Almost

excerpt Lying on the hot tile floor, Brave Leader was reaching back and scratching his ass with the Romanian people. What he lovingly called the Romanian people was in fact a tiny little bathroom brush with ivory engravings, which he never parted with, and liked to have

Speaking about I. L. Caragiale, i. e. the quintessential comic playwright in Romanian theater, N. Steinhardt made a few distinctions likely to offer generous openings: However powerful its spiritualism, Asia terrifies us with its uncivil dirt and squalor, while blind and

Almost no one in Vintileasa saw on TV the scene when the revolutionaries broke into the famous Studio 4 in the afternoon of 22 December 1989. The villagers were busy doing other, more important things. Some were killing their Christmas pigs. Others were stealing wood. Most

Georgescu went to the pub with his wife and sister-in-law. He is on holiday. His monthly salary is about two thousand three hundred lei, in fact he receives two thousand two hundred and ninety-two lei exactly. As he was paid the vacation money too, Georgescu left the cashier's

One sleepless night I went out to walk my dog. Although I had noticed that for a few days some digging had been in progress on my street, I failed to be heedful enough and fell in a ditch. Frightened, I started to scream:'Help! Help!''Well, dear,' said

In almost all professional meetings, whether they are held at the Filmmakers' Association or right nearby at Vineyard tavern, the film director Tufiş (in the credits of a labor safety documentary submitted to the greatest specific film festival he had required that

I couldn't say I was properly introduced to Magdalene, the wording would be equally pretentious and inexact; as a matter of fact, she actually rushed into my studio… She was tired, exhausted, shabby, as if she had come out of the hundred year war. I had worked all

It was almost closing time. I guess you all know what a horrible time that is! The waiters are all in a hurry not to miss the last tram that leaves Balcescu Square at ten past one; they are therefore busily collecting the tablecloths while the customers are still eating,

In the romantic revolutionary years after the communist take-over there was a custom to hoist a red flag or lay a red cloth over the presidium table at any meeting or session having a political character. It was a revolutionary symbol, an optimistic one, a symbol of the

I was preparing to go to the editorial office where I was going to give a lecture in front of a group of journalists. A cultivated, exigent, familiar audience. I was waiting for the car to take me there. I like to be left alone in such moments, so that my excitement doesn't

'Make your stores - they're cutting it off,' calls the bobby, pushing the entrance door ajar. And every member of the household hurries to grab a pail, a mug or any of the tinier pots and pans, dashing forward to the tap (the house is endowed with a tap -

The leader of a new political party has just written to me from Bacău. I quote:I have wandered the snows of the county for a few days now. I've had very little rest, but have walked and talked quite a lot instead. The electoral problem consists in wiping off the oratorical