by Bel Mooney
I remember he nodded, then put his arms round her without saying a word, so that I felt excluded, and didn’t know why.
Now I pictured their hug, then recalled their recent rows and thought that all the possessions in the world weren’t as important as love. And friendship … Then I wondered if Alys had thought of me that weekend. In the old days I’d have rushed to show her my scarf and my sweets but not now. Something had gone, and my glorious presents went only part way to consoling me.
So I looked at the two things in the drawer and couldn’t help seeing them as opposites, standing for two halves of life. The scarf (I reached out and touched it with my finger, so silky-smooth) represented my mother and father, and our whole life together up to that point, when suddenly I had grown up and became aware of things I hadn’t seen before. I hated that – the fact that I suddenly saw my father as mean and bad-tempered and secretive and unfriendly, and that a part of me could even criticize Mama for retreating to the kitchen whenever there was a bad atmosphere, instead of standing up to him.
The M&Ms represented a dream, and luxury, and privilege, of course … but also something new I knew nobody understood: a longing within me to be liked – sort of, as a grown-up. The fact was that Daniel Ghiban, the handsome and popular one, was the first boy to have treated me like a person. And this knowledge awoke little longings inside me I hadn’t known were there – to be independent, to be good-looking, to be admired. Just like Daniel.
One half of me, with the memory of chocolate still in her mouth, felt excited and rebellious. The other half, which remembered the simple taste of roast chestnuts in the street, and the feeling of my arms tucked in my parents’, felt guilty and uncertain and afraid.
From the room next door I heard my parents’ voices raised in anger once again.
Then I smelt it.
The terrible, acrid smell of burnt soup.
And I wanted to cry, because I sensed it was all my fault, but I didn’t really know why. So I slammed the drawer shut, and stood in the cold room alone, suddenly wishing with all my heart that Daniel Ghiban had not come.
FOUR
It was not long afterwards that the world turned upside down – at least as far as my father was concerned. If I tell you it made little difference to me, that I didn’t even know about it until a couple of days later, you’ll probably think me dim or something. But it was like that for a lot of people much older than me. The point is, when you’re in a prison you can be thinking so hard about the key, focussing on that imaginary key in the great, thick iron door, that you don’t even notice that a little stone has fallen from the wall at the other end of your cell, letting in a chink of light.
So.
On 9 November 1989, the wall between East and West Berlin was opened. Then my father, Constantin Popescu, aged 36, small, dark and excitable was plunged first into a state of delirious happiness, and then (just as quickly) into a deeper despair than I had ever seen.
Even at school we had heard rumours of change “out there” – in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia – like the awful, ugly old buildings were shaking at their foundations, and falling down. I knew we all lived in a system called Communism, or Socialism. In school we were taught how bad life was in the West under the opposite system, Capitalism. We knew for a fact, because they told us, that the rich people lived off the poor people, that there were no jobs or homes, that people killed themselves in their misery. The vast invisible barrier that stretched round all our countries in the Eastern Block (which was made concrete in the actual Berlin Wall itself) was to keep OUT the destructive enemy forces of fascism. We weren’t allowed to travel there because we would be corrupted. And so on. That was what our teachers said.
Of course, most of us probably got a different message at home – that the borders, with the guards and the dogs and the wire, were there to keep us IN. That’s what my father said.
So now my father saw one wall being taken down – the wall the world saw as a symbol. But once he had got over his excitement and disbelief, he said it made him feel the wall around US was all the higher.
On Monday 13 November there was a strange new atmosphere at school – a sense of strain, and of waiting. Even before classes began, some of the older students stood around in small knots, whispering. Their faces were tense and excited. Quickly teachers moved amongst them and broke up the groups, but although the older teenagers were sullen they didn’t seem as intimidated as usual.
Then two mysterious things happened. A boy in our class called Maryon was called to see the Principal. This was a surprise, because he was a quiet, weedy boy with big, sticky-out ears and funny glasses, and he never, ever got into trouble. He went white when he was told, walked slowly from the room with his head down, and didn’t come back into class. At the end of the afternoon someone said they had seen him being driven away in a black car with two men. But people say all sorts of things. You never know if they are true. Rumours run up and down every school, factory and office like flame on a leak of paraffin. You never know what to believe.
But this we did know. Next morning our form teacher, known as the old Monster by everyone, was not at his desk. We all thought he must be ill, even though the idea was ridiculous. The Monster was, we all fervently believed, put on this earth with the holy task of making his pupils’ lives a misery, and never, ever showed any weakness in carrying out this duty. So he couldn’t possibly be ill. He’d live for ever, like Dracula.
One of the other teachers took the register, and put us through all our usual patriotic stuff. She was just going out when Alys piped up, “Will Mr Paroan be back soon, Miss?” The look she was given would have even turned back Dracula from a nice juicy neck.
“Paroan has left, Grosu. He won’t be coming back,” was the icy reply.
Then the teacher slammed the door behind her, as if she’d been given a personal insult. Something was wrong, it was obvious. Why should the Monster leave like that? We stopped calling him his nickname from that moment, as if we sensed he wasn’t so bad after all.
