The Visit

by Alexandra Magearu 

Mrs. Rotaru collects the three oranges in her cupped hands. Perhaps she should save them for the neighbor’s children, or use them to make orange jam, or squeeze their juices and plant their seeds so that they grow into beautiful sheltering trees. She could then seek refuge under their branches, abandon bedspreads and pillows, books and other human comforts, and she could embrace instead the mysterious delights of herbs, and shrubs, and weeds, and flowers in bloom, until her whole living room would turn into a forested island floating above the somber apartment buildings of the city.

Then again, she should probably just make another pie. But she remembers how meager her rations of flour have become and she decides, instead, to save these to make cozonac for Christmas, for which she would need more eggs too, though perhaps she can exchange the oranges for a carton of eggs, and this would of course mean that she would have to let go of her precious fruit. No, she can’t do that. It would amount to a certain sense of defeat, as if the weight of waiting in line for almost two hours, and braving the biting cold, only elicited absence. 

This will be the first Christmas without Adrian. There will be other visitors, though, and these other strangers in her life will need to be welcomed respectfully with a plateful of rich and sweetly flavored pie and a cup of steaming blossom tea to alleviate the heaviness of the winter, the pervasive, soul-crushing cold, and the prospect of a holiday season stripped of the most basic delights. Perhaps Mrs. Mihăilă, the librarian, will drop by and bring her books from the library, epic novels vibrating with the multitude of other lives lived in other centuries with problems very different than her own. And Cristina, the retired teacher, will surely show up unexpectedly with homemade cherry liquor and warm liver patties. How she always manages to keep the patties fresh and toasty as she takes the bus from her neighborhood, three stops exactly, then walks over and up the stairs to Mrs. Rotaru’s eighth-floor apartment is quite a mystery. And, of course, Mrs. Ionescu will knock on her door once a week and check on her health and her wellbeing, often in anxious outbursts betraying her perpetual sense of worry about the worst possible consequences of a life lived quietly and away from the public eye. Sometimes she wonders if Mrs. Ionescu keeps steadily to her routine because she is worried the old lady—that is, herself—may expire at any moment and then you can’t leave a dead body in the house for weeks to decompose in solitary oblivion. It will likely stink up the whole apartment, and then the dolorous smell may spread to other apartments since the walls are so thin and the plumbing is all connected in this poorly made housing block. But someone has to keep an eye on the natural rhythms of life and this thought is strangely and quietly reassuring to Mrs. Rotaru, who has long neglected to investigate the state of her own health. At least there is somebody there willing to care for her inanimate body and give her a proper burial, someone who will also bring flowers to her grave, light the candles, and pull out the weeds. 

She wonders if he’s going to show up too, Officer Răileanu, with his ominous official coat, his bad breath, and his impatience. Perhaps she will invite him in as always, then serve him a slice of cozonac and some chamomile tea. He will grasp the wooden arms of the chair and lower himself cautiously in the seat, a motion she will be able to distinguish with her back turned to him by the distinct squeak of the furniture. And she will imagine his weight creating a depression in the metal arcs almost all the way to the floor. She will then take his coat and arrange it on a hanger in the living room closet, and she will wait for him to draw his breath patiently. Very likely, the elevator will not be working because of the outages, and he will hold it against her personally that he lost his breath while climbing eight flights of stairs. But what if he will come to take her in this time? Should she open the door?

When the electricity is restored and the light comes on in the kitchen, Mrs. Rotaru contemplates the appalling scene around her: the floral wallpaper is coming off in full peels, the water stain on the ceiling has shifted into strange irregular patterns resembling wild animals, and the windows covered with a transparent isolating film held in place with blue tape to keep away the cold. She has been forgetting things lately, she thinks, as she notices the toothpaste tube left hanging, still open and probably dry by now, on the edge of the kitchen sink (why did she brush her teeth in the kitchen?), the unwashed dishes piled up tenuously in the sink, and the pot of bean stew left uncovered on the stove. 

