Four things matter in life if you want to be happy, said the Zen master. The first I never learned, the second is a secret, the third doesn't matter, and the fourth is to strictly follow the first three. That's when enlightenment struck me. The devil's lamp wasn't fixed well and fell straight on my head. And I understood the golden rule: it's better to give than to receive. Not Buddha said that, but Leonard Doroftei[1]. Buddha's not wrong either, but what do I know-do I speak Japanese? 私はサムライです, or something like that.
Every evening he climbs the hill. Step by step. He sits on the stone that already knows his shape and gazes at the sunset. Always the sunset. Sometimes he smiles faintly. And the sky seems to answer. It lends him its colors and lays them gently, one over the other, until the whole world is painted in silence. Other times, he sighs softly, smoothing the wrinkles of his trousers. He stays there until daylight fades completely. And when darkness falls, something slowly melts and slips quietly into the stone.
Alexandra Buhudini
On Saturdays, he brought his harmonica to the construction site. His creased hands had the color of chrysotile, dusty-white like the harmonica's mouths he kissed into song. That white kiss turned crane heads in a working-class blues that built matchbox homes where souls found shelter; children at their mothers' breasts, retirees before their TVs, newlyweds in freshly laundered sheets. On Saturdays, when I make coffee, I listen to the blues from the wall. Like a crane, I sway over memories of him from the '60s.
(Translated by Miruna-Camelia Baicu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan, coordinator of the translations / Edited by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.