“Have some,” said Daniel, holding out his packet.
“What have you got today?” I asked.
“Only sausage,” he said.
“Mmmm.” My mouth was already full.
We stood together, slightly apart from the others. It was often like that now – although Daniel was as popular as ever. He seemed to make a point of talking to everyone, yet I had the feeling that he liked best to be with me. Sometimes he would slip me a whole piece of chewing gum – but only when he knew nobody was watching. Sometimes this made me guilty, and I longed to be able to go up to Alys, tear the stick in half, and share it with her. Of course, I never did. For one thing I knew she wouldn’t accept such an obvious overture of friendship.
Anyway, I thought, why should I share with anyone?
At last I finished eating, and hesitated before saying what was on my mind. I suppose it was custom: you didn’t ask people questions unless you’d known them for years and years. Then presumably you’d be able to read their mind anyway.
“Daniel … What do you think about this business with the Berlin Wall?” I asked finally.
“What do you think?” he countered.
“I don’t know … My father …”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me, Flora,” he said gently.
“Um – people are different, aren’t they?” I said, not saying what I had been going to say.
“Your father?”
“No – people. There’s a new feeling in the air.”
“It won’t last,” he said decisively. “Not here. You wait and see.”
He sounded utterly convinced, and perfectly satisfied too. It was strange, but it reassured me.
“What do you think’s wrong with the old M … with Mr Paroan?” I asked, wanting to change the subject, in case he asked about my father again.
“I think maybe the Monster’s being taught a lesson by somebody else, ju
st for a change,” he said, with an odd, harsh note in his voice.
“Who?”
“Who knows?” he shrugged. “I’ll tell you something, though. Two people have gone, the Monster and Maryon. And I saw the same person deep in conversation with them both, at separate times, last week. And I saw this same person talking to a man in a car, after school. Looks suspicious to me.”
“Who was it?” I gasped, ready, as we all were, to listen to any rumour that would answer all the questions. It was like a disease, this dependence on gossip, this readiness to seize on it and embroider what we’d heard.
“Your friend Alys,” he said.
In the few seconds which followed that statement my mind travelled a couple of hundred miles in fast circles, so that I wanted to faint. I thought of the gulf between Alys and me.
“She isn’t my friend any more,” I said.
When I got home from school Tata was there already, which was unusual. He jumped guiltily, and pushed a book back into the crowded, rickety shelf unit, as if caught out doing something wrong.
“Why are you here so early?” I asked.
“We were sent home – production stopped because of the electricity,” he said.
I hit the switch, but of course nothing happened. The room was full of the darkening grey of a November afternoon, damp and chill. Out of habit I went through to the kitchen and came back with two candleholders which I set up ready, although we wouldn’t light them until absolutely necessary, because of the extravagance. I sighed. Doing my homework by candlelight was a strain. But maybe the lights would go back on soon.
“I’m going out, Flora,” said Tata. “Your mother asked me to try to get some fruit, and I heard there might be some at the back of the supermarket. OK?”
I nodded. It didn’t worry me to be left alone, even on such a dreary, dwindling day. Mama always used to tell me when I was little that only foolish children were afraid of ghosts and goblins and things that make noises in the night. “It’s the real people you have to be afraid of,” she would say.
As soon as the door closed behind my father I rushed over to the shelf unit, to see what book he had been looking at. Was it fat, or thin? Blue, or red? I couldn’t remember. So I pulled out a volume of folk tales and flicked through it – then thought. It had been on that shelf, I was sure. Next to the tales was the one book in the house you can be sure he wouldn’t have looked at – a volume of Ceauşescu’s speeches. We had it because … well, you had to have such things. Just in case.
Something made me take out the fat book. On the jacket was a highly coloured photograph of our President, taken at least twenty years earlier, so that this eternally young, impossibly rosy-cheeked man beamed out at me. I opened the pages in the middle, and then nearly dropped the book in shock. Because someone had cut out the pages to make a secret compartment, and there, hidden in the centre of Ceauşescu’s interminable speeches was … money. I had never seen such money. There were green dollars in little rolls, and brightly coloured Deutschmarks. American and German banknotes … hard currency, we called it, what everyone dreamt of, and what some men would kill their grandmothers to obtain. Our own money, the grubby lei, was worthless. To deal on the black market, to get American cigarettes, to bribe people, you needed hard currency. And here it was – hidden in my own home. It looked like a fortune. But what was it doing there? How long had he been collecting it – and how? Did Mama know?
The evening seemed to pass very slowly. It should have been happy. The electricity went back on. Mama had managed to find a bit of chicken, which she made into a stew, with potato and onion and cabbage. It was the most delicious meal we had had in a long time, and yet I could barely taste it. I kept glancing at my father, and thinking of that mutilated book just across the room. It was as if a silent monster was crouched on the shelf, waiting to devour us all.
I couldn’t wait to retreat to my room, although Mama asked me if I felt ill. She could tell something was wrong.
“I’ve got a sore throat,” I lied, wanting to escape from them.
