What a life this is, nephew. If my kid didn't die, if your aunt never left me, maybe just maybe, I wouldn't be like this. First cirrhosis. Than the CVA. My last homes are the medical offices of Neurology and Gastroenterology. I'm aware of that. And I have a very tough life. At least I feel my arm again. But the liver is on its last legs. The liquid continues to gather. The belly swells incessantly. Yesterday they did me paracentesis again. Three hours with a needle stuck in my stomach. Eight litters. Almost a bucket. As of today, they also put the protective mask on me. It's hard to die, nephew.
Alina Voinea
He came this morning from Iași and I ran from school straight home. I was running out of patience. He showed me how to make a tailed kite from ribbons, he read to me from Memories of My Childhood with the accent of Nicî of Știefan of Pietrii and he drank three pines of beer, from which he let me sip the foam. There you go, Ioan, said my mother while holding a plate full of sweets, while I was licking my bitter moustache laughing softly. Give him beer. A ten year old kid. Then maybe a spritzer and finish with plum brandy. After that we can turn him into a writer.
George Dometi
My uncle is God. But who was He? The real Him should've been under the layers of mud thrown up by every pair of eyes that noticed him, beneath the dug deep tunnels into his gestures and behaviors and under the mines of Himself in which women and children, blind and deaf, love and Word, lack of life and death have made their bedchamber. It's just that every bit of His self is not real. But it's tasty. Then he takes his head, kisses it, hugs it to his chest, cuts a slice and puts it behind the showcase. Next to his atheist family.
(Translated by Constantin Grigorescu / 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.