––––––––
I next opened my eyes to a flood of sunlight through the broken window pane. Dust sparkled as it floated timelessly above me, ensnared in a rectangle of light that slew through the gloom of my chamber to play casually upon the splintered wooden floor.
Through the jagged shards of glass the branches of an olive tree diluted the sun’s glare as she forged her way above the horizon, a few defiant clouds daring to challenge the welcome orb that announced the arrival of each new day. I reached out a hand into the beam of light, enjoying the warmth against my skin, the dust swirling anxiously around my extended limb, as if trapped by some invisible border.
Outside, the dawn chorus was already under way, a welcome aubade to the new day, for the social and political upheavals of recent times seemed to have had no impact on the fauna around us.
I could hear Mama as she went about her chores, determined our abode should be respectable at the beginning of each day, cleaning and clearing what it had been too dark to tend the previous evening.
A smile crept across my lips, broadening as I became conscious of it. Happiness was not a commodity in great supply at this time and I welcomed it with open heart. Perhaps it was a sign that things were to change for the better.
I rose quietly and washed from a bowl of water prepared the night before. For nearly a year now we had been obliged to follow this cumbersome routine, to allow to settle the sediment that spewed forth from the communal faucet a few roads distant.
Nicolae slept undisturbed through my ablutions, as I wished. We had always shared a room, since before I can remember, but I had reached that age now where privacy was beginning to assume increasing importance.
This was a difficult time for me. I was aware of the changes taking place, yet unable to fully understand them. There was no-one of whom I could seek explanation, for Mama still thought of me as a little child.
And now... Now I found myself without a mentor in the form of teacher or friend, in whom I could confide.
I donned a smock and went to the kitchen, where Mama was still busy with her chores, and after exchanging perfunctory salutations, I passed through to the garden, to view the church clock on which we all relied for our time-keeping. It was a symbol of our village, defiant of the coming and going of those below. A sign of security and continuity in moments of national crisis.
As with King Carol’s abdication. We, the entire village, I should not be surprised, had stood, studying the hands of the clock, in order to bow our heads in reverence on the hour of his son’s succession.
All but Papa, whose contempt for the new King Michael lost him many friends. I’d heard it whispered this had been a pertinent factor in his arrest. As much so as the workers’ strike in the Ploesti oil fields. But as yet, the political machinations of the adult world were quite beyond my understanding.
For me, the clock was simply my guide to attending school.
Papa had always been insistent that my schooling was of the utmost importance. And so few children were able to benefit from an education, least of all girls, that I ought perhaps to have felt privileged.
But even when Papa were alive I had gained no enjoyment from my scholarship, surrounded by peers who seemed to look down on me because of my background. Because my father was of the labouring classes, a humble engineer of the oil industry, not part of the intelligentsia.
Despite this I had made a few friends, and my preceptor had, at first, given me encouragement and helped me to learn.
But then, after the workers’ strike, when Papa was arrested, everything changed.