No. 7, Strada Dr. Lister, Cotroceni

Among the many quarters of Bucharest that Igot to know over the years, the first one wasgreen and soothing, a gift.

We lived in Cotroceni, on a street linedwith lime trees, across from the Saint Elefteriechurch, whose greyish and red brick stripesseemed to forebode the colours of a reversedwinter coat, dyed wine-red and trimmed at thecollar and the sleeves with a sliver of greyish-silvery astrakhan, which my mother wouldwear day in, day out for all those dark years.In that coat mother looked like a church towerherself, I used to think to myself, while waitingfor her to come back from school, on a benchin the tiny rose garden at the corner of ourstreet. In the evening, the round rose bed waswatered with punctiliousness by an older man,all skin and bone, about whom I only remem-ber the solemnity with which he held the hoseand the meticulous patience with which hewould make sure that each of the tall stemsending in a rosy-yellow flower would drink itsshare. The garden hose has stayed in my mem-ory ever since like a prized possession, inac-cessible, till I bought a simple one, the first,here in Providence, far away. The new acquisi-tion and its meaning for my evenings wasgrafted onto the remembrance of the rosesrendered happy in times past by a kind-hearted stranger.

Less showy and rather sagging, the rosesin the park were still there when, many yearslater, one morning in autumn, with my sickmother barely standing next to me, we waitedfor a taxi that refused stubbornly to come andbring her to the hospital where she would diea couple of months later.

From the lime trees on Strada Lister,which smelled like a huge tea-pot every spring,my brother and I would pick “our” share withdignity.

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Daily lives in Bucharest 1946–1950

Sanda Golopen]iaSanda Golopenția is Professor Emerita at Brown University.

ABSTRACT

The text is an excerpt from the author’s volume Viața noastră cea de toate zilele(Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2009) narrating memories triggered by reading the Se-curitate files of Anton Golopenția, surveilled by the political police between 1949and 1950. Translated into English by Lidia Bradley.

KEYWORDS

Memory, silence, family, Holy Days,Bucharest, Cotroceni.

Sanda Golopenția at the beginning of the 1950s

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The male and female blossoms, some or-ange and mat, others fair and transparent,would be spread out to dry on newspapers,which rendered our tiny living space eventighter. The high point of our contribution totransfiguring our dinners was when we woulddelicately stuff the dried-out blossoms intosmall sachets made of a light green cloth, sewnexpressly for tea or bread crumbs. Then wewould pull the string, green as well, but of adarker shade, and we would make a bow. Thelight, scented sachet would be placed on a shelfin the pantry. Four to five bags of these home-made sachets would hold us through the win-ter, we would not have had space for moreanyway.

A yogurt peddler went up and down thestreet each morning. He advertised his waresby shouting. I would run down the threestoreys of the building at the back of the court-yard, from which I dreamt every night that Iwould jump down with deft agility directlyonto the asphalt. I would cross the narrowspace, running, and come onto the streetaround “the front building.” Yogurt was soldin small blue porcelain pots capped with alu-

minium foil; I took them from the packedpushcart and ran home with the cool prey inmy hands, while the peddler intoned with con-viction “yoguuuurt … fresh yogúrt”, lengthen-ing the syllables as he disappeared towardsStrada Dr. Clunet. It seemed to me that one ofthese pots should become part of my emi-grant’s dowry; now, after all these years, I haveit close to me, here in Providence, Rhode Is-land. On it the word “Miorița” stands out infine handwriting on the pale blue background,the colour of the old houses of Transylvania; Iput spring flowers in it, or wild ones, and I feelcloser to the murmur of a good Bucharest.

In the wild garden behind the Saint Eleft-erie church, shepherds would start arriving to-wards Easter with lambs to sell. For a whilethere was tumult and wailing in the street.Then all of a sudden it grew quiet again, andour interest would change direction, attractedby the triangular space beside the newspaperkiosk on the Strada St. Elefterie, where tinpans were being mended, minced meat rollswere grilled and sold, and where, sometimes,we could buy layered ice cream.

It was the time of food ration cards. Ibought daily three or four slices of clay-likebread, which the baker behind the St. ElefterieChurch, a former university professor,weighed gawkily on the scales. From time totime one could find butter at the grocery,sometimes ham, bologna sausage, krakauer,and at the market near Strada Costache Negri,my grandmother would even buy a chickenwhen we had become fed up with the smellyold mutton from the butcher’s.

In “the garden with the statue” betweenBulevardul Ardealului and the Dâmbovițaquay, where I had once discovered dandelions,we would play the statue game walking, guilt-ridden, on the regularly mown grass, up to theflower beds in the centre.

We lived at number 7, Strada Dr. Lister, inthe back building, on the third floor, to theright. Between the building in the front, iden-tical with our own, and ours, two rectangles —with small, wild roses, blood red, raspberryred, cherry red, coral, pink or wine red—

Anton Golopenția in 1949/1950, before resigning fromthe Central Institute of Statistics

framed both our main door and the back doorof the other building. To the left of both build-ings, the small wagon that carried the garbagecollected at the back of the yard moved on nar-row rails up to the street, sliding under thecherry tree in the neighbours’ garden, fromwhich we were separated by a high woodenfence. Towards the street, a thick concrete walltwo-feet high, topped with thick iron barslooking like the back of a chair, would often-times host, also close to the cherry tree, a tallman with blue eyes, and long, white hair; hisclean clothes had long ago lost their colour,growing white, like him. He would linger therefor hours, serene and silent, and people wouldset by his side food, some old piece of cloth-ing, or, rarely, money. When this happened, hisface cleared a bit, he would bend his head in adignified sign of gratitude, and the day seemedbrighter.

To the right, a low wire fence did not quitemanage to separate us from the neighbouringcourtyard in which the champion JulietaNamian would hit a tired tennis ball against agreen wall, all day long. In the back right-handcorner of the courtyard, the moist shade of amulberry tree, reaching towards us from thehuge garden of nameless neighbours in StradaCostache Negri, would entice braver children,who climbed up and down it incessantly, inways that are still unimaginable to me. WhenI grew silkworms, the leaves of the mulberrytree filled my father’s office for a time, and ourapartment got to know the discreet noise oftheir rhythmic crunching.

