Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Mircea Cartarescu

uncleMikola, pushinghis hat back, looked at me with his round blue eyes that always looked surprised because of the deep lines on his forehead. Dâmboviţa 5 and its grassy banks could be seen through the window of the room we were talking in, a crowded little kitchen with a table covered by an oil cloth. “Well, we’ll agree”, he told me. I seemed to be a good boy, this was more important for him than the money. He couldn’t leave his house to just anyone. Then he started telling me a very confusing story at first, with a kind of senile liveliness. My classes were starting at two, I had already missed the military training and couldn’t afford to also miss the first actual 5  The small river that crosses Bu- charest from NV to SE

class. However, I eventually missed it, because the old man’s story, as unbelievable as it was, gripped me and I didn’t have the heart to shorten or interrupt it. The man had been something hard to define in his life: inventor, physicist, architect, even a kind of a medical doctor, his name was Nicolae Borina, did it ring a bell?. I looked at him blankly. Among others, he had invented the “Borina solenoid”, which had never been patented, first of all because the inventor had no kind of school. He had only attended a few primary grades in Abrud or Alejd 6 “where I should have a statue already, yes, sir!”. He had spent ten years in the United States, where he had 6  Little towns in Transylvania

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