Henriette Yvonne Stahl – “Aunt Matilda”

I embraced every short story from this book like it was a new land, with different points of view, with characters that have intense torments, dreams, visions, fears, joys and melancholies, so compact that one is transferred there amongst them, next to the character, as if one’s being was made from modelling clay. And one can keep transforming until the last word on the sheet of paper is read. Then, disappointment gently lays over for one got accustomed to being a chameleon, but glad to look behind and appreciate the journey.

 Excerpts from two short stories:

“The white house”

“…

Here it is what I read in the newspaper: ’A housemaid was alleged to have stolen an amount of money from her master. Brought to the police, in order to confess, she had been tortured. Out of fear and pain, she had gone mad. The real thief was discovered after three days. The maid was checked into a psychiatric institution. The case is under investigation.’

(…) For anything, anything seems bearable in the world: illnesses, calamities, earthquakes … but people, people that torment other people, that is something I cannot bear. It is something I cannot get myself to understand…. Something that wears me off, that ruins my belief. And thus, I came to realize that life is made out of an essence superior to the human intelligence; (…) I told myself, ugly things that happened cannot be totally erased by a good deed. Instead, they keep together, bad and good. Everything is eternal. Nothing can be erased.

…”

“Onofrei and the upper rolling”

“It was drizzling. Onofrei had no umbrella. Actually, he had one, but it was at home and he forgot to take it with him. For a few days now, he had been feeling under the weather, and the weather was bad and kept reminding him of the state he was in.

...”

CooCOOcooCOO

Anytime I hear the sound “CooCOOcooCOO”, coming from a dove, I smell kindled hay, gathered in order to make a soup with lovage. Suddenly, I’m transferred to a room in which the chill of the clay walls overrules the burning of the August sun. It is calm and quiet; so quiet that we can hear the fly buzzing in the next room. 

The smell of green pears, brought inside to ripe faster, overarches everything. Even the hammock-bed, in which my cousin and I sit, waiting for the afternoon nap time to pass. But we keep ourselves busy, though. With our hands, we have invented a new alphabet, trying not to speak and give ourselves away by making noise and showing that we do not sleep. It is actually something that we got accustomed to do, now, as adults. To become more and more keen on miming something that it is not. 

But it’s way too nice in here, in the “CooCOOcooCOO” memory, to spoil it. And the smell of the pears cures everything. Even the hypocrisy. 

I have a piece of joy within me!

Recently, my mom told me how I reacted to joy when I was a child. Aside from the distinguishing smile, I used to add the exclamation: I have a piece of joy within me!
I reckon the saying is a little odd, but then again I wasn't very far from the truth either, for the joy was within me, and only from there could it reach outside of me.
And outside of me I have been finding joys, among which that of receiving an immortal bunch of flowers with buds encrusted with poems.

My heart is weak at the thought of undoing this wonder, so carefully made, but a bud I have managed to unveil. The others are bound by 'to be continued'.

The 'Adventures' have arrived at the seaside

A traveler should keep on travelling. And the road should better be adventurous.

The book ‘Aventuri de excursionist/ Adventures of tourists’ has arrived at Constanta.

Receive it with open arms!