The Voices of Silence

by Bel Mooney

  When I thought of his packed lunch I felt a pang of longing in my stomach as sharp as the pencil. And envy – real envy.

  Anyway, none of that was important.

  He had talked to me, that was what mattered. And that made me push aside my unhappiness at quarrelling with Alys. Alys had been mean and unfair about someone who was trying to be friendly. I had been right to snap back at her. It was, I decided, all her fault.

  TWO

  Just after that things started to happen at home which did push the business of Alys, and Daniel Ghiban, to the back of my mind. I became aware of an unusual atmosphere – a degree of silence between my parents which I could not understand. They had always been lively and talkative. Despite all our problems, and the anger, which sometimes settled on Tata like a thick black cloak, stifling him, they were happy. I knew that. Mama once said to me that loving somebody, really loving them and sharing things and being happy, is worth all the material goods in the world. I agreed out loud, but found myself thinking that it would be much better to be happy and loving in a fine house with lots of wonderful clothes and food. I didn’t say that, of course. Perhaps because I couldn’t have borne it if she had agreed with me. You want to feel your parents like their life, just in case it is your fault that they don’t …

  Anyway, suddenly, it seemed, they were not talking at all. Mama looked more weary and hopeless than ever, and Tata now seemed permanently sad and angry. Some nights he came home really late, and Mama would take his dinner out of the oven, all dried up, and put it down in front of him with a reproachful look.

  “I met with Stefan,” he said quietly.

  “Again?”

  “We have a lot to talk about,” he said.

  “I’m sure you have.” Her voice was sarcastic. “Stefan is lucky.”

  “None of us are lucky, Rodika,” he whispered, trying to reach for her hand.

  She pulled it away. “You don’t have to tell me that. You don’t have to tell me what I know, Constantin,” she said bitterly.

  “Oh, but I do.”

  “There’s no point in talking any more,” she said, and rose to go into the kitchen, where the damp bubbled and sprouted on the walls and the wooden draining board was cracked down the middle.

  Tata glanced at me, where I sprawled on their bed, pretending to do my homework. It was cold in the room, I thought, although the paraffin heater was lit, and the curtains drawn tightly against the world outside.

  Suddenly the lights went out.

  I froze.

  In the kitchen, Mama burst into tears, whilst Tata crashed about, looking for the candlestick. He cursed the President, the economy, the lack of electricity – everything. At last light flickered from the table, mysterious and beautiful, and making his bearded face glow like an image of John the Baptist I saw once on an icon.

  “What’s the matter with Mama? Why is she upset?” I asked at last.

  “Adults have quarrels – just like children,” he replied. “By the way, have you made friends with Alys yet?”

  “Oh yes – it was nothing,” I said.

  “That’s my girl.”

  My mother was clattering plates in the sink. We both listened for a while, then my father raised his head and called out, “Rodika! Flora’s friendly with Alys again!”

  She stood at the kitchen door, her hands dripping, and said, “I knew that. She told me. I said it’s silly to quarrel when …”

  “… you don’t know what tomorrow will bring,” he finished.

  “Exactly,” she said.

  There was a short silence, as my father and mother looked at each other and nodded, then looked at me, as if to show me how wise they were about my friendships. And then the lights went on as suddenly as they’d been extinguished.

  I got up and went to my tiny bedroom, and lay on the bed, looking up at the cracks and stains on my ceiling. I could always see faces in them, or sometimes maps of other countries. Now I just saw a spider’s web, in which I felt caught. How dare they act in that way? Pretending to be interested in me, when it was obvious that they were really talking about themselves? It seemed to me that in every single conversation there were three levels, and that all of us spoke different languages according to the level we were on at the time – like a lift going up and down.

