|
Timisoara, Timisoara |
a hundred and fifty – Deutsche Marks, of course – not a single Pfennig more
for it’s old and broken and I can’t tell how much the repair will cost (to say nothing of the ride to Budapest) I
hope
you realize I’m taking it only because I see you’re hard up and I like taking risks come
let’s strike the bargain – this incident involving a photo
journalist buying a high-grade camera in mint
condition from a second-hand street vendor for something less than three point five per cent of
its value I did witness through the clumsily patched-up hole in a Romanian flag
after ’89 – it is sad that of all places it occurred in Romania
and at Timisoara to boot for it might have occurred any place else
it so happened that Timisoara God bless her was also the place
of some other exchanges in which some Roma had been cheated and several Romanians had been led only God
knows where to find their peace while Hungarians and Serbs and Croats and Czechs and Germans and Jews all
of them
had been aware of the risk they ran when taking money out of their pockets their wallets or out of their homeland
to say nothing of the “legal" possession of hard currency
which the vigilant eye of the border-guard would spot
in the spare wheel of the ramshackle bus
in the bus driver’s frightened eyes in the tourist guide’s distracted look
as he was dutifully filling out his report to the customs chief inspector
anyway it would be unjust and below our position and power
to regard all these as real, true, and incontrovertible
at a time when everything is ripe for a change / more than mere post stamps money clothes customs words
affiliations
whether political administrative geographical sexual religious moral and above all
Timisoara, December 1995
(Translated from the Rumanian by Heathrow O’Hare)
copyright 1995
Traian
Pop Traian |
