2. Grigore watched the vendor until he finished hauling the crates into the
cellar, then he headed towards the mill, grinding in his mind plans for the
coming holidays. In front of him, swathed in the light of an April afternoon,
red flags were fluttering here and there, and among them the militiaman
glimpsed excitedly the white wings of the ghost which protected him from
between the walls of the mill and which gave him faith in life. Now it was
fastened to the immaculate sky, above the sandpaper road, and it seemed to
Grigore that it was swaying to the rhythm of the ringdoves' song. Whenever he
saw its white skirts among the clouds or descending the walls of a room he
knew that he was going to be victorious. Not only then, in the mill, after
that grievous accident with Nicolescu's lad - he couldn't even remember what
he was called - when he had risen up in the sight of them all in order to
protect the boy from the misfortune that had befallen him, but also afterwards
in all the difficult situations through which he had passed. When he first
moved from Comoșteni he was lost and desperate. He knew from the very start
that cadres were rotated and that a militiaman never stayed in the same place
for life. But once he arrived in Comoșteni, one autumn day - he remembers it
even now - he felt that the place had something that belonged only to him. In
1964, when the orders for his transfer came, he had fallen ill. He commuted to
Daneți for three months, until one day the fluttering spirit of the mill
revealed itself to him. He was on a street, in Craiova, near the Romanești bus
station, when the foamy overcoat, undulating and wispy, had percolated through
the branches of a quince tree, just as he had also seen it take shape above
the cadaver of the mill. And five steps further on he had bumped into Nini,
who was wearing brand new navy-blue overalls. Back then Nini was nothing but
an unimportant employee in the Securitate, but he had already made all kinds
of connexions, in his friendly and forthright way. He can almost see him now :
swarthy, with large eyes, like those of a cartoon dog, smiling obligingly and
instantly inspiring trust. Nini had a word in the ear of the necessary person,
and in two weeks Grigore was transferred back to Comoșteni. This is why he is
fond of the lad, as though he were his own son. He was glued to the lip of his
heart, and whenever he saw him he felt as though he was under the protective
wing of the world.
There were also periods, just as short, when he was sent to one place or
another, but it was back here that he always returned. He built himself a
house and fathered children. For some ten years, everything went well for him,
until poor Fifina died. She passed away unexpectedly, without ever seeing her
grandchildren, and he had not been able to do anything to help her. He had
buried his wife, and the protective wing had not revealed itself again until
his oldest boy entered Law school. Then he had seen it once more, white and
thin, an evening before receiving the results, and he had known it was a good
sign.
Now, seeing the ghost up in the sky, he straightaway thought of the thing that
was consuming his soul the most : Ionutz, his youngest boy, whom he wanted to
join the Securitate, to become a man and get on in the world. He had needed an
impetus and there it was in the sky, like a silky mushroom. Grigore cast a
glance at the tents of the gypsy tinsmiths, just so that they would know he
had his eye on them, and wiped his index finger across his sweating brow. In
the courtyard of the Cultural Club there were two lorries from the Collective
Farm, laden with flags and banners. It was from there that they would set off
at the crack of dawn on May Day, all the people put down on the parade list :
a brigade from animal husbandry, ten little boys dressed up in folk costume,
and children from the school, in black shorts and white shirts. In addition,
at the top of the village there was also a bus for employees of the Institute
of Phenomena, who, dressed up to the nines, in suits and ties, would be like
pigs in clover on the black oilcloth seats. Grigore had thought fleetingly
about their equipment, merely glancing at the lorries with the battered and
faded placards. Then he slowly headed to old man Păun's house. In front of the
gate, a red flag was hanging from the lamppost, fluttering above the branches
of an apple tree in bloom. Lucica was in the yard. She was whitewashing the
garden fence. Lucica, the militiaman barked, and as she immediately turned her
head, he made a sign for her to come over to the gate. She came without haste,
and it was obvious she was reluctant. She was still holding the paintbrush
made of maize leaves.
