Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Doina RuSti

I. BUCHAREST

1. His best day was that of the meeting in the bakery. Many things had happened in the meantime and he was now already in the period of wanting to forget her. It was the summer of the tunic from fustian ochre, one of his beloved coats. A bakery with a bell had opened alongside the Red Inn, where people went primarily to listen to the clinking of the door. A smell of baked bread and sesame was coming from the open window. He had only gone in to look around and had remained transfixed. Five people filled in next to the counter. His lungs made a long pause. In front of him, not even at a finger’s distance, Maiorca breathed quietly. He could have

touched her, but his blood, still unrefined by living, had transformed him into a boiled crayfish. Time with its three hundred wings beat in his eardrums and Maiorca’s napewas steaming. He could openly look to her straight shoulders, her tens of braids twisted up in rags and her ears with earrings made of red thread, on which three little nacre buttons shivered. Maiorca saw him only after filling her basket with bread rolls. At first, they looked at each other as two strangers. Maiorca lowered her lip, letting out the sigh he had almost forgotten. While the baker wrote in his register, he threw two coins onto the counter and confidently grasped the bun

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