Short

The Dreams Also Matter

excerpt  A train puffed away from the smoky railway station. A number of pioneers were waving goodbye from the window of one of the cars. Among them, there was a familiar face: big, blue eyes, and the hair, as dark as a nutshell. Goodbye, my darlings!Goodbye, comrade instructor!The

Why Spiridon Was Late

CHARACTERS: NEACSU SPIRIDON: sixth grade pupil, the head of the Pioneer Unit VICA: Neacsu Spiridon's classmate, pupil on dutyMARIANA: classmate of Vica and SpiridonA WOMAN: 30-35 years oldTHE TEACHER: 28-30 years oldPUPILS: Neacsu Spiridon's schoolmates The setting

Blue Evenings

excerpt VICA'S DIARY Vica had forgotten her diary under her pillow. Usually, she kept it in the drawer of her nightstand and in the evening, before turning off the light, she would write down her impressions of that day. Mica found it by chance. She was there tidying

The First Book, The Last Book

excerpts Dear Mother, I'd like to tell you something, and just because if I tried to talk to you about it, you wouldn't let me, I'm putting it in writing. You said to me, I quote: You go to school, do a good job there, finish well and we'll let you do

Novel Of The Nearsighted Adolescent

excerpt  VI. MONDAY, 8 TO 9, GERMAN When I was in the first grade, I flunked French, German and Romanian. I used to spend my afternoons barefoot on the pitch, sweating, short-sighted, playing oina. [1] I had become famous for the lightning rapidity with which I would catch

The Storm

The two students, Andrei Banica and Tudor Leru were in a hurry. That's why they had taken the shortcut. Leaving the highway that was taking a detour on the bank of the river Aries, they decided to climb up Vanatu, the mountain bordering on the river like a huge flat

The Life And Times Of Andrei Mihai Stan

Writing an oral history of a ten-year-old child may seem like a perfectly absurd enterprise any day of the week. The social experience of an individual of ten would not recommend an approach of this kind. With such a person it cannot be a matter of immediate memory. Hence

A Worried Man

It had been three days since the wind had been blowing from the east, the earth had dried up, and in the thicket from the edge of the village, on the bank of Siret, the cornel trees started to bloom, yellowish. Dumitru Onisor's youngest son took out six sheep to graze

Old Stan

Children, have you ever thought that the grown-ups around you used to be children once? Well, ask any of them, and you will see that they are all pleased to recall their childhood. You will be grown-ups one day, and you will tell your children about today and then you will

The Offensive Of Childhood

I was never a child, I never had childhood… warm, golden days of puerile frenzy, the long-lasting serenity of innocence, the surprise given by the daily discovery of the universe, what do all these mean to me? I know nothing of them, or I no longer remember anything. I

The Sabine Amphora

excerpt  THE IRON PALM TREE In front of the Burebista eating inn stops one of those tiny automobiles that no one notices, a frog Skoda or a small Fiat, one doesn't know exactly what model, because the respective car raised a huge amount of dust that the Dobrogea

The Wheel Of Fortune

excerpts CHAPTER I How had the members of the Cherry Blossom Club gotten to the town of D. ? That was not a difficult one to answer. First, the little town was not very far from its twin, where the members of the Cherry Blossom Club lived. Then, as it often happens, one