Our apartment consisted of two roomsand a hallway. The largest room was the bed-room in which my mother, father, my brotherand myself slept. It also housed my mother’sbooks. The smaller room was my father’sstudy, with his bookshelves and a narrow bedcovered with a soldier’s blanket, on which, foryears, slept my grandmother, who soughtrefuge in Bucharest after her house in Bozovicihad been bombed and, later, sold. Before shecame, that bed had served for my father’syounger brother, Bubi. Several years after myfather’s death, when we had grown up, my

grandmother moved to live with Bubi and hiswife Maria, who had young children.

The bedroom was separated from the hallby a large glass door, covered, like the glassdoor of the office, with curtains hung frommetal rods. I have just one memory of thatlarge glass door being open, for Christmas. Atall Christmas tree stood right between thebedroom and the hallway, from the kitchencame the scent of roasted sweet chestnuts, and,for a moment, bliss alighted on our lives.

The hallway was pierced by doors – to-wards the two rooms, towards the entrance,towards another small hall by which we ac-cessed the kitchen and the bathroom, towardsthe narrow, long balcony on which we lay inthe sun listening to the sizzling of hot oil andthe din of pots and pans put to good use in thekitchens of the front building.

Girlfriends

There were no girls of my age in our apart-ment building: my name was not called out bychildren, nor by my mother or grandmother.When I was not at home, I visited my friendsin the neighbourhood. One of them lived onStrada Lister, just after the cobbler’s at No. 12,and I would go there to play on her swing—Iliked to work the swing faster and higher backand forth, back and forth, until I grew dizzy.Another friend, whose second name wasNichifor, was the daughter of one of the pow-erful men of the moment. She lived in acream-coloured villa before the pink house onthe corner to Strada Dr. Pasteur, both of uswould climb into the attic, to taste from thedark grapes hung to dry out on a string. Herparents did not like me. There was TamaraZambilovici, also on Strada Lister, up towardsGaghel’s villa. Gaghel used to own a chain ofbakeries. I think it was at Tamara’s, or at afriend of hers that I climbed on a ladder intoone of the sour cherry trees behind the house.Carmencita Lepădatu lived not far fromschool, near the art historian Oprescu’s house.

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Ketty (Alexandra) Nicolau, a strong chessplayer already, lived somewhat farther away,on Strada Iatropol as I remember. She had allsorts of shells, brought back from the seasideby herself, her brother Claude and her sisterMonica. In their house a French chef did thecooking, whose milk rice was unsurpassed,Ketty was the only one in our class who man-aged to dance the Cossack dance (kasachok);she was my soul mate.

Mademoiselle Economidis

With the Stamatin daughters at Dr. Lister 1,with Dănuț and myself, and others whom I donot remember, our parents had organized aFrench class and they all paid Mlle Econo-midis to teach us twice a week. The classestook place at the Stamatins’; we would nothave had enough space for them in our home.There, around Christmas, I ate fondants forthe first time. I had not known that somethingso delicious existed in the world. From the Sta-matin girls I used to borrow books later on;those I owned had been exhausted long ago,read over and over.

Miss Economidis had short straight hair,dyed like copper. She stood upright, naturallyelegant, lived by the Pioneers’ Palace, in thesame house as writer Nicolae Batzaria, and sheasked us to write portraits of acquaintances inFrench and read them to each other. I remem-ber how I listened to a portrait written byChiți, the elder Stamatin sister, without realiz-ing it was depicting me. I was likewise sur-prised, later, listening to my own voicerecorded on tape, unable to perceive in it any-thing familiar. Chiți was speaking about thedetermination with which I defended mybrother against other children.

The cobbler’s at number 12, Strada Dr.Lister. A man of about fifty, grave and sad, sur-rounded by patches of leather sole, shoes, san-dals, worn-out boots, soldier’s boots, leather ofall sorts, shoe cream and dyes, lasts, pliers,drills, blakeys and an unlimited number of

tools. It might be because of him that I havetaken lately to describing the disorder of pa-pers surrounding me at the office, at school orat home by saying “it’s like a cobbler’s shop”.

This kind, pale, soft-spoken man mended,dyed and straightened the worn-out shoes ofthe whole district, he helped us all to a lighterstep. He seldom smiled, I never saw himstanding, only sitting down on his low stool.His workshop was located in a dark garage, wewould go down a slope to enter it.

Tram number 14

In my childhood, tram number 14 passedalong Strada Dr. Lister. Children would putcarbide on the rails, which exploded with abang when the tram hit it. The tram stop wasin front of the Meinl store. Meinl sold coffee,sometimes oranges, each wrapped in its ownthin paper wrapping. Close to Meinl there hadonce been a flower shop, with windows alongwhich water streamed down, mysteriously, atall times – I dimly remember a moment ofwonder when, not finding a word for the mag-nificent flowers, I created one myself, and Isang it like an incantation, over and over again,in front of the window: ciuli (pronouncedtschiuli). By 1948 the flower shop had longbeen replaced by a grocery store to which Iwould be sent to buy butter, sometimes ham.Butter was brought in large cakes, from whichslices were cut off with a big knife, the waythey also used to cut the halva in the storeacross the street. I left the shop with the slice ofbutter wrapped in white paper and on the wayhome I would eat from the good cold butter,too good to be wasted on bread, so tasty, sweetand fresh as it was.

A round market

I see it as in a dream. The St. Elefterie Market.An American-like glass-paned bank building

rises now on that spot. Our market was round,with dark shops, each shaped like the segmentof a circle, with the goods exhibited outside, atthe front. They would sell there butter madeout of buffalo cow milk, with patterns stampedon it. They would sell chickens, and when Mr.Vasile the concierge was not to be found, cut-ting their throats posed a problem. At the cor-ner, in Strada Costache Negri, was thebutcher’s, where during those years, to mygrandmother’s dismay, they would sell mostlysinewy mutton with a pungent smell, whichshe, a Bohemian from Banat, would reject in-stinctively. Just as the Bucharest people did, asa matter of fact.

