Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Mircea Cartarescu

was taken by the chair that has been waiting there for tens of years maybe, fixed to the floor in bolts. Not one speck of dust, no spider web, not the least trace of mould in that silent room showed the passage of time. It looked like an image from the centre of your mind, clear like in a camera lucida and equally enigmatic. I sat down on the yellowish chair covered in fake leather, like I would do over and over again. One push of a metal switch turned on the lights on the huge porcelain plate. I remained suffused in light, my back against the chair, my head leaned on its head cushion, like a navigator in a ship crossing the gap between galaxies. What was this vision doing here? The old man hadn’t

told me anything about his “dental office” that I initially imagined the tower to be. But what kind of office could this be, where in order to reach you needed to go through the bedroom, go up a stair, get out on the house terrace, go up again on the narrow and dangerous cement stair that went around the tower, then go down like in a submarine in order to get to the dentist? Who would ever get into that claustrophobic and sinister trap? And where was the waiting room? I thought about all these in the hours when, withdrawn in my tower under the clear light of the bulbs fixed in the ivory platter, I played with the instruments on the enamelled tray in front of me: weird crooked tongs,

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