To Ilona W.

A few years ago, I was invited to a poetry festival, taking place in S---, a small city in northern Romania, not far from the Hungarian border. (This small detail has its importance.) There were writers of several nationalities, mainly from Eastern Europe, and a few from Western Europe, including a handful of completely uninteresting fellow-French writers. For my part, I spent my time with Romanian friends, in particular with Vasile, the director of an important publishing house in Bucharest, Oglinda.
And then there was Marika...
Moreover, it was thanks to Vasile that I had been invited to this gathering in the first place. He has been translating my poems and short stories for Romanian reviews and was planning to publish an anthology of my texts for Oglinda. I had met Vasile in 1996 in Iasi. We immediately struck up a friendship. Like many of his compatriots, he spoke French remarkably well. An excellent writer of poetry and prose, he often also wrote in French, which he would then translate into Romanian and vice versa. Vasile had also translated many French-speaking writers for various Romanian publishers.
I arrived at the Bucharest airport in early evening. Vasile and his wife Ioana had come to pick me up. Ioana had driven all the night in order to arrive by early morning.