Uncle Tudor lives alone in the house by the side of the road. Until last year he was the joy of the village. He's a laughing stock, said the people at the Community Drinking House, as Tudor called the village pub. He wanted to become a comedian in Iași, but life handed him tragedy. A wife and a child, crushed by a truck, on this cursed road. He goes out every night to look at cars in that place where it happened. Make peace with life. A driver stops, thinking he's a hitchhiker. Where exactly do you want to go to Iași? Uncle Tudor gets in.
Titela Durnea
I'm just a Stone. In the burning desert, or in the swift-flowing river, the same sins wait to be washed away. By hot sand or clear water. Let the camel's hoof or the waterfall's roar trample me underfoot. Thirty days as long as thirty light-years to eat from the hump. To drink from the cold river for a thousand seasons. And, at the last minute, to pour myself into the sea, reborn as the primordial infant. And let the tide toss me back to the world, to wrap me in another hundred sins.
Camil Popescu
Prince Charming was seething with anger. The stock of grain with which he fed his old mare was exhausted, and Ileana Cosânzeana[1] had to be rescued from the Ogre's clutches. What's more, the mob had raided the poppy field and was talking in a loud voice: Hey, Prince Charming, do you know what Ileana is doing now? Bang bang bang hump hump hump with the ogre. Prince Charming wanted to strangle him. Come on, I was just kidding. Get warm and move quickly back and forth, and Prince Charming listens. That's the way Cosânzeana moves, on the last minute, the horse said and galloped away.
[1] Ileana Cosânzeana is the main female character in Romanian mythological fairy tales.
(Translated by Andreea Cristina Moise / 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.