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Years ago, I experienced a peculiar evening. My life is far from eventful, and the few significant occurrences I do remember have been sucked for all they're worth in my books. There are, nevertheless, among their number some which, for a variety of reasons, I couldn't

I lived in Amsterdam for a while, it now feels like a different lifetime, perched in the attic of a Flemish house along Watergraafsmeer. The rest of the three-storey building accommodated the owner, a lady of Polish descent, and her rubicund daughter. They would have a bath

excerpt  You haven't the slightest idea what sound the stopper makes when you hit it with that DAMNHUGEBOLT. Yes, that's the bolt I'm talking about, the bolt I'll never forget, as long as I'll live 'cause it was damn necessary to stop it without

excerpts  I passed the entrance exam in philology at Cluj, but I was already bored after my freshman year. I had the best results in my class, but that was not my place. Whenever I danced at parties, and I felt the boys' knees splitting my legs through my dress, my

excerpts 30. The ass and the airCane and Tolstoi on the train. They talked about the status of the writer in society, how good it was during communism when writers were given cars, villas and fat paychecks. Of course you would keep on writing; today you write and everyone's

excerpts 37. Hari is a virgin Finally, trolleybus 88 came and I no longer bothered to make the phone call; I hopped then on a tram and about half past ten I was at Hari's. No X drawn in pencil on the door now: instead, big deal, a cool plate reading HERE LIVES HARI;

excerpt I paused a little in order to recall better the dark areas of my teenage years. I don't know why it is only about them that I feel like writing. But do I only have to write about them? Maybe the journal that I'm struggling every second not to finish the

One of these days, a good friend of mine reminded me of how we used to court. It was his way of laying stress on the snail-like progress of things from Mrs. Grundy dates to the first touch or hand squeeze, and then to their ultimate glory – the kiss, which usually happened

excerpt The second time I went to Alina's parents', the neighborhood seemed too familiar not to imagine that my memory was playing a prank on me, and not a nice one. I had got off the tram a few steps away from the barber's called The Merry Whiskers, which

excerpts The house of Maria Dragases is a small palace rising next to the western wall of the city, and from its orange-tree garden one can see the sea. The sun is now above the garden, its light has the color of a lime, and so is the light reflected by the fruit in the

excerpt All his anxiety, that apoplectic fit, was proof he did not know Clara. That was precisely the state of their relationship at the time. In order to know and understand and accept her manner of thinking, the style of her infinitesimal psychic reactions – allowing

It is amazing how many children are begotten from the sentimental exultation that one or the other of their parents feel for a third person, another than the partner in the respective action, irrespective if the person in question be a man or a woman. Sometimes this third