I do not intend in this Foreword to offer reading keys to readers. Some will probably consider that the novel is inspired by a real case, others, on the contrary, that it is the fruit of some inventions and that the documents on which the former are based have been prefabricated. As the reader is always right, I will confirm this right to some and to others. So, I will say or not that, starting from a newspaper article, I set out to follow in the footsteps of the event and recreate a world. In fact, such a world would not be plausible because, in the real world, life often gives the class of fiction.
I assure you that the novel has no difficulty in being read as a linear narrative, respectively as the confession of an addict. But it can be read in another way. The keys are found right inside, in the form of small digressions or symbols. To capture the interest of those who open this volume in disbelief, I would just like to say: if we replace the rigors of life with a prison where we all receive from the first moment of our birth a blank certificate of death row inmates, and us, those who live with victims and executioners at the same time for our dreams and feelings, some brutally repressed, if we tend to become frequentable for our fellow men, responsible for air pollution, for the flora and fauna that surround us; for the whole Earth, whose passengers we are, we cross the ages with the permission of the one who tolerates us on his face, the perspective changes radically. So there is a parable of life that I leave you to discover in the following lines. And, as sometimes happens to me, following the path of the main character, torn by contradictions, fickle and inconsistent, in a continuous struggle with himself, I end this brief note, on a piece of paper and on a desk corner, by I don't care about the word from the beginning. With your will, I just revealed one of the keys to reading. There are others.
Marius Carbunescu