by Bel Mooney
‘Romania awake?
‘Ceausescu, WE are the people?
‘Romania awake?
‘My God, he’s confused – he can’t take it! Look!’ muttered Christian, putting out an arm to steady Ana. The crowd had lurched, almost pushing her over, when people not far off began seizing banners and placards from those who held them, and tearing then up in a frenzy. There was no resistance.
Ana looked around wildly. People were moving about on the balcony, shifting helplessly, used to order and lost in its absence – but she was no longer interested in them. It was the faces all around which grabbed her attention: men and women of all ages, some of them very young teenagers, all of whom threw back their heads and made their hatred known. He had faltered: the flow of old, bad, false language had, for a moment, been stemmed – so that now anything was possible. And the people knew it. Into the vacuum where the lies had been, they sought now to pour the truth: a cacophony of different sounds, harsh and discordant, and yet liberated to be so.
Ana felt something blowing up inside her like a balloon, so that she felt dizzy – as if the pressure from the swirling mass around her, and the growing lightness, might lift her off her feet and allow her to float freely above the city, looking down on its chaos. Though Christian Luca’s arm was protective, it was restraining too, and she realized that she did not want it or need it, nor the support of Doina, who had seized her hand.
So Ana shook herself free, and stepped forward a pace, into the crowd, looking strangers in the face. She saw the history of her country in their expressions, fear struggling with disbelief, hope with knowledge, acceptance with rage. And she raised both clenched fists high, punching the air in time with the words that broke from her now, in a hoarse, ecstatic yell: ‘Jos Ceauşescu! Jos Ceauşescu! Jos Ceau-şes-CU’!
Others around her took up her chant, Doina and Christian too, baying at the dictator and his wife, crying for their downfall. JOS CEAUŞESCU–‘DOWN WITH CEAUŞESCU!’
She did not hear him return to the microphone, after the moment’s confusion – when the television transmission stopped. She did not notice his money offer of a 100 lei wage increase to everyone, and a 1,000 lei bonus for pregnant women. Ana shouted and screamed until she felt dizzy; then she found herself running, dragged by Doina, with Christian lumbering behind. Pressed by the crowds, sometimes struggling against the counter-current of those trying to enter the Square, they tried to keep together as they were carried along with a group heading for Boulevard Balcescu. At one point Ana cried out, ‘Why are we leaving? – I want to stay!’
But Doina shouted, ‘It’s not safe. Not if they start firing, Ana. We’ll…’ and the rest of her sentence was swept away.
All around them was a murmur, a dull sound like that of the sea. Ana could no longer distinguish individual voices shouting slogans; it was as if each new wave of people (pouring from their homes because they had witnessed on television the dictator’s fatal hesitation, that moment of confusion which punched yet another hole in the dam) was too dazed to cry out the obvious things. Instead the cries swelled incoherently to a sullen roar as they surged around Palace Square and its surrounding streets, flowing out into Balcescu and University Square, and heaving in a dark, whitecapped swell as the whine of helicopters began overhead, circling like birds of prey.
And then the crowds did call out together, ‘No violence, no violence!’ as they stared upwards at the darkening sky.
‘It’s wonderful! Ana – isn’t it wonderful?’ cried Doina, in her ear, as the surge pushed them together. But Ana could only nod, her throat red-raw and a sense of such madness that, were she to open her mouth, the sounds that came out might be in a strange language, a tongue she had never learnt – crying out inarticulately of a different existence.
‘Look!’ shouted Christian Luca, grabbing both of them and pulling them backwards, not caring who was in the way.
Armed personnel carriers were creeping forward, attempting to drive the crowd back. People screamed. There was a sound of splintering wood and breaking glass as people were pushed through windows in the crush.
‘Don’t give in! Don’t leave,’ people called, and the exhortation was taken up and passed from mouth to mouth, growing in strength as bent figures loomed out of the darkness, blood pouring from their heads and hands.
