Just a Monumental Summer: Girl on the train

by Schneiders, M.

  I walked over toward him, trying to talk to him. “Yes.”

  “I met your lover. He came to the theater after the show. He waited for me backstage. I don’t know how he got in.”

  I sighed. “He knows everyone in there.”

  “Of course he does. He’s a parasite. A communist pig.”

  “Watch out, Alin. When you use this words, you insult them, you insult the system.” I was worried; we were outside, anyone could hear.

  “He is a fucking communist pig. I said it.” Alin raised his voice, shoving off the wall and taking a few steps away from the house. I grabbed his wrist and pulled him down onto a bench on the front porch, trying to keep the conversation quieter. He hissed, wincing, cradling his hand.

  “What did he want?” I asked, concerned, wondering what had happened. I looked at his hand – his knuckles were swollen and scraped.

  “What do you think? He told me to leave you alone. He started to threaten me, and I punched him in the face.” He was serious, but also oddly proud of himself – he all but beat his chest with pride, all the while cradling his wounded hand.

  I couldn’t help but chuckle at his manly pride, and he laughed as well.

  “Alin! Such a foolish thing to do.”

  “What I was supposed to do? We’re men. He threatened me, and I had to punch him.”

  “He’s not just a simple guy. He has power. I don’t want you to get in trouble,” I said worried for him.

  “I don’t give a shit. Someone needed to give him a lesson. You chose, and he should respect your decision.”

  “And you decided to punch him in the face,” I said in disapproval. I slowed down: “He’ll come around, Alin. He needs time. I need to talk with him. It was stupid of him as well to come and see you.”

  He considered my words, then asked, “Did you tell him where to find me?”

  “No. I didn’t tell him who you are. I told him we’re done because I’m in love.” I said, smiling shyly.

  “Are you?” His smile – that smile - was melting my heart again.

  “Of course I am. You know that,” I reassured him, leaning in and kissing him.

  “Mona, say it again.”

  I yelled as loud as I could, head tilted to the sky: “Alin, aka Sunny, I am in love with you! It was love at the first sight.”

  I took a breath, and I heard people clapping. “She needs the dick, man!” someone screamed in the distance.

  “I am in love with you, Mona, and it was love at the first sight as well.” He kissed me. “Now we need to go to the doctor. I think I broke my hand.”

  ***24 August 1989

  I still can’t quite understand why I am so attracted by Jony even though I have Alin. Why I am weak around him? And how can he read my moods so well? It took one look from him and my mind immediately concocted fantasies of him naked. Is it because he ignored me? I’m not used to being ignored. He came home with a different girl every night, parading them in front of me, proving to me he was quite capable of managing without me. Is that why? I don’t like being ignored. Since childhood I’ve craved attention, typical middle child syndrome. Is the middle child in me craving for love? Could that be why? Is that why I can’t be happy with just one guy. I have to have them all pining for me?

  Middle child syndrome. By that I mean, I felt neglected, as any middle child feels. It is hard to explain how I sensed that. My mother had a preference for my two brothers. Even though she went to great pains to treat us all equally, there were moments when she would let them get away with things. When confronted, she was always had an explanation. “You know your older brother has been in so many accidents. And he suffered so much when we were really poor. I had to leave him alone for hours to go to work, and no one would play with him. He would cry for hours, waiting for me.” The second explanation would apply to the youngest brother. “He is the little one. He doesn’t know anything.”

  Indeed, my older brother had a hard life. First, he broke his hand. When they took the splints off, they noticed the bones were not correctly aligned, and they had to break them again. When he was in school, he used to take the bus, and it was always overloaded. Once, the driver closed the door without my brother making it all the way out of the door, and he dragged my brother for kilometers till he reached the next bus station. I remember my mother yelling like a hurt wild animal when she found out.

  “I will go and kill the driver. Any moron gets to drive a bus. What kind of country is this? I hate that country. OHHHHH! How can someone drive for kilometers and not see he’s dragging an innocent child! How not anyone let him know! I will kill that monster. I will go to school and kill everybody.”

