Tomorrow I'm going to the oncological institute with my sister Poem by Dumitru Crudu

Tomorrow I'm going to the oncological institute with my sister, where she's been going for a check-up every three months ever since she got pregnant, even though she wasn't supposed to, and the doctors are afraid she is going to die, because they told her not to get pregnant, but she chose to give birth, even if it costs her her life, she's going to have twins, although she might die, she's seventeen years younger than me, and she already has four children, and I don't have any, for a while I thought she wasn't as clever as me when we were children I used to give her piggybacks, but now I go to the doctor's with her, not long after mother died, about a month afterward, when mother died my sister didn't know she was pregnant yet, she called me over to her house, without telling me why, without telling me mother had died, telling me it was something urgent, I was in Jassy, where I'd gone to see a play, which for that reason I still haven't seen
the taxi driver talked to me the whole way, he said that you shouldn't get attached to anybody that way you won't suffer, that's what he believed in, and he used himself as an example he told me

that he would never suffer if anybody pinched his car, because he wasn't attached to it, just as he wasn't attached to anything in the world, because he couldn't care less about anything, nothing affected him, that's why he didn't even suffer when his wife left him, and his kids slammed the door in his face, the car was hurtling along at top speed, he didn't care that he might crash into a tree at the side of the road or maybe he was trying to prove to me
that he didn't care, that's why he was going so fast, the only thing he felt sorry about in his life was that there were things he had felt sorry about, as he spoke I was wondering why my sister had told me to come home, what could have happened that was so urgent, but she didn't want to tell me over the phone, by the time we reached Flutura the driver was still telling me
about how he didn't care about anything in this life, he was still telling me when he dropped me off by the gate, where my sister met me, her face bathed in tears

it was raining, the taxi driver swallowed his words when he realised where he had brought me, I gave him a hundred dollars, ten times more than the fare, and told him to go, but he didn't want to and he stayed to help us with one thing and another, that afternoon he forgot not to care and he smoked cigarette after cigarette, crying into his hands next to me, a stranger who had never met my mother, it was only then that he realised where he had been going, I didn't tell him to stay, but he stayed, without realising that it was blatantly at odds with his philosophy of life, and he left only when we all went to bed, he wouldn't accept a single cent from me, he gave me back the hundred dollars, I never saw him again after that, there are people we never see again, after I was left on my own a swarm of mosquitoes attacked me
in the morning I went with my sister to the oncological institute, for another check-up and the doctors told her that if she wanted to live she would have to have an abortion, but my sister didn't want to, she would rather die than kill the child in her belly, and she gave birth to twins, but she didn't die, she left the doctors open-mouthed in amazement, I think that wherever she is now my mother is proud of my sister

when I left Flutura on the way I met the taxi driver walking up the hill somebody had stolen his car just as somebody had stolen the tears from my cheeks