He examined all her limbs, then shrugged helplessly. He had no idea what was wrong with her. Doctor, Masha gasped, I'm telling you, that filthy animal is to be blamed. I was scrubbing the stage but didn't pay attention. I haven't noticed my sauseg' had swollen until I got home. I just couldn't pluck it out, and my husband yelled at me to bloody sleep already. That's when everything started. I told him: \'Torvald, I'm tired of being your marionette, I'm leaving.' Yesterday was even worse, I was a gravedigger talking with the gourd of som' Yorick. Give me some remedy \'cause tomorrow they'll be starting the rehearsals for some cuckoo's nest.
Claudia Ene
I grew up in the concrete jungle somewhere in Drumul Taberei. I had picnics with the girls in our block's garden where we treated ourselves with leaves.[1]. One of them has passed away since. I grew up longing for a house with a yard. Then I met you, and you taught me how to pluck weeds and trim branches. In the first day I got a splinter in one of my fingers. You pulled it out and looked at me. For a moment I've felt we were Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden. Since then, I intentionally prick myself from time to time, and you still look at me the same tender way. Our first tree grows in the palm of my hand. I've had the best apples from it.
[1] Not a real picnic where they would eat leaves as a treat. They were pretending they were having a picnic. Children, at least in Romania, play such games where they "cook" using leaves, dirt, pebbles very often.
Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
Rain is falling. I'm sitting by the window with my coffee mug in my hand. He's at the table, sipping from the steaming liquid, doing his best to avoid my gaze. I open the window and let the heavy raindrops and the darkness disintegrate my being into unspoken shards of speech. I sit in front of him. Sadness has seized the sight from my right eye. I faintly see his figure. No, I don't have a splinter in my eye. I'm the splinter under the fingernail. Or at least, that's what he told me. I ask no questions; I seek no answers. Why do you have to always make my existence so complicated? he spits it out right in my face. Silence almost breaks into a cry. I stand up and go look for a pair of tweezers.
(Translated by Marian-Cătălin Niculăescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.