Twenty-four hours later I was lying on my bed in a Satu Mare hotel room with a plum-sized lump on my skull, a sensational headache and an area of agony at the base of my spine. I could remember the bald-tyred Sebis car sliding slowly off a steep icy road – so slowly that I had time to ask the driver, ‘Is there something wrong with the steering?’ Then came a moment of incredulity (incredulity, rather than fear) as the car went over the edge.
When I came to I was lying on sacks in the back of a state farm grain truck. It had been closely following us and was wearing snow-chains, a luxury not then available to private vehicles. The car driver lay beside me, still unconscious, with blood oozing from both ears. We had been covered with fleeces. It was snowing lightly. The truck driver’s mate sat between us and when I opened my eyes he gently stroked my hair and said ‘spital’.
I only vaguely recall my fellow-victim being admitted to the hospital where (it later devastated me to learn) he died within a few hours. I was refused admission, apparently because I could walk – albeit with difficulty. The truck driver and his mate then helped me find a bus for Oradea; inexplicably, they were very keen on my not being interviewed by the local police. From Oradea, where no hotel would accept lei without an exchange certificate, I caught a train to Satu Mare. I vividly recall walking to the gara and queueing for my ticket – but, curiously, as though it were an ordeal I had read about rather than a personal experience. The bus and train journeys are both blanks: and on arrival in Satu Mare I must have been still semi-concussed; when revisiting the place in March, again arriving by train, I had no recollection of getting from the gara to a Centru hotel.
That evening I told myself I’d feel better in the morning. In fact I felt worse, so painfully stiff that I could drag myself to the bathroom only by hanging onto the furniture. My lower back was hotly throbbing but Adrian, the young waiter who came to my room yearning to change dollars, laughed at my fantasy about finding pain-killers in Satu Mare.
Lacking anything to read, I spent most of that day writing a concussion-blurred description of my misadventure for Rachel’s entertainment. This was composed in as light-hearted a vein as events warranted but alas! it failed to amuse my daughter, then in London. She shared the news with her godfather (my publisher) and the pair of them colluded in a most shameful exercise which caused me exquisite embarrassment when, much later, they confessed their indiscretion. Alarm signals were sent out in every direction: to the Foreign Office, the British Embassy in Bucharest, the Rumanian Ministry for Culture, the International Red Cross, the British Council … Please, could somebody find me and provide appropriate aid and comfort and let London know where and how I was? For someone who believes that when travellers get themselves into trouble they should, if at all possible, get themselves out of it, this was the ultimate humiliation. I don’t of course take independence to extremes; in Quito, as already recorded, we benefited from diplomatic cossetting. And when we were arrested near Lima by Peru’s sinister Political Police, in 1979, we at once sent an SOS to the British Embassy and were promptly rescued. But such appeals should, in my view, be reserved for major crises.
By evening, solitary confinement in a bookless room had caused me to develop piteous print-withdrawal symptoms. Observing these, Adrian was puzzled. ‘This is good!’ he assured me, switching on the television and demonstrating its versatility; Satu Mare receives Hungarian, Czech and Russian programmes. ‘You can watch all day,’ he consoled me. ‘Here! Look! A funny show from America in English!’ As he turned up the volume I shuddered and begged him to switch off. ‘Is there an English teacher in Satu Mare?’ I asked desperately.
Adrian considered. ‘Maybe one old lady, finished work – you want her? I can find.’
‘Please do!’ I said. ‘And explain that I need to borrow some English books.’
An hour or so later Adrian returned with Agnes, a dynamic elderly Magyar lady married to a Rumanian teacher of Russian. When she drew from her shopping-bag two Iris Murdoch novels, bought in Moscow in 1980, I almost sobbed with relief. Gratified by my reaction, Adrian beamed and slapped me vigorously on the shoulder: in the circumstances, an unfortunate gesture of affection. Seeing me wince, Agnes investigated my injuries, then resolved to seek pain-killers. She had a contact … But for once ciubuc failed.
Ironically, Agnes and her circle of gregarious friends were so attentive that I had time to read only one novel before moving on to Baia Mare. Although the hotel larder happened to be going through a fecund phase of its allocation cycle, my friends insisted on providing all my meals, including breakfast. For them, my foreign company was a precious commodity. For me, their Magyar views on the peculiar problems of Transylvania were no less valuable: at once illuminating, saddening and worrying.