"Are you going to the children's parade ?" George began officiously, so as not
somehow to forget just who he was. "Well then," he went on, without waiting
for an answer. "Don't go. I've had a word in the ear of the necessary person
and Victoritza is going in your stead. I've got other plans for you. Tomorrow
we're having a party at my house, with refined company - Căruțașu, the vice-
president, president, and a high-up comrade."
He looked at her until he caught her gaze and said in an almost comradely way
: "I want you to come too."
"What would the likes of me do there ?" Lucica said in amazement, her eyes
boggling as though she had been given a clout on the back of the neck. A flame
like the ring of a gas stove was burning on her pate.
"Come now, lass, you know I look after you. Old man Păun is getting on, he
can't do much these days. He doesn't even go out of the house. If he bursts in
on you again, who are you going to call ? Aren't I the one who protects you ?"
Lucica remembered her divorce and the violence of Vali, who had turned up in
the middle of the night to attack her with an axe, raging mad at her not
wanting him any more. She had married for love, with the boy who was her
sweetheart in school, and she had ended up detesting him. There had been three
years of commuting to a village across the Jiu River, the probation years. She
would set out in the morning and get back in the evening. And everyone always
had a bone to pick with her : her mother-in-law, who now and then would batter
her about the head with her fists, like a rain of stones ; her father-in-law,
who would curse her for not doing anything ; and, after a time, Vali too, for
whose embraces she no longer had any appetite. Her only joy was the eyes in
the mill, which she almost never had time to visit. Grigore had indeed helped
her. That night, managing to escape from the house, she had fled down the
road, sensing the icy axe at her back, and had run into Grigore's house,
screaming in terror. And he had come out in his underpants and shouted loud
enough to wake the entire neighbourhood, That's enough with that damned axe,
sonny, or else you'll go to gaol for nothing. It was also Grigore who had
helped her, after her probationary period, to get a transfer to the school in
Comoșteni, where she would never have had any chance of ending up if she had
waited at the doors of the school inspectorate. She had no connexions and nor
did she have enough money to pay a bribe. Consequently, she was highly
indebted to Grigore. She stared fixedly at the paintbrush she was holding in
her left hand and tried to imagine what exactly it was that Grigore wanted
from her. She could not see any possible reason she might have to be there, at
a party for bigwigs. And what about women ? Are there going to be any women
there ?
Grigore's mouth had spread like marmalade from one corner to the other : You.
There'll be just you there. In the young woman's mind, a small, cold light
kindled. Through the aspergillum of dry leaves droplets of whitewash pattered.
Lucica suddenly raised her head and gazed the militiaman straight in the eye,
as though she were speaking to him on her knees, imploring and ready to burst
into tears :
"I'm no good for parties, really I'm not ! Please Mr Grigore, what do you want
me to do there ? You know how flighty I am…"
Abruptly, Grigore was exasperated and raised both palms, as though he wanted
to prevent her from speaking. Then he spoke firmly, cupping her shoulder in
his palm like an apple :
"Lucica, don't do this sort of thing to me. I asked you something and I expect
you not to put on airs. What could happen to you ? Nothing you don't already
know ! If you have a little fuck there, will it do you any harm ? Don't get on
my bad side because I'll move you tomorrow, to Măru Roșu, at the arse end of
Moldavia, for example, where the entire battalion will fuck you." And as
Lucica had turned the same colour as the flag on the pole, Grigore moistened
his lips and said to her more warmly, almost in a whisper :
"Tomorrow afternoon, at around two o'clock, sneak alongside the mill, through
Costea's garden, because there's no one there any more, and enter my yard by
the back gate."
3. Over the road, at Jana's window, the corner of the curtain twitched. She
sees Grigore holding Lucica's shoulder in his palm and assumes that the
teacher doesn't want to go to the parade. It would be a good idea, thinks
Jana, not to go out of the house until tomorrow, because who knows who will
see me and put me down on that damned parade list. She can't take it any more,
she's sick to the back teeth of climbing into the lorry, crushed in with all
the thick yokels, sick of going twenty-five miles, and for what ? To chant
ceaușescuromaniancommunistparty on the streets or in a stadium, wherever it
might be, until she got a blister on the roof of her mouth, or to lug flags
and placards from the stores of the Collective Farm in return for two wafer
biscuits and a can of food. If she was lucky to get even that. Because last
year, she'd ended up with just a tin of beans, one that was dented and whose
contents were fermented.