Mrs. Rotaru unmoors herself from the chair and sets on an almost vengeful cleaning spree, although she is not sure what exactly she is seeking retribution for, but the cutlery and the pans, the porcelain dishes and the jars all become foreign and hostile intruders in her hands, and she manages them roughly. She drops them in a large wash basin, pours hot water over them, expecting them to twist and turn, but they remain silent, and she is now exhausted with the effort and everything else and she holds on to the edge of the sink to catch her breath. A provisional sense of order is restored, so she takes a seat again at the kitchen table, opens a black notebook on a fresh blank page, and begins writing.

* * *

Sunlight was streaming through the gaps between the shirts and the bedspreads and the linen on the clothesline, leaving uneven traces on the concrete floor, like tiny flashing fireflies. You were crouched in a corner of the balcony, fully absorbed in catching the straying beams onto your magnifying glass and projecting them onto the gray floor. The light broke its natural flow and refracted. And I thought I caught a victorious glimmer in your eyes, as if you had learned for the first time that you too had power. 

You were always lost in your own private world, Adrian—happy to sit with your loneliness for hours. Your little striped shirt had large holes at the edges and the sight of it made me want to both protect you and let you run wild. In the back of my mind, I would join you on your mysterious boyish adventures, jumping over fences, scraping my knees against the pavement, building fortresses out of sticks and dried leaves. You were fierce when you wanted to be, when the intensity of the moment demanded it. But you remained quiet for the rest of the time. Maybe this was because you were learning the patterns hidden beyond the surface of things—how the water flows from the sink, how the wind connects the branches of the trees, how feelings hurt sometimes. 

You did not care as much for our rules, as if the guidelines we had arbitrarily imposed in our household were insignificant compared to the revolving movement of the stars on summer night skies. I must confess I was jealous of the trees, the flowers, and the clouds for holding your attention so. And my heart was clenching at the thought of your unworldliness. How would you survive if you disregarded the laws men made?

That night you started running a fever. Your forehead was covered in sweat and your little body was burning under the covers. A heat stroke. I rushed between the kitchen and your bedroom carrying rags dipped in iced water. I was afraid. And that is when you said it, a simple question, uttered almost with indifference, “Mama, am I going to die?” I reassured you that it was only a fever and that we would take care of it and it would go away the next day. You took in my agitation impassively. And I could see that, even in a small child body, so much understanding can accumulate.

* * *

The first time he came, Mrs. Rotaru was startled by the unexpected appearance of an official at her door, clutching a briefcase that seemed incongruously small beside his stately belly. Officer Răileanu introduced himself politely and even stooped, in a somewhat theatrical manner, and kissed her hand, but he did so emphatically, leaving an uncomfortable pool of saliva on her skin. After she invited him in her home and followed him into the living room, she discreetly wiped the back of her palm on her apron. All she had to do was to remain calm, she thought, so she told him she had been baking a peach cobbler because they had plenty of peaches at the neighborhood store and wouldn’t he like some, and maybe some coffee too? She learned that he prefers his coffee pitch black, no milk and no sugar. She told him that she takes her coffee black most of the time, so that she can savor the taste of sweet coffee as a treat saved for special occasions. It is good to delude ourselves sometimes and deny ourselves pleasures we have taken for granted. And what is his opinion on this very matter, she wanted to know. But Officer Răileanu waved her antiquated mannerisms in a brief and indifferent gesture resembling the swatting of a fly. So Mrs. Rotaru told him instead that she was happy to have visitors, because she rarely goes out, and what may be the purpose of his visit?

Officer Răileanu threw his briefcase on the floor, smoothed his impeccable suit, and accepted the peach cobbler and the coffee. He was now making himself comfortable in the upholstered chair, after he had removed his shoes and stretched his feet on a stool nonchalantly. There was a distinct stench emanating from his brown cotton socks, something like the smell of a clogged sink. And, despite his obvious delight in the newfound comfort, he was still keeping an eye on her, a crooked smile frozen on his lips. With complete self-assurance and a sense of abandon, he was taking over her world, cramming his heavy body through the most intimate chambers of her chest, occupying the space between her arteries and her veins, and discarding his muddy shoes in a corner. And she knew this was just the first sign of a lengthy occupation of her life. She took a seat on the edge of the couch, her arms folded in her lap, her shoulders fallen in an odd shape, her house slippers sinking in the plush carpet. 

