Being the youngest of the family has its advantages and not really. You don't get beaten up at school, but your elders will beat you up at home. They with the brawn, I with the brains. I was aiming to finish seventh grade with an all As. The reason? The special scholarship, plus the promise of a room of my own room. I was on schedule. Until they sent me out for bread. You know, my math teacher owns a bakery. I still don't get it, the principal squeaked. I asked him for four loaves of bread. He said he ran out of them, but he'd give me some eights[1]. So? You realize that's ruining my grade. I called my brothers.
[1] Eights - Eight Strand Plaited Loaf
Adina Drag
He caresses the yellowed pages of the book, which until then had been lying on a bookshelf in the library of the three-room apartment he rented from old Hampus. He'd left it with him after all, just before he'd made the decision that he wanted to die in a nursing home alongside other old farts like himself. Boy, if any books go missing from this library, goddamn you, I'll be back to haunt you, don't be stupid. Start with what you want, but never stop. Ask questions, damn it. Between these covers lies the real bread.
Răzvan Drăgoi
For man, bread is life. In the alchemical sense, it is transformed matter. Brought to perfection. The technological process encompasses, metaphorically, the whole of human evolution. Uprooting. Crushing. Blending. Baking. Exactly the same steps are at the genesis of diamonds. Religiously, it's the holy grail, but also one of the great temptations. It is the only one written both in being, as it represents matter, and in having, as it is accumulation. It goes through all states of aggregation, including the plasma of fire. For wheat, bread is death.
(Translated by Corina-Alexandra Belu / 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.