84 292
Mircea Cartarescu
84
of loneliness and, naturally,
were flowing into my
dreams, homogenizing my
inner life. Two of them have
deeply impressed me to the
day.
The first story (by whom? I
never knew; the names of
the authors were merely a
negligible hieroglyph on the
cover) was about a peasant
fromremoteSiberiawhowas
sleeping in his hut next to
his woman while biting frost
was coming in through the
logs, bringing snowflakes.
The peasant woke up a little
before dawn and could no
longer feel the woman next
to him. He thought she
went out for necessities
and went back to sleep. But
when morning came and he
saw she hadn’t returned, he
went to the porch closing
his nightgown. What he
saw left him speechless. In
the snow fallen overnight,
so clean that even God
wouldn’t have dared step
in, one could see the
woman’s footprints going
from the house threshold
up to the middle of the
yard, where they suddenly
disappeared. All around the
snow was untouched. The
last sentences of this story,
which didn’t give a soothing
explanation of what had
happened like many others,
left the peasant staring into
the sky with a dumb look.
The second was about
a convict who had been
rotting in a jail cell for years.
He was convicted for life and
guardedwithsuchharshness
that the miserable man was
certain he would die in his
dungeon. But one night he
heard some faint knocks in