Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Doina RuSti

that Bozăria must be avoided. It and Bucharest’s elderly women were the two dangers. Moreover, he had also heard the story of a valet eaten alive by Bozăria. And before the valet lay the bridge,thecityandMustafa’s shop where is believed to be the beginning, although no beginning can be discerned. Until the day of the meeting in the bakery there remain lots more to be said and all are about her eyes like two otters coming out from under the snow. He first saw her in the yard of the Metropolitan church, where he had was taken by surprise on the very day he had entered the city where he would dream like a madman. And how he had dreamed!

2. He had first heard of Bucharest in his friend’s shop, Mustafa’s, and just by listening to its music he felt it like a feather duster passing over his teeth. Inexplicably, all through the day he couldn’t get it out of his head. Aword is like a little worm, made to multiply relentlessly. It goes into the labyrinth of the ear, map in tote, inattentive to any interruptions or alliances and, in this case, it stopped only in the thalamus, in a dark place, the kind of place said to be haunted by ghosts. But Ioanis did not know this perverse side of words. He was 16 and he had spent all these years at the edge of the Căţol neighbourhood, among baskets of fish, first next to his mother’s stand, then

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