"If you don’t promise me you'll go to the doctor or ask the doctor to come and see you, I won’t give her any brandy, do you hear me?”
My mom ended up giving him the brandy. He promised to go for medical treatment, but it was February 1991 before we learned that he hadn’t gone. He poured the brandy on the wound and in his stomach, too, and got better before New Year’s Eve. However, in the long run that choice was a very poor one.
Iliescu wanted very good servants when he battled the liberals and christian democrats for power, so his government started to give gifts to the revolutionaries.
There were commissions formed and if people could prove they were involved in the events or got wounded they would receive a fortune.
Vasile couldn’t receive anything. He was shot but got no award. So he missed out on the apartment that others got, the 500 square meters of land inside a town or 10,000 square meters outside towns, tax exemption for life on a piece of real estate of his choice, among other benefits.
Others were not even shot and hit the jackpot. Like the mother-in-law of the 2009 Presidential Candidate, Mr. Geoana. She was, like many in the television station, not a victim but a beneficiary of the communist regime. So after the Revolution she claimed that she had dropped a box on her right leg and got injured. And she hit the jackpot. And 20 years later still claims that that leg hurts, but now she points to the other leg, or at least that's what we read in the newspapers.
Mr. Geoana, too, was involved in the Revolution. His father, the famous Securitate General Geoana introduced him to Iliescu. "This is my son, Mr. President! Our country needs young people like him”, he said and left the young Geoana with him.
I met him in the summer of 1996. My boss held a party for him when he was appointed Romania’s Ambassador to the United States. Years later Iliescu got sick of him and called him "the dumb one”, and that name stuck with Geoana so well that if you search for "prostanac” you can see that he ranks number one in both Google and Yahoo.
Anyway, Romania was too poor to award all those who really fought in the Revolution with houses and land. Or got injured when looking for booze, like Vasile.
As my mom banged down the phone Teodora was already opening the gate.
It was the 24th, Christmas Eve and we had to leave the door open for the carol singers.
Teodora had the kids with her, three very beautiful little girls and they sang. My mom instantly warmed when she saw them. So she invited them inside and gave them sweets and money. Then asked their mother to not let their father to take the money from the girls. He used to. Over the years we gave them a slide, a bicycle...and he traded all their toys for brandy.
He even traded his fridge for alcohol but that particular trade was not a good one at all, despite the fact that he got almost one month's supply of it.
"He traded his fridge for pufoaică brandy”, shouted my father one day after he came home from work.
And the rest of us replied together "Wwwhhhaaaaaaaatttttt????”
You’d go "What?”, too, if you knew what pufoaică brandy was.
So, here’s the question: have you ever seen pictures of Russian soldiers or Russian workers in winter? If the answer is yes, then you probably know that the Romanian name of what they were wearing is "pufoaică”.
The story goes that Russian winter clothes, when introduced into a common latrine, start fermenting when in contact with urine and feces and where there is fermentation there is alcohol too. Nobody knows who it was who dared to boil and then distill this fermenting sewage but someone must have because cheap alcohol lovers got to drink it.
"They probably produce it industrially”, my father once said, obviously full of admiration for the ingenuity of the people who made booze from clothes and shit.
Those were the times we were living in! And what times they were! It’s interesting to think back and realize that I never ever heard of people getting sick after drinking that pufoaică brandy. It seems that the only downside to it was the awful smell. But who we are to judge them? Japanese potato brandy doesn’t smell good either and some bottles cost more then 100 dollars each.
But over the following years of economic downturn when people started to lose their jobs and inflation skyrocketed with prices going up almost daily, other Romanians got smart and added chicken poo mixed with the paste obtained from water melted arc welding sticks to the pufoaică brandy recipe. And that got even more alcohol out of it. Some drinkers forever ruined their health while others were faster and simply died.
Newspapers reported on pufoaică brandy but their articles were to sell papers not to point out to the government the plight of its population.
"Must have been the heavy metals in those welding sticks” was the popular conclusion given at funerals.
