Here's a rough draft of the first little bit of my new project. It's the long-imagined novel about my former home, and is shaping up as the fictional tale of a teenage boy who takes a horse across Romania just after the demise of Ceausescu. He scams the horse off a group of naive aid workers, they give him the animal far from his home, and he has some adventures on the way back. Actually quite a range of adventures that reflect the bizarre atmosphere of those first few months after the dictator was shot and the peculiar mix of people who turned up. The story starts at the end of the liturgy in a little village church. The omniescent narrator is me, and I am trying to make sure that the main protagonist, Stefan, is not me. Comments are welcome.
---ooo---
Cel ce a înviat din
morţi, Hristos, Adevăratul Dumnezeul nostru, pentru rugăciunile Preacuratei
Maicii Sale, ale sfinţilor măriţilor şi întru tot lăudaţilor Apostoli şi pentru
ale tuturor sfinţilor, să ne miluiască şi să ne mântuiască pe noi ca un bun şi
de oameni iubitor. Amin.
Arms spread out as if crucified in a sunbeam heavy with
incense smoke, the thickly bearded priest stood motionless before the gilded
iconostasis. The liturgy was concluded. Stefan gazed at the priest’s long blue
robes, a little threadbare now, but brighter than the brown and grey homespun
garb of the peasant congregation. The priest was clad in heavenly azure, whilst
farming folk bore the colours of the soil they tilled and the beasts they
husbanded. It was a profound thought for a boy living in the Carpathian
foothills, erudite for a village where older people still wrapped their feet in
felt strips and laced stout moccasins in place for the winter. As he looked at
the priest sharply illuminated in the otherwise gloomy nave, Stefan’s thoughts turned
to the prosaic reality of the Southern Bucovina. Now winter is ending even up
here in the hills. The bumpy road through the village isn’t so muddy. Purple
crocuses are blooming. Soon sheep will be driven towards the spring pastures,
then higher still for the summer. That was the world that Stefan knew.
“Stefan”, hissed his elderly aunt Viorica, “go up and kiss
the cross.”
By now the priest had lowered his arms and taken a polished
brass cross from the elderly stooping alter servant. Stefan joined a line of
supplicants according to the traditional formula: younger boys, then older
boys, men, women with babies, girls and finally women. Aged fifteen, Stefan
took his place behind three boys younger than himself: Radu and Doru the shepherd’s
sons, friendly boys whose father sent them to church in sheepskin cloaks like
miniature versions of himself – only less smelly – and his brother Mircea.
Women dominated the congregation for most of the men found other things to do
on a Sunday morning, feeding animals then standing around in little groups
smoking whilst waiting for the bars to open. Just four men stood behind Stefan:
Mr Popescu, the tall schoolmaster with a love of poetry; Mr Gheorghe, the
often-tipsy doctor; Mr Radulescu, the short dour shopkeeper and finally, full
of importance and paunchy, Mr Somesani, the mayor. How the mayor now liked to
be seen at church, visiting the school, putting his nose into the doctor’s
surgery or giving instructions to the policeman. ‘Ha,’ Stefan’s mother had commented,
‘he’s a foreigner. His name comes from beyond the mountains, from the Somes
river. Ceausescu sent him, and he should take him back.’ Well, Stefan had
thought, now we’re stuck with him. Nicolae Ceausescu was shot last December. A
good thing too, as meat had appeared in the shops, and other things besides.
Not that Stefan’s mother had much money to buy anything. Behind Mr Somesani
queued the girls, two dozen of them, each rosy-cheeked from helping out of doors.
There were Stefan’s cousins Irina and Magdalena, who brought eggs and cheese
for his mother. Finally the women waited in line, clad in multiple layers of
wool. With a smirk Stefan imagined the stench, which was a little unfair since
fully half of them had washed in tepid water from chipped tin bowls that very
morning, as they did every Sunday from sheer force of habit.
Stefan shuffled in line until he reached the priest. Bending
forward he kissed first the cross and then the priest’s right hand, as was the
custom.
“How are your mother and father, Stefan?” whispered the
priest in contrast to the rich baritone with which he had delivered the Liturgy
of Saint John Chrysostom.
“Well, Domnul Parinte,”
Stefan replied, using the formal Romanian to address the parish priest of Gura
Brodinei village.
“Does your mother need anything, Stefan?” the priest
continued. Stefan’s mother was distantly related to the priest.
“We have very little food, Domnul Parinte,” Stefan admitted, screwing up his courage in order
to do so. His mother would have been furious had she heard his words. They were
hardly starving. Simply their diet had become monotonous at the end of a long
highland winter, maize porridge and bread, pickles and beans, plus occasional
welcome eggs.
“A lorry is due today at the Baptist church, Stefan,” the
priest whispered into his ear, so quietly that Mr Popescu standing close behind
hadn’t a clue of the advice.
