He didn't seem to belong there. His clothes were new, but old-fashioned. His stories seemed like echoes from another world, with unreal characters. Like the one about the soldiers found hanging. One day, Luca decided to follow him. He'd heard he was sleeping in one of the houses at the foot of the mountain. The man didn't leave the bar until midnight. He walked alone whistling through the woods. Luca's legs were shivering. He thought that's where he'd meet his end. But nothing happened because the man disappeared. How? I don't know.
Carmen Tot
That year we celebrated our admission to college at the village pub that a good friend of mine ran. We didn't order anything, the glasses were flowing towards us. Let's celebrate the young engineers, shouted the locals, because for them, engineer was the supreme word. The music took us to the tables, we preferred the rock rhythm and we danced without shyness, for the first time, among the village elders. Uncle Onu, my grandparents' neighbour, who was as old as they were, dared to do something he would never have thought of: Miss, may I invite you to tango?
George Dometi
He was paralytic, she was a Second Hand saleswoman. Drama was brewing. The drama was that they were only married because this guy's mother had a house. So she'd have a place to haggle with her husband. The bachelor who sent her champagne and a box of liquorice candy. Liquor that made the paralytic get a divorce. A divorce based on the existence of a lover. A lover who wasn't working. Nothing seemed to announce that murder. That's the branch where he hanged himself, right above the two champagne-splashed bodies.
(Translated by Andreea-Daniela Vasilache / 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.