"He shouldn’t have drunk that pufoaică brandy. Matrafox is much more safer”, was another popular comment.
Now, if you are confused and don’t know what matrafox is, I can tell you that it is something that is very easy to make. Just take an ounce of any alcohol based aftershave that you have in your house, pour it into a two liter plastic bottle, add the contents of a peppermint toothpaste tube, some sugar, fill with water and shake. And shake. And wait for a day or two and then you can label the bottle "Matrafox”. It’s still a popular drink in Romanian prisons. It gives the euphoria that real booze gives and the headaches the following day too. Or maybe just the headaches, I don’t know for sure, since I didn’t have the guts to taste my homemade Matrafox.
But again, those were the times. People were made poor by Iliescu and his men, people became desperate.
But the bright side of those times was the beautiful silver plated Christmas Tree in my parents’ room.
My mom and my sister were looking at it and turned it around to find the best side that would face the door. Our house was already super clean and we were eager to start covering the tree with our glass decorations. The house was so warm. As usual in winter when the gas pressure dropped we supplemented the gas with firewood, twice a day, in the morning and before going to bed. The defrosting tree started to spread its perfume throughout the house.
That was the moment I was waiting for all year. The real smell of Christmas.
"If we'd had oranges it would have smelled even better”, said my sister, reading my mind.
"I’m sure next year we'll have plenty”, my mom said as she left to start cooking and baking.
She was as usual, right. In less than one year oranges were as common as apples and we didn’t put them under the Christmas tree anymore. Strange as it was, our last real Christmas was in 1989. It died right there with the two Ceauşescus and nobody cared to notice.
Things turned so commercial afterwards. People bought plastic Christmas trees and pine scented air fresheners to replace the real thing, candles were forgotten and replaced with Made in China Christmas lights, candies were no longer hung on the tree and obese kids do not worship them since they fed themselves on Swiss made chocolate bars every day.
Maybe it’s wrong to complain like this, but as a carol singer you now are more likely be greeted with the same brands of Christmas cookies that everybody has, on the traditional rounds on the 24th, than the carefully homemade fruitcakes and cornulete.
I was still admiring our beautiful tree, before opening the boxes with the decorations, when my mom called me from downstairs. Teodora was about to leave and I had to cut the pine branches off the tree bottom for she was to take them home with her.
I had completely forgotten that the tree was always the same height year after year for the same reason. Vasile’s family didn’t have a tree so we would give them three branches they would hang and decorate in their living room. One branch was for Uncle Lulu who used to buy a tree for his living room, but a small one, and he always wanted a branch to decorate his kitchen, the place where almost all visitors were invited.
"Cut all four of them, Teodora will give one to Anişoara”, said my mom.
"Isn’t it too dangerous
to go home that way?” I asked , thinking about the town center where the revolution was taking place, but my mom replied:
"They came that way, and apart some half burned piles of books and smashed windows everything is back to normal”.
I didn’t say anything but I wondered why nobody cared to lift the curfew on me and my sister since everything was "back to normal", but I didn’t realize at that time that "normal” was just the fact that our town was peaceful. Nothing more, nothing less. That "normal” didn’t have a predictable future. The terrorists were still battling with the Revolution in Bucharest and Sibiu, the two Ceauşescus were caught and awaiting trial, their kids were imprisoned and their dogs were, to general applause, clubbed to death. What was next nobody knew, nobody dared to imagine. People were still afraid.
After you are afraid for so long it’s very difficult not to be afraid anymore. We were like caged animals that wouldn't leave their open cage. Brucan was aware of this simple fact, and so was Iliescu, but we weren’t and that’s why we accepted the new power made by people that served Ceasusescu and his despotic regime and that’s why we rejected the unknown, the Liberals and Christian Democrats.
The four branches came off that 30cm long tree end and my mom wired three of them together. They were beautiful. I wished I had such long branches last year instead of the plastic tree I bought in Japan for my kids. These are the times we live in now...
