We Who Stand on the Front Line

Monica Aldea
Real Fiction Battalion, gooood afternoon. At your service, sir! We serve Fiction. The commander took out his chemical pencil and marked the ones who were present with a cross. Where's Raneti? In the trenches with his dead, sir. What dead? Those from his texts. Rotariu? At the mess hall with the dictionary, he learns ten neologisms a day. What about you, where are you from? You look Aryan, the officer laughed. Sir, from Ceative Writing, sir! So American, then. Battalion, attention! Here is my order! You are the front line of literature. Maaarch forward, to the Nobel.
 
 Paul Dârvariu
we are the most exposed, the first to be attacked. I didn't listen to my wife: stay out of it, Grigore, are you in the mood for scandal? She was right: retirement is retirement, Hunchback is Hunchback, beer is beer. I didn't listen to her , I had to submit my candidacy. The rumours began from the very first minute: that I'm part of the system, that I get a special pension, that I'm not truly devout, but rather some New-Age sectarian, that I'm cheating on Cocuța and that I'm a human and children trafficker in Denmark. What the hell made me want to be president of the tenants' association in our block? Tomorrow, I'm resigning.
 
 Răzvan Dițescu
We are cannon fodder. The ones that go first. We plant our boots into mud mixed with blood and mumble prayers no one hears. We are not heroes. We are statistics. Our bodies absorb bullets so that officers can get decorated. There will always be others coming from behind, ready to take our place. One wrong step, one splinter in our chest and that's it - our mothers will caress our names carved on gravestones. The General tells us we are essential. He is wrong. We are just fuel. And the war burns ceaselessly.

 
(Translated by Mara Scoroșanu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)