Читать книгу Provence Forever - Massimo Cereso - Страница 12

4

Sabrina

After my father sold his company, my two sisters and I each received a larger amount of money as an early inheritance. With this start-up capital, I opened my first company and married my first wife a short time later. At that time, I invested a large part of my money in the purchase of an American luxury car and used the rest as a down payment for the purchase of vending machines. The contents of these vending machines consisted of food, candy, and toys that could be taken out of the machine in exchange for inserting a coin. All of these vending machines were mounted in convenient locations and required refilling and maintenance several times a week. However, the income from this business was not enough to cover our higher-than-average living expenses and the additional loan repayments for the vending machines and merchandise deliveries. This was the beginning of my lifelong tightrope walk and it came as it had to. As a blameless young entrepreneur from the best family, I was granted various bank loans and was able to continue financing my lifestyle in keeping with my status. Fully aware that a huge bang with a miserable end was imminent in the foreseeable future, I simply wanted to enjoy life up to that point. I enjoyed my long vacation trips to the Côte d'Azur and Provence with my then wife until the last moment, because I did not want to and could not do without flying, my tailor-made suits, or much else. But the success of my business fell far short of my expectations and the financial situation became more and more unbearable every day. When the first payment orders from my creditors and threats of additional criminal actions arrived, I was forced to inform my parents about this hopeless situation. Despite the greatest arguments and remonstrations, my family would not have been able to bear the shame of my bankruptcy, and so my father liquidated the shambles I had left behind and satisfied all creditors in full.

I started a new life without debts and worries. As an employee of an American company, I sold electronic copiers for the next two years. My salary at the time had to be enough to support myself and my family, so I was forced to live a modest life.

But this life became unbearable for me as time went on, and finally my marriage broke up after only three years. After our divorce, our two children were taken in by my parents, who in the meantime had moved to a smaller house in another community. In this new home, where I also spent a few years, my son Christoph and my daughter Nicole were lovingly and sacrificially cared for by my parents for five years, until my divorced wife remarried. Sabrina, my great childhood sweetheart and first wife, meant a lot to me, so this divorce was a real tragedy for me, from which I suffered for many years to come. I had tried everything to prevent this divorce, but since I did not have a regular income at that time and therefore was not able to guarantee the necessary financial support for my family outside my parental home, the marriage was divorced.

Since Sabrina had entered into a new love affair with a veterinarian during the time of our separation and continued to enjoy the carefree life, I could no longer offer her at that time, my attempts to save this love were futile. Due to the pain, I had suffered and Sabrina's subsequent behavior, an enormous anger began to build up inside me, which eventually led to my refusing to pay her the alimony that had been awarded. Sabrina then filed a criminal complaint for refusal to pay alimony.

I ignored all the requests and summonses I received from the court to take a stand on this matter, and so early one morning the police showed up at my parents' house. My mother opened the front door and since I was not "ready to go" at that early hour, she asked the officer to wait in the entrance hall for a short moment. My mother informed me about this early visit and I decided to leave our house in a hurry through another exit in order to escape this unsympathetic environment with my car in the fastest way possible. But since our garage was right next to the entrance of our house, the police officer recognized me and wanted to stop my car, which was already in motion, in a daring and life-threatening action. He yelled like a madman and screamed, "Stop, stop!" Then he jumped on the rear of my car and, since I did not stop immediately and the car continued to move for about ten meters, he was dragged along accordingly. This circumstance had serious consequences. Even afterwards I was arrested by this policeman and brought before the competent examining magistrate; in addition, my driver's license was revoked for a longer period of time. After complete clarification of the criminal facts, I was finally released from the remand prison after three days. The subsequent court verdict brought me a minor prison sentence, which was suspended for two years.

My childhood sweetheart Sabrina was an outspoken beauty who was the envy of everyone. While her wishes and dreams had always come true until our marriage, she no longer had this happiness in her later life. Although Sabrina had married a man fifteen years her senior in a top executive position after our divorce, she was no longer happy with him and eventually put an end to her life herself. Sabrina came from humble beginnings and had a very hard youth in which she had to fight for everything herself. At the moment of our marriage, me and Sabrina did not have any assets; this was also one of the reasons why my parents stayed away from our marriage, which did not correspond to their ideas of a wedding befitting their status. In my later life, I could see again and again that people from modest backgrounds make the highest demands in their later lives, because once they have had a taste of a good life in luxury and financial independence, they do not want to return to their modest circumstances under any circumstances, but cling on like drowning people and try by all means to maintain what they have achieved.

The most important things for them are money and wealth, and since they had to fight for survival like animals in their youth, they also behave like animals. I would like to explicitly state that this is mainly about female creatures who happen to have achieved a noticeable social advancement through their marriage. On the other hand, I treat people from the same milieu, who have earned their later success and prosperity themselves, with the deepest respect.

Children who spent their youth in an affluent family and did not have to struggle for daily survival often unfortunately only learn in later years that a future life under equal conditions cannot be taken for granted.

In my situation at the time, without a driver's license and due to the additional obligation to make corresponding maintenance payments to Sabrina, I was forced to sell weekly magazines on an annual subscription basis for a publishing company. I traveled by public transport and sold these subscriptions to numerous households. The description of my experiences would take up a chapter of its own, ranging from confrontations with biting dogs, to sex-starved women who wanted to be satisfied immediately, to homosexual men, to old women who wanted to tell me their long stories of illness. All in all, I earned an above-average amount of money by selling these magazines at that time; but since I had also catered to certain desires of the female sex on several occasions, my commissions were ultimately hard-earned money. After a year, I gave up this job again, preferring to spend the next few years in various companies in the field.