Thursday, 25 August 2016

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.

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