“Tell me, Comrade Rotaru, when was the last time you saw your son?” Officer Răileanu asked through a mouthful of peach cobbler. So this is why he had come. This meant Adrian had crossed the border, made it past the militias, past the checkpoints, past the dour men with heavy guns. He was free to roam the streets of other cities, no questions asked anymore about his allegiances and his past. But, then again, did he actually make it … over the border …?

“Officer Răileanu, if I remember correctly, he came to visit me a week and a half ago. He stayed for dinner. I made him a delicious potato stew with canned tomatoes. He loved it and asked for a second serving and …”

“So that was more than a week ago,” Officer Răileanu interrupted her, vaguely irritated.

 “And have you heard from him ever since?” 

“I … No, he hasn’t called. Is he alright, Officer?” Her voice was breaking now, a lump the size of a peach stone blocking her throat.

“Well, read for yourself, Comrade Rotaru” he said, handing her a scrap of paper which he had removed from his leather briefcase.

Dear Mother,

I have arrived in XXXXXXXX and XXXXXXXXXXX. It is XXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX although I have XXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX. Please don’t XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXX,

I have been spending XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX great and thought-provoking. XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX. The weather is capricious and we are preparing for the road. I bought XXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX. And it is always a great pleasure to XXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXX. But I always think of XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXX XXXXXX.

Love,

Adrian

“When was this written, Officer? Where is Adrian?” she stood up, her hands turning the paper over, looking for a date, a place, any detail of Adrian’s fate.

“Comrade Rotaru, your son is an enemy of the state and he is facing at least ten years in prison if we get our hands on him. And you will help me bring him back. We know he possesses top-secret industrial information from the chain of production, and we have strong evidence that he will sell our secrets abroad. And we wouldn’t want that, Comrade Rotaru? Would we?” 

Officer Răileanu’s bushy eyebrows were twisted in a question mark, as if he was waiting for her to join in his condemnation of the traitors of the glorious socialist republic. She felt the ground shaking below her feet. So she sat back on the couch, her mind spinning like a blank reel.

“Comrade Rotaru, here is what you will do for us. You will write a letter to your son, asking him to come back urgently. I don’t care if you invoke illness or the death of some distant relative, he must return immediately.” His booming voice was rolling through the living room, scraping against the yellow plaster walls, hitting against the chairs and the pine-wood table, and echoing back. Soon, he was placing pen and paper in her hands, and rhythmically tapping his shoeless foot on the carpet, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. But she remained frozen, in the shape of a crouched statue, and this sent Officer Răileanu in a fury of feet stomping, hand waving, and invectives. As if awakening from a trance, Mrs. Rotaru took the paper in both hands and, while still staring at the floor, ripped it into small pieces and threw it at his feet. 

“Comrade Rotaru, you agreed to serve our cause and leave aside personal considerations. Surely, you must be concerned about what your son may be doing in the West with this kind of precious state information. How could you let him go just like that? Don’t you care at all about what will happen to us, the people?” 

“Listen, Officer Răileanu, I’ve been a member of the Communist Party since before you were born. And back in the day, we used to be concerned with rather more solid ideals like fighting fascists, the rights of working peoples, and a universal wage, not minor political intrigues of the sort you’re cooking now. Every regime has its political dissidents, and if Adrian chose this path because he could no longer stand your dour bureaucrat faces and your tedious power games, why should I oppose him?”

“Comrade Rotaru, you are telling me that you are knowingly aiding and abetting enemies of the state. Do you know what happens to those who protect traitors? They too rot in jail. You could get up to five years in jail. And at your age,” he added, glancing at her scornfully, “you probably won’t make it through the first year.” 

