The Pigs' Slaughter

by Florin Grancea

  had died with his wife and youngest son. The old ladies’ network

  was functioning and my grandmother said she would go with

  candles to mourn them and invited my parents too. Eventually

  they went the next day, shocked.

  "I hope they didn't commit suicide", my father said.

  "Ceauşescu doesn't deserve such gratitude.” And he was

  probably referring to the Japanese General Nogi, the same one

  that visited Romania and befriended our queen who committed

  suicide with his wife after his Meiji Emperor died.

  "No, God take care of their pure souls", they died in an

  accident. You know last night was windy, and they took a bath,

  after listening to the 'Joseph and Mary' carol. It was carbon

  monoxide. The wind had pushed the exhaust gases back into the

  bathroom and they didn't stand a chance, my grandmother told

  us. She was already candles in hand, going to give the news to

  other old women in town. How sad Christmas had suddenly

  become. Three days later their funeral was the talk of the town.

  The young men that sang to them their last 'Joseph and Mary'

  went deep into the forest and cut a huge pine tree. It wasn't a

  Christmas tree but a tree with which the boy that died that night

  would be married during the funeral for the afterlife. We always

  planted pines on the graves of unmarried boys, but nobody

  wished to plant one that particular Christmas. The people hated

  communism but cried when they took the three bodies to the

  graveyard. Comrade Stoica was a good communist and he had

  only friends. No enemies.

  With grandmother gone mourning and our games canceled

  because of the sad news, time was passing slowly. For me, for my

  family, but not for Ceauşescu. Or for his soon-to-be killers. The trial started at 1:20 pm not long after Nicolae and his wife had had their meal. Should they have known that would be their last one, maybe they would have appreciated it, despite the fact that it was meager. Not that Ceauşescu ate only French cuisine every day. He ate French cuisine on occasion but he was still a peasant's son, so he often ate like farmers, white bread with cheese and tomatoes. Except the bread and tomatoes he used to eat were fresh, and the cheese was handmade and didn't have that metallic taste added to it when it was processed by the state

  owned dairy industry.

  Now, there's a big chance you saw this trial on TV. With

  subtitles. Ceauşescu didn't take it seriously. How could he? He

  was accused of killing 60,000 people in Timişoara, of destroying

  and damaging buildings with explosions in cities, the destruction

  of the Romanian economy, and attempting to escape from

  Romania with more than one billion dollars in foreign bank

  accounts. That trial was insane. Senile as he was, he had been

  loosing it in his final years, he definitely thought it was a joke. It

  had to be. If his army killed 60,000 as his wife Elena had ordered,

  then he was supposed to be enjoying lunch at his office, as usual,

  not detained for the last three days. And by who? By Iliescu. He

  knew that Iliescu had been eyeing the role of Romania's

  Gorbachev, but he had believed that wasn't going to happen.

  And the things about the economy they had said. Romania was

  the only country in the world with no foreign debt. Romania was

  poor but independent and he had just been pressuring Iran and

  Libia to finance, with their oil, a new International Monetary

  Fund for poor countries.

  That trial was a joke. At least when he was arrested by the

  king's police before Romania turned into a communist state, his

  defenders did their job and defended him. Now, at his second

  trial more than 40 years later his defense, a man called Lucescu

  and another called Teodorescu, were accusing him as much as

  the prosecutors. What the fuck?! He was nervous. He could feel

  his wife was nervous too. There had to be a way to solve this

  civilly, like the people in East Germany or in Czeckhoslovakia

  had. He was trying to think of what he could offer in exchange for his freedom, when his trial ended, as suddenly as it had started. It was 2:40 pm. The trial had lasted only an hour and 20

  minutes.

  The judges left to deliberate but even that deliberation was a

  joke. They hadn't even finished their smokes properly when they

  were ordered back inside to read the verdict.

  Death by execution! It was 2:45 pm. The sentence was to be

  executed immediately, they said. Not even in Ceauşescu's

  Romania was it possible to kill people so easily. Romania, a

  dictatorship as it was, still had laws. People respected them and,

  when they didn't there were trials. But even mock trials lasted

  longer. And the accused had the right to appeal. Not since the

  end of WWII and the communist purges had people been shot

  like animals.

  Twenty years later I am happy for the Iraqi people. They had

  the chance to send Saddam to hell in an organized way. There

  was a trial and the trial didn't finish in 80 minutes. And Saddam,

  if compared with Ceauşescu, was indeed a criminal. The

  genocides he was accused of were real. But in Romania more

  people died after Ceauşescu was captured than when he was in

  power.

  I know now, twenty years on, that not one of those who

  ordered people killed in Bucharest, at Universitate Square or at

  the airport or at the Ministry of Defense, were prosecuted.

  Nobody ended up behind bars. General Stănculescu got a prison

  term, but only 18 years later, and he was out in almost no time.

