Fortress on the Shore

By Claudia Ene

That girl that would devour the books of her age (I can still remember the charm of the tales, of “The last of the Mohicans”, of the children’s poems, “The Laurel Princess” or “The Valaquian Legend”, for example), passed without any struggle, around the age of thirteen, to read Tolstoi because she’d feel that children’s play was a loss of time. Thus she made her first exercise of patience: to resist and finish reading the descriptions of “War and Peace”, or to not know how the novel ends. Since those years, I always write something, anywhere, on any piece of paper, but far less than what I’d like to.
It was a luxury I couldn’t afford, during those times; simply, a river that returns to its riverbed, at the present.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Claudia Ene
• Release date: Dec 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370990917

Claudia Ene

Born in 1974, in a small, southern village of Romania, next to the natural border that the Danube makes with Bulgaria, my childhood was a period of mixed emotions, between the happiness of that age, and the fear of living in a communist, dictatorial regime that forbade any expression of free speech and free thinking. When I was 10 years old, my mom decided that it would've be better for my future to move to a city nearby, in order to provide me a better education. For a lot of time, I was convinced that I'll became a doctor. I even prepared for it, since the exams for admittance to the medicine university, at that time, were among the most difficult ones, along with architecture, law and engineering. But then happened the 1989 Revolution and everything changed. Because of my Romanian language teacher, after an exam she gave us, in which we were supposed to comment a poem belonging to Mihai Eminescu, the Cervantes of the Romanian literature, I realized that she was right, that what I really like is to read and to write. So, I started to study English language and Romanian grammar and literature, to prepare for journalism studies, and to recover all the years I had lost without studying these subjects. And since then, it's what I've been doing. After finishing a private journalism school of which I'm proud of, I met my soon-to-be husband in the last two weeks of classes, a fact that, somehow, changed once again my life. So in love and so young, both of us, we got married after only six months after having met each other, and so I postponed my license exams, my hole professional life, since our son said "Here I am". One year after his birth, I started to work for a Romanian television program, a job that I got after passing an exam, since the production house was searching for new employees. It was my first job, the place that I remember with tenderness. Years passed by, so did my husband's life, and what he didn't dare or didn't want to do, I decided to do on my own: leaving Romania and going to live with my kids to a place for which I longed, Madrid. Seven years after arriving in Madrid, I have worked as whatever I could (house cleaning, restaurant kitchens, writing one book and preparing the second, lately making my own political analysis website, raise my kids -one of them is studying English language and literature at the university), and here we are, still.

Book preview

CLAUDIA ENE

FORTRESS ON THE SHORE

TRANSLATION: TONI TALMACIU

The copyright belongs to the author

CONTENT:

The innocence (1991 - 1994)

The mist (2008 - 2012)

The clear blue sky (2012 - 2015)

Prologue

There is a not too well known Romanian novel, called Barefoot, whose epic yarn happens during the year 1907. Not even the author would’ve imagined that the niece of a very reduced character, almost a scribble, that drowns in his novel, will be the one to write, too, after one hundred ten years after what occurs in his novel. That girl that would devour the books of her age (I can still remember the charm of the tales, of The last of the Mohicans, of the children’s poems, The Laurel Princess or The Valaquian Legend, for example), passed without any struggle, around the age of thirteen, to read Tolstoi because she’d feel that children’s play was a loss of time. Thus she made her first exercise of patience: to resist and finish reading the descriptions of War and Peace, or to not know how the novel ends. I remember the library that one of my uncles, a Romanian teacher, had at home and from which I fed that summer, with the small pocked books, of a clear blue. It was also him, the first that read my notebook with greenish carton covers, where I had started writing poems, at the age of my daughter, with my letter that so many headaches gave me in calligraphy. Thus opened for me the door to his library.

That notebook got lost for a time, until one day, going up in the attic of my grandparent’s house, searching for something, I found it. Already a woman, upon touching and dusting it off, I felt the genuine emotion of children upon opening the Christmas presents. I had been remembering it for a while already, and was wishing to find it. It was just so that it could disappear again, this time for ever. As much as I looked for it to show it to my children, I couldn’t find it.

Since those years, I always write something, anywhere, on any piece of paper, but far less than what I’d like to.

It was a luxury I couldn’t afford, during those times; simply, a river that returns to its riverbed, at the present. Also, the transformation of that girl, to this woman behind her words and master of them and of the clouds of stone.

The innocence (1991 - 1994)

Void

I draw your being everywhere, with my eyes

I breathe to find your strange perfume

With cold, trembling hands

I seek your hands, entangled curls,

Your mouth, your tired, bored eyes

The filled emptiness of my soul runs

After the filled emptiness of your soul.

When we breathe the same air and I have lost you

And I don’t let myself find you,

I can’t clear my mind,

I can’t erase your traces,

And so I pass the time hating ourselves.

1991

Waves

The salt of the sea

Is the poison of the bodies drowned in it.

The dead arms,

Turned into waves,

Call for other dead.

Thousands of eyes, eyelids,

In as many snails

And as many empty shells.

Brain seaweeds, tenderly touching shapes

Sip their flame.

Yet, in heaven?

1991

Solitude

I write, to be less lonely.

For the soul I write, for it to vomit its restlessness.

For the time past,

That I have no right to forget,

For the future, in which I will have lost.

The rain pours its tears on my cheek.

Of its sadness, of its happiness, maybe.

But where are mine?

Up until yesterday I wore them on my back.

1991

Unknown paths

Stations of our sadness,

Lost minutes and trains collect.

The obsession of the moment yet to come,

Lost as well,

To stranger souls pours its goblet.

Indifferent bodies swallowing memories, places,

Head towards the end on unknown paths.

Plenty of lives,

Paths intersecting in as many points,

In as many deaths.

1991

Silence

Silence the birds!

In vain they carry their song to