“How about traitors of their own flesh and blood, Officer Răileanu? Do they not betray themselves?” she returned. At this, Officer Răileanu threw his arms in the air, then began collecting his belongings, as if he had given up on her. She noticed that he stopped for one last sip of coffee on his way to the door, his pinky finger slightly lifted as he held the cup. The finger looked impossibly small in relation to his body as if it had been a mistake, a birth defect. On a somewhat cheerful tone, he announced he would be back, after which he began humming a tune only he was familiar with, a sweet medley that bounced and lifted his spirits. And so he proceeded towards the main door, without looking at her again, humming and bobbing back and forth on his wide, wiggly hips, stopping at the top of the stairs only to say, “Careful with these steep stairs, Comrade Rotaru. At your esteemed age, I wouldn’t like for you to trip and fall one day and tumble all the way down. You would surely break some bones, maybe even your neck.” 

And this is how Officer Răileanu entered her life. He began to visit her frequently to perform his routine interrogation sessions, from which he seemed to derive even less pleasure than she did. Perhaps for this reason, he entertained himself by launching into incomprehensible fits of screaming, frantic hand-waving, bangs and crashes that would make the little trinkets in her glass cupboard jiggle uneasily on their plates. In the beginning, right after Adrian’s disappearance, he would show up twice a week with an obstinate dedication to what seemed to be his mission—that of scrutinizing the folds of her soul, probing and plucking until new evidence emerged. Did Adrian talk about his plans to cross the border? Who was he in touch with before his departure? Where did he hide the sketches for the new extraction technologies at the petrochemical factory in Ploiești? Who helped him secure his passage across the Danube? Mrs. Rotaru invariably replied that she did not know, which was to a large extent true. She now understood that Adrian was protecting her when he withheld his plans from her. After a few months of prolonged silences and circular conversations, Officer Răileanu reduced his visits to twice every month. 

In these extended encounters he had become even more intimately familiar to her than some of her former school colleagues, who would visit her less frequently now. She recognized him by the ponderous way he climbed the stairs, by his distinctive cough, probably the result of the two packs of Carpați cigarettes he smoked every day, by the way he knocked on her door and by the scent of his bad cologne that would persist in the nooks and crannies of the living room long after he was gone. She knew that he preferred apple pie to chocolate cake, that he did not take coffee after 4 pm, that he had a slight stutter when it came to pronouncing long and difficult words (his tongue struggling over sistematizare was her favorite example), and that he too had a family and a son who was in the army. 

Mrs. Rotaru once guided him into a prolonged monologue by asking too many questions until he capitulated and breathlessly released what had been on his mind for weeks. He was concerned that he had not taught his son the basic principles of discipline, letting him off the hook too easily when he would trespass the firm rules of their household. One time, his son had stolen money from his wife’s purse when she was sleeping and he had bought a pack of cigarettes, which he then proceeded to smoke in one sitting with a friend. He came back home nauseated and passed out in the hallway. Officer Răileanu had to rush him to the hospital and the commotion of the night made him forget that he was supposed to be the strict parental half, dealing serious punishments for misdeeds. In the army, Officer Răileanu observed in a rather mournful tone, he was probably already exposed to abuses of power, competition, corporal punishment and constant bullying, and will his feeble physique endure all of these? 

Mrs. Rotaru was at a loss as to how to soothe this policeman-turned-father all of a sudden under her eyes. “We always have our children’s best interest in mind,” she suggested after a while. “And you, Officer Răileanu, you did your best giving your son all your love and trust. Now he has to repay you in kind.” He nodded his head in agreement, his shoulders still burdened by this sudden desire to open up and make himself vulnerable to a stranger. That night he left in silence with his chin sunken deep into his chest, his body exhausted by the ebb and flow of his suppressed internal life. 

He stayed away for five whole weeks. But then, perhaps because he could not silence the clock ticking on his desk, he returned once again and he was the same Officer Răileanu as before, puffing and grumbling, making implausible threats, all traces of humbleness having vanished from his face. Mrs. Rotaru still welcomed him with cake and a warm drink, but her patience was slowly wearing off and her interest in his histrionics subsided. She remained silent for long periods of time, looking away towards an invisible mark on the wall, hoping that, if she were to play the senile old lady, she would also be treated as such.  

