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Life Begins on Friday
[Excerpt]
Translated from Romanian by Alistair Ian Blythe
Friday, 19 December: An Eventful Day
Section 4
Perhaps all that was and will
be is now, in the present.
Perhaps what was is what
once more will be. Before
you ask me any questions,
try to get used to my
voice, the voice of a man
sundered from a world he
had come to know quite
well, and plunged into an
unknown and unintelligible
world. Perhaps without
knowing it, we live in this
endless moment, in many
worlds at once. Perhaps the
voice that speaks to you
now and which thrashes
among the voices here like a
fisherman’s net – this voice
that finds itself in the city
and the country of its birth,
more alone than the voice
of any man imprisoned in a
foreign land – speaks even
now with beings which you
have no way of seeing. Or
perhaps I, the source of the
voice, have already been
extinguished, like the sun
that has just now set, but
you still hear me, there, in
your world, where the sun
is at its zenith, there in your
warm room, or outside, in a
green park, on a bench. Or
perhaps precisely when you
cannot hear me, when you
are sleeping a dreamless
sleep orwhen you are yelling
at each other like madmen,
or when you are bored to
death, desperate for the
time to pass, perhaps this
will be when the essential