  It’s not an easy thing to see your parents in pain. You sit in there, and you know you can’t help them. Their pain is yours as well. These were the moments I felt such love for my mother. But what use if it’s entangled with pain.

  Then, yet another accident. My older brother took the train to go to the seaside. Our town was located less than thirty-five kilometers, about sixteen miles, from the beach. It was not unusual for teenagers to gather together, take the train, spend the day at the beach, and come back in the evening with the last train.

  On one of those days, my brother fell from the moving train. The door was open, He fell.

  The place where he landed was far away from the rails. Every time we took the train, at a certain spot my mother used to show me a lonely old tree, far away from the rails, and she would whisper in my ear: “This is where they found your brother. Look at the distance. Can you imagine?”

  He recovered after that accident. His pinky finger looked weird, crumpled, but other than that there were no visible physical scars.

  Later, on his graduation night, my brother didn’t come home again. My mother was freaked out, but my father wasn’t worried and tried to calm her down. “Give him a break. Maybe he is with a girl, with his friends. They’re celebrating and having fun.”

  But she knew something was wrong. “I know my son. I told him to come home at midnight. He would never do that. I am going to the police, you go to the hospital.”

  It was a small town, and both locations were situated less than one kilometer apart. My mother was right. He was at the hospital. He had been in a car accident. His best friend was driving the car. My brother sat in front, near the driver’s seat, and another two friends were in the back. The car was a mess, but no one was injured except my brother. His friends found him in a field. He was singing a song.

  My mother would always cry when she would come to that part. “Can you imagine? He was singing? Can you imagine his brain? Maybe it’s damaged. Poor child.”

  His friends told her how they’d found him. He recovered after that accident. He stayed for a week in the hospital. And it was funny: after all these accidents, the only visible scar he ever had was from the broken hand. He was so smart; growing up, he was the most intelligent student in each school he attended. He was bored in school, but learned things on his own. He made extra money by writing articles for student papers; he created crossword puzzles and sold them to the newspapers; he learned Morse Code; he developed all kinds of complicated theories to beat the odds in the lottery. By the time he finished high school, he knew four languages and he had finished writing two fiction books. His creativity was simply amazing. Creativity was a quality pretty common in that time. Life was hard, and improvising came naturally to compensate for the things you were deprived of.

  My older brother is a genius and he is my idol. Ialways tried to prove myself to him, but doubted I would ever make him proud.

  CHAPTER 28

  SABOTAGE

  We walked to the local doctor while Alin cradled his hurt hand. Apparently the adrenaline had worn off and he was now in serious pain. The resort didn’t have its own hospital; the closest hospital was twenty kilometers away. But the resort had a small doctor’s office, open day and night for any kind of need.

  It was situated in one the nice villas by the beach
, like the one Alin lived in. The doctor wasn’t there this late at night, but a nice nurse was inside. She recognized Alin from the band. She looked at his hand, and said it wasn’t broken. Alin sighed deeply with relief and I gave him a careful hug and kiss on the cheek. A guitar player with a broken hand was not something either one of us wanted to deal with. Smiling flirtatiously at him, the nurse told him that he still had to go the hospital for x-rays just to be sure. She gave him some painkillers and gave us the name of a “good doctor” to ask for at the hospital. We decided to go straight to the hospital, even though it was almost midnight. We didn’t want to take the slightest risk with his hand.

  When we got to the hospital, it was silent and almost appeared deserted. We had to bribe the gate guy to let us in. I couldn’t help thinking with some irony that Alexandru wouldn’t have had to do that. The hospital was stark and sterile inside, with white walls and floor. It felt empty and lifeless; there was only a single light on, and it seemed only one room had some kind of activity. I was trying not to make any noise as we walked toward the light. Something about that kind of silence has always intimidated me. It was ominous and somehow threatening - the silence present in buildings belonging to the state. Courthouses, hospitals. Those buildings were never noisy. Their silence was impressive and would intimidate people into speaking only in whispers. I always felt insignificant and humiliated in buildings like this.