‘Don’t go home! Don’t give in! Don’t go away,’ Doina shouted, over and over again, and Ana knew that they would stand there forever, whatever happened, because of this shared awareness that now there was a chance to redeem all that was lost before, and to fill at last the vacuum of the spirit.
When they talked about it in the weeks that followed, neither Ana nor Doina could remember anything that happened during the hours they waited, just outside University Square, looking up at the lighted windows of the Intercontinental where silhouetted figures stared down, until they were driven away by the sound of firing. The sky was lit by tracer bullets. People began running down side streets, heads ducked, taking shelter in shop doorways. Christian, Doina and Ana stood with their backs pressed against a wall.
‘Come on, we’re getting out of here. To my place,’ he said roughly.
‘You can go if you like, but I’m staying,’ said Ana, her face alight. Doina agreed.
‘It’s not a carnival, you stupid pair! Those are real bullets, and you won’t serve any revolution if you’re dead. Look after yourself first…’
‘Yes, Luca, that’s your motto,’ shouted Ana angrily, despising him.
‘Look, all I’m saying is, let’s get out for a drink and a cigarette and a few hours’ sleep. At my place. Tomorrow …’ he shrugged. ‘Well, I’ll come back with you. OK? What do you think I am? The shoemaker’s finished, and I told you it would happen! I’m not going to miss it either. But now …’ He gestured up at the yellow patterns in the sky.
Not long afterwards he was brandishing a bottle of champagne at them, laughing aloud. ‘Look, girls! It’s French too. I was going to sell it, of course, but this deserves a celebration.’ He looked wild, his fat face shiny with sweat, greasy hair standing up in a crest where he had yanked off his hat. They tuned to Radio Free Europe and heard the first reports of the disturbances in Bucharest, and hugged each other, laughing aloud with the relief of being inside.
‘Isn’t it strange,’ said Doina, ‘that you don’t feel exhausted, when you know you should. I feel totally detached from my body now. As if it’s a shell I’ve been living in all these years, and now I’ve crawled out of it at last, into the light, and wonder why I hid in it for so long.’
Ana nodded.
They finished the bottle quickly, then started on the Johnny Walker, filling the room with smoke and trying to recall, in precise detail, the moment the shouting began.
‘It was over by the Athenée Palace’ said Doina.
‘No, nearer the front than that’ said Ana.
‘No chance! That’s all Party people. No, it was just by us.
‘Maybe it was us!’ giggled Doina, drunk now, and lying on the sofa.
‘It was all of us,’ murmured Ana, leaning back and closing her eyes, as the city whirled around her, and all its people sighed in her ears.
By the time the whisky bottle was half-empty, Doina was fast asleep where she lay, hair over her face, mouth slightly open. Ana walked unsteadily over to the sofa, bent down, and kissed her gently on the cheek. Then she went to the window and looked out. The sky was dark now. There was no sound.
‘What will it be like – in the morning?’, she asked, articulating with care, her head surprisingly clear while her body, she knew, was drunk.
Christian Luca lumbered over to stand behind her, knocking into the table on the way.
‘Different’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, it will be different.’
‘What will He do?’
‘God knows – but one thing’s certain, he can’t get back, not to where he was. Not after that.’
They heard a shot in the distance, and Christian pul
led her away from the window.
‘Be careful. I tell you, Ana, there’ll be a lot of killing. I know it.’
‘What’s strange is – I don’t feel afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore, is there? Not for me.’
Not understanding, he looked at her, his face softer and flabbier than ever because of the drink.
‘You’re so … beautiful.’
‘Yes, Christian, I know,’ she said, trying to sound light, as she started to move past him.
‘Come to bed with me. Please. Won’t you sleep with me, just this once? This night?’
‘You’re drunk.’
‘So are you.’
‘I’ve told you, Luca …’
‘Please.’ He reached out and laid a hand gently on her shoulder. She glanced down at it. He could have encircled her upper arm with that huge, nicotine-stained paw, and yet it lay there lightly. He towered over her, a gigantic fat man who repelled her physically, and who would have to make very little effort to force her to do whatever he wanted.