The C.A.M. kiosk at No. 2,Strada Elefterie

The imprint of the steps that brought us to thiskiosk would have dug, in time, visible furrows.There we bought the newspaper, stamps andenvelopes with stationery (always slightlycrumpled and smelling of cigarettes). Therewe found matches or fiscal stamps.

Next to the kiosk a peddler of layered icecream set up his stand each summer. I wouldrun from home with a soup bowl in my hand,pay in a rush and run back home as fast as mylegs could carry me, climbing the three storeysat once, with the ice cream dripping slowly, inits different colours, and we all marveled at itsfestive composition and at the sweet coolnessit left in our mouths. About once a summer aman came there to tin pots and pans, or tosharpen knives. Later the minuscule gardennext to the kiosk turned into a place with abarbecue for sausages.

Pontiac and Buikeikt

In Bucharest at that time they still used the oldcars, from before the war, fixed and patchedup endlessly. In the park with the statue, my

brother and I would while our afternoon awayguessing at which make of car would drivefirst down the Bulevardul Ardealului. I do notremember what the stakes were, but I still hearthe triumphant tone in which one of us wouldcry out loud: Ford! Plimut! Pontiac! Buikeikt!(Plymouth and Buick Eight, of course, but wehad no knowledge of English whatsoever.)That’s how we played for hours.

The park as it was before theOpera was built

The alleyways of the park between the VenusArena and the Faculty of Law were covered inpebbles of many delicate shades whichscreaked under our feet and slowed us down.The leaves of poplars that I no longer manageto place in the landscape would shiver andshine in the sun. My mother came with a fold-ing chair and with a bag of eye-shaped al-monds that she would carefully crack openwith a special little nutcracker. Sometimes wewould take fruit cakes baked by our grand-mother with us, eating with relish the tasty im-prints that cherries or apricots had made in thedough.

I ran around on the grass, looking for

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House in Cotroceni. Behind it, St. Elefterie church

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flowers, through bushes, gathering branchesof Japanese quince or searching for twigs onwhich snails had blossomed after rain. A manwas hiding in the bushes, that I would laterlearn to call an exhibitionist. I did not quiteunderstand the hurry with which he was call-ing me, the strange look in his eyes, the insis-tent way in which he would urge me to getcloser. But mother’s voice, suddenly worried,would always come to my rescue in time. Iwould run towards her and forget in an instantthe humble, unspeakable gestures.

The Central Institute of Statistics: No. 31, Strada Brezoianu

My father’s office at C.I.S. was on the secondfloor. The big hall of the Office for Studiesseems to have been there too. I remember thatone day, when father took me with him – hewas not a Director yet –, I read out a new slo-gan on the wall: “Those who will not work,will not eat”. “What won’t they eat?” I asked,eager to understand this unheard of statement.It was my father’s turn, and his colleagues’, to

wonder. “What do you mean, what?” “Well,won’t they eat soup, or stew, or what won’t theyeat?” I remember answering, and, for a mo-ment, their faces lit up.

It was a time of bewilderment. Someoneat school had asked a similar question whenwe said good-bye to each other—and to theFrench School, which was closing, and sang“To the last one they will perish / the enemiesof the people”, – “Up till one o’clock when, onwhat day?” I found out then from the teach-ers, and my mother confirmed it, that in Ro-manian până la unu “until one o’clock” alsomeant până la ultimul, “to the last one.” It wasnot much clearer, but by then I had given uptrying to understand in depth every sloganand every song.

Going to school through the Ci[migiupark

In the short time he was director general of theC.I.S., my father had to use the official carmore often than usual. He had to get quicklyfrom one of the buildings of the Institute, theone in Strada Brezoianu, across the Cișmigiupark, to the others, the headquarters in theSplaiul Unirii, or to the one in Șerban Vodă,where the Archives and the garage were lo-cated. The driver, the austere Mr. Chelu,showed up every morning at No. 7, Strada Dr.Lister and from then on my father would nolonger walk me through the Cișmigiu park toschool—which was on Strada Christian Tell(whose name jingled for a long time in myhead like a tiny bell: cristiantel)—and send mybrother to kindergarten by car, but he submit-ted instead to the grown-up discipline ofsullen, motorized efficiency.

When we walked together to school, theamusements that my father invented were notfew. These were the years in which we atemaize mush in the morning, at noon, and inthe evening. Maize mush with jam in themorning. Maize mush with potato stew orcooked beans at noon. Maize mush fried in fat

Statue of Sanitary Heroes

or maize mush with milk in the evening. Theleft-over maize mush was wrapped everymorning by my grandmother for us. We tookit to the beavers and the deer in the Cișmigiupark, not far from the exit towards the Con-servatory. The beavers would hardly let them-selves be seen, busy as they were with theirwoodcutting on the small island on the pond.We would throw clumps of dry mush andwatch to see how they got them. Where thedeer were, there was a sour smell, from theneighbouring foxes. I would stretch out myhand with cold mush, their lips took it fromme delicately, my father looking on.

To get to Cișmigiu we would cross theElefterie bridge, leaving the Dâmbovița riverto our right. On the Dâmbovița quay, moreprecisely on the slope leading to the muddywater, poppy flowers were growing, and wewould talk about the probable number ofpetals; for me every flower had at least five,four said my father, five I would insist withconviction. I remember how I once saw himjump with ease over the metallic fence and rundown the slope, he stumbled a little, reachingfor a poppy that I could make out round andfull and most certainly having lots of petals.He came back triumphantly, there were four,all crumpled on top of each other. That is howI learned that common poppies, unlike thedouble ones, indeed have only four petals.

We walked on Bulevardul 6 Martie toPiața Kogălniceanu. Entering the park by therose alley, right after the Lazăr High School,we would look at the statues of writers. Thenwe went out by the Conservatory exit, wherein springtime an elegant little tree blossomedin pink, crêpe-paper tassels. I remember howonce, seeing that I was pining for them, my fa-ther broke off a twig and offered it to me. Ithad been a royal gift, he had assumed a seriousrisk, I thought, by breaking off a branch froma tree that was not ours, and, ever since, eachtime I pass by that place (where the tree liveson and probably blossoms just as wondrously),I remember the joy and terrified pride I feltone far-gone spring. He had won, in one sec-ond, my life-long devotion.