  First, there was the public language: what we all spoke in school, and on the stairs, and in the street. That was open, but at the same time utterly closed: you never ever said what you meant. Second, there was the private language, which you shared with your family and closest friends. The trouble with this was, it could work on so many levels of noncommunication too; just as in that little scene in the other room. And third, was your private, inner language: the words you spoke in your thoughts just to yourself, the secrets you whispered wordlessly to the foggy mirror, and the wishes you would yell out on the wind, wildly, freely … but only on the solitary chocolate island of your dreams.

  As I went to sleep at last, the radio was on in the next room, playing sad violin music. But I could still hear them talking in low, urgent voices, and it seemed that he was trying to persuade her of something, his voice putting out little hooks to grasp at her understanding, her … permission.

  But for what?

  I couldn’t hear.

  The next morning, in the blackness, I heard the front door slam. I knew it was Mama going out on her usual quest for bread, but instead of going back to sleep I sat up, and swung out of bed, gasping when my feet hit the icy linoleum. It took me just a few moments to dress, bundling myself into layer on layer of clothes, not caring how bulky and ugly I looked.

  Tata was pulling up their bed. He looked round at me in surprise. “You’re early.”

  There was a tiny noise at the door, more like an animal scratching than a knock. He jumped, and walked across putting his ear to the wooden panel. Someone whispered something, like a sigh in the blackness. My father nodded, satisfied, and opened the door.

  An enormous man, wearing a stiff leather jacket and shapeless black trousers, filled the room. He and Tata nodded at each other.

  “Mircea.”

  “Constantin.”

  “I saw Stefan last night,” said my father.

  “Good.”

  Then the man Mircea glanced at me.

  “This is Flora,” said my father anxiously, and I knew he wanted me gone.

  “Hello, Flora,” said the man.

  I said nothing.

  “Flora …”

  I shrugged. “I expect you want me to go back to bed,” I said coldly. “I have that feeling that you don’t want me in here.”

  “I’ll come back later,” said the man.

  “No, Mircea. Rodika …” my father began.

  Then I felt really angry. It was obvious he had invited this man at a time he knew Mama would be out. Furiously I strode from the room, slamming the door of my room behind me. I lay on my bed in my clothes, hearing them whisper, trying to overhear.

  But after only about eight minutes Mircea had obviously said what he had come to say, and I heard the door click shut behind him. When Mama came home at last bearing a loaf that was at least a day old, neither Tata nor I made any reference to the visitor. We chewed the bread miserably, then all went our separate ways. So that was another brick in the wall of silence that was being built between us all.

  In school Daniel Ghiban quickly became very popular with most of the kids. He was generous – he gave his favoured ones bits of his packed meal most days, and it was always superior to everyone else’s. He was strong and tough, and once, when he was jeered at (I can’t remember why) by Ion Babeti who’d always ruled the roost, Daniel pretended to walk away, then turned before you could blink, got Ion in an armlock, and made him apologize. He never had any trouble after that, and to tell the truth, most of us thought him wonderful. He was a leader.

  But here’s where I come to the part that makes me feel strange. Daniel seemed to pick me out of the crowd. He gave me bites of his sandwi
ches (chicken … ham … salami … cheese … Oh, you can’t imagine!). He would just hang around with me during those small pockets (not enough) of free school time. It was as if he had noticed me and helped me on his very first day, and that was a bond between us.

  He had a fund of silly jokes too, which made me laugh more than I had laughed in years. Like, “A woman went into a shop, to ask for some meat. The man behind the counter shook his head in pity and led her to the door. ‘No, Madam,’ he said, ‘over there is the butcher’s. That’s where they don’t have meat. This is where we don’t have cheese.’”

  “You’ve never told us, Ghiban, how come you always have such decent food,” Alys called out, when we were all standing round in a crowd, stamping our feet with the cold.

  “It’s a long story,” he said with a grin.

  “Tell us, we’ve got time,” she said, in a challenging voice I knew very well. Our friendship was not what it was. We still walked to school together, but sometimes in the afternoon Alys went off a different way, and she was moody and quiet a lot of the time, as if she had something on her mind. But I didn’t ask what.

