NexT

Excuse my asking sir, but people say that the grandmother of the family in whose flat you have a furnished room is your mistress. Should that bother anyone? She is a good-looking woman who has just turned 56 and if you must know it, she is quite a spicy one. It was her who

On one of the central avenues I ran across a very good friend of mine, one of the most gifted poets of our generation. Shall we have coffee together? Of course! So we entered a restaurant. It goes without saying that what with one thing and another, coffee was followed by

The barracks has always been an endless source of colorful and comic stories, of funny tales subsequently raised to the status of anecdotes… We heard them, we all keep hearing them and we transmit them to others. Who hasn't heard, for instance, the pieces attributed

'Make your stores - they're cutting it off,' calls the bobby, pushing the entrance door ajar. And every member of the household hurries to grab a pail, a mug or any of the tinier pots and pans, dashing forward to the tap (the house is endowed with a tap -

It was past midnight. I had gone to bed a long time ago but sleep refused to come. I was permanently lulled between sleep and wakefulness by the same strange dream. I woke up with a start: somebody must have knocked at the front door. I heard the knocking again. Rather dizzy

'Ma'am, I don't know what to do. I'm pregnant. ''What are you talking about, Maria? Have you no shame?'Maria was 18, had an athletic body and a heavy step, like that of a pack horse. Still, on top of a thin neck, her child-like face with

That summer, teacher Caranfil had gone to spend his holidays at Neamţul Monastery and on the day when the events he related to me had occurred to him, he had taken a trip with a company of friends in the surroundings of the monastery, beyond Procov hermitage. When he had

Taking large strides with his long legs adorned with double-red stripes, the colonel - a brigadier with one star splitting the waves of the crowd who drew back like the Red Sea before Moses, advanced, dry and black like a cigar, to board the gunboat Oituz which, shining

Captain Drăgoi used to enjoy much consideration among officers. He had gone through the whole set of hard tests. From a non-commissioned officer he had been promoted second-lieutenant in the regiment of a colonel with many daughters who had been withering, a prey to hidden

Mr. Guţă Gheorghiu had just one weakness, which as a matter of fact dominated him to a greater extent than anything else in the world: oleanders. And he did feel it was a weakness, because whenever you asked him how come so much love for a flower, he just shrugged his

This time I am forced to avoid disclosing both his name and that of the school where he taught the same subject-matter as Anghel Demetriescu: history. But how remote the two teachers were! The fine stature of the former - who was a scholar relying on thoroughgoing studies

excerpts EPIZOOTIC A few years ago, Captain Scabbard's company was transferred to the border to protect the country from cattle diseases. He found this very convenient, as by the frontier there is far less discipline among officers, and life is more regular. Besides,