My Satu Mare conversations suggested that the Magyars’ post-revolution euphoria was tempered by fear – an impression repeatedly reinforced elsewhere. The political boat had been rocked and, though it was a hated prison-vessel, the Magyars had learned their way around it. Now, after the rocking, they were confused and nervous. Whether or not this reaction was reasonable is, in a sense, irrelevant; the emotions aroused were real and troubling. Agnes and her friends tended to convey these emotions indirectly, despite their assumption that I, as an Irishwoman from the Latin West, would of course be pro-Magyar.
Forty-year-old Eva, a fluent English-speaker, channelled her anxieties into the effects on ‘the common people’ of access to Western television. ‘The revolutionaries see this as an important symbol of liberty, but it could unsettle people before the Front can satisfy their new demands. It could cause terrible discontent and riots. A month ago most people didn’t know how deprived they were compared with any other Europeans, East or West. Now every day they see films about normal life, so they begin to realise their situation. And they may not have patience to wait for the economy to be reformed, which will take a long, long time! Soon they could become dangerous. Rumanians are very fiery people, very wild and impetuous …’
I remarked that, judging by what I had seen of Rumanian television sets in action, they seemed unlikely to reveal enough of the outside world to inflame the multitude.
This feeble witticism was taken seriously. ‘So they will want better sets,’ said Eva grimly. ‘They will feel thwarted because the good films are there but they cannot see them. Then they will make trouble.’
Eva’s sister-in-law spoke up; she and her family were about to migrate to Hungary. ‘You don’t understand’, she said, ‘how violent Rumanians are. Quickly they can become like savages. And they hate us! If they become angry, for any reason, they will attack us. And now there is no government in this country, not even a bad one. The police and army do not know what they should do, in a crisis. They have no boss. For us this is a very dangerous time. Transylvania is my home, my only home – I belong here, I don’t belong in Hungary. But I have two children to protect, so we must go …’
As time passed, and blood was shed in Transylvania, and I investigated some of the background to that bloodshed, it seemed to me that the phrase ‘they hate us’ revealed an unhealthy projection. The fanatically nationalistic Ceausescu regime did indeed hate Magyars and tried to suffocate their culture. However, Rumanians, Magyars and Saxons suffered equally under Ceausescu, with the important difference that Magyars and Saxons could – as many thousands did – get permission to migrate. Unfortunately Ceausescu’s anti-Magyar campaign was helped by both the Hungarian government and the ex-patriate Magyar lobby, who tirelessly disseminate tendentious accounts of ‘the Transylvania Problem’ throughout Western Europe and North America. This naturally angers ordinary Rumanians, who have no comparable international network to present their side of the story. Thus the post-revolution heightening of Rumanian–Magyar tension was partly an outside job, though with many insider accomplices.
At noon on my third convalescent day I gingerly emerged, leaning heavily on a beautifully carved walking-stick – a gift from Eva. Before the Treaty of Trianon in 1920 Satu Mare was Szatmarnemeti, capital of the Hungarian county of Szatmar and a major trading post on the river Szamos. The Magyars claim that since being deprived of its natural hinterland across the border it has lost not only its prosperity but its character: which may well be true. Yet I enjoyed my first glimpse, despite every step provoking red-hot twinges. The architectural flavour of the city centre remains Magyar, as does a big minority of the population – though how big I couldn’t discover. The lack of reliable figures is a handicap all writers on Rumania must accept. Unreliable figures of course abound; statistics on everything from agriculture to zoology poured from Ceausescu’s presses, all designed to prove how singularly blessed among the nations was the Socialist Republic of Rumania.
Near the three conspicuous but unmemorable basilicas – Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Calvinist – several maimed beggars were sitting on wet cold pavements: discarded citizens who seriously damaged the image of a blessed Socialist Republic. But naturally Ceausescu had never been allowed to see beggars. This was the first city I had explored and it distressed me to observe how many passers-by looked malnourished to a Third World degree, their faces recalling photographs of starving European refugees at the end of the Second World War. Yet the majority were adequately dressed and all those unhealthy bodies, normally attired, underlined the fundamental insanity of Ceausescu’s dictatorship. There had never been an extreme clothing shortage, my friends explained that evening. The manic ‘save energy’ campaign was accompanied by exhortations to dress warmly and, since there was so little food to be bought, people could afford to spend on their wardrobes. But many garments were ‘seconds’, unimaginatively designed, drably coloured and of poor workmanship. ‘Firsts’ were, at least in theory, for export only.
