Vignettes #14

Our cinema was a bit hidden. Up front on the street there was a large 4-story fin-de-siecle apartment house, on the bottom floor facing the street there was a pub. To the left of the pub you'd enter an open duct leading to the actual entrance door to the house and further on leading to a courtyard with 2 more buildings: another small apartment house and the cinema. If you passed the entrance to the cinema on further to the pack you'd reach the trashcans for the whole complex and the door to the projection room, where I spent most of my time.

In the main house there lived a Turkish family, a mother, who we soon employed as our cleaning woman, with her 2 sons and a daughter. The younger boy, Sülo, immediately became a regular at our cinema. When we opened, he was 13, and even then he helped out as much as he could on his own accord. When he reached the age of 18, I officially employed him as a projectionist; I didn't need to teach him anything, he knew everything merely by watching us.

While Sülo was a bright and very industrious kid, his older brother was more leisurely inclined spending most of his time at home. He did finish education as a cook - and he is a very excellent cook! - but often he was unemployed, since restaurants often open and close on short terms.

Working at the projection room I'd always notice, if someone was bringing trash back to the trashcans. Curiously, everytime I saw Sülo's borther doing this job, he had a very formal suit and tie on. It looked more like he was going to a wedding party rather than to the garbage bin. I knew he wasn't going anywhere else and not coming back from any special occasion. And when I asked Sülo, he confirmed that his brother dresses up each time their mother sends him down to get rid of the litter.

So I finally asked the boy whether he wasn't a bit over-dressed. "Well", he replied, "but what if I met a pretty girl on the way?"