She was raised this way, she got older this way, with faith and fear of God. When she received her pension, she carefully skimped every penny, so she could go every Sunday to the Holy Church, to pay a mass both for her and for her man, who rose to Heaven. Only so she soothed her soul of the hardness of life. But life kept getting harder, just like for many other old, lonely people and for a while, she was content to only go to the House of the Lord once a month. Then she stopped going. Remember thou me, Lord, even without money.
Dorin Vasile
In '52, when the money changed, my dad lost all his savings. Not even the bank knew about the government's operation and began minting coins with the year that had just started. They immediately sent them to the mint foundry, meaning to our factory. I followed the train through the furnace, coins fell from the bags and I picked them up from the snow. I gathered as many as I could, for the nougat, but I wasn't able to buy anything with them, the new leu[1] had already appeared. Today, my nephew tells me they are worth a fortune. I keep them, they remind me of dad.
[1] Leu - the monetary unit of Romania.
Ligia Dumitrescu
They had brought rock candy to the Grocery Store. The news spread with lightning speed amongst the kids from the block. I had one leu, a change that my mom had allowed me to keep. I set up in the long line of children that could barely wait to feast from the sweetness sold en gros. Big crystals, milky white or translucent, with sharpened edges and polished faces were slowly perishing, greedily licked, to last longer, or rather instantly disappearing in small mouths, screeching in our teeth and swelling our cheeks in small moving mounds.
(Translated by Andreea Sorana Oltean / 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.