I went to see Iris. She was
chopping cardboard fish. The cardboard was stolen. It was clear as broad
daylight.
“What do you want?” Iris shouted,
watching me above her glasses.
“I am here.”
“I can see that. If you got no money
you moved your butt in
here for nothing !”
Poor Iris! She’s a hell of a
businesswoman. She’s got that sea of hers from an office worker in a high
position. As a reward for a sinful night! I handed a bundle of money to her. She
counted it two or three times. She checked every banknote in the lamp’s light.
For fear that I might cheat her. She mumbled and then she
said: “Did you steal it?”
Imagine what crossed her mind! By
all means! I really worked hard for it in the harbor. I carried lots of sacks
with coffee. I broke my back. I got lots of kicks in the butt from all my
supervisors. I had been moving too slowly. But what did they want after all? To
draw my last breathe?
A guy who was soiled from head to
foot with painting rushed into us. He shouted at Iris:
“Listen to me, lady! If you don’t pay me
some extra money for this gas then you must know I’m out of here right away!”
“I already gave it to you,” Iris
said calmly.
She wasn’t scared too easily. She
urged us to follow her. The guy wanted to tell me something, but I pretended not
to hear him. It wasn’t my business.
We walked across a hall, where they
were building a tinfoil whale on the scaffolding.
“You were supposed to finish it two
days ago,” Iris said.
“These gases! I’ve got a headache. I
got a lump in my throat. I want something more!” the guy yelled kicking angrily
one of the empty boxes.
“I will, don’t worry about it!” Iris
said. “Come on!” she told me.
I followed her. We entered a huge
room. You couldn’t even see its bottom. A few paper seagulls were flying above
us.
“Are you going to go fishing or you
just want to have a bath?”
I didn’t quite know. I shrugged my
shoulders.
“If you want to hunt you need a
diver. And this will cost you!”
“I don’t know.”
“If you haven’t decided yet, look,
there’s a boat. You may paddle until you fall flat. I don’t care. Mind the
whirlpools! Others were in trouble, too!”
Did she mock at me? Oh, if I only
could go to the real sea, yeah! An oil whirlpool or a methane gas bubble would
have sucked me in, but in here? There’s nothing else but a cardboard sea!
“Can you see the lighthouse over
there? You get oriented by its light, I’m not joking!” Iris warned me.
“I heard they were going to clean
the real sea,” I told her wickedly.
“You’re a fool! Not in a thousand
years will they manage to. And you know what? Until then I will get rich due to
this cardboard sea and I will be able to buy the real one!”
I got in the boat almost crying with
anger. I paddled for a while without looking to the shore. A mermaid appeared in
front of me trying to attract me in the bottom of sea. She was a cardboard
mermaid and above all, she was awfully painted in pale hues of red, yellow and
blue.
Translated by Ioana Bostan
ioanasdr@hotmail.com