* * *

You were passing through one of your darkest phases and I felt you were slipping through my fingers for the first time. The more you receded to the obscurity of your silence, the more I tried to make up for our separation by lavishing you with my affection. I would make you breakfast every morning, bring you books from the library, cut out random facts from the newspaper and hide them in your drawers and your pockets. 

I knew you disliked my attentions. You must have registered them as small violations of whatever was left of your privacy in our crammed one-bedroom apartment. Or perhaps you were devoting yourself to that tremendous melancholia entirely, and any interference from the world of concrete things and weighty feelings was pure distraction. It was not possessiveness that was driving me, but a pronounced feeling of helplessness. I was a spectator on the edges of your life. 

When I came home that afternoon, I could sense there was something amiss the moment I stepped in the living room. There was a draft in the apartment and the air was heavy all around me. I moved through it slowly as if in a dream. I must have been very quiet, because you did not turn when I entered. You were sitting on the windowsill of your balcony, frosty air spilling into the room, your legs hanging over eight stories of nothing but void. I opened my mouth but my voice was frozen in my throat and nothing came out except a heavy breath. You were startled, but you remained motionless for a while. I knew you had sensed my presence and you had become two once again—son and mother in the same body. And it must have been this that drew you back to me. 

You stepped down from the windowsill and you turned towards me, your eyes dry, but your shoulders shaking gently, and you said, “Please forgive me, mother.” When I embraced you, I wanted to tell you everything, as if I could compress my entire life, its intoxicating heights and its sour depths, into a single breath. But I resolved to rock you back and forth, your head on my lap, as we lay on the floor.

* * * 

It was an unusually warm November afternoon when Officer Răileanu last rang her doorbell. She had been avoiding the bright sunlight by voluntarily cooping herself indoors, with the blinds drawn across all the windows in her apartment. In the middle of the living room, a ventilator was shifting around the air inside the apartment and ruffling a stack of papers on the floor, her notes on Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Officer Răileanu stooped heavily and picked up the papers, scanning each page quickly and turning it over. His forehead was brimming with sweat and he occasionally tapped it with his handkerchief.

“Very well, Comrade Rotaru. I see you are an avid reader. Too bad it’s such useless mannerisms you’re recording here. The private lives of aristocratic Russian families of times past. Who cares about such things these days, Comrade Rotaru?” he scoffed and added, “I guess you do.” The mockery was purely gratuitous. She knew he was grasping for some random meanness to throw at her and she was ready to receive the blows.

“Would you like some plum pie, Officer Răileanu?” she said in a low, tempered voice. “A friend brought me a bag of fresh plums from the countryside, beautifully darkened and as sweet as honey. You have to try the pie I made yesterday. It is pure delight.” She wanted to sound cheerful, eager for conversation, maybe even happy to see him. She only managed to drone on like a radio report, flat and emotionless.

Officer Răileanu waved his hand as if pie or no-pie was fine with him. He adopted a different strategy this time. Instead of asking her questions about her son, he began by offering her little bits of information on where he was and how he was fending for himself abroad. He told her that Adrian was in a refugee camp in Italy, in the southern part of the country, writing articles to international newspapers about the plight of dissidents in Romania. As Officer Răileanu had well predicted, Mrs. Rotaru became more animated. She asked him questions about Adrian’s state of health, about the conditions in the refugee camp, and about his chances of crossing the Atlantic. 

There she was, Officer Răileanu thought, mushy and malleable in his hands like clay. So he looked once again for her sympathy. She must understand the situation she had placed him in with his superiors by not cooperating at all with their investigation. Her son had done some unforgivable things, she must be the first to admit, seeing how she had been abandoned to the capricious forces of nature in old age. Not to mention the political campaign of defamation he had been waging from his sheltered hideout against the country that gave him birth and nurtured him and promoted his illustrious career. 

“It is hurting all of us, Comrade Rotaru,” Officer Răileanu said. “He is doing nothing but feeding the imperialist propaganda out there and then reaping the benefits. You, madam, have raised an opportunist, a snake.” His eyes held something wet inside, something like genuine sadness about the fate of this prodigal son and the soiled honor of the beloved nation.

