A Detour with Dosia
Short Fiction and Small Lies from Eastern Europe
Though I came from a family that liked to talk about its old aristocrats and frontier warriors from the days of Ștefan cel Mare, the first swordsman I ever met was my friend Roland’s driver, Dosia.
He was a stout man with a thick mustache and the widest arms I had ever seen, both fat and muscle at once. He would pick Roland up from school in a small blue Golf 6.
One snowy December day, as we prepared for our end-of-term exams, he offered to give me a ride and drop me off at my after-school tutoring lessons.
“Fat boys.” That was how he referred to everybody. Although I was not particularly chubby and Roland was athletic, everybody in those years was either “fatso,” “fat man,” or, if they were younger like us, “fat boys.”
He laid it on thick.
“Man, this ain’t Japan. You know, last week I was just there. Just there.”
Now, Dosia had been to Japan. Roland had told me earlier that year that he’d gone there on some discounted charter holiday and stayed for ten days.
“I started out on holiday,” he said, gripping the wheel with those enormous hands, “but you know how life is for a man like me. I ended up working for the Yakuza. Cutting people with a katana.”
He glanced at us sideways.
“Of course, first I had to earn their trust. After that, we were out there fighting in the streets together. They’d heard what I did during the Revolution.”
Of course, the story about the Yakuza was highly dubious.
How would they even have time for that in just ten days? And who flies all the way to Japan to do dirty work for the Yakuza only to come back here and drive children around in a Golf 6?
“I am a fool for coming back. They offered me a small, clean apartment with a talking toilet over a Pachinko place. That’s how the Japanese gamble. Like gentlemen—they don’t even touch money when they do! Can you believe that? Here, even if you go to the Marriott, it feels low-class. Only hookers who think their shit doesn’t stink because of the foreign businessmen. And what’s with all of them faking a British accent? Lady, I know you’re from Dorohoi. You never went to Oxford.”
He let out a long sigh and blinked slowly, swerving through the snowfall and traffic.
“That’s the thing, fat boys.”
He laughed and pointed at us with two thick fingers.
“When I was out there during the Revolution, shooting people with my Kalashnikov at the airport in ’89, I wasn’t doing it for glory. It was about honor. We thought things were gonna change in this country.”
The snow thickened outside the windows.
“And I got hope in you. Hope in you kids. You’re the first generation that never saw communism. Once the old guard dies off, you boys are gonna change the world. I’m sure of it.”
He paused for a moment.
“Just pray to God and His Holy Mother that They give me enough days to live to see it.”
Then he picked up the little icon hanging from the mirror and kissed it. Beside it swung one of those pine-tree air fresheners that every Romanian cab driver seemed to have back then.
I listened to Dosia with great enjoyment, and neither Roland nor I had the heart to tell him he had missed the exit to Fundeni long ago. We were already heading toward the outskirts of Bucharest, where Roland lived.
We probably would have reached his neighborhood if Roland had not finally interjected.
“Dosia, what the fuck are you doing? We were supposed to leave for Fundeni way back there.”
Dosia blinked fast three times, sighed with a chuckle, glanced through the windshield, then shrugged.
“Alright, fatso. Maybe you should’ve told me earlier instead of letting me make the little detour.”
From the Found Generation
Like the story below, I wrote this in one take, but not while on the bus.
It was partly inspired by my reading of The Tome, Kerr Martin and AB’s novel that I am currently reading as part of a select feedback group (yes, I am that special and important. But you can all read this amazing chapter right here on Substack.
What’s funnier than even Dosia is that I set out to write a story for Ray Imgrund’s Swordstack Saturday initiative. But I ended up writing about the Bucharest of my youth.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this piece, especially on Dosia as a character.
But more importantly:
Thanks for the shout-out! Dosia is a marvelous combination of every older guy I've ever known who can't stop spouting off about all the cool and dangerous stuff that he has definitely 100% managed to do.
Love 'im.
I look forward to seeing what you get to that more explicitly involves swords, though I can tell you certainly tried!