We would then pass an antiquarian book-seller, somewhere towards Calea Victoriei, notfar from the Athénée Palace Hotel. At times Istopped still to look at the guards of the RoyalPalace, turned into stone, as in the sleepingforest.

Russian language

Because of Russian, after the French schoolhad been closed down, my mother and fatherdecided it was better for me to repeat the year.I had started the French school at six and a halfand had “jumped”, in the middle of the schoolyear, from first grade into the third, as wasusual for the children who did well, so thatthey did not get bored. Instead of registeringme in the fourth grade at St. Elefterie School,my parents thought it better for me to repeatthe third year, so as to get used to the newschool, to the new teachers and subjects, andto start learning Russian after I had givenFrench some time to settle.

The chests

When he resigned, my father acquired somechests. They were large, made of oak, yellow-ish-orange, with handles made of thick,braided rope and with a sliding lid. They hadserved to store census cards and statistics doc-uments when the Institute was evacuated dur-ing WWII. In the after-war years theemployees still kept old provisions of minus-cule soldiers’ biscuits in them, of which I atemy share, heartily, each time my father tookme with him to his office.

He then put all his “personal” belongingsinto the chests. Letters, reading notes, photo-graphs, books from his private library, which,too numerous to be kept on our shelves athome, had been gradually taken to the Insti-tute and were now coming back to getsqueezed in the study room where my grand-

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mother slept and we children took turns doinghomework.

Months of careful selection followed.Some of the books would stay upstairs, on thethird floor, where we lived. Others would bestored in the basement chamber correspon-ding to our apartment. My father went up anddown the stairs. The chests, their lids slidopen, had been placed on top of each other tobuild deep shelves. Books were thoughtfullyand patiently arranged in them.

For a while life went on like this, with myfather at home, going downstairs to the base-ment to read, doing piece-work for the Plan-ning Commission and having, all of a sudden,more time for us.

In the spring of 1949, our basement cham-ber was assigned to someone else. The chestswere to be removed from there urgently. Fa-ther, together with a friend, moved books andpapers from early morning till late at night.They put them in a locked area in the base-ment. They took them there in batches, fillingbox after box, pouring DDT onto each newlayer, since the cellar was at risk from mice andcockroaches. The book chests, with their lidclosed tight, were piled up on top of one an-other. At the bottom, which you could notreach without moving everything away—thecellar was tiny and the chests, cubes with one-metre-long sides rising up to the ceiling, wereheavy—father had put the chests with thereading notes, works in progress and letters.He nailed their lids shut.

One day father did not come back fromthe library to which he hurried every morningwith writing paper and a slice of dark bread.No one went downstairs to the cellar again;even my father had stopped going to his booksa while before his arrest.

Years went by. The chests provided somany reasons for the housing authority to has-sle us. “What’s in them? Books smell. They at-tract mice. Basements are not for books.” Mymother firmly refused to open the door to thestorage chests. My brother and I looked some-times at the chests through the bars, whenthere were problems with the plumbing and

grandmother sent us to fetch water from thebasement in a bucket.

One spring the basement was flooded. To-gether with my father’s youngest brother andus, my mother unlocked the door. Climbingup the chests, we removed the lids of the upperones. We emptied them and moved their con-tents, layer by layer, until we reached the bot-tom. We did not open all the chests. The wood,solid and thick, had not allowed the water toseep in. The chests with their lids nailed shutstayed closed. There was a mouldy smell in thecellar. We put the books back into the chests,the chests in the pile; we children took somebooks that seemed legible to us upstairs. Forweeks the apartment smelled of DDT (Al-though the dictionary definitions speaks of acolourless odourless substance, in my mem-ory DDT stays white and with a definite smell)and we had sore throats. The cellar was un-locked again when, upon my mother’s death,the apartment had to be evacuated.

When—together with some friends—Ibrought the military chests, untouched for al-most 20 years, out into the daylight, andstarted pulling out the nails with a pair of pli-ers, a neighbor, a retired Securitate officer,stopped to see what we were doing and said:“Be careful, there might be bombs inside”.(“Lupta” [The Fight], 15 March 1985)

When they left for work

When he left from home to spend the wholeday at the Library of the Academy, my fatherwould take along a hunk of stale dark bread,the kind we bought on ration cards. At thebakery in the Strada St. Elefterie the shop as-sistant was a former university professor, onewhispered he had taught psychology. Fromtime to time his smiling wife came to help. Theration cards were in different colours, made upof small undetachable squares which we wouldcut gingerly with the scissors in the beginningand which, later, apathetic, we would tear awaywith bare fingers. My father did not have a ra-

tion card. My grandmother had a dark greyone. The unexplained symbolism of the twoexclusions did not escape us. It was echoed bylumps in our throats when we were offered acake at a cake shop, which my brother and Iwould swallow hesitatingly, almost with guilt.Our mother or father, who bought them forus, did not eat any. We finished ours quickly,eager to leave that space of unshared pleasures.

Father went down the stairs running, and,once in the courtyard between the two apart-ment buildings, he would turn as if by reflextowards the building where we lived and,slightly lifting his hat, he would greetwhomever was at the windows. Mrs. Vlădescu,a retired physical education teacher, on thefirst floor to the left; Mrs. or Mr. Fortunescu,rosy and smiling, retired as well, on the sec-ond floor, also to the left; on the left groundfloor, Dr. Abrudescu’s mother, who was thenover 80 and whose son managed to procureorange juice for her every single day. From theright side of the building, on the ground floor,Mrs. Plăcințeanu happened to look out intothe courtyard from time to time; she was thewife of a unversity professor who would latergo into hiding, only to be arrested soon after-wards as well. On the second floor Mrs.Moscos, a Greek, stood always at the window;her husband had also disappeared, they saidhe had left the country. Father would thenwalk away briskly, towards books and forget-ting.

Mother went to school with fatigue writ-ten in bold letters on her face. The telephoneconversations have long disappeared from mymemory. But I knew about hiring, downsizing,and purging, as I knew about the State Plan-ning Commission, for which my fatherworked now. I also knew about the Theses onRomanian Literature, which teachers taughtwhile waiting for the new handbooks to comeout; my mother read them gloomily whilepreparing her lesson plans at the unvarnishedfir wood table, over 2 meters long. The tablefilled up the hall, and was alternately covered,on one stretch, with plates and cutlery in themorning, at noon and in the evening, and on

the other with mother’s copybooks and books,or with those belonging to my brother and tome. Mother left the building without lookingright or left. Without looking back, she slowlydisappeared around the corner.