“Perhaps you could give me his address then, Officer Răileanu? I will write him a letter as you say, and I will let him know that he is dearly missed here,” Mrs. Rotaru said. She was alert now, tense and impatient. Although seated as always on the very edge of the brown canvas couch, her hands folded on her lap, she looked as if she was about to leap at him, her feet firmly grounded in expectation. 

“But that would be simply impossible, Comrade Rotaru. I would hate to endanger you further by divulging such information to you. It would be better if you wrote the letter and we took care of sending it. In fact, you may want to consult his letters addressed to you first so that you prepare a thoughtful response,” Officer Răileanu offered, his soft, feline voice luring her closer and closer. 

So there were other letters. Adrian had been writing to her. How many more letters? Oh, if only she could see them for a few minutes, catch a glimpse of his signature with those beautiful twisted embellishments at the end. She would then feel some continuity was established once again between life before and after his departure. What was he going through, feeling, and thinking, alone and removed from everything he knew, everything that used to be familiar to him? What kind of life did he choose when he crossed the border? A life of perpetual uprootedness and alienation? Or was happiness available in greater quantities over there, as they said? She feared all that she did not know, all that could have been omitted, all that was left unsaid.

Officer Răileanu lifted himself from his favorite chair, his hands firmly wrapped around the wooden handles, pushing against gravity. He took out his dark blue coat with golden shoulder boards from the closet, savored his time removing some indiscernible lint from the cuffs, and began buttoning it up, one long button at a time, as leisurely as he could. He stopped in the middle of the living room, slightly disoriented, sighing heavily from the effort of moving about inside his elephantine body. And then slowly, but very slowly, he lifted his suitcase and opened it with a click-a-clack sound. 

Mrs. Rotaru was out of breath, registering his every single move, looking for any clues that might indicate where he stored the letters. Perhaps she could snatch his bag and lock herself in the bedroom with it. But would she be able to outrun him, trapped as she was in her old woman body with her wobbly hip and her weakened muscles? No, she should have thought of a better plan before, like slipping some laxatives in his tea or, even better, rat poison. Officer Răileanu removed another handkerchief from his suitcase and began wiping his forehead gently with it.

“Come, Comrade Rotaru, don’t be shy! I brought you the letters.” He was now waving a stack of envelopes of different colors. Blue, yellow-green, white. Adrian’s letters. She reached for the letters, but just as her fingers were about to touch the paper, Officer Răileanu pulled them away and folded them back inside his jacket. 

“Now, now, now. Nothing is for free, Comrade Rotaru. You will answer my questions and then I’ll hand you the letters. One at a time and only if you behave this time. Let’s try this once again. Did Adrian leave behind any work sketches, or any slips of paper, notebooks, or official documentation?” Mrs. Rotaru looked pensive. So Officer Răileanu persisted: “You know how immensely helpful this would be for the industry … for the entire country. You have to do your civil duty, Comrade Rotaru, and hand us his papers.”

Mrs. Rotaru let out a long sigh, reached for the ventilator and unplugged it, then headed for the glass cupboard, slowly removed her porcelain ballet dancers and placed them carefully on the floor, one by one. She then slid the wooden panel in the back of the bookshelf, and there it was: a dark red leather-bound notebook. At the sight of it, Officer Răileanu jumped to his feet and, in one swift move, snatched it from her hands. There was something strange in his eyes now and Mrs. Rotaru interpreted it as a mixture of excitement and relief. He rushed back to the chair, dropped the colorful stack of letters on the floor, picked up his jacket and his bag, and was on his way out, the plum pie left untouched on the side table, the coffee still steaming. 

Mrs. Rotaru was collecting the letters from the floor when Officer Răileanu turned to her, “Don’t worry, Comrade Rotaru, this will not be our last encounter. I will see you very soon indeed.” 

When he was gone, Mrs. Rotaru opened the letters right away and spread them out on the floor. Seven letters in total, all blacked out by some assiduous censor’s hand. She counted the words still readable in the five letters. They were twelve, written in Adrian' s hand: you, concern, wish, worry, interest, I, come, sometimes, although, never, thinking, and love.

