Her skin had suddenly acquired a strange pallor, when she heard that Uncle Ion sacrificed the youngest baby goat for us. I want you to feel pampered, he told us tenderly. I knew it was impossible for me to make her understand or to make her taste that meat that everyone in the house called tender. For her, it was just barbaric. Did he cut the baby goat, she asked me in the bathroom, and I nodded my head while holding her hand. Let's come up with a story and leave, I told her. I'm going to tell them that our cat got sick.
Monica Bologa
I'm playing in the grass with an ant. I let it climb on my arm up to the shoulder. The men are sitting around the fire holding bottles of beer in their hands. Women are chatting in the shade drinking some liquor. I tell my mum that I'm hungry. In a moment, dear. I continue playing with some dry benches. Dad puts some wood on the fire, mom pours into glasses. They are singing, they are laughing too hard, but on the grill there is no meat. I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. I lie down next to a birch and fall asleep. I'm dreaming about juicy minced meat rolls and well browned pork steaks.
Lidia David
A desert island on a Friday. Nobody around and dazed as I am I ask myself what am I doing here. I didn't take the ferry, I'm sea sick, I don't know how to swim. But here I am, shipwrecked, wounded and dehydrated. After all the movies I've watched, I know that if I survive this night, probably I won't live to see the next one. Either my wounds get infected or I get bitten by a snake. I'm thinking of sitting in the shade, maybe I can try that trick with the dew gathered from the leaves, when I see the fires. I hear the drum beats and now I get it. The savages are firing up the grill.
(Translated by Constantin Grigorescu / 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.