Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Solenoid

round littlemirrors, baroque hooks, needles, drill heads, top-like grinders… The substances that give dental offices their specific smell were missing: the amalgam, the gips, the anaesthetics. There was no smell whatsoever in my tower. Was it possible that uncle Mikola had tried to play the dentist at atimeof poverty in his intricate life?Hadheused the home chair for learning the dental techniques? But who could have played the guinea pig? Or was he trying, as an inventor, to upgrade existing chairs, to improve their electrical side, the transmissions, the rheostats? But there was no sign of repair, no lubricant, noloosescrews, themachine was perfect like an insect with hard shell and flawless

mechanical articulations. It was entirely functional, although old fashioned and somewhat weird looking as a consequence: each turn of a switch lit a little light and the heads of some suspended machine with hard cables of metal coil started sizzling speedily. A switch was lifting and lowering the chair making the noise of an ancient elevator. Another one made a reddish rubber hose with a metal piece at the end start sucking imaginary saliva. For a long time I was a guest in my own house. Because the times were awful and one could only find jars with floating livid vegetables, inedible, in food stores and because I was suffering of loneliness like a dog, I preferred to go on

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