* * *

You came to the apartment close to midnight. I had fallen asleep on the couch, my book folded on my chest, the lamp still on. Your knock startled me awake. When I opened the door, I could see you had been running away from something. Your eyes were haunted, you were out of breath, and you were clutching your briefcase close to your chest. 

“Mama, can I sleep here tonight?” you said and I said of course, please sit down on the couch and I’ll make you some tea. You were shivering slightly, your back tensed and curled up, your gaze lost somewhere in the distance. I could see that your parted hair, which had been blacker than charcoal, was turning white at the root. You had always had that freshness about you—the boyish suppleness, the delicate hands with slim interminable fingers, the vibrant eyes shaded by long eyelashes, the broad smooth forehead. Somehow, I could never imagine that you too were going to grow old, that there was a germ of decay at the center of your body, waiting to unravel, take over. And perhaps the process had been accelerated throughout those years preceding your departure.

“Mama, someone has been following me all the way from Ploiești. A black car. All I could see in my rear-view mirror was a shadow. And then, right before entering Bucharest, he crashed into my car at a stop sign.” You told me the whole story in one breath, the fact that you kept driving faster than you had ever driven, that he chased you along the deserted city streets, that you were afraid they were going to kill you this time. And all for what? The fictive research report you were supposedly withholding from them, your refusal to become their collaborator and inform on your colleagues, your lack of solutions for the crumbling petrochemical industry?

“It is as if I am being held accountable for all the ways industrialization has gone wrong in this country. The fact of the matter is that our equipment is terribly outdated and there are no funds for genuine research.” You told me you had had enough of participating in the large-scale destruction of life for the sake of some kind of senseless notion of development. All the scraped villages, the land confiscated from peasants, the devastation of forests, valleys, and the pollution of the waterscapes. You were responsible for it, you kept repeating over and over, while you bobbed back and forth on the couch, your back folded over, and your head clasped tightly between your hands. 

I looked at your clean, elongated nails. How touching they were in their frailty, and how familiar to me. Yet, I did not dare touch you or console you. I could not articulate a single soothing word in response to your predicament. You must have thought that I too was blaming you for it all. But Adrian, I was struggling with my own feelings of guilt. For you see, I could no longer protect you.

* * *

It is almost lunch time and Mrs. Rotaru just finished making the orange pie she has been craving. She is decorating it with orange chrysanthemum petals when the doorbell rings, and she is startled by the loud bangs on the door. She drops the petals and they scatter on the linoleum floor in quick splotches of color. He is back and he must have discovered her ruse. They must have looked at the notebook and informed him that it contained nothing but nonsense sketches. He will finally arrest her and drag her to jail and she will waste away in an unheated cell. The bangs continue, louder and heavier. She decides to stay put and not answer the door at all. If he forces his way in, she will feign ignorance. 

There is a pause in the banging and she feels as if someone is leaning against the door. Then a squeaky woman’s voice calls from the other side, “Mrs. Rotaru, are you at home. You won’t believe what is going on. Open the door.” Mrs. Rotaru now rushes to the door and pulls it open with one quick twist of the key. Mrs. Ionescu backs away from the door. She looks dreadful, her face all ashen and scrunched up, with deep eye circles, locks of hair falling out of her usually impeccable bun, her shawl hanging across her body like a dead animal. “Mrs. Rotaru, it’s happening! Finally! Mrs. Rotaru, are you watching television? They are everywhere on the streets downtown. Young people. They have taken over the Romanian Public Television. They’re in the building. Do you understand? It’s over! It’s finally over!” Mrs. Ionescu takes in a big gulp of air then places her hand on her chest, as if pausing to collect herself. Her husband appears in the doorway. He is still dressed in his striped blue pajamas, one corner of the shirt tucked in his pants. His shoulders are trembling slightly. His hair is disheveled. One of his slippers is missing. “We are free, Mrs. Rotaru, we are free!” Mrs. Ionescu is shouting now and wringing her arms. She travels back and forth, creating invisible circles between Mrs. Rotaru’s door and her own, dragging the edge of her shawl and collecting the dust. She then lowers herself on the cold cement floor and stretches her body as wide as possible. The poor woman is in a state of shock, thinks Mrs. Rotaru, not daring to move at all so as not to disrupt the strange scene. The husband winces, stumbles forward, and picks up his wife gently, wrapping his arms around her waist. He carries her inside without a word or a glimpse at Mrs. Rotaru and the door shuts behind them with a thud.

