Cristina Peri Rossi; Megan Berkobien ::

She understood because she suddenly started looking at him with a deeper sadness, if that were possible, as if she needed a lot of help, What bullshit those trafficking sons of bitches must have told you: Spain, a country of sun, beaches, flounce and frills, flamenco dancers wherever you go, boatloads of money, men willing to marry you, to provide you with a little house and furniture, a washer and dryer, kitchenette, for a fuck a day, only one fuck, not one more, I promise you, marry me, marry me and we’ll leave this filthy after-hours bar together, away from this damned highway with windmills and gas stations like blackberry stains, off to Constanța, where you were born and we’ll listen to “The Internationale” and you won’t have sadness cast across your face, we’ll go to the lake, no more men in your life, no more take off your panties, suck my dick, I’ll study Romanian and you’ll learn English, I promise you.

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Cristina Peri Rossi; Megan Berkobien ::

He sustains himself on the canned food and oranges he steals from a neighboring field by night. It’s the only moment he abandons his post, although really, you cannot treat it as desertion: at night the skirmishes come to a halt and he can rest a bit, eat oranges, loosen his boots. The state of his uniform doesn’t bother him. In the pit of the trench he keeps two rusty guns, a soldier’s cap burned through by a bullet, the keel of a grenade, and a dead man’s jawbone.

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Cristina Peri Rossi; Megan Berkobien ::

Often you see them, walking through the streets of those grand cities, men and women who float on air, suspended in time and space. Their feet lack roots; sometimes they lack feet altogether. From their heads the roots don’t grow, nor do smooth lianas tie their centers to some species of soil. They are like seaweed driven by the currents, and when they fix themselves to some surface, it is only by chance, lasting but a moment. At once they return to floating, and there’s a certain nostalgia in it.

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