Pirates, burn the boats, screams like a demon the one-eyed captain. Without boats, our only option was to go forward, victory or death. The English were waiting for us with cannons. Gunfire and howls, bayonets shoved into guts and eyes gouged out. The captain fell, and now it was the first sailor pushing us on. He fell too, bleeding like a pig, and everyone looked at me. I'm a thief, what kind of captain am I? Oh, but we need a thief, a clever thief will get us out of here alive faster than a wicked captain. Damn it, I said, does anyone have any rum?
Siranuș Hakobian
May time strike you down, that woman yelled after me, and it made me laugh at the stupidity of the curse. Maybe she just couldn't find the right words; she was just a cheated-on woman, but the curse stuck because time froze for me in that moment. I remained exactly as I was then, a deranged 30-year-old, and I watched as time passed for others: I saw my parents, my wife, my kids, and my grandkids die while I suffered from a sickly youth. Hope bloomed in my heart when I found a white hair on my head.
Elia Ghinescu
He shields his eyes from the smoke of the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, thinking that this time it might be different. Old scrap metal, batteries I buy. The cart moves slowly through the relentless heat, even in the evening. He lets the horse trot along. Go, with Dad, go. We're picking up stoves, refrigerators. In the shack with clothes in the window, the barefoot kids are waiting for him. We're getting washing machines. A lit cigarette burns a hole in his pant knee. It'll be a girl, he tells himself, pushing his worn-out hat back onto his head, enough with seven boys. And when she comes, I'll call her Steluța, that's what I'll name her.
(Translated by Eduard Mihai Uretu / 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.