  "What are you doing here, General?”, he was asked when he was

  found in a casino by the media. "Killing time”, was his answer. After being sentenced to death, Ceauşescu didn't have any

  time left to kill. Or to think. He was taken and despite his

  protests his hands were tied behind his back. He wanted to go in

  a dignified way.

  "You're hurting me! I raised you as I raised my own kids”,

  Elena was screaming at the soldiers who were ordered to tie her

  hands, but they didn't care. Everybody felt it was about time to

  end it all and looked forward to the promised freedom. Ceauşescu and Elena were dragged out of that room and a

  few meters away put against a wall.

  "He's first, then you!”, somebody informed Elena. "No way! We fought together, we die together!” she said and

  she showed more dignity than all the men in uniform in

  Targoviste's military base.

  Ceauşescu started to sing the The Internationale (the

  communist anthem), but when he heard the AKM's being armed

  he shouted:

  "Long live the free and independent Socialist Republic of

  Romania”. And then he died. It was 2:50 pm. Nobody organized

  a firing squad, nobody gave the order to fire! The soldiers started

  to shoot and nobody could tell who was first. They fell on their

  backs, eyes wide open gazing at the sky. At least they were able

  to refuse the black blindfolds.

  The fact is that the execution was so poorly organized that

  the cameraman brought especially from Romanian National

  Television by Gelu Voican Voiculescu didn't record it! He was

  about to change the batteries when Ceauşescu was sent to meet
>
  the white dove my grandmother's sister saw on her death bed.

  He got closer when the firing stopped and filmed the face that

  every single Romanian wanted to see that Christmas Day, their

  dead Ceauşescu, but there was not much to film. Blood was

  coming out of his nose and just he looked like all dead people

  usually look. My father didn't look much better when he died,

  five years and four months later in 1995.

  It was a nice spring day but he didn't feel so good and went

  home. He said to my mom that he would lie down for an hour or

  so, but when she checked on him he was unresponsive. Dr.

  Rogojan, the same old doctor that we asked to come in the

  middle of the night and paid a 100 lei came, and he simply

  announced, "Coma!”. Did nothing to my father, took his pay,

  doubled many times by the skyrocketing inflation of those years

  and called the ambulance. After he called it he went on his way,

  and my sister called me.

  I cannot say whether I was lucky or unlucky. I was living in

  Bucharest then, studying Journalism at the University and experiencing first love in the arms of Cosmina, a girl that wanted to be a babe, from my high school in Sibiu. I had no phone, no mobile phone, no pager. So my sister called Ms. Jenny, a 60 year old widow living next door, and she came and knocked on my

  door and I was there.

  "Come immediately, father is unconscious, we're waiting for

  the ambulance to take him to Sibiu”, she said, and I started to

  run and I went into the subway without paying. I had no money

  to spare. I was only hoping the train prices hadn't changed since

  the week before when I visited my family and didn't say "I love

  you!” to my father, as I have should have.

  But I was quite lucky that day to get the afternoon train.

  There were only three trains every day for Sibiu, one in the

  morning, another in the afternoon and the last one, a night train,

  so I was lucky to get it. It was crowded. Those days people still

  used trains to travel and I stood in the corridor and when I cried

  I opened the window to let the wind dry my tears.

  "Please God, not him!” I was saying all the time, but over and

  over I was remembering how, the previous night, while studying

  in the National Library, suddenly some poetry had entered my

  head and I wrote it down, reading it after without understanding

  it's meaning.

  "I sniff, I sniff in the air/ The smell of death and despair/ I

  sniff the Occidental wind/ And shout‚ I know death is wind/

  And sliced myself in two big halves/ One for Hell and one for

  Gods/ I sniff, I sniff in the air/ The smell of death and despair"! But I couldn't sense what was waiting for me in Avrig. Uncle

  Lulu was at the train station with his car, waiting. That was a

  first. Nobody ever waited for me at the train station, not even

  when I went as a child, every day, by myself to Sibiu with a

  broken arm, for rehabilitation.

  So I expected my father was already dead, but Uncle Lulu

  said that he wasn't. So I started to hope, only to reach home and

  see all my relatives there, all the aunties and uncles and cousins,

  all sweeping the front yard, cleaning the house, preparing it for

  the funeral.

  They were either lying to me or they weren't giving my dad a

  single chance.

  Only a long time after that day did I understand the drama of

  my father's death. He was executed after being judged and

  sentenced by people who were more ruthless than those that

  killed Ceauşescu.

  The Ambulance came a half an hour after Dr. Rogojan called.

  They looked at my father and waited for my mother to tip them

  generously. But we were poor. We had no money. The money

  that we had went to paying my studies and my one bedroom

  apartment in Bucharest. So, when they saw that there was

  nothing to take, they took my father with them. My mom wanted

  to ride in the ambulance, too, but they said it wasn't allowed.

  We'll take him to the City Central Hospital”, they had said and,

  through the closing door, they gave my mom my father's

  wedding ring.

