GG Dumitru

Elena Dumitru taught in the same village school for forty-one years, and three generations of the valley learned their letters at her desk. Her father, a forester, showed her the board on winter evenings when the snow closed the roads, and she has played ever since without hurry and without mercy. One teaching habit has never left her. Against somebody new she will drop a game she could have won, deliberately, with no remark about it afterwards, so that they finish the night willing to come back. She does this precisely once. The second meeting is conducted at full strength, and she has been told more than a few times that the contrast is unkind.