Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Aperture

FABLE OF THE PARSLEY DEALER

for P.S.

A certain parsley dealer (wholesale retail shipping) invested his entire life savings in arcane Orphic teachings. When informed of this, his friends and business partners looked concerned or tapped their foreheads. Nonetheless, after years of initiation into the mysteries, the dealer began to speak so persuasively that no one could contradict him. His parsley, whenever he negotiated on his own behalf, reached the price of gold; when he stood at the edge of his plantation and sang to the rabbits, none of them preyed on his fields; politicians sent their press secretaries, asking him to write speeches for them, and publishers—their agents waving contracts worth millions. Cars let him pass at intersections even when he had the red, and men and women everywhere, after listening to his words spun out in mysterious constellations, were prepared to walk through fire for him or, at the very least, wind up in his bed. But he had undertaken these esoteric studies for one person only—a taciturn, long-fingered pharmacist with a touch of Asperger’s who proved resistant to the magic of words. That’s why when they’d say, “You have a true gift!” he’d shrug his shoulders and respond sadly, “If you say so.”

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