  “I’m not supposed to tell,” he said. Yet he looked relaxed, as if nothing would ever worry him, standing there squarely, in his good jeans, and the padded bomber jacket that was the envy of the school.

  “Don’t you trust me, Ghiban?” asked Alys, with a mocking note in her voice I found unpleasant.

  “It’s not wise to trust anyone, Grosu,” he replied calmly.

  “That’s what my mother says,” I chipped in.

  “I suppose you don’t trust your friends if you’ve got something to hide,” said Alys.

  There was a silence. Everybody was looking at Daniel, waiting for him to speak. We didn’t ever ask each other outright questions; it just wasn’t done. When you are brought up right from the beginning to believe that your neighbour might be your worst enemy, you hold back. My mother even told me that in a queue the women don’t complain to each other about the bread being stale, or the oil ration running out – for fear they will be overheard and reported. So this public challenge by Alys was daring – and frightening – somehow.

  Daniel Ghiban shrugged, and lowered his voice. “Well, if you must know, it’s my mother. She works as a cleaning lady for somebody in the British Embassy – somebody very important – and he pays her very well. He has to. He can’t get good help otherwise. And his wife – she likes my mother and gives her things.”

  “Food?” I said, enviously.

  He nodded. “They get stuff from England, you see. Every week they have supplies flown in. And the people at the Embassy give second-hand clothes away, so …” He shrugged and stopped. Then he lowered his head and added, “You probably think it’s humiliating to take charity from foreigners, but my mother wants the best for me.”

  I was torn in two when he said that. A part of me admired his honesty, and felt touched by the fact that he seemed almost ashamed of what he had admitted. Open and free with each other – why couldn’t we be more like that? I suspected that’s how kids our age are in America or Britain, not scurrying round with your head down, as we do. And Alys seemed mean to me – a person who wanted to get her own back by showing up someone in public. But.

  There was a serious But as well. Why should Daniel say all that stuff about humiliation? We were all green with envy; we’d all give anything for a few free presents. Why, we’d all seen our parents running desperately to be at the front of a queue, waiting patiently in Easter snow to buy us awful bits of stale chocolate from God knows where, even bribing the local Party officials with whatever they could, to get access to special deliveries at Christmas. Humiliation? That was part of being a Romanian. It went with the blood. It was in the soil. So what on earth was Daniel Ghiban talking about? It didn’t ring true.

  “OK, so what does your father do?” asked Alys.

  “He’s a hospital porter,” Daniel replied shortly.

  Then the buzzer went, and it was over.

  Later, Alys and I were walking out of school together when we heard running footsteps behind us. I clutched her arm, afraid to look round. But it was only Daniel Ghiban.

  “Can I walk with you?” he asked pleasantly.

  “I didn’t know you lived this way,” said Alys.

  “Alys!” I protested.

  It was a cold, golden autumn afternoon, the very end of October, when most of the trees have already shed their leaves and the city seems to breathe out the smell of a million paraffin stoves and as many lamps, smoky and pungent. And the people on the streets start to look mysterious – all muffled up, with hats pulled down over their eyes, and taking on that bundled, huddled, shapeless look of Winter strangers, so that you would hardly recognize your own mother, unless she spoke. I always dreaded winter. Walking from outside into our block was like drifting from ice into snow – only the cold inside was worse because it was damp and dank and clung to you.

  Mama said she always regretted her bad timing, so that I was born at the beginning of November – because when I was a baby she and Tata used to make a sort of tent of bedclothes, to change my nappy underneath by the dangerous light of a candle, because that was the only way to keep me warm. She’d be washing nappies in icy water, so that her skin cracked, she told me.

  Sometimes I hate the thought of growing up, if it has to be like that. The hardship. No escape.

  I don’t know why I started to think these gloomy thoughts – because the afternoon was beautiful, and Daniel Ghiban was smiling. Perhaps it was because I was with the two of them, I felt embarrassed that Alys had to be so unfriendly.

