12 O'Clock calls 14 O'Clock. I am glad you picked up. I wanted to hear you, especially since I have 10 minutes left to live. They pass by very fast, you know? At 12.07 O'Clock, 13 O'Clock called me, and asked how I was doing. I am good, short on time. The final ceremony for 11 O'Clock impressed me. It lasted a second. I didn't even get to contemplate it. It's very busy. You'll see. Each moment something goes on somewhere in the world. I have no time to tell you. It's 12:53. I need to go.
Cecilia Fofiu
The cow's not here, mutters the old man with the empty milk pail. We'll both look for it, says the old woman, for the calf will spend the night out and the violet twilight is a bad omen. They set off hobbling, one hunched, the other limping. They hear the clanging of a cowbell leading them to the dewy grass glade where Dulama, with a tangled ray in her horns, pulls back the sun from below, behind the hill. Frightened, they quickly snap the light thread, slip the noose around her neck, and start milking. From that milk, they grew younger overnight. And they had a little boy with golden hair, your father. Go to sleep now, Granny concludes.
Arthur Ianoși
The tears stuck in his beard were no good, the priest's reassurances that the now was the only one dying each moment, so that those truly present could be born again, were in vain, nothing could sway his father. There is no way in hell you are going to be a writer, they all starve, you are going to be an engineer. So he became an engineer, but he kept writing on the sly, when he had time and he wasn't too worn out from work. He sheepishly asked a colleague if she would submit his writings. To a magazine. It was finally published. A masterpiece. The most gut-wrenching suicide note.
(Translated by Ioana Grințescu / 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.