Petrol was still very scarce and the city’s buses ran on gas, contained in huge, torpedo-like cylinders on the vehicles’ roofs. Motor cars were far outnumbered by rubber-tyred carts; the glossy (uncollectivised) horses or ponies had their tails neatly plaited and tied up short, to avoid muddying, and wore long anti-evil-eye red tassels on their head-collars.
Most of the shops were three-quarters empty; when I asked for a toothbrush people laughed – derisively or sympathetically, according to temperament. The customerless alimentaras were however crammed as usual – here, with giant jars of pickled apples, tins of blackberry jam and bottles of murky ‘carrot-juice’. Bread was plentiful; within hours of taking control, the Front had ordered the release of extra flour for domestic consumption. I paused outside one small shop to admire some rare delicacies: a little pile of shrivelled spotty apples, four bunches of sprouting onions and a few coarse beetroot. Then a collective truck pulled up beside me and two men delivered two sacks of half-rotten potatoes. A moment before the street had been almost deserted, now scores of panting men and women converged on the shop and at once formed an orderly queue. Its logic was beyond me, so many people had arrived simultaneously; but the Rumanians had perfected the art of fair queueing and everyone seemed satisfied with their placing. They had also devised an informal rationing system; on such occasions, it was not done to seek more than one’s share. Observing that scene, it struck me that Rumania could probably survive for quite some time without a government, proceeding under the momentum of forty-five years of regimentation:
Food for the mind was equally scarce. Four bookshops had tellingly bare shelves which a month earlier would have been laden with the spurious works of Nicolae Ceausescu. A month later, Rumanians rejoiced to see on television tons and tons and tons of those phoney volumes being pulped to provide paper for, they hoped, real books – or politically independent newspapers and journals. Meanwhile, Satu Mare’s citizens were virtually restricted to the complete works of Mihai Eminescu (1850-89) in a fine centenary edition of twelve Encyclopaedia Britannica-sized volumes. One French grammar and three German engineering textbooks provided links with the outside world.
Next morning, feeling slightly more flexible, I hitch-hiked to Baia Mare: a test to determine whether or not my trek should be abandoned. After a five-mile walk, in the shadow of squalid tower blocs or through disintegrating industrial estates, I reached the wide level fields of a state farm. Here a relentless wind from Russia – some twenty miles away – went through me like a rapier, despite the cloudless sky, and in an hour only three trucks passed, each with an overcrowded cab. By then my back was protesting yet I dared not rest, in that temperature. I was regretting not having taken the train when a decrepit motor van stopped, the driver assuming me to be Rumanian. (My build, colouring and attire often fostered that illusion.) Momentarily he seemed nonplussed, but when he noticed me painfully struggling to embark – my back having suddenly become inflexible – he jumped out to help and provided a thawing swig of tuica.
Gheorghe, a jolly young man with a chubby ruddy face and oily dungarees, spoke two words of English: ‘private enterprise’. These he proudly repeated, several times, while jerking his thumb towards his load – hunks of rusty machinery which had come from a Satu Mare factory and were to be sold to Gypsies in Baia Mare for Gheorghe’s benefit. It seemed unlikely that he had bought them, but I suppose the Free Market has to start somewhere.
During our fifty-mile drive Gheorghe gloated over the Ceausescus’ executions, turning to me and putting two fingers to his temple, then simulating sudden death and laughing uproariously. At intervals he flung back his head and chanted triumphantly, ‘Jos Communismul! Jos Communismul!’ (Down with Communism.) When we stopped to buy cigarettes he took from his wallet a blurred newspaper photograph of Iliescu and stroked it affectionately: a good man was now leading the country … Then he presented me with an ID-card-sized photograph of himself, having neatly inscribed his name on the back, and requested one of me in exchange. I obliged, wishing I had brought a bigger supply; exchanging photographs, it was becoming clear, is an important ritual among ‘the simple people’.
Abruptly, across the wide ploughed plain, dark blue mountains bulked against the northern sky, their slopes only slightly snowy. My pangs of frustration were sharp. It had taken me four hours to walk ten miles on the level road from Satu Mare, yet my back had resented even that gentle exercise. Clearly trekking was out for some time to come.
