She thought it was a joke: how was she to teach art at a school for the blind? And yet here she was, surrounded by eyes that looked at her but could not see her. She put the cool colors on their left and the warm colors on the right in order of their chromatic strength: sun yellow first, citrus orange next, blood red last. She moistened their brushes and brought them fruits, grass, spices to conjure their shades. Afterwards, when she said, all canvases[1] up, she too became blind from so much beauty and color.
[1] Wordplay in Romanian based on the title of a well-known book, Toate pânzele sus!(All sails up!) by Radu Tudoran. The word "pânză" in Romanian is used for both canvases and sails.
Ioana Clara Enescu
She swallowed the last sip of coffee, jammed the cigarette butt in the ashtray, opened the window wide, rested her elbows on the windowsill, propped her head on her hands, and stayed there for a while, watching the seagulls that had built their nests on the roof of the apartment building across from hers. For a few years now the city had been flooded by these birds, which flew over it as if over an invisible sea. Their screams had often roused her from her sleep in the morning, making her believe, until she would come to her senses, that from the shore where she had been waiting for her whole life, she could see, at last, the Hope[1] finally docking.
[1] Speranța (Hope) is the name of the ship in Radu Tudoran's book Toate pânzele sus! (All sails up!)
I miss you so much, that I have searched for days for a pen to write to you. Anything can be my ink, but I want the letter to be beautiful. At home everything is as you had left it. But I feel that even in the barnyard you're missed. Rarely is there any news from the front. And when there is, I wait with bated breath for it to pass quickly, for it to not be about you. I'm waiting for you. I always hang the sheets from the dowry chest to dry on the clothesline, so you can see the house from afar. Yesterday I found a four-leaf clover near the barn. I'll have it pressed send it your way.
(Translated by Andreea Teodorescu-Colciu / 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.