Give me your hand, he yells, leaning over the peeled railing. But she hesitated and desperately held on to the iron frame where the planks had once been. They've stolen them for the fire, she thought to herself, that's what you do when you're poor and your children are cold. Give me your hand, you fool, he insisted. No, she resisted, and her fingers whitened to nails, joined with iron. If she didn't hold his hand, she'd fall. But if she did, he'd pull her to him, into the cold, miserable room, where he'd beat her again, even worse.
Florentina Ghițescu
She accepted the invitation to this conference just to leave. She thought a change would help her get rid of this feeling of something missing. The subject didn't interest her at all, the speaker not so much - a satisfied one. She had sat in the second row, in the middle, since she was 30 she had become myopic. It was a long time before the break. She stood up, disturbing half the room. Spilled a coffee left on the floor, stepped on someone's feet, but managed to get out on the fire escape. Here he was, with a cigarette in his hand, smiling at her.
Gabriela Rus
We all thought of him as a risk lover, an adrenaline junkie. But he was just sad and indifferent. He'd already lost everything he'd considered worth the effort and the will to live. He lived on inertia and accepted any challenge for a few minutes of high. It was no use. The comeback wasn't a cold shower, it was a stale, smelly puddle. Until that night at Colectiv. He didn't feel like going, but his friends dragged him to the concert. He saved as many as he could, then passed away. Some people are made to leave life on the fire escape.
(Translated by Cătălina Colibaba / 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.