As if reading her mind, he said in a quiet voice, which had nothing in it of the pleading she had just heard, ‘I want you to want to.’
‘Why? To celebrate the revolution?’ She could not keep the mockery from her voice. His face seemed to collapse, and he dropped his hand.
‘OK, OK, forget it. I know I’m the ugliest man in Bucharest. They all make that clear. I can never get a woman.’
‘I don’t believe that, Christian,’ she said, feeling sorry for him, yet thinking at the same time that with his black-market goods he must be able to get any woman he wanted. Everyone has a price: you learnt that with the fairytales and lullabies.
‘Oh yes,’ he said bitterly, ‘I can get the whores and the slags, Ana, I can buy women, OK. But I want, I want…’
To her horror, a tear began to spill from one eye, and move rapidly across his puffy cheek. He stood there, hands by his sides, crying.
‘Christian, it’s the whisky that’s crying,’ she said gently, unable to prevent a twist of deeper compassion, ‘and … everything.’
They heard another shot in the distance.
‘I wish there was a revolution for people like me,’ he muttered. ‘You know, Ana, the liberation of the ugly.’ He tried to laugh, but failed. ‘Ah, but you don’t know, because you’re beautiful.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want somebody to want me, properly. I don’t ask for love, that would be too much. But just … to be kind, that’s all. It’s not much, is it?’
Ana looked at him and sighed. Outside, she knew, people were still on the streets. She thought vaguely about Him, and wondered when the real crackdown would begin, and with that sudden remembrance of the teetering world outside came a shiver, almost of desire. But the desire was not for Christian Luca. That could not be possible. It was to stretch, to grow, to push down the walls, and then to fly into the night sky.
And yet I pity you, Christian Luca, with your jokes and your bottles of Johnny Walker hidden with the icon in your cupboard, locked within your body as surely as all of us have been locked inside our brains, with no hope of freedom. Or at least, not before, not for us. But for you, fat and ugly as you are – never. No woman would want you – in America, or England, or France, or Australia, Luca, not unless you paid her well. But she wouldn’t be kind to you.
I could be kind to you. Why not? I’m drunk and I’m exhausted, but I’m not afraid. Everything’s changing: I can feel the ground shifting beneath my feet, and my mind shifting inside my head, believing, for the first time ever, that anything might be possible. Anything …
We have never even had the freedom to give – as precious as the freedom to take. Who can be generous in poverty? To give freely … well, that might be as valuable a revolutionary gesture as any.
She threw back her head suddenly and laughed; great ripples of mirth released her body into lightness. Christian Luca looked reproachful; he dropped his head, swayed slightly and went to turn away.
Ana stepped forward, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him quickly on the cheek. ‘You’d better lead me to your bed, old Luca,’ she said, ‘because I won’t find my own way.’
He could not speak. She almost despised his gratitude, yet pitied it too – and with that wave of pity came a kind of love. As she undressed and lay on the bed, averting her eyes from his nakedness, she wondered how prostitutes felt, going through the motions. Boredom certainly, revulsion often, desire never … Yet as she lay, and felt his hands trembling as they touched her breasts, her stomach, slowly and so lightly that, eyes closed, she could have fancied him a tentative young boy, Ana was surprised to feel that sudden curl of desire again, the first flicker of excitement of bodies pressed together, the sway, the release, the rhythm of everyone shouting, Romania awake! Awake! Awake!
As if in a dream he rolled over at last and entered her, and she barely felt his enormous weight as, mumbling incoherently in her ear, he thrust a few times then groaned. It was over. Tenderly she touched her own fingertips, barely reaching round the soft curve of his back, feeling at peace. It was as if the strange, dancing lightness inside her touched all corporeal things, so that she and Christian were floating on this rumpled bed, which smelt of unwashed sheets, cigarettes and sex, and the grotesque body which bore down on her was transfigured, through what she had given.
‘Oh Ana, Ana, I’m not good enough …’ he cried, and she felt wetness on her shoulder.