Crossing a ridge, we saw Baia Mare far below. Gheorghe superfluously informed me that it is a very big city with many factories; he seemed inexplicably proud of it. A mining centre (on and off) since pre-Roman times, it has lately become a grotesque agglomeration of pollution-wreathed high-risery on the banks of the poisoned river Sasar. Because one tries to avoid looking at them, one can’t afterwards describe such places in any detail. However, I should record that The Rough Guide lists several minor tourist attractions which I was in no state to be attracted by – the house of Iancu de Hundeoara, a Baroque cathedral, Stephen’s Tower, a Mineral Museum and a Village Museum.
Gheorghe insisted on delivering me to the city centre Hotel Carpati, built for hypothetical tourists on the chemical-scented Sasar. I didn’t argue; the idea of lying down, immediately, was appealing. But Fate had other plans for me. As in Oradea, my lei were rejected for lack of a bank exchange certificate, and the hard currency charge for a single room was $50. (An interesting post-revolution change: The Rough Guide gave the 1988 charge for this hotel as $28 single.) I protested that in Sebis and Satu Mare no such certificate had been demanded. The young woman at Reception looked apologetic and sad as she explained, ‘In this city we have not been told to make things different.’ Apparently Rumania was then being governed by autonomous local factions, some adhering to the old rules, others discarding them – others again modifying them for personal gain.
Retreating to the enormous crowded restaurant, I took the last empty table and wondered what to do next. The four good-looking young waitresses were beaming and efficient and had time to exchange semi-flirtatious jokes with ‘regulars’. The table-linen, as in most such hotels at that time, was crisp and spotless. Then gradually Ceausescu’s terror-influence waned and standards declined; when I revisited the Carpati in March everything looked perceptibly scruffier.
The restaurant was crowded not because of lunch-time – few were eating – but because of a tolerable-looking beer. As I ordered two bottles, three men at a nearby table heard my foreignness and eagerly invited me to join them. French is Rumania’s first foreign language but – to counterbalance my various misfortunes – I chanced to meet an extraordinary number of English-speakers.
Mihai and Justinian were in their early thirties but looked older; life under Ceausescu was ageing. Tiberiu – tall, too thin, with a long pale sensitive face – had just left university. All three worked in local factories but now Tiberiu was hoping to be able to do a post-graduate course abroad. ‘I have my passport!’ he said elatedly, taking it from his jacket pocket and waving it above his head. ‘Yesterday I got it – now we can all get passports! Tell me, please, which is the best university in Europe for chemical engineering?’
Before I could reply Mihai said impatiently, ‘But you have not enough wages to buy dollars – and you have no one living in the Occident. For you it is impossible to leave, to be abroad without dollars.’
Justinian nodded and remarked, ‘It’s bad to give everyone passports they can’t use. It makes people discontented and angry.’
‘But in a democracy,’ I said, ‘people must be free to travel, if they can find the means. That’s their problem, but it’s the government’s duty to provide passports.’
Justinian looked puzzled and Mihai shook his head and said sombrely, ‘We have much to learn about democracy – everything! Can you send us some books when you go home? We need to study democracy. No one in Rumania can understand what is it, really …’
I promised to do what I could and didn’t say what I thought – that the practice of democracy cannot be learned from books.
The atmosphere in that restaurant, at lunch-time on an ordinary working day, was exuberantly festive. And not because of the liquid intake; Baia Mare’s flowing beer, though just drinkable, was scarcely two per cent alcohol. When I remarked on all the jollity in the air Tiberiu said, ‘The Ceausescus are dead, so we are happy all day and all night!’ He finished his beer and took another bottle from the bucket on the chair beside him.
Justinian clinked glasses with me and said, ‘We are free! I think in the West you have a problem to understand what means freedom, because always you have it. It means for us we can shout “Jos Ceausescu! Jos Communismul!”’ – and he did joyously shout those words, and at other tables young men and women laughed and echoed them, and the waitresses clapped and one grinning old man threw his fur hat high in the air.
‘Six weeks ago,’ said Mihai, ‘if we spoke those words the Securitate would come and beat us up and take us to prison. Or if we talked to you for five minutes, they would force us to repeat what we said to you and you said to us.’
‘And if you didn’t tell them the truth …?’ I wondered.
‘We must tell true,’ replied Justinian. ‘Maybe they knew already, they had so many listening machines. Then if we don’t tell true they beat us even more.’
‘What about the future?’ I asked. ‘Is it good to have elections so soon? Can the political parties get organised in a few months?’
