Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

Dana Grigorcea

Then he disappears into the thick mangrove forest, and soon reaches the old Doherty tennis courts—little fish and frogs swim in the stagnant water. Wading through the darkness in water up to his knees, the sack still over his shoulder, with only the stars to orient himself, he heads toward the mighty ruins of buildings that were supposed to become a communist museum. Their bulk astonished even my grandma, Mémé—every day as we rode bus 368 when she took me to school, she’d exclaim, “Good lord, how quickly they’re building, it’s utter madness.” Sometimes I wouldn’t even turn to look, adopting the same defiant indifference with which the locals of Zurich and Paris refuse to admire the Lake of Zurich and the Eiffel tower. And then she wouldn’t look, either. In the yellowish light of the street lamps, the abandoned libraries and bakeries were reminiscent of a sleepy provincial town, unless one looked up to see the endless apartment blocks stretching up toward the pale moon. Followed not even by his own shadow, the robber ran up the street, boarded the bus, climbed to its upper level, and rode it to Palace Square. A tourist group—Serbians of Romanian descent, waving Romanian flags in front of the equestrian statue of Carl I—only notices the old man when the printer cartridge full of red ink powder explodes from his sack, and he runs off in a red cloud, like a red devil. Millions of moths flit about in the bright light surrounding the statue, and

290