It's Joe's job to prepare meals on the spaceship. He makes a week's menu on Saturday. The rest of the days, he just pulls various capsules, concentrated and liquids from their compartments and distributes them. Big C, who he talks to so the time will pass quickly, told him yesterday that he looks like Ismail, the chef from a 20th-century Earth novel, only missing the bigladle. Joe and Big C now listen to the book together, like two old friends, except one is the software and the other is the ship's computer.
Siranuș Hakobian
Radu, the painter, has been my friend for 20 years and I can't leave him now, when his art is going through its blisters, mould and mud phase. The last time I purchased two canvases from him for which I paid a price as for my own enemies. No bargaining, because Radu has a sensitive soul. When I took the webs out of the trunk, my husband critically waited for me outside the door: aha, he says, now you've bought two sad, sick whores. I hadn't seen, but my whores had some eczema on their thighs. All the webs up in the attic, says my man, so the kids won't see them.
Sanda Burță
What should I do now with you ? When you were a girl you didn't want me, because I was always at sea and you didn't want to wait. Go home and leave me undisturbed. He took his harp and began to sing without looking at her, as if the wind had swept Oleana off the face of the earth and from his soul. But Oleana was still there, unmoved, you'd have thought God had turned her into a pillar of salt, because she looked back. She didn't know what was to become of her, she only knew that her soul's longing were being split in two by the cursed ship.
(Translated by Andreea Iulia Udroiu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.