They looked at one another, doubtfully, and hesitated. Then Justinian said, ‘We must have a government and order. Now no one has no one to obey. That is not good, but it would be worse if we didn’t have Iliescu. He is a strong, honest man. He can keep the country safe until the election, so we are lucky. And Petru Roman also is good. But we have too many parties – eighteen!’
Mihai frowned. ‘Now anyone can have an idea and not know what to do with it except make a new party. I don’t like this way of politics, but we are told it is democratic.’
(That was in January. By 20 May – Election Day – the Rumanians had lost count of their parties. There were rumoured to be seventy-five, or perhaps seventy-eight? And three months later there were 102 …)
Suddenly Mihai was angry, his fists tightly clenched on the table. ‘Foreigners think our democracy will be a joke! Why are so many reporters and television men coming and treating us like animals in a zoo? We have pride and dignity, we are not crazy lunatics for Western people to stare at!’
‘Maybe Western people think we must be crazy’, said Justinian, ‘to have waited so long before killing the Ceausescus.’
‘And maybe’, said Tiberiu, ‘we are crazy!’
Mihai scowled. ‘We are brave people, our revolutionaries had no weapons, only they were brave, to go out and get thousands killed to get freedom for us all.’
The long silence that followed was vaguely uncomfortable. Tiberiu broke it: ‘No one was killed here, in Baia Mare.’
Mihai abruptly got up and went to the telephone. Justinian went to the ‘toaleta’. Tiberiu said, confidentially, ‘It is hard in places where no one is dead. We are free without fighting. We have bad feelings about that.’
‘You mean you feel guilty?’ I asked. ‘Or ashamed that you didn’t all go out on the streets to defy the Securitate?’
‘Yes, guilty!’ said Tiberiu. ‘That is the right English word which I could not remember.’
When the others returned Justinian repeated, ‘We are lucky to have Iliescu, when he got rid of the Ceausescus he gave us everything next day – more food, heat, light, passports. And liberty to have many newspapers saying different things, and bigger wages and pensions for miners and farm-workers. And every day foreign films on television.’
Mihai agreed. Tiberiu twiddled his beer glass and said nothing. I mentally noted, not for the first time, a certain confusion in the Rumanians’ perception of their revolution. Many seemed to believe, simultaneously, that it had been brought about by ‘thousands of brave unarmed heroes’ and by ‘strong, honest Iliescu!’
We talked for over four hours. My friends should have returned to work soon after our meeting but were so excited by their new freedom to talk openly to foreigners that they found me irresistible: the first foreigner they had seen since the revolution and the only foreigner with whom they had ever held normal converse. At intervals one or other would dash to the telephone to make flimsy excuses to some boss, then hurry back, eagerly demanding ‘What were you saying? Tell me what I didn’t hear!’
I then mistook this casual opting out of the afternoon’s work for a symptom of the general post-revolution euphoria, a natural reaction against a lifetime of regimentation. To the wandering foreigner it seemed at first attractive and convenient – everyone everywhere dropping everything to talk, advise, guide. But I soon realised that this feckless attitude to work is among Rumania’s most ominous problems, which becomes deeply worrying once the implications have been seen. Either people are in phoney jobs, as is often the case, or they regard their work as supporting a system they despise and thus get some satisfaction out of neglecting it. Which under Ceausescu too many could do with impunity, if they took care to keep their political noses clean.
This form of corruption is recognised as such by those who call themselves ‘intellectuals’ – the university educated, though in our terms not necessarily ‘intellectual’, new middle class. One midsummer morning I was sitting in a friend’s kitchen, far from Baia Mare, having an absorbing discussion about the differences between police and Securitate corruption. Suddenly my friend looked at her watch and exclaimed, ‘It’s 10.30! So I’m corrupt too, I should have been at work two and a half hours ago but I prefer talking to you. In this country we’re all corrupt – you know that?’
I felt no need politely to demur. By then numerous Rumanians, of every condition, had explained that no one could have survived the past forty-five years without jettisoning normal standards of honesty. Clearly this was so; but as one historian bluntly told me, and several other friends coyly hinted, the Rumanians found it not too difficult to practise those habitual dishonesties essential for survival under Communism. The historian said, ‘We are a half-Oriental country. In Wallachia and Moldavia, for centuries, Ottoman standards prevailed. In Transylvania, under the Magyars, the Rumanians were outcasts, so discriminated against and deprived that any cheating of the rulers seemed justified. We have no tradition of not being corrupt.’