Mrs. Rotaru walks into the kitchen, picks up a large knife and the plate with the fresh orange pie, then makes her way to the living room. She lets herself fall on the couch and waits there motionlessly for something to happen. Then she remembers the television. She heads over to the small black and white device, lifts the dusty cloth covering the screen, then twists the large metal dial, and white noise floods the room. So she struggles with the antennas for a while, then bangs her fist on top of the television box. Three times. Surely enough, both image and sound erupt all of a sudden.

The scene is stunning. Dozens of people, most of them in their twenties and thirties, have taken over the main studio room of the Romanian Public Television. They are spread out in multiple rows behind two tables complete with microphones and tablecloths. The camera has panned out excessively and you can see the décor behind them: a panel, studio lights, curtains, and other technological devices hanging from the ceiling. Everyone is wearing winter coats as if they had just stepped in. Two Romanian flags stick out from the crowd. In the midst of the gathering, a young poet is speaking. Mrs. Rotaru recognizes him, but she cannot recall his name. He too, like the palpitating crowd around him, is in a state of trepidation. He is wearing an oversized striped sweater with visible holes above his stomach. Moth holes perhaps. He pleads for calm as he waves his hands in the air. Mrs. Rotaru wonders whether his gesture might have the opposite effect on the audience, an entire nation now likely glued to the televised unfolding of history. 

“We ask you to maintain your calm and wisdom,” the poet says, his eyebrows locked in a frown, his dark eyes glimmering. “There has been enough blood spilled. We have to be patient. We’ve been waiting for twenty years …” 

“Twenty-five,” someone interrupts from the background.

“Twenty-five years,” the poet resumes, “Let’s be patient for a few more minutes. Our people have won. We ask the army and the Securitate to lower the flags at half-mast. Let’s fraternize. Enough blood has been spilled in Timișoara, in București, in Cluj, in Iași, Arad, Sibiu, across the entire country. Please maintain your calm. Come out on the streets in silence, listen to it all silently, defend the Romanian Public Television and the Radio Romania and the factories. Don’t destroy anything. Please stay calm and wait a bit, five minutes, and the Romanian people will be victorious forever.”

Mrs. Rotaru’s eyes are fastened to the hypnotic gaze of the poet, but she finds herself voided of all emotion. The moment has finally come. They will be able to travel freely now and perhaps stores will be stocked once again with the basic necessities. And the electricity blackouts. No more. And the lack of heat. No more. And the daily humiliations. No more. And the degradation of human connections, of neighborly love. The greed. The suspicion. The terror. Will it all disappear overnight or is it all too deeply woven into the fabric of daily life? Is Adrian watching this right now? Will he be able to return home? And what of this sad and sickly world? Who will repair it and nurse it back to life? Mrs. Rotaru cuts herself a generous slice of orange pie. She realizes she has forgotten forks and plates, so she does the unthinkable: she picks up the slice with her bare hands and consumes it in a few gulps. She must have misjudged the ingredients because the pie is much too sweet, and the bitter orange taste has drowned entirely in the warm cloying doughy folds.

About the author

Alexandra Magearu is a writer and visual artist, originally from Romania. She is currently based in Cleveland, Ohio, where she teaches in the English Department at Case Western Reserve University. Her writing has been published in Michigan Quarterly Review, Tint Journal, the other side of hope: journeys in refugee and immigrant literature, World Literature Today, Apofenie, and elsewhere. 

About the illustration

The illustration is a photograph by Claudiu Cobilanschi of a Romanian living room. A still from the December 22, 1989 Televiziunea Română television broadcast (of the poet Mircea Dinescu announcing that the revolution was underway) was superimposed onto Cobilanschi's photograph.