Barbie

By Stefano Paolocci

An effective, sophisticated and accurate piece of timeless narrative, a testimony of the individual truth that is always ingrained within the actual and social facts of history.

Between the last days of the "Geniul din Carpati," or Nicolae Ceausescu, and the years immediately following his famous execution by firing squad that was shown live on TV (25 December 1998), Romania fell into the uncertainty of a revolution that was never implemented in practice. Reflecting a society split between the desire for freedom and the latent immobility of an entire generation born of the backwardness of the Ceauseschian regime, is Nicu, a teacher living in Bucharest. Within the short span of a few months, Nicu finds himself unemployed and has to face the hardships of a job that is no longer there, money that is scarce, and food that is lacking. Mihail, a preadolescent boy of the underground, lives with his friend Barbie within the sewer system that cuts across the city. Always populated by a young humanity, the sewers of Bucharest form a jungle where the law of the strongest prevails, where one gets high sniffing Aurolac from plastic bags and in order to eat one prostitutes oneself in exchange for a handful of dollars. One day, on the snow-covered meadows of the Tineretului Park, that green space of Bucharest and the invisible wall of partition separating the good neighborhoods from the periphery, Nicu’s and Mihail’s stories cross.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Dec 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781507140925

Book preview

Then cherish pity,

lest you drive an angel from your door.

William Blake

Chapter 1..............................................................................................................5

Chapter 3...........................................................................................................13

Chapter 4...........................................................................................................15

Chapter 5...........................................................................................................17

Chapter 6...........................................................................................................20

Chapter 7...........................................................................................................23

Chapter 8...........................................................................................................25

Chapter 9...........................................................................................................26

Chapter 10.........................................................................................................28

Chapter 11.........................................................................................................29

Chapter 12.........................................................................................................30

Chapter 13.........................................................................................................32

Chapter 14.........................................................................................................34

Chapter 15.........................................................................................................37

Chapter 16.........................................................................................................39

Chapter 17.........................................................................................................42

Chapter 18.........................................................................................................43

Chapter 19.........................................................................................................45

Chapter 20.........................................................................................................48

Chapter 21.........................................................................................................50

Chapter 22.........................................................................................................52

Chapter 23.........................................................................................................55

Chapter 24.........................................................................................................57

Chapter 25.........................................................................................................58

Chapter 26.........................................................................................................60

Chapter 27.........................................................................................................62

Chapter 28.........................................................................................................63

Chapter 29.........................................................................................................64

Chapter 30.........................................................................................................66

Chapter 31.........................................................................................................68

Chapter 32.........................................................................................................69

Chapter 1

When my armchair, with its sticky synthetic leather embrace, welcomes me into its kingdom, the world outside can fade away: the school, the students, even Miss Corina with that apple green lace of hers that she believes makes her attractive.

Adrian says I'm a slacker and that the country doesn’t need people like me, then he laughs and imitates our President while he swears allegiance to the state and to the Romanian people.

He kills me, especially when he moves his right arm from the fake microphone to the fake Mrs. Elena: zap, a small leap to the side and Adrian/Nicolae transforms into Mrs. Lenuta Petrescu.[1]

Once Mr. Ciobotariu the principal came into the staff room just as Adrian was finishing his performance with the inevitable final raspberry. All the chairs scraped on the floor and knees, like jack knives, straightened out to have everyone standing up in one single instantaneous, lightninglike movement.

Mr. Lupu come with me and the rest of you return to your sacred duty of teaching, but will someone tell me why I have to put up with these spineless anarchists, and tomorrow you're all invited to the People’s House to meet with Mr. Manteliu.

That was all we needed - Manteliu and that bald-head of his, now I'll have to endure his lecture on the country, teaching and his majesty the great Nicolae.

When they left the room I saw Adrian unequivocally send his comrade the principal to that place where we would have all liked to send him.

I wonder if today the principal and Adrian are going to meet each other.

Why don’t you come too, Nicu?

Come on, Adrian, you know I'm not like you.

And what does that have to do with it: there’s a revolution in your country and you aren’t allowed to choose the mold of that horrible brown armchair!

But it isn’t brown and he knows it, he says that just to hurt me, but he knows that with me it doesn’t work.

And anyway they report the whole thing on TV and it’s cold outside and I don’t want to be around people.

Adrian and the principal will never be able to meet, I'm sure of that.

A few days ago, when in fact Bucharest and Timisoara were bound together by a green camouflaged cordon of armored cars and the leather belts of the army, I saw them arguing in the courtyard. Their words were incomprehensible streams of vapour and their hands only eddies of gestures that would never reveal the sense of what they were discussing. So I opened the window just as the north wind from Moscow, which had been waiting for nothing other than this mistake, gobbled up my ear and, satisfied, handed it back to me shortly thereafter, frozen. Still, I managed to hear them and in the end I understood: I realized I wasn’t capable, that I would have been sucked into my chair with my students saying teacher, teacher, you didn’t finish the sentence, the sentence, you didn’t finish it and the chalk moved and the blackboard was covered with my handwriting explaining: Elision: elimination of the final vowel or syllable of a word when there follows a word beginning with ....

Now I’m going to pour myself a bit of vodka and I arch my back to reach radio dial. Around this time they have a selection of classical music from a Hungarian station. You can’t hear it very well, but when the President has something important to say, he doesn’t care about us poor teachers incased in leather armchairs: radio, television or newspapers, everything becomes his, everything is less important, and therefore there is nothing else for me to do except to grin and bear it.

Piata Republica appears like a mirage in the square border of the TV, an impressionist painting seen up close, the grooves of the brush strokes astigmatically confused in inconclusive lines, a hodgepodge overview of marred colors.

With a standardized cadence, the voice of the commentator becomes part of the buzz, a kind of sentence among the pauses, phoney like the tape recordings that pronounce the name of the Conducător:[2] this is just preparing the front of the stage, soon he’ll be entering the scene.

What a clown, doesn’t he realize that I’m still too young to believe it's all true and yet too old to be absolutely certain. I turn up the music and Mozart invades my kitchen, the vodka isn’t any good and I'll let Vladimir know next time, he who believes he’s fooling me with the story that his brothers still live in Russia and who even own a distillery.

Doresc de asemenea sà adresez mulţumiri  iniţiatorilor  şi  organizatorilor acestei mare manifestari populare din Bucureşti  considerànd aceasta ca o... [3]

Mr. President, look down there

What are you doing behind the curtain, why don’t you shut up, you fat bastard, let me talk, I'll take care of this flock of sheep, tell your friends to be ready.

But look at this! With what kind of bearskin hat is Ceausescu going to speak, since he hurriedly returned from Iran in a panic, he hasn’t even had time to unpack.

The violins aren’t playing with same zest as those I heard the last time and maybe Vladimir has even used some trick to raise the alcohol content of

Reviews for Barbie

[samira · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

no sé no puedo decir nada por q no lo he leído