94 292
Mircea Cartarescu
94
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