Dan Lungu – Mr. Escu's Adventure

Mr. Escu is the kind of man who, on his way to buying a loaf of bread, ends up by mistake in Bucharest where, crippled with sloth, he elects to avoid returning home and instead raises a family and searches, unsuccessfully, for employment. We all know the type.

Romanian author Dan Lungu's Mr. Escu's Adventure is an absurd romp through a kind of dreamscape Bucharest; the story revels in abstract philosophy and comic surrealism, mixing Descartes with a vehement hatred for matches. Bucharest, we are told, smells like bread, and there's a certain sense that the years of this story occur not in reality but in Mr. Escu's dreams.

Mr. Escu, somewhat oddly, is not really the primary character of the story. Instead it is Mr. Ov, who has stopped in Bucharest for a “phenomenological stop-over” before travelling on to Paris. Mr. Ov argues constantly with Mr. Ovici, who declares himself the winner of these arguments by virtue of his lengthier surname. In effect, Mr. Escu is the observer to this strange pair, who embody the oddness that has settled on Bucharest following the city's many tribulations.

But, for now, he is in Bucharest, the town with far too few streets and too many personalities. It's raining outside, and he, together with Mr. Escu and Mr. Ovici, are immersed in a passionate discussion on anything. There's nothing in this world upon which he cannot draw a theory, except for matches which he's never loved since birth. Had the lighter not been already invented, he'd've done so. But that's another story. In his opinion Bucharest smells like bread, while throughout the rest of the country all the statues are sculpted in polenta, and the only real skill the citizens of Bucharest can boast is their ability to guess which bus goes to what ministry.

It is perhaps Bucharest itself that is the oddest character. Strange creatures and odd situations proliferate, and what is perhaps most odd is how accepted it all is. Mr. Escu, desperate for a job, is contacted by a man with a gold tooth and hired to stand on one foot for eight hours. He declines the job because he dislikes the man's face, and then Lungu's next sentence begins with, “In order to keep in touch with reality...”, and then the story promptly falls further down the rabbit hole. Bucharest itself comes across as the instigator of these bizarre situations; the characters are shown as merely reacting to what goes on, or, perhaps, are attracted from around Europe to the city by virtue of their eccentricities being wholly welcomed by the city.

Mr. Escu's Adventure is a story that seems as though it could be a page shorter (it's two and a half pages long), or a thousand pages longer. Lungu's touch is farcical and, though his trio harbour some very bizarre ideas, the relatively neutral narration anchors the text, keeping matters relatively coherent. This is a story where noses, after sneezing, say “Shalom!”, and the noses' owner's greatest fear is that the neighbours will “kidnap him and sell him to the circus”. Much like Gogol's The Nose, these bizarre situations are accepted with a aplomb, dealt with in an internal manner which is charming in its acceptance, while recognising that the outside world (in this case, the neighbours) are ultimately hostile to differences and oddities.

There's a lot to like in Mr. Escu's Adventure. As noted above, the story is rather short, but there's a lot packed in. The three Mr.'s and Bucharest teem with invention and eccentricity, and though the foundation of the story seems at times as though it will crack this is only a threat – Lungu remains in control. The final paragraph provides a surprising circular nature to the story and caps it off well. Absurdism, it seems, can still surprise, and is able to remain useful in its ability to express something unique about a city and culture.

Mr. Escu's Adventure by Dan Lungu is a short story from Bucharest Tales from the New Europe Writers series

Author	Dan Lungu
Title	Mr. Escu's Adventure
Translator	Alina-Olimpia Miron
Nationality	Romanian
Publisher	New Europe Writers series
Availability: ---Amazon (US) ---Amazon (UK)

See Also

Other stories from Bucharest Tales from the New Europe Writers series include:
---Bican, Florin - Penguins
---Ruşti, Doina - Bill Clinton's Hand
---Ormsby, Mike - Democracy

Other titles by Dan Lungu under review include:
---To the Cemetery

Index of short stories under review from New Europe Writers - Bucharest Tales
Index of short stories under review from Absinthe 13: Spotlight on Romania
Index of short stories under review from The Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. XXX, #1 - Writing From Postcommunist Romania

Index of short stories under review

The reviews for this book were made possible thanks to a kind gift from my friend Bogdan Suceavă.