Provisions

To get the necessary provisions, my father hadgradually developed a genius that sometimescristallised into small miracles. In those yearsof poverty, a walk to the lakes outside the citybrought us back fish or some crabs, while awalk in the woods brought us snowdrops,transplanted in miniature pots. Friends fromall walks of life helped him bring us little sur-prises or buy us nutritious supplies for winter.From some he bought, in good husbandry,plum jam in large, deep earthenware pots,from others, also in enameled earthenware,pork fat with pieces of meat in it, or sometimesa little barrel with cheese, a little crate of ap-ples, or a bucket of wine. Strings of onions andgarlic appeared like decorations in the kitchen,potatoes were stored in the wooden box in thecellar. Once, I do not know how, a huge catfishfound its way into our bathtub.

When there was no time for serious shop-ping, my father managed to discover, in 10-15minutes, something good to bring home:halva, chestnuts, lemons. He walked fast,

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Ștefania Golopenția with her colleagues and students in a classroom filled with propa-ganda posters and portraits of the Communist leaders

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bought what he could, and went afterwards, bycar or on foot, slowly or in a hurry, to hiseveryday work, which needed to be done welland to which he had given full thought whilewalking or queuing up.

From the Peace Conference in Paris hehad come back in 1946 with a bunch of ba-nanas, the first I had ever seen. He watchedour reactions with curiosity. I do not knowhow Dănuț reacted, but as for me, my disap-pointment was absolute. For me bananas wereakin to maize mush.

Buying petroleum

We used two petroleum lamps to cook. Thecast iron stove, with an oven, was used spar-ingly, since wood was scarce.

I remember my father telling us once, ona dark autumn day, that since petroleum wasrationed to only 5 liters per person, we wouldall three need to go to the warehouse near theA.N.E.F., to get 15.

I carry in my hand a rectangular containertied with rope. The rope presses against theflesh of my hand as hard as the metal handlesdo. We queue up all three silently. With a senseof conspiracy, I do not look and do not talk ei-ther to my father, or to Dănuț. One should notfind out we know each other. Otherwise notonly would we be refused the petroleum, butwe would also be punished in some way, I donot know how. As if not understanding therisk, my father is smiling. We go back homeand, only after having crossed the large inter-section at the Elefterie Bridge, I calm downand accept to hand over the container of guilt.

The wool blanket

From the Unirii market my father once boughta wool blanket with white and grey stripes.The blanket was not new—it had lost its downand shine, but it was large and carefully folded,

and it would serve us well. Father unfolded ithappily. From its centre, on the last fold, a holeas large as a soup bowl gaped back at us. Hehad bought it on trust, he had not checked it.Looking at it now, he was saddened, not by thewaste, but by the disappointment. My mother,saddened too, but for other reasons, looked onsilently and tired.

At Str\ule[ti, D\m\roaia, C\]elu, atB\neasa and Fundeni

In October and November 1949, as I learnfrom the surveillance notes, we went for a walkwith our father every Sunday. Either becausewe had both grown or because our father hadmore time for us, we were no longer limited tothe park near the Faculty of Law, or to theBotanical Garden, or the Cișmigiu, as in for-mer years. Our walks get longer, more daringand offbeat. Father shows us Bucharest, withits surroundings, trying to get us accustomedto the ways in which the city could be criss-crossed by public transportation, available toall. We usually left directly after lunch andwent by tram (sometimes taking the wrongones), by bus and on foot all the way to the vil-lages of Cățelu, Străulești or Dămăroaia, to theforest at Băneasa, the lake and village of Fun-deni, the lakes Pescăruș, Tei, the Freedom Parkand the Metropolitan Church, to Mogoșoaia.

Sanda Golopenția at the end of the 1940s

We took along a food basket or one in whichwe could bring back home grapes, somepicked by us, others bought to complement ascarce harvest. Father gave us explanationsabout acorns and flowers, villages and hills, hetook us to a vineyard recently harvested, to seewhat it looked like and if we could still findsome grapes.

A.G. mentioned these walks he took withus almost as if he had foreseen we would beorphaned, as he said in a declaration. Hewanted to bequeath us memories. By way ofthe shadowers, the memories left in my mindbecome keener. As far as the walks were con-cerned, my father might have wanted to walkfor himself as well, too, to clear his thoughts,and forget his grief.

Our Sunday walks cease between 4 De-cember and 15 January 1949. It might havebeen bitterly cold that winter in Bucharest. Myfather needs to finish a project for the StatePlanning Commission and does not readilyleave his desk. Or he foresees, he knows even,that he will soon be put under arrest.

Grandmother

The Germans had bombed her house in Bo-zovici, in which she had lived as its mistressfor less than two years. Before that, she hadlived there after her divorce, as the daughter ofAnton Staschek and the niece of his cousin,with carefully minced rights and endless du-ties. The marriage to Simion Golopenția, whowas a Romanian Railroads employee, hadtaken her to various towns and places; toSlavonia, then to Cluj and lastly to Timișoara.Grandmother had insisted that Simion studylaw and take his doctorate; she had embroi-dered for money to support the household andhad studied with him, youtfully, at his side, togive him courage. Once he became a lawyer,the husband ran away with Scumpa (Dearie),in the year of the comet. Grandmother was leftwith three sons to bring up, feed, and dress,and, in order to make ends meet, she gave

room and board to youngsters that came fromafar to study in Timișoara’s schools. Lodgersand embroidery or macramé were the solu-tion; her parents had not sent her to school, asshe had hoped for in her enthusiastic teenageyears, and she could not become a teacher, asshe had dreamed. The house in Timișoara, ofwhich she was the mistress after the divorce,and the one in Bozovici, after her father’sdeath, hosted the short interludes of freedomin the life of Emma Staschek Golopenția, mygrandmother.

