Music Is My Life

Arthur Ianoși
I knew before I was born that I would be special. There were signs. The biggest clue was that I was born at twelve months. At nine months my mother was arguing with me, but there was no way I would go out and play. Leave him, Maria, to rest, there's no need to hurry, that's what the midwives said. My mother, poor thing, got fed up with only seeing the cracks in the ceiling, and called for the specialists. They all tried with heave-ho. In vain. I just poked my head out a little and went back inside when I saw so many people. Then my father started to sing Highway to Hell on his guitar and that was it.

Florina Hegedüs
He heard her in the wind, in the river behind the monastery, through the rays of the sun, through the rain, only not in the chapel. The frightened nuns forced penance on her in the cell. Pepita was smiling. She had the key to solitude and opened her heart. In the narrow space she thought like Mahler, profoundly, hummed Mozart's E-E-C and touched the wall with the scent of the seasons until her eyes darted hard-rock. From the bed's rough board sprang roses like in a Rossini piece. The next day the cell was empty. Pepita had fled in the afterlife with the world's music.

Gheorghiță Mircea
Țîcă, the fiddler, had fallen ill and was bedridden. He was coughing and the head elder sent him home. Music is my life, he said coughing. It's COVID. Go home. Țîca, beside his bed with a plate of cold soup, was watching him silently, he didn't eat or speak anymore. She left the room and went to the elder. By evening, the fiddlers were surrounding his bed and they didn't stop until morning. She poured them wine in their glasses. When dawn came, they parted ways, tired. Țîca escorted them outside. When she returned back in the house she found Țîcă shaving in front of the mirror. Freshly shaven, he took his violin and went out for coffee.

(Translated by Maria-Ilinca Darie / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan, Edited 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 March 2024, the group has 12,800 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.