By sunset the Carpati’s beer quota had long since run out and the restaurant was almost empty. My back objected agonisingly to the short walk to the loo; a quest for pain-killers in the capital seemed the logical next move. But when I announced that I was going to Bucharest on the night train Tiberiu exclaimed, ‘That is not possible! First you must buy where to sleep in the train. Now you come to my apartment and early tomorrow buy for tomorrow night.’
Mihai drove us through long, wide, straight boulevards, feebly lit, to Tiberiu’s bloc. Cranes surrounded it: sinister angular shapes against the night sky. Tiberiu explained, ‘Ceausescu came over here in a helicopter and saw little bits of ground left between the blocs. He said they must be filled up with other blocs for people from villages around – then the villages could be cleared away. So now no one in any bloc will have any light or air or space. In the Occident do you know he was mad?’
Alina was awaiting Tiberiu, looking tense. They had their own problem, quite apart from state terrorism. As partners outside of Holy Matrimony, they could not live together; Alina’s parents insisted on her always being home by midnight, though she was twenty-two, and so they had to be consistently deceived. Luckily Tiberiu’s parents, who would have been equally awkward, lived far away and were not a complication.
Alina looked tense because Tiberiu was late and she had plotted a pleasant surprise which required his immediate co-operation. She would be able to spend the night in his apartment, having had an invitation to stay with a girl friend in Satu Mare and told her parents she was accepting it. However, to prevent any burgeoning of parental suspicion Tiberiu must now ring a friend of his in Satu Mare and ask him to ask his sister to ring Alina’s father at his factory – he was on the evening shift – and enquire about the train’s exact time of arrival.
I have never felt so de trop. This tiny apartment, though adequate for one person, could not possibly accommodate a pair of lovers plus guest. As Tiberiu hurried down six flights of concrete stairs, to the public telephone by the entrance, I glanced at my watch and remarked that I mustn’t stay long as I hadn’t yet booked my hotel room.
Alina stared at me, aghast, and for a moment it seemed she was about to cry. ‘But Tiberiu said you were staying with us!’ She pressed her hands together as though in prayer and begged, ‘Please, please don’t go!’ She was small and already tending to dumpiness, with a broad, pleasant, too-pale face and wide rather sad brown eyes, now pleadingly fixed on me.
When Tiberiu returned I was persuaded that the privilege of having a foreign guest really did outweigh all else. It felt oddly touching to have my company so valued – and its value doubled when my profession emerged. Authors, I was to discover, are much respected in Rumania. And books are often regarded as an individual’s most precious possessions: especially foreign books, it being some time since volumes uncontaminated by Communism were published within the country.
Alina’s English was more fluent than Tiberiu’s; she had wanted to study English and French at Cluj university but her father had a flawed file – he had been involved in a factory dispute in 1986 – so she had failed to gain a place.
These two were the first of several young couples who befriended me and then revealed that for them the path of true love was strewn with multiple obstacles, personal and official. Under Ceausescu unmarried couples were forbidden to cohabit, which partly explains a high divorce rate in the under-thirty age group. On the family level, it baffled me that so many parents retained rigidly puritanical views though religion is no longer a dominant force.
As we ate our supper of scrambled eggs and stale bread, I asked Alina, ‘Why are your parents so strict? Are they very religious?’
She looked down at her plate and prodded her food irritably before replying. ‘They believe in God and go to church at Easter. But I think they are strict not because of God but because our friends and relatives would think I was a bad woman if they knew about Tiberiu – I mean, that we go to bed. It is just the old custom, not the religion.’
During the months ahead, I was frequently given this explanation for parental inhibitions.
‘The biggest problem’, said Tiberiu, ‘is that we love our parents, very much. We can’t make them sad. They have worried and suffered to feed us, when we were growing up – going without enough food for themselves. So we must respect the way they think, even if it is very troublesome.’
Alina said, ‘Both our families would be happy if we married and last year we wanted to – but it would be wrong to have children while there is no good food for them. And we couldn’t afford the tax punishment for not having them.’
‘Next June’, said Tiberiu, ‘I will be twenty-five and under Ceausescu I would then have to pay the same fine for not being married. But now Iliescu has stopped all those laws so maybe we can marry soon.’