After the bombardment of Bozovici,grandmother had come to Bucharest to craminto our tiny apartment with us. She did thecooking and the washing; she would knit ussweaters from my father’s old ones, which sheendlessly unraveled and whose ply she knot-ted back together in silence for hours on end.Now and then an irrepressible upsurge of lib-erty awakened in her, and she would gatherher possessions—a china bibelot representinga young lady and a young man, both dressedin golden period costumes; the Bible with afew pictures, as the Catholics have it; her fewclothes—and she went to stay with her friendswho had also come to live in Bucharest, to theCloșan family, or to the Itus. She spent a fewdays there, and then came back to ourcramped abode. When my father wanted tobring her joy, he would bring her books—inGerman or in Hungarian, which marked thesecret bond between them, and separatedthem from us and from the present, by usher-ing them back to a shared, past space.

On holidays grandmother would take mewith her and we would go to mass at St.Joseph’s Cathedral. Sometimes she would re-count, with humour, how thieves had robbedher and the children of the few things theyowned in the house in Timișoara. At othertimes she remembered how she came back toBozovici from school, on winter holidays, byhorse-drawn sleigh and she would see behindthem wolves’ eyes, shining in the dark. Or shewould cry and tell me to ensure that she wasburied in a Catholic cemetery. From us grand-mother moved to Bubi’s, my father’s youngest

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brother, who lived in Tei and had, in his turn,children that needed raising and hardships toovercome. And she lived all the time, there aswell as with us, with invisible suitcases in herhands, dreaming to go not even she knewwhere, to be free in a space of her own that shewas never granted. There was a Russian song Iused to listen to over and over again with myfriends in Bucharest in the 1970s, two versesof which stuck in my mind: Kliuci drojit vzamke/ Cemodan v ruke (The key shivers inthe lock/ The suitcase in my hand). Every timeI heard it – grandmother had died and hadbeen buried by then, as she had wished, in theCatholic section of the Bellu cemetery – Ithought of her. By herself on holidays, with anorthodox husband and orthodox children. Byherself with her grandchildren, who all won-dered at the way she talked (she said hă! foruite!, look!, and șcătulă for cutie, box), shedrank her tea (she used a huge cup of half alitre, from Banat, like the one I use for my teanow, here in Providence). An independentwoman who had married the villager SimionGolopenția from Pecinișca, braving the oppo-sition of her parents, who were better off, morebourgeois, and with higher expectations. Whohad studied law, together with him, encourag-ing him to get his doctorate. Who had urgedher children to study and who had been urgedlater by her eldest son, my father, and in agree-ment with her ex-husband, to go back to herparents’ home, so that life would get back ontrack and everyone would be at ease as far asshe was concerned. My grandmother whoused to set the alarm clock so as to be able tomeasure her hours of work for pay scrupu-lously. My forgotten grandmother, with hertroubled life, lived with dignity and pride,without joy.

Grandmother could cook food for us outof nothing at all. Potato stew with tomatojuice. Lentil soup, black—the blackest of all—or caraway soup, greyish. On holidays,breaded chicken with endives and floating is-lands. When she managed to make crepes, mybrother and I would swallow them withoutpity, as she was placing them on the plate. The

plate would forever be empty and grand-mother was pained like a child. Grandmotherwould wash the dishes and I would dry them.She would never throw away the grease left inthe basin for washing dishes, or the leftoversauces. She would mix them with the soil inpots that were more often than not simplecans, and which she used to grow lemon treesor small ungrafted grapefruit trees whoseleaves, when rubbed, would give off a refresh-ing scent.

What upset her was when we came homelater than she expected us to, without havinglet her know in advance. “Dog or kitten, I’llbe late”, that’s all you should have told me, shewould say with annoyance, and her strangewords did not make us laugh, they expressednot only her worry, but also the suffering atwhat seemed to her our lack of delicacy, therudeness of children unable to anticipate theconcern of those who love them.

Mother

My mother would leave for school in themorning, come back and do homework withus; she would struggle to obtain for us, besidesthe food grandmother cooked, some milk, orbutter, or ham, or fresh eggs; she would takeus for walks in the park near the Faculty ofLaw, in the one with the statue or in the Botan-ical Garden, where she always chose the sunnybenches near the hot house and the labyrinth.As the one under surveillance was my father,and as they were sharing their tasks, as, fur-thermore, my mother had to prepare, at home,the lessons she was going to teach and do allthe housework, together with grandmother,the agents see her only rarely going out shop-ping or walking with my father.

She had heaped her books in a bookcasein the bedroom. Not having a desk of her own,she had crammed her field research notebooksand her articles next to the linens, in thewardrobe there. As her cooking ambitionswere not especially strong, mother had given

over the kitchen to grandmother. My fatherhad his own study, doubling as bedroom formy grandmother. In the dining room, at thelong table, mother wrote and read next to us,while we were drawing, learning to write orread. In a way, my mother was the most de-void of her own space in our house, where noone was in fact enjoying one.

During the first two grades, my motherhad followed my progress attentively, with eyesthat never missed anything: she would have alook at the assignments I had written, ask meto rewrite them when she was not satisfied,and show me how to draw tubers or butter-flies. Now she was doing the same with Dănuț.In those years without radio or television, mymother was, above all, the background voicethat called us out at the sea of books, readingto us as only she could do it. Her voice was fulland warm—in her youth she had sung unri-valled, the researchers of the Gusti teams hadnicknamed her Maria Neichii—and she wouldselect for us vivid texts that would stay in ourmemory. I fell asleep many times listening toher reading Ispirescu’s or Grimm brothers’fairy tales, which at one point I knew by heart.I hear her reading to us poems by Eminescuor Coșbuc, later on from Arghezi. As she wasreading to us about the deer dying in the for-est of Petrișor, I could not know that, muchlater, she would likewise die alone one night,our brave and sad mother, strong and fragile.

Twice a year, in spring and autumn,mother took us on our ritual shopping tours.We went to the commercial Strada Lipscani,passing by Șelari.

