The 1914 Forest

by Iulian Tănase
translated by Raisa Lambru [MTTLC student]
 
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The sand is a cannibalistic numerologist, pretty well-known among some hot and salty circles, and which feeds on raw meat. Its musculature is very delicate, and its numerous victims know this. The cannibalistic numerologist is endowed with an outer uterus, which has a plasticity that counts as an argument for its chaste intercourses. The woman born from the sandy uterus of the cannibal takes the form of a man’s right leg, having been cut off at the knee. The man born from the outer uterus of the numerologist is often mistaken for the left palm of a manly hand, cut off at the elbow. The cannibalistic numerologist is aware of the fact that his muscle mass can be enhanced with the power of the trees with criminal instincts. When he starts feeling weak, he summons the palmiferous man and the peripatetic woman, he fills their eyes with bloodied sand, gives them brine to drink, places shells between their fingers or toes and, uttering a few carnal incantations, he transforms them in man and woman, both with classic features. Then he tells them: “You were legs and hands, and you didn’t know what to do, now you are full-grown humans and you have to go to the 1914 Forest, whose trees have the form of the digits 1, 9, and 4, with 638 trees for each digit. You go to the Forest, you take a walk among its digits, you fall in love, you make love, you do whatever you two want, but don’t forget that you have to return to me with 1914 leaves, one from each tree”. The woman (who, at first, was a man’s foot) and the man (who fitted in a right palm) leave for the 1914 Forest, gazing one at another, falling in love with each other, acting as if they were humans, not what they actually were. Having arrived in the Forest, the man and the woman kiss between digits 1 and 4, hug between digits 4 and 9, make love between digits 1 and 9. Then they drop to the ground at the roots of digit 1 and sleep for ten whole days. On the eleventh day, the man and the woman begin their journey among those tall digits full of leaves and take a leaf from each tree, just like the cannibalistic numerologist had ordered them to do. After another nineteen days, the man and the woman, heavy with leaves, return to the outer uterus of the numerologist. “You’re back just in time,” the cannibal tells them. “I was feeling very weak, I really needed leaves, my muscle mass had started failing me”. The man and the woman don’t say a word, they shake the 1914 leaves off of them and, in a ceremonial silence, they drop them in a bowl with boiling water. After a few minutes of waiting, the numerologist drinks the infusion of leaves with criminal instincts and, after another few minutes of waiting, he kills the two lovers, first the man, then the woman, bringing them back to their initial form.