Back upstairs with my sister, after Teodora had left with her fairytale little girls, the brandy for her shot and drunk husband and the Christmas tree branches, we started to decorate our tree. First we attached the biggest glass ornaments, then smaller ones until the tree looked like it was supposed to look. Only then did we add the candies wrapped in colored paper and finally the candles.
The candle business was a delicate job, we had to carefully put them in place making sure they would burn without setting the tree and our house ablaze. But even that job couldn’t compare with the placing of the tree topper.
Usually my dad did it, but that year I had decided I was man enough to do the job myself. However, a chair to climb on was not high enough, and even a table was still short. Therefore it had to be a table, a chair and me on top of that.
Felicia was already starting to panic and in her usual way threatened me in a loud voice that she would call mom. But she didn’t. She wasn’t a snitch, so she had to stay and help.
I got a table close to the tree and put a chair on it, close to the edge facing the tree. Then I carefully climbed on the table, and from the table on to the chair.
I was afraid of heights. My knees were trembling when I lowered my hand to take the tree topper handed to me by Felicia.
It was a nice topper. It looked like a potato being screwed by a huge carrot - in one end, out the other. My father always laughed and called it a "dick”, and I didn’t understand what it meant, but our secular communist society had earlier rejected all Christian symbols and transformed the star-shaped Christmas Tree toppers into carrot screwed potatoes. Communism was about to end and I was about to find out that we had been missing a star on the top of our tree. But again, I didn’t know all that. My mind was glued to only my careful movements, the way I stood up and reached with my left hand to the tree top while my right hand was holding the topper tighter than it should. My body was tense when, holding my breath, I put the topper in place.
At that very moment many things happened at once. First my left hand released the tree. The tree snapped back and I thought it was going to fall down so I tried to reach back to hold it, but then I lost my fragile balance. The chair slipped off the table, my feet still on it, so I did the only thing I could do, I pushed it by suddenly straightening my knees so it fell with a loud crash on the floor while I was flattened, face down on the table. Felicia was shouting, pointing at some scattered glass decorations on the blood red carpet, but the tree was still standing so I closed my eyes and tried to understand something above the rush of adrenaline that suddenly flowed in my body.
No matter how big the adrenaline kick that I got falling down was, it was nothing compared with the one that Colonel Kamenici was experiencing at that very moment.
He was the commander of the military unit to which the Ceauşescus were brought on the 22nd, but at that moment he wanted to be anything but the man in charge.
He was biting his nails, turning in his head, over and over again, the words of General Voinea, the head of the First Army. "You can, Colonel, can’t you?...Understand that you are finished? It's you or Ceauşescu. Only one of you will survive this Revolution. Remember, it’s you or him”.
That was the night of December 22nd, and he wasn’t stupid. So he called General Stănculescu and asked for more troops to guard the dictatorial couple, but he was denied. "Then, if we are attacked and outnumbered, be sure, my General, we won’t hand over the Ceauşescus alive”, he said bombastically, like he was the main character in an American movie. But the answer that he got was not the one that he expected:
"That’s a good plan. When you hand them over be sure they are dead”.
That was the reason he was biting what was left of his nails. He was watching the TV like any other Romanian at the time and saw that the same people that ordered Ceuasescu dead on the 22nd, pretended for more than a day that they were still pursuing Romania’s president and battling his terrorists. Was it all fake? Perhaps, but he knew it was him or Ceauşescu, so he had to get Ceauşescu killed as soon as possible.
Only it was something quite difficult to do. He was still nervous about the missed opportunity from the previous day. Somebody called their unit and said that in 30 minutes they would be under heavy air attack so he turned to two majors he had in his commanding room and barked:
"Mares, you go and execute Ceauşescu! Tecu, you execute Elena! Now!”, and they went and everybody was waiting. They were listening for aircraft noise, but he was listening for shots, but those shots never came.
It turned out that his majors, Ion Mares and Ion Tecu, were waiting for the bombing to start before executing his order, so, as the bombing never started, they refused to obey. "It’s you or him”. Those words were ringing in his head, louder and louder. There had to be something else, he thought, something that would get him out of this unscathed.