  "Lady, you wanna keep that. If he dies and is put in the

  morgue before you get there, they'll steal it!”, they said and

  closed the door in the disorientated face of my mom. So what

  happened was that she panicked but had the strength to dial

  23850, the phone number of my Uncle Ion, and she spoke with

  my cousin Ioan and asked him to go to the City Central coz my

  father was almost dead in an Ambulance with some heartless

  people beside him.

  And she dressed in less than 3 minutes and still crying went

  out with the intention of hijacking a car, because we had no car,

  the train was hours away and a connecting bus with Sibiu was

  available only in the morning, once.

  My cousin first finished his meal and then walked to the

  hospital. The ambulance had already returned from Avrig, he

  learned, and the man inside was on a bed in the hospital waiting

  for medical help.

  But he couldn't enter the hospital, those were the rules, so

  he went and bought some flowers and some chocolates and gave

  them to a nurse and he smiled, and she smiled back and let him

  through. And he took the stairs because only the special elevator

  carrying people to and from the operating room was working, and only an hour and a half, after receiving that phone call from my mom did cousin Ioan finally get to see dad.

  "The moment I entered the room, blood started to flow from your father's nose” he told me during the funeral, and I thanked him for being there. That piece of information was all that we needed to know. It meant that my father didn't die alone, like an animal, but died like all human beings should, with someone watching over them, telling them, "It's OK, you are not alone, you have a loving family beside you”.

  My mom got there but it was too late. And it was our own fault that we were poor and had no money to tip the people working in the Ambulance. We were too poor so that was why we were judged and then sentenced and then executed by our motherfucking country, this time Iliescu's country. Romania couldn't provide for us all. There were industries to be dismantled and sold for the benefit of the chosen few. The teachers and doctors and all other public servants were paid only meager wages. My father was a public servant but when he died he had no decent shoes. That was why we buried him in mine. About 3000 people attended his funeral. He was young and he was popular. I was walking behind the horse led funeral carriage, and that funeral carriage was made of glass, and what I saw reflected in that unlikely mirror was the huge cortege of people walking behind me, my sister and my mom. There were enough of us for another Revolution, I thought, because 1989 was the last time so many people walked together through my town. The only difference was that my father wasn't at the front but the back and he wasn't being carried but walking with them. In 1989, on 25th of December, we never imagined that that was the freedom we were getting when we listened to the news on the TV that Ceauşescu had been executed. It was Christmas Day and people were cheering like it was New Year's, or like Romania had just won the Soccer World Cup. We were quite happy and satisfied too.

  "I'm so sorry grandfather didn't live to see this moment”, my dad said, referring to his own father. "He just hated the fact that he shared his birthday with Ceauşescu
, January 26th”, he said, and he was repeating himself. The truth is that my grandfather had also said those words so many times during his final weeks that we started to fear political prosecutions for the entire family.

  "Free Romanian Television", the new name of our one and only TV station, of course changed in the months following the Revolution to "Romanian Television", because it wasn't free, announced that we would see the trial and the execution. At that time other TV stations around the globe were already airing that macabre show. Some people in Romanian Television were already thinking of making money for themselves.

  So we were just waiting around when dinner time came and my father said we should not eat in the kitchen but set the dining table in the middle of our room again, which we did. We took the fine tablecloth, which took my grandmother 3 months to make, and lit candles, and prepared everything like it was an anniversary. Fine crystal glasses replaced the usual ones, and my sister was allowed to take out our finest tableware and silverware. Even the wine I got from the basement I put it in a crystal carafe. It was all so exciting.

  My mom brought as entrées caltaboşi, tobă, cîrnaţi and sângerete, together with beef salad, a delicacy usually made with boiled chicken, because we didn't have beef. It also contained boiled vegetables, pickles and mayonnaise, stuffed eggs, eggplant salads, mushroom salad made with mayonnaise, garlic and white cottage cheese.

  Everything was on the table when we heard some loud knocks at the gate. It was strange. People never visit on Christmas Day. It had to be something important.

  I wanted to go and check it out, but my father went instead. "Kids, set another place at the table and one more glass, coz we have a guest”, my father said in a very strange tone of voice. And then, addressing that visitor:

  "You are very lucky to arrive just now, because they are about to show us how Ceauşescu got killed”.

  Now, as they opened the door to come inside, I was halfshocked. I expected someone we knew, not a total strange. But, that man, whoever he was, was as shocked to see us, the entire family, including my grandmother, around that festive table. "Please, sit down”, said my father and his tone of voice wasn't the one that he used for happy events, but the one that he used when my sister presented him with bad grades. My father was worried.

  "Let's eat, let's drink” he said as our unexpected and unknown guest sat at the table without removing his winter coat. When I say "unknown" I mean that he wasn't from our town. We knew everybody, all 10,000 people living in Avrig but that man wasn't among them. That was really strange.