Drizzle

Fabiola Stoi
He woke to the screeching of brakes. The floor had a sour smell and someone was groaning in a corner. He looked outside through the planks. It was twilight over the taiga. He no longer knew whether it was morning or evening. The carriage door opened and the cold air invigorated everyone. Anyone dead? the guard shouted. It was mealtime, the dead were being handed over and food was being served. He stretched out his hands with the other travellers in anticipation of the bags of bread. His arms were blanketed by cold and gentle raindrops and he left them like that, extended, hoping that the bags would be delayed a little longer.

Sanda Burță
When they saw him at their gate, clutching his hat in his fist, they knew something bad had happened. They hadn't wanted him as a son-in-law, he was a poor blacksmith and their daughter was a teacher. If you go after him, you won't be my daughter anymore, her father had yelled, and Dafina understood then that in her heart, her love for a man would go hand in hand with the longing for her mother. What do you want, man, where's your wife? She'd gone to get clay to patch up the chicken coop without waiting first for the rain to stop, it seems that was her fate. They recognized her by the wedding ring made from a horseshoe nail.

Ioana Clara Enescu
The incessant rain, day after day, following my return from the seaside, was irritating me terribly. Thousands of needles seemed to pierce my skin when a droplet touched my cheeks. A yellow raincoat, emerging from the greyin the street, made me instinctively close my eyes, as if, accustomed to the darkness, they were suddenly facing a lit bulb. That's when it happened. It caught hold of my little finger from my right hand and started whispering in my ear, with my long-lost voice: U-S-S-R-friends-we-are-a-thou-sand-cen-turies-for-ever.

(Translated by Oana Ionescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)