Mirel came from a farmers family. His father, the first of the Gutuie family to go to university, had been the pride of the family when he returned to the village as the new agricultural engineer of the association. Mirel was the second most educated of the Gutui family, but no one bragged about him. To everyone, Mirel was an oddity: what man learns so much to make, God forbid, bras? All day long with his eyes and hands on his tits. Mirel would tell them that they, and he, do the same thing: they take care of the apples, pears and so on, but no one heard.
Elena Fermuș
When I was a little girl, I thought there were only three seasons in the world and that Grandma was autumn. She was too rich at heart. She knew how to be autumn. With the smell of apples baking in the stove in the room. With pumpkins sitting on duty on the porch overlooking the big house and quinces strung like beads on the porch ledge. And then the jelly which I smeared myself from the tip of my nose to the marrow of my soul. With its baskets full of good fruit. And what she did to them that they never got done. Why do I miss autumn today when it's autumn?
Marilena Demian
My stepmother raised me in our orchard house. When my brothers were born, I was already in high school in the city. We rarely saw each other, but it was clear she had changed. She'd lost weight, she was angry, she said she worked too hard, she'd become absent. She'd borrow my clothes and spend hours in the mirror. I used to buy her small gifts from my teaching allowance, but she only wanted my things. After her last apple pie, I was hospitalized. The dwarves in my group came to visit, and the handsome doctor kept asking me what I was poisoned with.
(Translated by Maria Cătălina Moisescu / 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.