Excerpt
…the pharmacist — to her name-day celebration, and alongside the
many exquisite dishes she played the piano beautifully. She also
took in her two sisters, who passed the time with card games and
reading. I found the endless solitaire and other card games played
for hours beside tables laden with pastries and tea — in winter in
the parlor, in summer on the terrace — unbearably boring.
Between the identical walls of the dormitory rooms I learned to
pay attention to others and to myself, to write amid silence and
noise alike. I tried fitting words together so they might express me,
preserve me. My young literature teacher read and evaluated my
writings in her apartment; the situation was at once embarrassing
and liberating. It was as though the boundaries between text and
life had blurred. That was the first time I understood literature was
not merely abstract curriculum but could become an intimate bodily
experience as well.
I founded a literary circle attended not only by students but by
teachers too. We did not merely dissect our own writings; we immersed
ourselves in literary history and theory, argued, doubted,
reread everything that until then had seemed certain. Meanwhile I
danced in a folk-dance ensemble wearing traditional costume, and
played bass guitar in a successful pop band where rhythm held
us together even when direction often remained uncertain. And
like local stars entertaining the student audience, we enjoyed the
special attention of girls, which manifested itself sometimes in shy
smiles, sometimes in stolen glances, sometimes in laughter too
loud to be natural, and although we accepted this innocent admiration
with confident ease, in truth all of us longed for the same
thing: that one day someone might notice not merely the role in us,
but the human being as well.
Even then the prankster in me resurfaced. Back then there were
no text messages, no instant communication; communication possessed
its own slow, paper-scented magic. At the Ditrău grammar
school — I do not know whether such a thing existed elsewhere —
there operated a peculiar institution called Flash Mail.