Jana is now looking through the aperture between the curtain's edge and the
window frame, with her pious eyes like chocolates half peeking from a silvery
tinfoil wrapper, and she is thinking that she ought to fetch a string of dried
red peppers from outside, to clean out the seeds and then make some soft dough
with a handful of flour, which is the last, mixed together with a puree of
onions fried in a spoon of lard, if there's any left at the bottom of that
jar, and then to fill each pepper and boil them in a six-kilo iron pot, with
plenty of water, so that she will have food for two days. And as the food is
boiling, she ought to stand in the garden, bent over the onion patch, and to
look across the lane, across Săndina's garden, beyond to the mill, waiting for
the moment he will poke his head out of the window and look across at her.
Before that, she will have to light a fire in the stove, on which the pot has
been placed ready to boil. The woman casts another glance out of the window
and sees Grigore leaving, then she bends down in front of the stove and opens
the book tossed into the dirty basin. It's a thick book, with dry pages, just
right for lighting a fire. It no longer has covers. It begins with a page on
which are inscribed the title and the author, and lower down, in violet ink,
Dear Josephine, read it because it is from me, Relu. She tears out two pages
and scrunches them up, to give them a shape, and then lights them with a
match. As they are flaring under the heap of maize stalks placed in the stove
that morning, she continues making her plans, such as what to cook and how to
be nice to Mariana when she comes back from school, in an hour at most, before
she arrives at the onion patch once more, from where she will raise her eyes
from time to time, awaiting the tawny head that appears at the window of the
mill. Jana is looking at the book in the basin, her eyes muffled with gleaming
lashes, and she is enjoying this moment of solitude, in which she can do
almost anything she likes. And she does not know how to make the time pass
more slowly. From tomorrow until Monday, that is, Thursday, Friday, Saturday
and Sunday, the entire country is on holiday, because this year May Day
happened to fall on a Thursday. The Saturday will be recouped, and Sunday is
free. After all those working Sundays, she no longer knows how many, at last -
four days off, like never before, including today, when she didn't go, quite
simply she didn't want to answer, she heard Florea shouting Jana, Jana, get
up, girl, we're leaving, but she didn't even budge. She went on placing maize
stalks in the stove, stroking the soft scales left after they are stripped of
kernels, and she looked into the mouth of the stove, like into a warm hiding
place, until Florea and the whole team had left, some seven or eight figures,
mostly women, with hoes over their shoulders and knapsacks swaying alongside
their napes, dangling from the worn wooden handles. They will dock her a day's
wages, in any case they only pay her enough so that she won't die, but at
least she knows that she will have knelt by her stove, alone and without
anyone's mouth braying in her ears. Jana works in the greenhouses, from where
she can no longer even take so much as an onion now that they have made Florea
head of the team, a good lad, what can she say, when they were young they
kissed a few evenings, he rubbed her haunches against the wall of the mill,
and put his arms around her in the cinema. But now he paces scowling through
the greenhouses, and empties everyone's bag when they leave, he sticks his
hands up the women's skirts and makes them turn their pockets out. He's a
bastard not because someone makes him do it, but because that's the way he
likes to be, he stands like Fane, thin-lipped, brows knitted, with one hand
behind his back and the other always pointing at something, beating out the
rhythm of the work, a cretin, anyway, someone who has joined the ranks of the
cretins, who are always walking about annoyed and waving their arms about, one
after another, from Ceaușescu down to the head of the team, who is now Florea,
but anyway it doesn't matter who it is or what he looks like, because as soon
as he becomes boss he's the same boor on whose face is imprinted a future
global catastrophe.
Translated by Alistair Ian Blyth