  Finally, we reached the only room that seemed occupied. I knocked, and I heard two women talking behind the door. We waited for a couple of seconds. They were still talking. I knocked again.

  I heard an annoyed voice coming from inside, “Wait your turn.” I rolled my eyes and Alin did the same.

  I sighed and looked around, tugging Alin toward the available seats. We sat down and I took his hand gingerly, kissing his raw knuckles again.

  “My crazy hero. He punched the ‘system’ in the face,” I murmured to him, smiling. He leaned his head on my shoulder and turned to kiss my neck. We waited in silence for a while. I could tell Alin had something on his mind.

  “Mona, don’t go and talk with him. You’re done with him. And don’t tell the band, don’t tell anyone about what happened,” he said pensively, head still on my shoulder.

  The door opened. Two women were inside a bright room that looked half clerical desk and half doctor’s office. One, dressed in a white robe, seemed to be a nurse. The other one was dressed in a colorful blouse with a black stretch skirt. The nurse invited us inside. Her tone was arrogant, nothing unusual for an establishment designed to help people. You needed to fill out a form, you had to deal with their arrogance; you needed to buy something, you had to face rudeness.

  The medical care was free. If you were sick, you would simply go to the hospital; you were treated and sent back home. That was all. But in order to get decent treatment, in order to skip the long waiting list, you would need to pay your dues and bribe people from the hospital, from the cleaning lady to the manager of the hospital. If you didn’t bribe the cleaning lady, she wouldn’t clean your room or even bother to show up. The nurse, if given the proper incentive, would take care of you and give you the right amount of painkillers; she would make your life easier while you were in the hospital. Same with the doctors. Everything was “free”, but with a cost.

  “Who let you in?” the visibly annoyed nurse demanded. “You know we’re open only for real emergencies!”

  Romanian hospitals never had the hectic, emergency room atmosphere common in America and the west. There were no shootings, no car accidents, or any kind of violent incidents. We had no guns, very few cars, so no major traffic — and the domestic violence wasn’t extreme and was kept behind closed doors. An emergency would be an acute appendicitis or a kidney stone.

  I stood up and walked toward her, saying, “Ramona sent us. She said you’d take care of us and to ask for Dr. Georgescu.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Her tone changed, and she smiled at us. She took a look at Alin’s hand and said to me, rolling her eyes, “It was a fight, wasn’t it? Men.”

  We laughed.

  She took him with her and let me fill out some forms. I finished the paperwork, and I gave the other woman some money. I sat back down to wait, trying not to worry. I knew the first nurse said it wasn’t broken, but I couldn’t help but feel responsible for this whole mess.

  It must have been an hour later when Alin came back with the nurse. The x-rays were fine, but he wouldn’t be able to use his hand for a couple of days. Alin gave her the usual bribe and she gave him more painkillers.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” she said as she pocketed the money.

  When we left the hospital, the gate guy recognized us and saluted Alin, “Long life!”

  The drive back was silent. I knew he was still in pain. I groped for something to say to get his mind off of his hand. “You know, Alin, the day I was waiting for the train? I never felt so much loneliness.”

  “Mona, you keep trying to justify yourself, and I keep telling you I don’t care,” he answered, exasperated.

  We arrived home. He took another painkiller and went to bed after giving me a hug. I opened the balcony door and walked out to lean on the railing and listen to the waves, breathing deeply, trying to just be. After a while I heard Alin snoring and joined him, still listening to the waves as I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to come.

