The voice teacher used a tuning fork to strike against the desk twice or thrice to indicate the tone, and after every strike, he would put it to his ear. First, the sound vibrations spread evenly in the classroom and we could hear the arguments with his wife. At the second strike, the sound waves passed the eardrum, set the hammer, anvil and ladder in motion and then turned into screams. After the last strike, we didn't hear a thing, and a week later they found her breathless at the edge of the forest.
Sorin Rizeanu
Every heart sings an incomplete song until another whispers back. She's curious, I'm tired, two disappointed people. My wife's afraid that I'd end up just like her, married to a person she's not in love with. Children suddenly go from preschool to college. The memories of a few summers spent at Vadu village. We weren't alone, but that's what we felt like. One day, my daughter's friend from college, whose hobby is married men, smelled my despair. Acid stains under the tongue, sharp blades, dry rivers. Because no heart has ever sang back to me.
Ioana Dumitrașcu
There are two great things his grandpa taught him, the Almighty grant him forgiveness: to put money aside and to pour his heart out through music if bad times are to come. That money thing didn't go too well, but at least he would pour his heart out every night, which made the neighbors knock on the pipes so that he would eventually stop, because his life was rough. And that banging reminded him of his grandpa, about how he came back from the tavern, straight as a ramrod and pensive, how he would stumble upon every little thing that happened to be on the path, clout him round the head and then pour his heart out that the whole village knew about him. Because his life was rough too.
(Translated by Cristina-Andreea Dobre / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.