Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Mircea Cartarescu

the purl of the intestines around it. At night, when I watch the stars through the latticed windows, I seem to see the nervous ganglions of the great woman I live inside of. The creaking of the old furniture and the floor sounds to me sometimes, in the middle of the night, like the cracking of the vertebrae of a huge spongy spine. I am happy in my house. I got to know its inner anatomy so thoroughly. The rooms have crooked walls and neither has the same height as the other. The cabinets go up to the ceiling. Their wood is spongy, seemingly swollen by invisible currents. Lamps of the same wrought iron as the gratings at the doors and windows hang from the ceilings. The bathroom is always damp, the oil paint

of the greenish walls is faded, the iron of the taps seems eaten by salt. The bathtub is deep, one of the old ones with lion paws. All the porcelain on the bottom is gone, like the enamel of old teeth. Sometimes, when I stand naked in front of the bathtub filled with grey water it seems to me that I am in a world without time, in a photograph: I have always been like that, I would always be like that: stuck there, next to the rusty toilet pipe, incapable of any movement, looking at the silent water I will never get into. My house has tens, hundreds or thousands of rooms. I never know where I’ll get when I open a door. They are all silent, with huge crocheted tablecloths, red

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