Soap Bubbles

Florina Hegedüs
When I want to hide within myself I come here. In the hill's groove, under the orchard. Everything is green as far as the eye can see, and a bit higher, there is the Pietrosu peak with its head always buried under snow. As if it were a cloud from Heaven. I can't see it but I hear the Vișeu river playfully flowing through the rocks altered by time. I don't want to die as long as Radu sends a letter from time to time. Rarely, but he does. I mash soapwort between my palms and I blow over the foam for the wind to take it far away, to him. I hear my mother calling me: Irinaa, let's go pick up the plums so we can start making plum brandy.

Alex Caragian
The plumbers unclogged a channel at the same time as their colleagues from the other side of the globe. At each pole they found the end of a pipe which they did not know what was for, since it was installed by the old administration. When they pulled it at one side of the globe, the pipe quickly sprung out from the other side. After long consultations with their master, the apprentice blew into the pipe. At the other end of it, a soap bubble came out. It is clear as day that the others did the same, but.

Paul Dârvariu
Mișu, you know that I am head over heels over that big-breasted woman from the Financial department. I found her alone in her office today. I told her that I am crazy over her balloons and that I would give anything if she let me touch them. You would think that she got mad. Not at all. She smiled and told me that she allows it under one condition. She pulled a ruler out of her drawer and asked me if I know how to calculate the volume of a sphere. I told her that I don't. She said: that's too bad, mister Grigore. You don't know, you don't touch. It's such a pity, Mișu. I'll go home and learn spatial geometry with my little one.

(Translated by Cristina-Paula Grosu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)


Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In November 2023, the group has 12,090 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, Luchian Abel, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)

Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.