The constructor of Bucharest planned it all as it appears today, with every building, every empty lot, every interior, every twilight reflection in the circular windows in the middle of the timeworn pediments. His genius was to build a city already in ruin, the only city where people should live. A city of blind walls with bulging bricks barely held in by rusty iron bolts, of daft plaster ornamentation, of antediluvian trams, of bug-eaten doorframes and decomposing window frames, of unearthed paving stones, of sad courtyards with forgotten, unwatered oleanders placed on a timeworn stair.
