He is very simple dressed up: cheap shirt, cheap and light trousers, old lether jacket and his shoes – one pair a year. He has his hair cut at a modest hairdresser to whom he gives a big tip. He has big broad hands of the great worker he is in buildings, most of the time with wounds and scars. Giving hands. He is tall, straight, strong, beautiful, with a great forehead, a Roman profile. His walk is that of the man who walks as if there is no finish point.
And in his way, he stops giving to all the children he may encounter. Once, someone said to him, “Why do you give them money, they are gypsy, and they would give this earning to their lazy parents, thieves.” He answered, “ Children… they are only children. They need some extra pennies to buy for themselves, without parents knowledge, what they would need.” And stops once in a while at a summer garden(terrace), to see people, to eat “mici” and drink a beer. He often buys, to the irritation of others, the worst fruits and vegetables from wretch paisants, men or women, in the market, at extra cost. He smiles wildly and kindly at the same time. And he may even hit someone that abuses a being. He cannot quitely eat his food in a self-service restaurant if he may see a beggar at the door, sniffing the food. He likes to stop and listens to the singers in the streets, throwing some pennies in their boxes and saying, “This is great music”, my father says.
One ordinary day, having his preferred “menu” in a summer garden, Obor (in Bucharest), he saw an old woman, at a near table, eating with the greatest appetite the same “mici”, drinking very satisfied cold beer, and giving money to a bohemian singer for every single song she ordered. And he played for her, passionately , virtuously as a passionate artist he was. When she finished her meal and her money for the music, she stood up, gathering in a piece of paper some rests of food discovered at other tables from where some people had left, and left the terrace fully...