In a few days, the entire school ends up smelling of anti-lice solution. However, she recommends the parents to use a whitish lye-like solution, smelling of chemicals, the same one the teachers end using. Half the kids have lice, they’re found when school starts, upon the medical check, when the nurse uncoils their hair with the expert gesture of chimpanzees – just short of cracking the chitin shells of the captured insects between her teeth. I can’t avoid getting lice – I am a teacher in a periphery school. Enough are left among the teeth of the comb and I clean them away with the old toothbrush, the one with the musty end. I always have nits, I keep shaking them away when I comb my hair in the bathroom: nacre coloured little eggs, shining blackishly on the sink surface. I got lice again but I no longer find it surprising, scary or sickening. An important English excerpt has been translated by Rodica Guja. Published at the end of 2015, it quickly generated an out pour of reactions, texts and reviews in Romanian literary journals, as well as a powerful response from Romanian readers. Part novel, part metaphysical essay and poem, Solenoid (which is about to get a new paperback edition) is a sum of themes and images to be found in Mircea Cărtărescu’ s work.
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