He flopped off her at last, and she lay staring up at the ceiling, as he curled like a giant foetus at her side, sniffing from time to time, and taking in huge gulps of air to control his tears.
‘Thank you … I’m sorry, so sorry …’
‘Sssh, Christian, there’s nothing to be sorry for.’
‘You don’t know. You don’t know what I’m really like.’
It’s over. Is it really over? Can He survive this? God knows, I feel that it might over, that we might be free, even here … Oh God, please let it be true, let it be true …
‘Shhh.’ She patted him as if he were a child.
‘What choice did we have – any of us?’ he snuffled. ‘It was so easy to do it. Everybody does it, Ana. It’s not just me, you know that. Don’t you?’
‘What are you talking about, Christian?’
‘I played both sides. I’ve always played both sides. Why do you think I’ve got all this, here? Oh God, if you knew, you’d despise me even more than you do now.’
‘I don’t despise you.’
‘You do, you do. I’m fat and I’m ugly and I’m a liar and a cheat, and I’m not good enough …’
Ana was barely listening. ‘Christian, tell me the truth. Do you think we’ve seen the beginning of the end?’
‘You’ve only seen one side. But how do you think I’ve been able to take such risks? I’ve been doing it for years, Ana – one philosophy, look after Luca. So I told them anything they wanted to know. I named the names all right, may God forgive me. But everybody does, don’t they? We’re all in it. We’re all to blame …’
‘But is it over?’
‘Yes, I think it is. I’ve had this feeling … And they’ve been running scared for a while. All sorts of rumours, of plots … I hear things, Ana.’
‘You would.’
He heard the irony in her voice, and buried his face in her shoulder. ‘Don’t despise me. I’m no worse than anyone else, am I? And now, it will be different. I’ll be different…’
‘Can you change, just like that? I don’t know – I think that if the Cobbler lives inside your head, you can’t get him out just like that.’
‘What about you?’
‘He’s not inside my head, Luca.’
‘I love you. I’ve loved you ever since you first came to Bucharest, but you were so bloody snooty, you didn’t seem to care that I fixed the flat for you, and so it made me mad. Fuck her, I thought. But this time, when Doina came and I met you again, I wanted to help you. I really do love you, Ana.’
He was crying again, little snuffling sounds like an animal rooting for food. ‘Maybe you don’t love me now, but you might start to. I’ll look after you, I’ll be good to you, Ana. You’ll need that, whatever happens. I’ve got money …’
Ana sat up and gripped her knees with her arms. The room was warm and whirled around her, whipped up by exhaustion and alcohol. Lost in the vortex she rocked back and forth, closing her eyes tightly so that red shapes danced all around her in the darkness.
Another distant shot.
‘What do you say, Ana? Will you try to love me? Will you try?’
‘If it’s over, if it’s really over,’ she said aloud, in a singsong voice, ‘then … I hardly dare to say it, Christian, I hardly dare.’
He groaned in despair, knowing she was not listening. ‘What?’
‘Then – I’ll be able to go and find Ion.’
Twenty-Four
He woke to the sound of gunfire. Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, like in the games they used to play, long ago, in another place, two fingers pressed together. ‘You’re dead!’
The room was warm. In the yellow light from the door he could see the mobile above his bed twirling slowly, little white mobile woolly things going round and round, a silver moon above.
‘Is it – for me?’ he had asked and she had smiled.
‘For you, little one,’ she said, ‘to help you sleep.’
And there were presents by the Christmas tree – he had seen them. Four or five of them, all wrapped in shiny paper and bearing his name. For tomorrow …
Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat.
Puzzled, he crept from his bed, not bothering with the slippers which stood by the radiator. The corridor was long; the threatening sound came from just along it, on the left. A whine … then voices. Then more gunfire.
Silently he stood at the open door of the sitting-room. They were watching the news. The baubles and tinsel on the tree in the corner shivered slightly, as though disturbed by his breath – but the two people on the squashy old sofa didn’t turn around. As images of violence flickered across the screen, they watched attentively, occasionally murmuring a comment which needed no reply, as people do when they share a view of the world.