  When I woke up I rolled over to look at Alin’s hand. It was swollen and purple; he was awake and in pain again, so he kissed me and got up to take another painkiller. He came back to the bed and kissed me again before leaving the room to get some breakfast. I smiled at him, feeling grateful. I leaned back in bed but knew I couldn’t hide in the bedroom all day - I had to talk with Alexandru. I sighed and got up, joining everyone in the living room. An awkward silence descended as soon as they heard me come in. Ema was there, and glared at me; she didn’t hug me as usual, turning away from me instead. Alin brought me a cup of tea and another kiss, looking a little abashed at Ema’s reaction. I carried my cup outside to the terrace and sat down on the bench, dejected. Alin followed me out with his own coffee and sat beside me.

  “They’re blaming me,” I said unhappily.

  “Someone saw the fight and recognized me.” He sighed.

  “What did you tell them?”

  “The truth. That I punched some moron in the face. And yes, it had something to do with you. Don’t worry.” He forced a smile, and nudged me with his shoulder, trying to cheer me up.

  Then he tried to justify the others’ reactions. “They got scared, Mona. What if I had broken my hand or whatever, suddenly, they realized, I realized, we are all in this together. We depend on each other.”

  “They depend on you. You’re the brain, you’re the look. Alin, you are the band.”

  “Mona, it’s more than that. We are family,” he said earnestly, turning to look at me on the bench.

  “Are you?” I asked irritably and then I regretted I said it. “I have to go. I need to fix something about my key from the other place. I’ll meet you later.”

  “I can come with you.” He stood as if to follow me.

  “No, you need to rest, and I need some space. Please. I’ll back in a couple of hours, and then we have two days to ourselves.”

  He reluctantly agreed, unconvinced.

  I left my mug of tea on the bench, not wanting to go back inside to face anyone. I hurried up to the hotel and through the lobby to Alexandru’s room, hoping to find him there. I pounded on the door; after a few minutes he opened it slowly. It was obvious I had woken him up – he was disheveled, dressed only in a robe, and his face was visibly bruised and swollen. He let me in and went to the bathroom to inspect his face.

  “Damn, Alexandru, what will you say to your wife? Really! You have a daughter my age. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Mona, I don’t need that right now,” he rasped, coming out of the bathroom and glaring at me.

  “I’m sorry.” I calmed down
. “I’m simply worried about you. Why did you go there? Who told you about him?” I folded my arms and waited for his reply.

  “You told me, silly. The first day you arrived.” He imitated my voice: “‘I met the boys from Silent Delusion.’ The rest was easy to figure out.”

  I walked over to him and tried to touch his face. He avoided my hands and sat down on the other side of the table to distance himself from me.

  “I thought it’s only a fling or better sex or whatever. You used to be smart. You never thought with your pussy. You played the victim. You took what you wanted and didn’t give a shit about us. About me. I fucking loved you. And now you’re in love,” he said in disgust.

  “Love? How can you talk about love, Alexandru?”

  He stood up and came over to me, grabbing my arms. “Baby, I’m so sorry. I’m hurt. Physically. The guy is freaking strong for a singer.”

  For a poet. I thought.

  “Mona, I love you. I should have told you. I’ve always loved you, from the moment I first heard your laugh. I was addicted to your laugh. I was drunk around you. You were a light in my life. I knew I wasn’t the only one. But I didn’t think you would love anyone else.” Shockingly, Alexandru had seen my emotional coldness for what it was, and had known that I had feelings for no one when I met him.

  “So what did you think? That I love you? I was there for you at the right moment, but that doesn’t mean it’s love.” I shook off his hands and sat down.

  “So now you’re an expert on my life, on my feelings?” He said sarcastically, thumping the table for emphasis.

  “No, I may not be, but I’m an expert in myself. I’m a fake, Alexandru. I can’t be your light. I am not even my own light,” I said, suddenly too exhausted by the whole mess to hide the truth.

  He sat down on the bed, putting his head in his hands while fixating on an imaginary spot on the freshly cleaned carpet. I looked over at him at his head and wondering when he’d started balding. I knew I could end his misery with just one word or a gesture, and in a sick, twisted way, it made me feel powerful. I walked over to the bed and sat beside him.