attraction made them lose their lucidity. Soon enough they were caught in the act by the children and a huge scandal followed. Both his children and hers turned against them. And the sailor was about to return. He had already phoned from a Turkish port.…
“I’m coming home, honey. I miss you so much,” Grigore heard him saying while he was kissing Elena’s strong neck.
Their five-month happiness was traumatized now. They didn’t understand why the people around them didn’t accept their affair. The children’s attitude worried them too.
“I’ve learned to look around me and keep quiet. It matters a lot not to judge other people’s lives. They may be family but they’d better mind their own business,” said Grigore.
“Please, Grigore, don’t let them ruin our relationship. Only you can face up to them.…”
* * * *
The next day around noon, Grigore went to the steel and iron works but didn’t stop at the furnace, his working place; he stopped at the mill, where no one knew him. He was dressed up as if for a special event. He climbed on the platform right when the steel-casting machine was being checked at the end of the house. The steelworkers didn’t have time to wonder who the stranger was and what he wanted. The man stopped at the edge of the gangway, took off his jacket, folded it neatly on the rail, and jumped into one of the pots which were full of liquid steel. Everyone stood still.
Instead of vanishing into the bubbling vapors of the newly founded steel, the man started to sizzle on the thin but hard crust which had already taken shape on the surface of the pot. The self-murderer was howling with pain while the workers were running about madly, trying to do something and retrieve him from the ingot moulds. It smelled terrible, of burnt flesh. At last, someone brought a crane over the stand and two workers managed to lift him from there. The ambulance came in no time but, on the way to hospital, the man died.
* * * *
Throughout his entire career, prosecutor Nicolita had had to deal with all kinds of misfortunes and horrors but never with such a suicide. No one knew who the self-murderer was or what to say because everything had happened so fast. They found the man’s jacket and, in the breast pocket, a farewell letter. In simple words, the man wrote how Elena had changed his life, describing his love as something just fit to inspire tearful romances and tame hard hearts. Late at night, after their last embrace, they had both decided to commit suicide. “Our love is like a rough diamond and our families don’t allow us to give the diamond its bright facets,” wrote Grigore. “Without my beloved I’ll be good for nothing. The ultimate proof of our love is that we’ve decided to die at the same time: I, swallowed by the liquid steel, she, after swallowing the poison. If we can’t enjoy our love, at least we can save it through death.”
Nicolita and his investigating team felt a cold shiver down their backs and hurried to Elena’s flat.
“I can’t wait to see the woman who could make one do such a horrible thing,” said Nicolita while they were in the car.
“I wonder how such a woman could be recognized in the street,” replied a younger investigator.
“We’re making a big mistake if we think only of the body, of the physical pleasure,” said the prosecutor. “The hot lips, the breasts’ aroma, the skin, soft and smooth like rose petals, all the spoiling.… That’s quite a lot. But the heart.…”
“That may be quite a lot, but we live in a world of speed,” insisted the young man. “Such a suicide is throwing us back into the last century, the perfect time for boarding-school novels.”
“If only we could get there in time,” the prosecutor cut it short worriedly.
They were ready to break the door of the flat but first they rang the bell several times. At long last a woman stupid with sleep, dressed in a typical housewife dressing gown, opened the door. The investigators looked at her in bewilderment.
“Are you Elena?” asked the prosecutor expecting a negative answer.
“Yes. What’s the matter?” answered the woman, her voice still sleepy.
The prosecutor would have liked to ask why she wasn’t dead. Instead he gazed at her and said:
“Your neighbor, Grigore, committed suicide today, at the iron and steel works. He left a letter in which he said you were going to do the same. Have you by any chance taken poison?”
“No. I’ve just woken up. I sent the children out to play and went to bed. I was very tired.”
Nicolita started to breathe heavily.
“Do you happen to know the real reason why your neighbor took his life? He wrote you had the same intention.…”
“Me? Never. He did keep mumbling something about committing suicide and all that stuff, he was kind of romantic, you know, like you see in soap operas. I just pretended I believed him. Was he really that stupid?… I’m sorry, I’m expecting my husband to come from the sea.… I’ll tell him what my neighbor did, they were good friends. That’s love! Poor him, may God forgive him!”
Her voice was loaded with compassionate inflections.
BRIDES’ CURSE
The wedding was going well, the party was flawless. Good food, music catering for all the guests’ tastes, a vivid atmosphere, a time worth remembering by the bride and groom. Victor, the groom, radiated happiness through all his pores—he wouldn’t have felt otherwise even if a car had run him over. He was simply floating. Mirela, the bride, looked like a fairy queen but kept her wits about her.
“Our journey together is starting well, our guests are having great fun,” the groom whispered into the bride’s ear while a waiter was serving them.
“I wonder if it’s a new beginning or the same old journey,” she replied.
“It’s the first real change in our lives. We’re married!… God, what a dream come true! Just wait and see what will happen next!” he said ecstatically.
“I do hope it won’t be the hardest of all times,” she snapped at him, her words bashing him on the head. “I’m joking, you silly little boy,” she laughed seeing his puzzled face, and tenderly put one arm around his neck and gave him a quick kiss.
Seeing the scene and without hearing the dialogue, the guests around them clapped their hands. It was a good omen.
Thin, slightly bow-legged, with a sharp face, merry hazel eyes, brown hair, and a little over three foot tall, Victor’s appearance didn’t impress anyone, on the contrary he sometimes looked as if a stronger wind might blow him away. Mirela, almost as tall as he was, with a wasp’s waist, slightly green eyes, her hair cut in a fringe, her chest embellished with breasts one could see only in erotic dreams, seemed an exercise in happiness to every man. At their wedding, however, everyone saw them as the perfect match.
They had first met at the Personnel Department of the big company that had just employed them. He was a mechanical engineer and had got a job at the rolling mill. She was an economist and was going to work for the Computation Centre. After getting their employment papers, they had both said to themselves they wouldn’t make a career there, a place in which one could hardly breathe.
That had been the beginning
