“I need you two to help me with the pots for the lard. I will start making it first thing in the morning, but the pots are too heavy and I need you to set them on the stove”. My mom was always practical. There was a Revolution happening, but so was the lard making, and she could not miss the chance to do it right. That lard was the grease that our health depended on in 1990, it made up a good part of the ingredients of our soap, it kept our pig ribs safe from mold, and so on.
“Let’s wash those pots, first of all”, my father said. “I’m sure they’re dusty”.
We entered the basement, where those two 50 liter pots were waiting for us. We used them to make lard, various kinds of jam, the zacusca and the tomato juice I loved to drink after school. But they were stored in the basement most of the time, which meant we had to wash them before using them, every time. We washed them outside, with hot water fetched from the kitchen, near the place where we slaughtered the pig. Despite the fact that we had cleaned the spot afterwards, the now frozen dirt was still coal black from the straw fire that had burned off the pig’s hair and dirt.
Once washed we went inside the kitchen and put one pot on the hub and the other on the stove. We had a hub that we used mainly in summer and a stove that we used, for the extra heat, in winter. Between them was the water tap which we used to put some water in both of those huge pots. If we were cannibals those pots would have easily accommodated some people for boiling, but we weren’t. My mom would put the pig’s fat and all the fatty parts of the pig in them, first thing the following morning, and boil them until all the fat dissolved and, before all the water was gone, she would turn off the fire under the pots and add salt. Then she would put the hot lard in the jars that held the fried ribs and the remaining lard into small jars that she would use for cooking. Vegetable oil was only used in our house when fasting, before Christmas and before Easter and every Wednesday and Friday throughout the year. We were supposed to be fasting and not eat meat, fish, milk, eggs or anything made from them. Lard was from our pig and she could not cook with it on those days.
When I got back upstairs, the lights were off, but the TV was still blaring out light and sound. My sister was sleeping and my mom had cleared the table of food. My father’s glass of wine and a half full carafe were waiting. From the TV I soon learned that people in Bucharest had been called on to stay in the streets to defend the revolution. That the so-called terrorists were “shooting from all sides” and that the TV station was under heavy attack. “Come and defend the TV station”, Iliescu or one of his team encouraged the citizens and those fearing a Ceauşescu comeback stayed on the streets. “Shoot on sight”, was the televised message to all the soldiers who were fighting for the revolution.
I got into my bed which was not more than a couch and closed my eyes.
“What if the people going to defend the TV station are mistaken for terrorists?” my father asked and the sanity of his question occupied my thoughts until I was dreaming. What bothers me still today is the fact that I can remember that day so clearly, without being able to remember my dream. Perhaps that dream was not so important, but I now think it was. Sometimes I have premonitions in my dreams. That massacre took place while I was still dreaming.
3. DECEMBER 23RD
The fact is that Iliescu had to get a stronger grip on power. The fact is that General Militaru was his man. The fact is that the crowd started to doubt his leadership after he morphed into a Gorbachov and not into a Havel. The fact is that Romanians had to unite against Ceauşescu. Around the new leadership. The fact is that the same Romanians did not know that Ceauşescu had been caught and was waiting for a summary trial, nor the fact that the plan was to execute the two of them anyway. Maybe I wasn’t the only one familiar with the French Revolution, maybe I wasn’t the only one who thought a Revolution must be bloody for Ceauşescu-lovers. For certain, someone was aware of that when he hit the panic button: there were no Ceauşescu-lovers to fight. There were no Ceauşescu-lovers for the people to unite against, no pigs to be sacrificed for the greater good.
So, while I was turning in my sleep, dreaming the dream that I cannot remember, the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Iosif Rus, was hanging up his military phone after he had barked his orders.
He did what he had to do, not knowing the bigger picture, perhaps, and went to sleep, too, satisfied with the way power had changed hands. Those who got his orders were already awake. They were no younger than 18 and no older than 19. They were only kids. Some of them, from the countryside, had never seen running water from taps, nor trains, nor helicopters before being enlisted in the military.
They were sleepy. They had been listening to the Revolution on the radio so long. I didn’t know because I hadn’t been listening to the national radio station, but there had been a revolution there too. All hopes of freedom and all the anger directed at Ceauşescu invaded the Romanian airwaves for those that did not have a TV set, not so few in those days, especially in the countryside. But everyone had a radio, and some soldiers had radios too.
“I reckon when this Revolution is over, we’ll all get to go home sooner” someone said with hope, in the dark, after the light was turned off at 9 pm in their stinking dormitory. The thought, spoken out loud, had come from the area of the room that hosted those with the longest AMR in their unit (in Romanian AMR stands for ‘Au Mai Rămas xxx Zile’ or ‘There are xxx days left’) so everybody started to laugh. New draftees were called ducklings and everyone loved to pick on them. But, when a new batch of draftees entered the unit, the previous batch would be called “veterans” and they would do to the new ducklings all the shit they had endured during their first six months, sometimes more.
The next group of ducklings was only weeks away. That meant that a third of the soldiers in that dorm were weeks away from their “liberation day”. The current ducklings had another year on their AMR and that was why it was so funny. The one with the radio turned it down and soon they were all asleep. The air was heavy. On that day they had to wash their uniforms and, because the glorious Romanian Army gave them only one each, the next day they had to wear them, wet or not.
In th e Romania of 1989, that military unit had no clothes dryers, not even ironing facilities. So they did as all soldiers do in that kind of situation: they laid the wet clothes neatly on their mattresses, covered them with their blankets and slept on them, covering themselves with the remaining two sheets. It wasn’t comfortable, but the woollen blankets would suck out almost all the water from their uniforms and the next day these uniforms would look like they had been freshly ironed. Albeit, still wet. In any case, the uniforms would be in better shape than if hung up to dry in that room, and in the morning, when they awoke, at least their uniforms would be there. Sometimes, perhaps often, low-lifes would steal uniforms in better shape than their own because the motherfuckingland was too poor to give them new uniforms just like it was too poor to give us new textbooks.
Then again, in those days everybody used to steal. When the shops were empty, and stomachs empty, too, the country’s economy changed into a barter economy. People would steal products from the companies they were working for and trade those products for others, until they managed to trade something for food. The military was no different. Even the words used to describe it changed. Nobody used the word “steal” anymore. “Steal” was negative. So they used “complete” instead. They were “completing” their needs, and having your wet uniform under your butt was the same as keeping it safe, out of reach of any “completing” that was going on at night.