Alone. He no longer dared climb the steep stairs to look through the slit. But how he would have liked to catch another glimpse of the strips of sky and patches of pinkish-white skin, to hear the pleasant music in the distance, to make out a few of the dancing shapes through the haze! The green eye twinkled imperiously — it was time. He raced up to it, then took three steps to the right and pressed a smooth, almost silky button with his middle finger, adding the weight of his ring finger since it had been sticking recently, then took two more steps to the right, flicked the bottom switch a couple of times, and then the top one, raising his arm to ear level, after which he pulled a lever left and right, up and down, right and left and down, dropped on his haunches and pushed three knobs far in, stood up again, took two steps left, paused, pushed a button, two more left, a slight bending movement, then another button, the terribly cold handle of the lever, a control switch, another button, and another, a handle — always the same movements, reflexes by now, pushing, pulling, and turning, while behind him the green light glowed mocking, or merely ironical, very rarely compassionate.
About the Authors
DUMITRU TSEPENEAG is one of the most innovative Romanian writers of the second half of the twentieth century. In 1975, while he was in France, his citizenship was revoked by Ceau
escu, and he was forced into exile. In the 1980s, he started to write in French. He returned to his native language after the Ceauescu regime ended, but continues to write in his adopted language as well.
A translator from Romanian, Spanish, German, French, and Italian, Patrick Camiller has translated many works, including Dumitru Tsepeneag’s Vain Art of the Fugue, The Necessary Marriage, and Hotel Europa.