VII.02.

The winter of that year was long. I was writing to my friends a postcard every two
weeks, but I didn’t get any response. Last time I called them last night, but no one
raised/ answered the phone: maybe their phone was defective/broken again. I thought
of their garden, at the willow curtain, at all those ravishing scents.
I returned to the city late autumn. After a few days, I was going to make a visit to the
painter Z.
The fence was gone. The gate stayed/ was open between the pillars. The fence was
surpassed, overgrown by the weeds. I went into the yard. The tree trunk struck by the
lightning it was still there. No movement. When I walked to the front door, I could
barely hold back a shout: the stairs were gone, neither the living fence on the edges.
An asphalt road was now snaking to home, to what was Z’s house - now an
ultramodern, square construction made of concrete and glass. No blade of grass in
sight, nothing, just a barren yard, asphalted and two vans in its center. Near the
building, empty boxes, stacked one over another, till the sky.

VII.04.

Within almost an hour of the walk, they barely changed a few words about things
that were indifferent to them, unimportant. On the one hand,
they didn't want the driver hears the conversation; on the other hand, the atmosphere
itself didn’t fit for other discussions. Rotaru ordered to the driver to stop at the
“Chateaubriand” restaurant.
There was a few people in the hall and a quiet like in an English club. A jazz
orchestra was resting more than it singing, it reserving for later, when the customers,
well disposed after dinner, they will want to start dancing.
They took a seat at a secluded table and Rotaru made a fine and easy menu, with the
contest of the waiter and the owner himself, came to respectfully greet the Minister.
However, the conversation was difficult, as if a shyness would still have hindered
Rotaru to talk about what interested him.