Translated by Mona Lepadatu


Sunshine, sand, waves, holidays and a room with a bathroom. The Balkan inn Helios Inn in 2 May has honoured me with its most discreet suite, two cosy rooms whose windows overlook the villa of Mr. Chippings from the Ministry of Labour. Big man, Mr. Chippings. In only three months he has built a two-storied house and the same number of garages. Now he has stopped the works, because it is electoral year.

In Helios Inn you can have traditional Romanian food thanks to Mrs. Mary’s talent, a serious woman wearing golden-brimmed glasses and minus five lentils, possessor of an only two years old little boy. They have both come from Greece and settled at the inn, for the owner is Greek, too, and his name is Sorin, like me. Moreover, I don’t need an alarm clock here to get the ultraviolet rays. In 2 May ring the donkeys: Tico, Dopey and Pendulum. As I was saying... in fact they don’t ring, they bray with all their might.

But it doesn’t matter. What can be more sublime than a peaceful holiday, without the idyllic presence of your girlfriend, without her tender cries, without her regular waking up or going to bed times, without her nocturnal reprimands, annoyingly whispered: My dear, if you keep turning so much, I’m going mad... Without the eternal morning ritual, rubbing of her back, shoulders and legs with SPF 20 lotion, without running for fresh juices when the sand is hotter. None of that. My agenda is simple, I do what I want. I walk to Vama and back at my leisure, I swim in the sea six hours a day, and when I feel like it I perform sleeping to my hearts’ desire. When I don’t want to dine in a restaurant, I go for a walk and buy baked corn. You have no idea how fascinating a holiday on your own can be. Donkeys bray, so what? Better them than her...

However, like all nice things, my peaceful and careless holiday ended too quickly. The morning of my departure arrived, done, good-buy tramp life, time to go home, to be good, to resume patriarchal living... In fact, I even missed my fish-smelling grocery store with its milk cans and mineral water, fresh borsch and sliced bread. After all, it is good to have a caring girlfriend. I can hear her: Honey! Somebody should dust the bookcase... You see? I’m Somebody in my house. No, better without holiday. Not good to go on holiday in summer..., and the sea? Sea is not even healthy, you can catch cold or, God forbid, you can get addicted...

I check out, I throw the bag with my clothes on the backseat of my car and I go straight to the beach to say good-bye to the waves. It is cloudy and there are only three men in truck suits running to and fro. Indifferent to the weather looking like rain I throw myself into the sea and swim for the this year’s last time. Eventually I come out, picking my way gingerly through the algae.. yuk! slimy touch… and I slowly lie down on a dry breakwater. Restless, the sea rushes against it below. I turn to watch the beach and notice a huge jagged-shelled snail rolling into the water.
‘Look, a snail!’

I bring it next to me, on the stone. It is still alive and has the flesh like a digger’s hands, black and coarse.
‘I’d better make you my co-pilot rather than throw you back into the water’ decide I eventually and get behind the wheel. ‘Have you been co-pilot before? Your mission is simple, to keep me talking all the time, especially on the motorway…’

In Bucharest I make a first stop at the Obor market, buy a fish tank and a bagful of dry fleas. I also get some sand, a little water and all ready! the snail’s abode is ready.

A week later I notice that my friend does not come out of its shell anymore, and that he does not like the fleas, either.

‘You snail! What’s wrong with you, are you sick or seasick? Do you think I don’t miss the sea, the waves, and the breeze? We’ll go to 2 May again, but not this year. Next year. And then, the water is cold now… It’s cold, snail.’

In vain. He kept playing dead. And as he wasn’t going to come out for a walk, I called doctor Bercaru, the neighbourhood vet.
‘Wow! What a beautiful specimen…. It is an Afropomus which only lives in Africa. Look at the spiral of this species, which, compared to the shell, is very small. And that is because it has the last curvature extremely dilated. Out of the first five curvatures the first two are smooth, the other regularly striated. Where did you get it?’
‘I found it on the beach, at 2 May. It must be sick, it won’t move anymore. It won’t eat, either.’
‘2 May? Impossible. Some fool must have dropped it from a boat… And you are saying it won’t eat and crawl around the fish tank? That’s serious. It has the symptoms of acute stress. Snail stress appears as an effect to using up the mechanisms of adaptation to the requirements of the environment. We can’t help it with medication, but I advise you to go to the pharmacy for four bottles of mentholated alcohol, the kind used to rub your back when you have a cold. You pour the alcohol into a jar and put the snail inside. At least you are going to get a most beautiful knick-knack.

The next evening I go into the kitchen with the jar, the mentholated alcohol and the stressed out snail. I look into the jar... no snail. It had vanished, shell and all. I look around on the floor, nothing. Nothing in the sink, nothing on the fridge, not even on the stove. .. ! There it is! On the cupboard. Crawling around livelier than ever, almost jumping on its coarse leg.
‘You’re alive, you Afropomus!’

I immediately phone doctor Bercaru and tell him the whole story.
‘Oh! then everything is clear, sir. The snail was not under stress, it had only had a cold. Probably the draught in the car. What about you, when you are sick and you have a cold, don’t you stay in bed?’
‘OK, but the alcohol...’
‘Well, it’s exactly the alcohol that saved it. It must have sniffed it and got well. I wish you good health and long live your snail!’