Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Mircea Cartarescu

living with my parents, in Ştefan cel Mare. At least my mother knew where “they distributed” the egg ration, where “they brought” cheese.Wewouldgoatdawn or even at night behind an apartment building across the street and we would stand in a queue in terrible frost, in themiddle of animal like crowds, for a chicken carrion or a bottle of watery milk. It was, however, food, I was, however, with my folks, I had someone to exchange a word with. Now and then I would come straight home and spend the night in my bedroom in Maica Domnului. Howmany times, in that eraof endless sadness did I not wake up with the feeling that I am in a cell, narrow like a vault, buried deeply underground? How

many tens of times did I not think I could hear the knocks of an impossible escape through thewall? Howmany notebooks did I fill in those times with half-moons, spur gears, crosses and triangles, obscure however essential language, like the notations of logicians? The terror of being in the world, my animal-like fear in front of the nothingness of our lives would then show up in its entire desperation. But the knocks in the wall would stop before they could be deciphered and the endless night would replace them.

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