  “We used to race sometimes,” I said, “but she always beat me. I’m so small.”

  “Nothing wrong with being small,” he grinned, “Chewing gum’s not very big, but everybody wants it!”

  “Yes, and cabbages are big, and they’re boring!” I said, feeling pleased.

  “Thanks,” Alys said, looking down at me.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said.

  “Well, if you think I’m silly and boring, I’d better get out of your sight,” she said, and started to run down the road, her hair bouncing up and down.

  “Alys!” I called.

  “Leave her,” said Daniel.

  “You’re right,” I said. He looked very sympathetic. “Alys can be so funny sometimes. We used to be so close, but now I’ve started to hate her moods. I don’t understand it.”

  “Maybe …” he said, then stopped.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Please tell me. We’ve been best friends for so long, and she’s not the same. I …”

  “Well, maybe she’s … worried about something. Maybe she’s got a guilty conscience,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, desperate for some explanation of Alys’s moodiness.

  “Oh nothing … I mean, I don’t know.”

  We walked in silence, then suddenly he stopped. “I have to go now,” he said.

  “I wish you’d explain. About Alys,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have said anything. You’ll only think I’m getting at her because she’s been so down on me. Do you agree? She hasn’t been exactly pleasant. Not like the rest of you.”

  “Oh, you’re right,” I agreed. “She’s been pretty mean.”

  “So promise you won’t think me unfair?”

  “OK.”

  “Well, all I’ll say is … don’t tell her things.”

  “What things?”

  “Anything … Oh, let’s leave it. It’s just that I’ve been watching you and, shall I tell you something? I think you’re one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, Flora. But you’re too open. Your face gives everything away.”

  I hung my head, feeling the blush spread, and glad that my black scarf was so thick. There was a sort of dazzle of light inside me, making me warm and happy, and blinding me – like the sun. I basked. I felt all my limbs relax. And of course, I didn�
��t know what to say.

  “Let’s leave it, shall we?” His voice was gentle.

  I nodded mutely, looked up and smiled – and then he had turned and gone, calling “See you tomorrow!” over his shoulder.

  The next morning, when I came out of the block into the murky gloom, Alys wasn’t there. I waited for a while, then realized she must have gone on ahead. For a second I felt stunned – as if someone had brutally removed a piece from the puzzle that was my life, so that nothing hung together any more. There was a black hole.

  But then the hole was filled with sadness. I thought of Alys and I pushing our funny old dolls around in our little home-made carts when we were tiny, and playing make-believe games, and sitting on the steps in the summer as we got older, and talking. We’d had such good times; it had always been me and Alys against the world. I knew that things changed as you grew up. At school people were always making and breaking friendships, but I never thought it would happen to us. Alys had changed. It wasn’t me, it was her.

  Then I felt cross. I thought of how unfair it was, and how mean she could be, and how kind and sympathetic Daniel Ghiban had been when he told me … what? Not to trust Alys? But Alys? Yet she had changed; she wasn’t the friend I’d known all my life; so anything was possible.

  She didn’t speak to me at school.

  I hung around with Mariana and Luminitsa, two girls I quite liked, and who were always talking to Daniel. At lunchtime he came up to us, put his hand in his pocket and pulled out … A STICK OF WRIGLEY’S CHEWING GUM!

  “Here,” he said. “Share this.”

  But it was me he handed it to.

  Feeling very proud, I tore it roughly into three, and we clutched each other in ecstasy, holding the bits on our tongues; not even sucking, let alone chewing, so that the minty taste would slowly, very slowly flood our mouths. Then you suck it a bit. Then – you can’t stop the urge – you let your teeth bite into the thin stuff, and feel it change and stretch, and, oh … amazing! I think that must have been only the third time in my whole life I’d tasted it. It was almost a myth: like Christmas.