PiE

In the romantic revolutionary years after the communist take-over there was a custom to hoist a red flag or lay a red cloth over the presidium table at any meeting or session having a political character. It was a revolutionary symbol, an optimistic one, a symbol of the

I was preparing to go to the editorial office where I was going to give a lecture in front of a group of journalists. A cultivated, exigent, familiar audience. I was waiting for the car to take me there. I like to be left alone in such moments, so that my excitement doesn't

The three of them are filling in soccer betting slips and drinking cold beer. About the beer they seem to agree. Over the match results there is much argument. Cut my head off if these don't lose, the one in an otter fur hat says. The one in the very large rimmed hat

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

excerptIAfter Shrovetide Reverend Ghelasie, mighty tired after the evening of Shrovetide that expended to till the matins service, spent in the company of his friend and neighbor Ghervasie, opened an eye only when the early March sun, also fatigued, cast a reddish-yellow

In our parts, at Jassy, autumn starts late in May and lasts until Christmas. There is no summer in Jassy. If from time to time, winter did not come we could say we have only autumn over here. Nice weather begins with foul smells, green flies and heat. Then it turns nasty.

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

After the conclusion of the treaty with Germany, a big cloth producer from Berlin called his oldest and most loyal clerk and told him:The Treaty with Romania was ratified. Mr. Madger1 was quick. We must resume immediately our relations with the Romanian merchants. You called

Mitzu and Barutzu have grown up some and started conspiring. In the brief reprieves between a lot of hair-pulling and two-way jostling, with their generation's interests in mind, they eventually realize they are in duty bound to organize against the big guns: Mummy

The leader of a new political party has just written to me from Bacău. I quote:I have wandered the snows of the county for a few days now. I've had very little rest, but have walked and talked quite a lot instead. The electoral problem consists in wiping off the oratorical

'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