A seriously ill colleague, a patient whose son dies of a heart attack at 43, another one who was attacked by a dog out of nowhere, an 87-year-old gentleman who looks no older than 70, a 55-year-old woman who enters the doctor's office helped by her daughter because she can't walk. What do all these people have in common? The will to live. One does it for the kids, another for the niece, or not to inconvenience the kids. They all have some lessons to learn. But today's lessons have been tough and overwhelming. For me and for everyone else.
Adina Drag
They say dreams take root in the heart. Mine took up my entire body, it even hurt sometimes. All the boys in the village wanted to be like Messi or Ronaldo. Almost all of them. It was only Petrică, Old Vasile's son, who always played as a striker, dreaming to be like Lewandowski. He even had a t-shirt with his name on it. It was second-hand but it didn't matter to him. He said the shirt had powers. And it proved to be true. When he had outgrown it, he got accepted into an important team. Not sure which one, I'm not big on soccer. I ended up as a teacher at the local school.
Sanda Burță
I still had a jar of vegetable spread and half a loaf of bread. I was penniless but my folks couldn't have known \'cause I was lying to them. I got enough, mom, don't worry, I'll come back home after the exams, no need for you to take a train all the way here. One more week. Three meals a day, that's seven times three, uh, actually, two meals day. So that's fourteen. How are we s'posed to split that one jar in fourteen? My head hurts. Hey, Liviu, can I borrow that snazzy coin on a string so I can trick the Romanian Post? Come on, man, I gotta call my folks. I'll share that jar with you.
(Translated by Bogdan Nicola / 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.