dwindling fast. Our good mood was growing.
Dad couldn’t handle his drink like he used to.
“Don’t marry one of those city sluts,” he advised, lovingly patting my head. “Marry a healthy, clean girl from the country, like I did. Your mother is a woman… oh, Lord! A saint! A good housekeeper? Yes. Neat? Yes! Decent? Pure gold!
You think I’m stupid, that I don’t know… hiccup… what I have at home? I know very well I don’t deserve a woman like your mother! She’s an angel of a woman!”
Dad stopped for a few seconds, staring at a point on the dirty wall next to us.
“Damn it!” I thought, scared. “If he starts singing in German now, I’ll leave him and go!”
“Don’t marry one of those painted city girls, or I’ll be pissed!” he growled. “Painted harlots…”
“There are good girls in the city too,” I protested timidly, with Irina’s image in my mind. “Let’s not exaggerate.”
“Yeah, right!” Dad thundered angrily. “I’ve known enough of those elegant, made-up, refined ones with icicles up their asses! Don’t try to teach me where the chicken pees!”
“I’m glad I didn’t say anything about Irina,” I congratulated myself with the last neurons I had left. “Who knows what kind of mess would have come out! We might have ended up shoving each other here!”
“Ah, I almost forgot,” he added, raising a finger. “Remember this very important piece of advice. Do you have something to write with?”
“I don’t.”
“Doesn’t matter, remember this: Never, ever marry a girl before you give her a ‘hammering’.”
I don’t remember how I got home.
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