Hello, who’s there?

Thursday, 21 December 1989

They know. Both sides, those who have been giving orders for years, and those who have obeyed them. All of them dependent every night on the voice of Radio Free Europe: no, they are not giving way, those silhouettes huddled in the depths of the Timişoara night, frozen stiff, demanding the return of the pastor whom Ceauşescu has just sentenced to house arrest, suspected of giving ‘subversive sermons’.

More than a thousand of them in that big square, most of them born as a result of Decree 770, born from failed abortions; at most they possess three guns, possibly four, and yet they advance towards the soldiers who have their rifles levelled at them. Fire at will, commands the kinglet when he hears: we’re in a state of war! What war? They’re already dead, killed at point-blank range. So then we’ll go on strike, the survivors decide.

In Bucharest they know too, those hand-picked workers pushed forward by the Securitate agents, quick, we have to fill this bus leaving from the factory to go and applaud the speech by the man they have nicknamed The Hateful One, a rapidly thrown-together speech to demonstrate his authority in the face of recent events.

And here it resonates, that echo of the bodies people stumble over in the streets of Timişoara, and here they hear it, those men crammed into the bus. They have to do something. During the journey to the centre of Bucharest, they whisper to one another as discreetly as possible: what can they do? Jump off as it goes along, persuade the driver to stop? Impossible, they are surrounded by vans full of the usual accessories, the blue–yellow–red flags, banners proclaiming the Comrade’s glory. All right, if they have to be part of the spectacle yet again, they will boo him, they will tear at the silence constructed thanks to the horror they’ve had rammed down their throats and into their brains for years now.

About twenty of them reach an agreement. They will shout: Timişoara. Staggered by their decision, stomachs churning, they fall silent and look out of the bus windows at the capital’s deserted streets. All the workers from the Bucharest factories are already in Palace Square, the pioneers at the front, flanked by important Party members. The platform is protected by rows of police. Guards are watching the surrounding streets. Securitate agents are posted everywhere among the crowd.

How do they do it? Do they take a deep breath before they launch themselves, or on the contrary, do they block out everything, fear, breathing, everything they should not think of? A Super-super-E. Let the air filter into their loosened throats, clench their abdomens, turn the ribcage into an echo chamber, and, almost inaudibly among the obligatory ‘Hurrah CE-AU-ȘES-CU!’, let out a feeble: ti-mi-şo-a-ra, ti-mi-şo-a-ra.

A few gasps escape from the stupefied bodies around them. A quiver, followed by nothing. An interruption. Up on the platform, the Comrade, an aged silhouette in black coat and astrakhan hat, has stopped speaking. Stunned. He turns to his wife, to his frozen ministers.

And there are only two left out of the twenty workers who swore on the bus that they would do something, two who are still holding the blue–yellow–red flags they have been told to wave. And they step forward, where are they going, no idea, they move slowly forward in the midst of the bewildered crowd, ti-mi-şoa-ra ti-mi-şo-a-ra. The Old Man clears his throat, taps the mike as if it is an old, out-of-order telephone receiver, there must be some technical problem – get back to the point – what was he saying, oh yes, the terrorist menace threatening the country, the foreign agents who had come to create chaos in Timişoara – Romania condemns this a-ggress-ion – we will re-establish order and the – above all don’t think about – the Wall – Rostropovich – the Bulgarians Poland Germany – a handshake, transparency, he says, that other Russian manager of – he is feeling giddy. Licks his dry lips.

HE-LLO? He questions the December wind, sprinkled with distant cries: ti-mi-şo-a-ra ti-mi-şo-a-ra. Hello? Hello? Who’s there? Who are you? Who is it? Who knows. He seems to see a wave at the back of the crowd, the sun is shining, violent and icy, is it a new dance the children are performing, or what? The Most Renowned Scientist in the World grasps his arm, whispers lines he doesn’t know, what is she talking about, Promise them a wage rise, she repeats, a schoolmarm who can no longer control the crowd, HELL-O, she shouts, but far from the microphone her silly voice croaks, silence, be quiet, eh, silence be quiet, eh that’s enough who’s there, and he, the Old Man, is like a scratched record, gets stuck, groans hello hello hello hell-o hello So What. It’s finished. The image freezes, the televised retransmission is interrupted by a patriotic song over a shaky test card.

Then the special broadcast resumes: beneath a soft blue sky, a scantily dressed crowd gathers round the platform. They had to act quickly to find some images and to be able to continue the narrative come what may: they come from a meeting the previous summer.

At what moment is everything turned upside down? What is the event that transforms these eternal spectators into actors? A few brave people shout ‘Timişoara’, then almost at once an explosion produces a mass exit and everyone flees the square, scattering, turning their backs on the Comrade without receiving his permission, something unheard of. But what is this explosion? Nothing more than a firecracker thrown by the workers determined to put an end to things? A diversion by the regime to cover the slogans hostile to Ceauşescu? The noise of tanks moving along the nearby boulevards to contain the first opponents, a small group of demonstrators who are already trying to storm the palace? And the following day, who fires at the small crowd that for the first time gathers of its own accord? Almost a thousand dead in a few days for a non-velvet revolution. Impossible to imagine they are all ricochets from stray bullets, I am told in Bucharest. So where do these bursts of fire come from? From those mythical gangs of psychotic orphans, Ceauşescu’s last supporters, trained since childhood to venerate and protect him? Soviet agents, those tourists who had flooded into the country from the start of December? Who is directing the snipers? Who is shooting at whom? Everyone is shooting at everyone, because for decades nobody has known who is who. Who to trust.