Heat

Gheorghiță Mircea
  Born in the scorching heat of the harvest, Goguță realized from the first moments that he was predestined to set the world on fire. He stood vigil in the rye field for a while, waiting for his navel to be cut, but everyone went off to drink for the joy of having been given a chance, not in the mood for work. He found a sickle and decided not to rely on anyone in life. When he saw his parents, he was convinced. When he was baptized, he peed in the baptismal font. It's the Antichrist, the priest said and dropped him on his head. He was crippled. But he was thinking and walking straight.

Ana-Maria Butuza
By midday, the heat was the center of the earth. She'd go into bookstores and browse the poetry books. She signed autographs on the blank pages. People would look at her and sigh, but the heat, in her untamed way, would strip through the romance novels. Till the sun went down, she would not stir from their souls. Then she lay on the rooftops, stretched out like a giant cat. The windows opened wide, waiting for the air-conditioning technicians. When they came, they vacuumed the mercury out of the thermometers and left a white mouse on the windowsill.

Lucian Pătru
All this was happening in the days of Stronțiu Mailat, the neighbor from the second floor. On a branch above, a sleepy Russian sturgeon was lounging, chatting with a small musk ox. You wouldn't believe it, but the rhinoceroses had grown a mind horn, unshakable. At every crossroads, a gang of demons would roast raisin-people on a spit. It would make your mouth water. Not literally. God was on his way out, suffering from colic or roundworms-He didn't really know for sure-and was spitting blood. The arrival of the Antichrist was expected, who would split the desert in two with a thread of water.

(Translated by Andreea Cristina Moise / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)