Apples, Pears in Baskets

Andrei Tiganus
The light fell from the left side. Should I use yellow or white? Oh, my colours got mixed up again. At this rate, the light's coming down on the desk by the time I'm done. I can hear my mother calling me to eat. That's what happened yesterday, and I threw the canvas away because the colours dried up before I came back. That's it, I close the kit, leave the brushes in the glass and tighten the tripod. I take an apple out of the basket and bite it. It's been sitting there for two days, but it's still sweet and tender. Again my mother scolds me for spoiling my hunger. What can I do, I don't like fish soup.
 
 Florina Hegedüs
You had pennies, you had a stove. If not, just a Vesta, with the pipe out through the hole in the window. In our little neighbourhood lived A.A. Tarkovsky. All the buildings had black stripes with what he wrote. Letters we lived by. How the hell could I forget? We were the ones who fed his creative state. Even Lupu, the furniture factory guard. That's where we all worked. The women in the upholstery shop sewed bags, the men filled them. When Lupu asked what we had in them, we'd answer in chorus: Apples, pears, and benchmarks. That was autumn. When the writers got picked.

Monica Bologa
A boy and a little girl run around the neighbourhood. They come to an unpaved alley next to a abandoned house with many trees. On the ground, near the fence, some ripe fruit is lying. The girl picks the apples, the boy the pears. Let's go to the park and fight with them, says the boy. Once in the playground, they start bombarding each other with the fruit, each hiding behind a swing-shield. An old man watches them from the window. After the children get bored with the fight and leave, the old man comes down, gathers the ammunition and makes compote out of it.

(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)