Who Wrote About Lela

The message reached Jasmin while he was peeling potatoes in Lela's apartment. An unknown profile claimed to be warning him out of female solidarity. Apparently Lela changed men as soon as they ran out of money and adored expensive gifts. Jasmin looked at the woman who had just mended a kitchen towel because she liked its stripe. That did not prove anyone's character, but the message sounded strangely disconnected from her.

He showed her the screen. Lela first thought of a former colleague with whom she had parted badly. She read everything twice, becoming less angry and more ashamed. "Now I have to defend my entire life against someone who doesn't even have a surname," she said. Jasmin replied that he believed her. Nevertheless, he asked whether there was anything he should know, then saw how that question was also part of the work the unknown person had just imposed on her.

A second message arrived the next day. It said that a man must beware a woman who would 'make someone else's loaf out of two grains.' Jasmin paused. His mother used that strange phrase about people she disliked. It was not a known proverb, but something she had been remembering incorrectly for years. He called and asked whether she had created the profile. The silence lasted longer than he could bear.

She admitted it only when he visited. His favorite pie waited on the table. She said Lela was too independent, that she would take him far away, and that she had only wanted to see how serious he was. "You wrote that she takes money from men," he said. His mother waved a hand, as though the actual words were insignificant beside her enormous fear. He did not even uncover the pie.

Lela did not want an apologetic call from his mother that same evening. Jasmin had to accept that identifying the message's source did not erase his first uncomfortable question in her kitchen. He named exactly what he had asked and why he was sorry. He did not promise that his mother would become a different person. They agreed that he would visit his mother alone for the time being and would not ask Lela to perform relief at the family table.

A week later his mother sent him a photograph of lunch and asked whether they were both coming. He answered that he was coming alone, as he had already said. Lela went on an outing with her sister that day. When they met that evening, she told him about a flat tire and a man who had lent them a pump. He did not interrupt to prove that he had taken her side. He let her finish the story.