I was getting down from the table while my sister was gathering the shattered glass globes on a piece of paper. She was using a real duck wing for the job, instead of a miniature broom. We always kept the duck wings for they were good for dusting and sweeping furniture, floors and carpets.
In the next room, our room, the TV set came to life. After switching it on it always took five minutes to start blasting out images and sounds. It had no transistors inside, only lamps, the same technology that was used in the western world in 40’s and early 50’s.
The revolution was continuing, it seemed. The terrorists were still attacking our dear soldiers and there were reports that they wanted to set Ceauşescu free.
While Felicia was finishing collecting the broken glass, I took a candy from the tree, unwrapped it and hung it up again, empty, on the same spot, and then I put the table and the chair back in their place.
We were done, and that tree was simply too beautiful. My father told me that Finul Moisică climbed full grown pines to cut off their tops for us and his family. Finul Moisică said the tops of full grown trees looked much better than young trees and the forest would stay intact. I didn’t care what part of the tree we had there, an entire one, or just a top. All I cared was that the tree looked beautiful.
I was still admiring our work when I heard a car stopping at our gate. I took a look from the window and I froze. It was a military car. If I had looked better I would have seen that it was an ABI, but all I saw was a young soldier behind the wheel. With my heart pumping even more adrenaline than a few minutes before when I almost broke some bones, I started to run outside. I had to put myself between that soldier and my family if they had murderous intentions. I had to.
> I was very close to the gate when the handle went down and it opened wide. The Colonel was there and behind him was my smiling father.
"Boy, you should eat more, you’re thinner than the last time I saw you”, said The Colonel in his usual happy voice. "Tell Nuţa we are here, and send her upstairs with food and wine”, ordered my father while he was showing The Colonel upstairs.
That was a first. My father would usually receive his guests in the kitchen, where they would eat, drink and smoke until the food, and the cigarettes ran out. The wine never ran out. We made a few hundred liters every year.
I said to my mom in a hurry what dad wanted and rushed upstairs to listen to The Colonel. He was always telling interesting stories and I really wanted to be like him in the future. At 18 I was supposed to go to the Army and I wanted to be in the paratroops. I was fascinated by planes and ships but I never had the chance to see a plane, except those flying at high altitude above us, or a warship. But as a paratrooper I would be around planes all day long and I would not work in the fields or on construction sites as the military usually did. Dreams. I had so many.
The Colonel came to us because he was a man with a mission. He came to inspect my father but as people were going home for Christmas Eve, from the town hall, he wanted to go to a warm place, too, and listen to carols and eat and have some wine. So there he was, and my father was more than happy to have him as a guest, despite the fact that on Christmas Eve we usually had people coming and going, not staying with us for more than 30 minutes.
That year was definitely special. My mom felt it, too, when she entered with food and wine. The kids’ room, the one with the TV set, was already filling up with smoke.
"Hey, you know it’s not allowed to smoke here”, my mom said, only half angry. "The walls will get dirty”, she pointed, forgetting somehow me and Felicia.
"Doesn’t matter. As soon as it gets warm we will have Sandu the house painter, here, to refresh the entire house”, happily replied my father.
He was talking sense. Every second year we had Sandu the house painter, repaint our house inside, and every 6 years we had him do his magic outside too. Along with Mr. Bara, the tailor, he was self-employed. We liked him but we couldn’t get close because he belonged to a different church. They celebrated the sabbath on Saturday, and that was the main reason Sandu refused to take a regular job and started to paint houses. Before 1989 only Sunday was a holiday, Saturday being a half day for workers. Another reason was that Sandu’s religion asked him to be a strict vegan. He couldn't eat meat, fish, eggs or dairy products, so we couldn’t invite him to eat with us on Sundays, the day we usually had guests. Sunday was a day we had to celebrate by eating our best food. We could be strict vegetarians from Monday to Saturday, but Sunday was different.
The Pigs' Slaughter Page 12