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Solenoid
[Excerpt]
Translated from Romanian by Rodica Guja
Chapter 8
I bought my house in 1981
for the price of a Dacia
1
. I
was living with my parents
at the time, on Ştefan cel
Mare
2
, in a long apartment
buildingwitheightentrances
connected to the Militia
Headquarters. Ihadspentmy
childhood in the Circus Park
and later, in adolescence, I
used to often go back to the
sun-drowsy park in order
to sink within its heart of
shade and sparkle, towards
the lake full of bulrush and
1 One of the two brands of au-
tomobiles produced in communist
Romania. The price of a Dacia was
around 70.000 lei (approx. USD 5.000
at the time) or about 30 monthly av-
erage salaries
2 Boulevard and neighbourhood of
Bucharest where Mircea Cărtărescu
actually grew up
weeping willows, eternally
bending over. On frightening
evenings with clouds taking
monstrous shapes I would
go down towards the lake
and sit on a bench. I would
sit there for hours looking
into the coffee coloured
water
and
mumbling
the lyrics my mind was
packed with – Apollinaire,
Rimbaud,
Lautréamont…
I was borrowing books
from the neighbourhood
library at the time, the one
next to the grocery store,
apparently never visited
by anyone except for me.
I happened to enter the
library loaded with bags
of potatoes, tomatoes and
cucumbers. I would leave
them in the little entrance