---ooo---
Well, that is news, Stefan thought as he walked across the
churchyard. Like everyone, he’d heard that the Baptists received aid from the
foreigners. They had a room full of it, so people gossiped. Certainly their
congregation was dressed in new clothes from abroad, at least on Sundays. A
number of the Baptists seemed to have put on weight, not that any approached
the mayor’s appreciable girth.
“So why did the priest tell me that?” Stefan asked out loud,
to no-one in particular.
“What did he tell you?” asked Radu in his high unbroken
voice, intrigued.
“That your father will roast a sheep tonight, Radu,” Stefan
replied mischievously.
“No he didn’t!”
Stefan laughed as he walked through the covered gateway that
led straight into the muddy main street, from habit running a hand across one
of the carved wooden gates. It was old now, sun-bleached and cracked, but interesting
to the fingers of a child and the mind of an ethnographer. Likewise the beauty of
the icons was veiled, their tempura darkened by centuries of incense smoke, and
some would call that a metaphor for the whole of the Regat, old Romania that
predated the addition of Transylvania.
Ignoring the shepherd boys’ banter, Stefan walked fast to
avoid the women already fallen into banter, his feet splashing in the mud. How
to get hold of a Baptist food parcel? They stuck together, those Baptists, demanding
attendance at two Sunday services and one on Thursday evening, and anyway he
was Orthodox. Every true Romanian, he knew from his mother, was Orthodox.
Still, food was food. And Stefan spoke a little English. He could address the
foreigners directly.
Besides, Stefan was grateful to the foreigners. He had
learned English by listening to Voice of America and the BBC World Service.
Clandestine listening at his grandfather’s house had been a treat, and one that
might have seen old Dumitru jailed, except that Stefan had kept his vow of
silence.
---ooo---
The first Sunday of May 1990 had started like any other
spring day in Valea Brodinei. In the thin grey light of dawn Stafan’s father Petru
rose, dressed in a shabby blue uniform with a battered peaked cap, and headed
for the railway station where he worked. As signalman he would pass four
passenger trains and two carrying goods in the course of the day, which would
be like any other. As usual he would breakfast with the stationmaster,
comforted by the routine of his existence. He signalled trains from Nisipitu,
at the head of the valley, down to Gura Putnei junction a few miles to the
east. From there trains ran eastwards down the broad green valley where,
swollen by melt-water from the snowy mountains to the southwest, the Suceava
river swelled to fill its wide stony bed. On the trains went, stopping at the
market town of Radauti, which Stefan had visited once, just the previous month.
The many market stalls selling herbs and beans, hardware and clothes, awakened
in Stefan a desire to travel further for he was a bold young man. Had he seen
the newer part of Radauti - grey concrete apartment blocks growing from a muddy
rubbish-strewn hinterland where gypsies scavenged – then Stefan’s wish to
explore might have been snuffed out. But fate smiled upon Stefan that day, as
it would again. From Radauti the train ran alongside a road, so his father had
told him, reaching a junction called Dornesti. That was an important place, for
every day an express train called there, running all the way to the capital
city, Bucuresti. According to the timetable in the stationmaster’s office one
could reach Bucuresti in fifteen hours. But hardly anyone travelled that far,
just a few old people taking sacks of maize or potatoes to relatives living in
the south of the country. Food was really short down there, it had been for
years. Now that Nicolae Ceausesu was dead, it was easy to blame him for the
shortages. But, Stefan thought, how could one man do so much wrong?
Stefan’s mother Maria made a fire of twigs in the kitchen
stove, beginning to warm the room that was the focal point of their home. A
thin, dark-haired woman she worked quickly with agile fingers performing
familiar tasks. Over the well scrubbed iron hob she heated a pan of water for
tea, and a frying pan in which she proceeded to fry three eggs, one each for
her, Stefan and Mircea. Stefan looked forward to the weekends. Not only was he
free from school, he would eat more than mamaliga
– maize porridge – and stale bread. Winter lingered long in that northern
valley, and it would be months before Maria’s vegetable garden yielded beans,
carrots and delicious tomatoes.
Stefan had turned fifteen the previous October, the month in
which most birthdays fell in the mountains. Well muscled by farm chores, with
the jet black hair and deep brown eyes that were usual amongst the peasants of
that valley, he was tall for his age and might even pass for seventeen. As his grandfather
had said, Stefan had better take care not to be taken by an army drafting
party. However that particular joke had not been cracked since the previous
December, when the Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu had been executed. Those events
had seemed far away to Stefan, and they were little talked about amongst the peasants.
Not much tangible had changed in the village. The trains still ran. The
foresters still cut timber and loaded it onto freight cars at the station.
There were a few more things in the dusty little village shop. Meat had
appeared on several occasions, and each time people had queued all morning waiting
for the delivery truck to arrive. Most significantly the village policeman was
considerably less sure of himself, and the mayor seemed more interested in
making friends with those he had previously ignored.