This
excerpt comes from the first chapter of the novel Tache
de catifea
[Velvet
Tache]The
Velvet Man.
The action unfolds in early 19th
Oltenia, a province that would be incorporated in Romania when the
country came into being in 1859. The novel therefore takes place
during a time when Turkish attacks were not uncommon.1
In
the portion of the novel leading to the fragment translated here, the
narrator’s father has just been killed by Turks. Tache, the
protagonist, is then three and a half years old. He returns home with
his mother one day to find his father’s head grinning from the top
of a pole, a punishment exacted by the Turks After this incident,
mother and son flee the region and arrive in a big city, where the
mother abandons her son to the care of a “bearded old man.”
Author:
Ştefan
Agopian
Translator:
Ileana Alexandra Orlich
Title:
Learning to Read, from Tache
de catifea [Velvet Tache] The Velvet Man
[1]
Submission
to the Turks ended in 1877 when the country freed itself of Ottoman
rule.