We bought sandals, shoes or boots, ac-cording to the season, or cloth from which thetaylor made us coats. We dropped by at thedrugstore, where mother composed her eau deCologne, asking the shop assistant to mix twoparts of lavender oil, one of chypre and one ofpatchouli. I would look intently at the funnel,at the liquid flowing slowly through it. Muchlater, in Mexico, I saw perfume makers use thesame gestures when creating scents to order.Mexican women, though, asked the perfumersto blend for them, as best they could, French

fragrances—Guerlain, Dior—or Italian andGerman ones, and pour them into vaporizingvials.

Once, when mother took us into town, wesaw, near the clock in front of the University, abear dancing. He stepped on soft paws, to thesound of the tambourine, over the back of the“patient”, people lay down for him withoutfear, mother and we wondered at their comingback to life afterwards, watching them movegingerly to check if the “treatment” hadworked.

Once or twice a year my mother broughthome a seamstress, who came with her sewingmachine and cut out and sewed for a day ortwo, making us new clothes and mending theold ones like in fairy tales. She sewed usblouses, shirts, school uniforms, and we felt ir-resistible for several days afterwards.

When I did not know something I wouldask mother. She was then, and later, our will-ing encyclopedia. It was from her that I re-ceived, one after the other, the books that shethought were worth having. Alice in Wonder-land at some point, Saussure’s introduction inlinguistics later. With Dănuț and with me,mother took apart for several years the syntaxof sentences that she would on purpose makeas twisted as could be, getting us used to the

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Dan Golopenția at the end of the 1940s

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pleasure of rearranging them clearly. It is fromher that I learned Romanian, I learned todream of words from her. Dănuț told me oncehow he misses, even now, the moments whenthe word in the book, the voice that utters it,and the ears that listen to it are brought to-gether, with imagination, in the act of livingtogether, and not by pressing a switch on anelectronic broadcasting device.

Our mother wanted us to learn foreignlanguages and enrolled us both at the Frenchkindergarten behind the Biserica Albă. I got togo for two years to the French school in StradaChristian Tell, with public exams whichmother never failed to attend. This school, inwhich my father had not believed, served mewell later, as it gave me confidence in my com-mand of French, learned through games andsongs at a young age, and through a primerand other textbooks published in France.Later, after my father’s death, mother wouldgive private lessons in order to be able to payfor our German lessons with BrotherAthanasie from St. Joseph Cathedral, or, forme, Greek lessons with our neighbour a fewhouses down on Dr. Lister, professor Marin,discouraged and bored in those years – he wasthe “Submarine” professor character inCișmigiu et Comp. Always inventing new oc-cupations for us, she would take us to the Clubof Employees in Education to learn to play thepiano, or Esperanto, and, in my case, to makemasks out of paper-mâché. She would take usto the theatre and the opera, buying cheapertickets through her school, or to the cinema.One summer, after her step-father passedaway, my mother unexpectedly inherited asmall amount of money. She transformed thatsummer into a movie festival, and for as longas the money lasted we would go twice or eventhree times a week to the open-air cinema,watch a movie and then eat grilled sausages orsteak. Who else could compare to us, for ourmother was coming out of her depression andshe had reinvented, towards the middle of the1950’s, joy and playfulness.

About herself, about her childhood, mymother almost never talked. I found out a lit-tle something by listening to her poems or

reading her letters. A fragment of her poem,Shutter, allows me to imagine bridges betweenher as a child and us at that time—she hadbeen brought up by a grandmother after hermother had remarried: “You cover me lightly/ and you bend / smiling / gently / to read inmy eyes / from close by / my melancholy /weighty / not to miss anything. / How lucky /that we have eyelids!” (Ștefania Golopenția,Sporul vieții [Life’s Gain], p. 268). Dănuț andI were both like her as a child, and she wouldlook back at us with the same full gaze that hadonce been directed at her by her grandmother,the hide-and-seek game between those whoknew and those who were learning to love hadstarted again.

We never went on holidays with both mymother and father at the same time. Mothertook us a few times to Bozovici, to Băile Her-culane, to Sinaia (where the Institute for Statis-tics had a villa for employees), to ourgodmother in Hodac—a teacher like herself—whom she had made friends with while doingfield research. With father we went once toSebeș, one summer when he gave a course onsociology and statistics for the C.I.S. staff. Weate wild strawberies and cream in our roomevery evening and I saw purslane flowers forthe first time in the Cotoras’ garden.

After our father was arrested, mothernever came on holiday with us again. For atime she would go, with other colleagues, totake care of other people’s children in summercolonies, getting, in exchange, places for us inparallel ones. I remember that we were the firstto receive letters when we went to camp. Shewould take us to the station, go back home andwrite each of us a letter or a post card so thatwe would not argue. Then we grew up, and onthe rare occasions that we went anywhere dur-ing high school or college, our mother wouldstay home, receiving our letters, or those fromfriends or colleagues who reported on theirsummer joys. She bore with difficulty thesteaming hot summers which offered her norest, dreaming at times of a journey to Craiova,the town of her childhood, which she nevermade.

The wonderful Mr. Negru of ourgrey childhood

I can barely picture him, I would like to seehim clearly, to have his photo. He was not verytall, had a moustache and an aquiline nose, afaint smile about the corners of his lips andgrave eyes. Paradoxically, he seldom came tovisit while my father was free, but became ournever-failing visitor after his arrest and subse-quent death. He was the only one who cameto see us regularly. There were several otherkind-hearted people, Nicolae Economu, IonApostol, Iuliu Mălinaș and Alexandru Nistor,who thought of us on every Christmas, allthose long years. But Mr. Negru came to seeus all the time, he was a part of our lives.

Having become a dental technician withstoicism and a sense of humour (he wouldonly return to the field of the history of statis-tics in the 1960s), joking about the fact that hisfirst name in the phone directory was Jenică(from his wife Elena’s middle name, a confu-sion that sometimes proved to his advantage),Mr. Negru had something to say to each of usin those dark years. With my grandmother hetalked about the Banat. With my mother aboutschool, the new curricula, D. Gusti, his Socio-logical School and the employees of the for-mer Institute of Statistics, about the trivial orimportant events in our lives: that I had notbeen made a pioneer, that we had to go tocamps if we were to go on holiday at all. Withmy brother and me, he would talk about les-sons and walks. He took over and on many aSunday organized outings for us. He mighthave been the one who took us to the SimuMuseum once. He had a nephew, Nini, and thethree of us made an eager team whom he leadat a brisk pace to stadiums, museums andparks. I remember that during a walk he talkedto us about big transportation containers thatcould be moved as single units and about thefact that they had been conceived by a Roman-ian.

