The Important Thing Is to Participate

Cecilia Fofiu
We invite you to attend the string quartet X recital. The venue is the small theater hall, it says so in gold letters on the card I received from George, my colleague from the office who winks at me. I excitedly burn a couple of hundred on a black dress and a string of fake pearls. I already own the shoes. George looks like a model. Me, I'm a doll. We sit in one of the box seats. The music is divine. We spent the break with champagne and cultured conversation. Bothered by yesterday's beans, I abruptly, desolately end the evening with a serious toot and melt into the night.
 
 Dana Popescu
That's what my parents used to tell me before I signed up for a new competition, a new event, a new class. I did everything: tennis, painting, swimming, ballet, singing, English, skiing, piano. After each competition from which I came back with my tail between my legs, having achieved the feat of not quite being last, they would look up the scores of all my competitors, analyze them, ostentatiously shove them in my face and tell me that I needed to work harder and that I would thank them later. Yes, I thank them every day, I'm a loser with no childhood.

Alina Ilie
Graceful but insecure, with her granny-knitted her leg warmers and pointe shoes worn in, Alex looked like a porcelain doll. She had been holding the perfect penché position for an hour, when her marble-sculpted legs began to tremble. Exhausted, she couldn't allow herself to think about anything but the next day's exam. It was important for her not just to take part, but to be admitted, otherwise all her hard work would have been in vain, she felt that the years she had devoted to ballet would suddenly have amounted to zero, and so would her whole being.

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