Glass

Occurrences In Current Unreality

excerpt Close to our home there was a shop that sold sewing machines, where I used to go day after day and spend hours on end. The owner was a young boy, Eugen, who had just completed the compulsory military service and had found a way to make a living in the city by opening

The Churchyard Of The Annunciation

9But the candidates were not equally possessed by the same feelings and consideration for the servants in the house. A student in classics had been surprised by the mistress with the kitchen maid, a swarthy wench from the south, with two golden round butterflies for ears

Miss Christina

XVMiss Christina stood there, very close to him, with her breasts uncovered, her hair loose, waiting. Egor, you're humiliating me! he could hear her thoughts. Turn off the lamp, come closer!Egor tried in vain to resist. He could feel Miss Christina's command in

Donna Alba

excerpt Donna Alba reached the door with her nimble, high pace. Outside, in the hall of the floor, I caught up with her. I switched on the light and moved my hand around, trying, finding no other way, to delay her from the straight, irrevocable path that I had traced out

The City Of Acacias

Chapter 5. The first and last nightsOne evening they were returning from a concert. It was getting late, but they still lingered on the streets, in spite of the cold, damp weather outside. They wouldn't part with each other after the two beautiful hours they had spent

The Procrustean Bed

excerpts  I passed dizzily from one room to another… nowadays, cubist furniture is commonly used and has long ceased to make a big impression, but four years ago there were extremely few lodgings that were furnished like that. Maybe a couple of banks had dared to introduce

Return To The Interwar Bucharest

excerpts  So closeSuddenly, the interwar people make the body visible: men are allowed to shave off not only their beards, but also their moustaches – a facial change that overthrows an aesthetic canon with centuries-old resistance – and women, punished and ridiculed

The Uprising

excerpts Titu Herdelea found out about the divorce from Nadina during their trip by train. He wouldn't believe it. It was only ten days later that Grigore's words confirmed it for him. And then he exclaimed in a sad tone of voice:She was, nonetheless, such a nice

A Death That Proves Nothing

excerpt I will retell now a typical argument between us which might show that the multiple interpretations that I give to her present silence are not just the games of some sick imagination. She moved to the little country town, so it was in the last phase of our relationship,

Ways Of Seeing

Minority ethnic groups have usually developed some separate cultures within the larger framework of the majority. Their particular language and specific customs generally single out such societies. From the cultural point of view, the main characteristics of a minority society

Turks, Germans, Americans... And Other Nationalities

An event that happened several years ago and has turned, in time, into an urban legend, goes like this: the employees of a German-owned media trust had become lazy and unruly, would come to work when, and if, they felt like it, and would actually work only between two coffee

I Kiss Your Ass, Beloved Leader Mine

excerpt Arvinte and Sodapop Marcel were marvellous indeed. When they broke and entered, the crowd would draw back in sheer rapture. The two would arrive at the scene, position their ladder or ropes, as the case may be, apply the skeleton-key or the bulldozer, and before