When my light was out I tried to sleep, but the vision of that currency kept dancing in front of my eyes in the darkness, mocking me with my lack of understanding. What was he saving for? It couldn’t possibly be for Christmas.
I must have dozed off, because when I woke the room seemed much colder. I glanced across to the wall, and indeed the little flame of my own paraffin heater had been turned off, as usual. One of them must have crept in.
But they hadn’t gone to bed. As usual, I could hear the radio, playing folk music. Behind it, they were talking, in those controlled intense tones they always used for a row. Yet this wasn’t a row; their voices weren’t angry. Even though I couldn’t make out the words I could tell the discussion was serious, as if words were being weighed very carefully before being dropped into the pool. My mind full of that hidden money and all that had happened during the day, I knew I had to hear.
Careful not to make my bed creak, I got up. It took me a long time to lower the handle of my door, and inch it open, and creep out into the hall. My bare feet made no sound on the icy linoleum. I was in luck – the living room was open just a crack.
“You understand now, Rodi,” he said.
“I … well … we’ve been through it so often it’s a relief to have come to a decision,” said Mama, with a big sigh. “I did think, when the news came from Germany, that you’d wait. I thought things might change here. You thought it too, at first …”
He broke in. “Rodika my darling! We’ve got to be realistic. You know we’re different. The Czechs, the Poles – they’ve always had it easy, compared to us. This place will never change. That’s why I got so depressed. All the good news just rubbed my nose in our own situation. When the old Cobbler dies there’s two equally bad sons to take his place. So what hope is there?”
“None,” she said. And her voice was so sad and low it made me want to cry.
“So – I’ve got no choice, Rodi. Please understand. I have to do it,” he said, in a low, pleading voice.
“What if you …?” she began.
“I won’t. It’ll work, I promise you!”
“They shoot people,” she cried.
“No,” he said. “I’ll make it.”
“Then what? How long will it be?”
“Oh Rodi – how can I know. But you’ll apply to join me, you and Flora, and in time they’ll let you. They have to. It may be hard – but I believe this is the only chance for a better life for all of us.”
I could see them through the door. They both got up, and enveloped each other in a massive hug before breaking apart and carrying on talking, still with their arms around each other.
“I can take it, Constantin – for your sake.”
“For all our sakes,” he said.
“But you’re the one who’s going,” she said wistfully. “And if anything goes wrong, we’ll be the ones left here.”
“I know,” he said.
“When …” her voice faltered again. “When will it happen?”
“Not for a while. The colder it is the better. Mircea and Stefan know the route, and they say the border guards there skive off on the coldest nights. Anyway, now I’ve got your backing I can carry on planning.”
“Did you need my permission, my love?” asked Mama, in a sad, faraway voice, as if she had long given up the struggle.
“I need you to believe in me,” said Tata.
And they clung to each other again, as if all the soldiers and secret police in the world would not be able to break them apart. I heard the muffled words, “I love you”, but I couldn’t see anything any more. Blindly I backed away, and I don’t know how I got back to my bedroom without them hearing me. But then, they were too involved in their own drama to think about me.
Lying in my bed in the pitch darkness, I felt as if I was tossing in a tiny boat on some vast, black ocean. There was nothing around me any more, nothing to keep me safe, only the howling of the wind an
d the beating of the rain. And the rain was the tears which poured down my cheeks, whilst my secret, silent voice howled out a long cry of pain. At last I knew what it all meant.
He was getting the currency from somewhere, and making plans with his friends to cross the border. He would go, and Mama and I would be left behind. Maybe we would never see him again, but that was a price he was obviously prepared to pay – and she was letting him.
My father was going to leave us.
FIVE
In the weeks that followed it was as if I was living on an island, only it wasn’t the island of my dreams. This one was cold and lonely, and certainly not made of chocolate. It wasn’t a fantasy. My misery and rage were real – and I couldn’t tell anyone.
When you find something out it changes your whole life – only backwards as well as forwards. So I thought of my birthday and felt angry because all the time my parents were deceiving me. I wondered for how long. So everything was spoilt.
I don’t know if my parents noticed I was different. One day Mama said, “You’ve been very quiet lately, Flora. Is something wrong at school?”
When I shook my head she didn’t ask any more questions. What do you care? I thought, You’re too worried about him to care about me. If she had only told me herself, treated me like a friend, I could have borne the whole thing much better. But maybe parents find it hard to think of their children as friends.
And when my father tried to put an arm round me one day, and make a little joke about thirteen-year-olds getting moody overnight, as bad as grown-up women, I pulled away. He shrugged, but I could see he was hurt. I didn’t care. It was fair that he should suffer. Fair. After all, Mama was a victim like me – but he was the one who was getting out. All I could think of was that he was prepared to leave behind the people he loved to get his own freedom. Strangely, I never imagined him being caught on the border and beaten up then thrown in prison, or even being shot. My imagination couldn’t stretch to that horror. No, the truth is, I imagined him having a great time in Germany, France or England, or (best of all) the United States of America. Eating wonderful food. Listening to Phil Collins and the Beatles and Madonna. Wearing Levis … all that.
