At first, it sneaked it into the file. I gave it back to him without saying a word. On our next date, he was holding it with two fingers. He tried to approach me with a harlequin gesture which I hadn't anticipated. I stepped back at the last moment. I felt as if I had been in a fools show. Now he was sitting in front of me. His eyes were faded blue. His mouth was distorted with helplessness. He hands it towards me without hesitation. Please, there's no need to, I tell him. He looks at me in disbelief. Doc, I'm dying, am I not?
Dan Banu
Jo and Joe have been married for twenty years, they don't have children, but they are deeply in love with one another. That's why Jo can't understand it. The young man she had welcomed into her home got inside her blood and into her soul afterwards. When they ran away, Joe found only a napkin full of her tears placed on the corner of the table. He had been a madman those nights in which she was gone, but he had always known that she would return. And she did. He cried, took her in his arms and made tea. She began to feel sick within a month. He cried, embraced her again and went out to buy raspberry.
Arthur Ianoși
I saw it one May evening, when the cherries ripe and they had just changed the church bell. The old one began to sound like death even on holidays. I saw the village madman chained to the cemetery fence. He had never hurt anyone, but people used to call him mad because he would always talk nonsense. I didn't know anything else about him, since I was not the type who would believe everything he heard. I stick to my business. Babu, what have you done, why did they tie you up? They told me to keep an eye on the gate lest the dead should escape.
(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.