Iustin Panţa

A Long While Before the Train Arrives She’s Thinking

To be afraid of lightning, to race frantically from one window to the next, shutting each of them in great haste. But the house is immense, the windows too many, and they’re already shut. He was trailing after me through all those rooms and asking questions, challenging me to answer, and I, banging the windows shut, intimidated, kept stammering, I’d no idea how to respond. So very intimidated that only later did I learn that the windows of this house where he brought me, I’m sure I shall never forget this, the windows I often looked out of, were covered with paper, and the house had been abandoned by its owners long ago.

I also once waited for a response from him, he promised me he would write it down for me, a long time passed after his promise, I knew he’d forgotten. But suddenly I indulged a great hope, I saw him from the other end of the table, waving a sheet of paper, I thought he meant to hand it to me, I said to myself that I’d read his answer there, the word I’d waited for with such virtuous patience. But later I noticed the only thing on the sheet was the cigarette ash he was flicking off the paper into an ashtray directly in front of me. And the ash wasn’t even from the cigarette he was smoking, he was merely being polite to someone sitting next to him.

                              translated by

                             Adam J. Sorkin and Bogdan Ştefănescu