Our mother, who had long ago given upon any visits, took us to the one-room apart-

ment on Strada Batiștei, where Mrs. Negruprepared for us a delicate beef salad withchicken breast instead of beef and apples in-stead of pickles. We would talk at length, asfamilies do, the Negrus were a good, reassur-ing presence. Mother would smile for a mo-ment, we had friends.

When we were really short of money, inspite of the private lessons my mother gave inorder to augment her teacher’s income and tobe able to support the four of us, motherstarted to glance more and more often at thebedroom closet that contained all her posses-sions and at the black wardrobe in the corridorin which some of my father’s belongings werestill stored. What had not been turned over orunravelled to be refitted for us children wastaken out, critically examined and shown toMr. Negru. Mother’s French evening shoes. Fa-ther’s gold watch. Other objects I do not re-member. Mr. Negru came by, evaluated them,established the minimum price below which asale could not be conceived of, and made plansabout when and with whom and with whichother objects he would go to the flea market.Flea-market Sundays were always cold andrainy, as if on purpose. As evening came, Mr.Negru, shivering, returned from the flea mar-ket with the news, his face grey. Most times hehad been unable to sell anything. But he hadconversed, around a primus stove on whichtea was brewed continuously, with such andsuch a person, who had come to sell this andthat object, and he recounted with humour thelatest happenings in town. We all relaxed, theflea market was at least interesting, if not anopportunity to improve our finances. Mr.Negru left, having consoled us indirectly, a fewweeks later another sale was in the planning,our problem was that we didn’t have much tosell, nor were people able to purchase much.

After a while Mr. Negru started writing.He wrote about the village of his childhood,Toracul Mare, in the Serbian Banat. He wouldread from his pages with an equal voice, aslightly skeptical expression on his face, wait-ing to see what my mother and grandmotherwould say, how we children looked at him. He

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was a gifted storyteller, we listened to him onevery occasion, caught in his time and space,forgetting ours. I wonder what happened tothose texts; they deserved to be published.

When we grew up, Mr. Negru was part ofwhat happened to us: University admissionand graduation, searching for jobs, my wed-ding, Dănuț’s departure for the United States.When the time for the great departure camefor me as well, it was to Mr. Negru that I wentto say good-bye. Mrs. Negru had died not longbefore. From a drawer he took out a cross witha little gold chain that had belonged to her, andhung it around my neck, like a father. His eyeswere wet; he was thinking, as we did, that itwas not right, not natural to leave for ever, aswe then thought, the country where you hadbeen born and where you had known yourparents and your first friends. I believe he wasthinking of my father, of his imprisonment, ofmy mother, and of disintegrations.

I wonder whether my father had nottalked to Mr. Negru about our walks, maybeeven about his arrest, which he saw coming.Whether he had not asked him, as I learned

much later he had asked our aunt Maria, towatch over us and help when possible. But Ibelieve, I know that Mr. Negru would havecome to us even unasked.

When I went back to Romania, after 1989,Mr. Negru was no longer alive.

Meeting Mrs. Negru in Ci[migiu

I cannot leave untold the story of my lastmeeting with Mrs. Negru. I was walkingthrough Cișmigiu, where the beavers were,without thinking of them, it was towards theend of the 1970s, and I saw her all of a suddenin front of me. She was walking deep inthought. She told me then, with sadness, thatshe no longer understood any of those dear toher, who were all trying to convince her tohave a biopsy, to see what could be done abouta cancer she seemed to have. With her large,grave eyes, Mrs. Negru was telling me shethought this was almost indiscreet. She did notwant to know what would cause her death anddid not want the others to know it either. Sadand lonely, she was thus walking with her ill-ness, accepting her death and wishing for onething only: that the others accept it too, natu-rally, with firm delicacy, without fuss. Thisstayed in my mind as a lesson.

The Simu museum, the Antipa museum

I remember the sculptures at the Simu Mu-seum in a space full of light that does not re-semble in the least the images of the halls I seeon the Internet. It could be that the first visitwe paid there with my father got overlaid inmemory by a later one, in which I still see fa-ther next to us, but could Mr. Negru havetaken us there instead? I remember I went tothe Simu museum shortly before it was demol-ished, it was already isolated from the city,shrouded by fences, and people came to see itonce more, to say good-bye.

Surveillance note on Anton Golopenția (1948)

On the other hand, some time before,whether long or short I do not know, I see thevisit to the Antipa Museum, the amazement infront of the whale-turned-house, inside ofwhich I vaguely imagine a possible life that Icannot find words for yet. And my father nextto me, who does not break the spell, but keepssilent and seems to smile, vaguely.

Going up

We lived on the third floor and we oftenwalked together as if joined at the hip, mymother, my brother and I. A Siamese family.We went together to Lipscani to shop wisely,as each season required. We went to the pri-vate pastry shops offering kataifi on Bulevar-dul 6 Martie or to open air movies. To aconference or to an esperanto lesson at theteacher’s club near Piața Kogăl niceanu. Tobookstores, the botanical garden, or to the the-

atre. Sometimes we would pay a visit tofriends. Every time we came back, whileclimbing purposefully the numerous steps, be-fore reaching the second floor, mother wouldsuddenly stop. She stood still, speechless, herleft shoulder slightly lowered. We did not over-take her. We kept silent too. Sometimes wewould hear the clear buzz of a bee around us,or a tired fly hitting against the window pane,the clatter of cutlery and faucets from the openwindows of the kitchens in the opposite build-ing. Moving from that place seemed after awhile quite impossible.

Frozen on the step I wondered, almostbreathlessly, what would happen if this timemother could not climb all the way up. If wewere to be discovered on the staircase in ourgrave statue game by our neighbours. Thoselong minutes passed slowly. We guessed at andshared our benumbed tiredness. Then, with-out a word, or even a sigh, just as unexpect-edly, my mother pulled herself together and,light as a feather, started climbing up the stairsagain.

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