‘Why “maybe”?’ I asked.
‘Because of where to live,’ replied Alina wearily. ‘If we marry Tiberiu will lose this apartment – it’s for one person only. But it’s hard to get a bigger place so maybe we must live for years in my parents’ little house. And we don’t like that although we love them.’
‘Perhaps Iliescu will also change the housing laws,’ I suggested. ‘Then you could both live here.’
Tiberiu shook his head. ‘No! He is changing only the laws that people outside have made trouble about – the baby tax, illegal abortion, contraceptives banned. People outside never heard of all the other bad laws, like not having freedom about where to live and other things – many other things! So those he won’t change. But maybe after the elections our new government will be more kind …’
Alina flared up. ‘Iliescu is a good man! He hated Ceausescu and Ceausescu was afraid of him and punished him!’
Tiberiu shrugged. ‘What punishment? To be Director of a publishing house! I would like that punishment! Iliescu is a friend of Gorbachev, they studied together in Moscow and ever since are friends. So always he is under Russian influence, which for us means our enemy’s influence.’
There is no evidence that Gorbachev and Iliescu were acquainted as students, yet throughout Rumania I heard this rumour frequently repeated. I asked, ‘Don’t you believe Gorbachev is a new and different sort of Russian? Didn’t he make possible the collapse of Communism throughout Europe?’
Tiberiu smiled at me tolerantly. ‘People in the Occident can’t understand. You get confused because Gorbachev is a different sort of Communist. But he will always be a Communist, and Iliescu the same. Perestroika and glasnost are only new sauces on the same poisoned food.’
This was a standard ‘single’ flat, with hot water for two hours both morning and evening since the revolution. The little kitchen had an aluminium sink and three-ring gas cooker but no refrigerator. Food was stored, when there was any to store, on the balcony, to which there was access from both rooms through french windows. The bathroom, to the left of the entrance door, was a windowless cubby-hole with space for only one person to stand between bath, lavatory and hand-basin. The hallway, though not big enough to hold a bicycle, provided extra storage space for – in Tiberiu’s case – books. In Poland and Moscow I have seen whole families living in flats no bigger than this; by Communist standards, most Rumanians were not ill-housed.
On the bed-sitter walls every available space was covered with pop-star portraits, sent from Austria by Alina’s émigré cousin. But there was room for only half a dozen, one wall being occupied by a typical piece of Rumanian modern furniture, some six feet high and eight feet long. This incorporated bookshelves, clothes drawers at floor level, food and china cupboards, knick-knack alcoves and a narrow wardrobe. On top were displayed the sort of things more fortunate people put on their mantelpieces. Most of these plywood conglomerates look attractive enough but many have tiresome defects; sticking drawers, loose door knobs, hinges that break and cannot possibly be replaced. All the best Rumanian furniture, which is very handsome indeed, was of course exported, mainly to the USSR – like the best Rumanian everything.
It was after midnight when we retired. News of a foreign body had spread fast and relays of excited neighbours arrived to present me with gifts and beg me to stay with them on my next visit. The conversation was mainly political, in the widest sense. Tiberiu’s anti-Iliescu stance was generally deplored, yet many doubts were expressed about Rumania’s ability to ‘go democratic’ within months of the revolution.
I slept uneasily, being often awakened by agonising spasms, and during the small hours came to a decision: should Bucharest fail to yield up effective pain-killers, that quest must be pursued in Belgrade.
At breakfast (more scrambled eggs and stale bread) Mihai reappeared, having already been to the gara to buy my tickets for the night train. In honour of the foreigner he, Tiberiu and Alina had reported ‘digestive trouble’ to their respective bosses – a plausible Rumanian complaint, for obvious reasons. It was a brilliant sunny morning but when Mihai offered to drive us to Baia Mare’s various tourist attractions I had to admit to being in too much pain to enjoy sight-seeing. Whereupon Mihai and Tiberiu, looking genuinely stricken on my behalf, rushed away to search unsuccessfully for a remedy.
Alina asked probing questions, then advised me to go straight home and have my pain investigated. I explained that I couldn’t bear to leave Rumania as yet, having just arrived after a fifty-year wait. And as I spoke something bobbed to the surface of my consciousness.
‘It seems to me,’ I said – astonishing myself – ‘that I’m going to want to spend much longer here than I’d planned. In fact … well, I’ve just realised this. I want to write a book about Rumania.’