Mr. Geoana, too, was involved in the Revolution. His father, the famous Securitate General Geoana introduced him to Iliescu. “This is my son, Mr. President! Our country needs young people like him”, he said and left the young Geoana with him.
I met him in the summer of 1996. My boss held a party for him when he was appointed Romania’s Ambassador to the United States. Years later Iliescu got sick of him and called him “the dumb one”, and that name stuck with Geoana so well that if you search for “prostanac” you can see that he ranks number one in both Google and Yahoo.
Anyway, Romania was too poor to award all those who really fought in the Revolution with houses and land. Or got injured when looking for booze, like Vasile.
As my mom banged down the phone Teodora was already opening the gate.
It was the 24th, Christmas Eve and we had to leave the door open for the carol singers.
Teodora had the kids with her, three very beautiful little girls and they sang. My mom instantly warmed when she saw them. So she invited them inside and gave them sweets and money. Then asked their mother to not let their father to take the money from the girls. He used to. Over the years we gave them a slide, a bicycle…and he traded all their toys for brandy.
He even traded his fridge for alcohol but that particular trade was not a good one at all, despite the fact that he got almost one month’s supply of it.
“He traded his fridge for pufoaică brandy”, shouted my father one day after he came home from work.
And the rest of us replied together “Wwwhhhaaaaaaaatttttt????”
You’d go “What?”, too, if you knew what pufoaică brandy was.
So, here’s the question: have you ever seen pictures of Russian soldiers or Russian workers in winter? If the answer is yes, then you probably know that the Romanian name of what they were wearing is “pufoaică”.
The story goes that Russian winter clothes, when introduced into a common latrine, start fermenting when in contact with urine and feces and where there is fermentation there is alcohol too. Nobody knows who it was who dared to boil and then distill this fermenting sewage but someone must have because cheap alcohol lovers got to drink it.
“They probably produce it industrially”, my father once said, obviously full of admiration for the ingenuity of the people who made booze from clothes and shit.
Those were the times we were living in! And what times they were! It’s interesting to think back and realize that I never ever heard of people getting sick after drinking that pufoaică brandy. It seems that the only downside to it was the awful smell. But who we are to judge them? Japanese potato brandy doesn’t smell good either and some bottles cost more then 100 dollars each.
But over the following years of economic downturn when people started to lose their jobs and inflation skyrocketed with prices going up almost daily, other Romanians got smart and added chicken poo mixed with the paste obtained from water melted arc welding sticks to the pufoaică brandy recipe. And that got even more alcohol out of it. Some drinkers forever ruined their health while others were faster and simply died.
Newspapers reported on pufoaică brandy but their articles were to sell papers not to point out to the government the plight of its population.
“Must have been the heavy metals in those welding sticks” was the popular conclusion given at funerals.
“He shouldn’t have drunk that pufoaică brandy. Matrafox is much more safer”, was another popular comment.
Now, if you are confused and don’t know what matrafox is, I can tell you that it is something that is very easy to make. Just take an ounce of any alcohol based aftershave that you have in your house, pour it into a two liter plastic bottle, add the contents of a peppermint toothpaste tube, some sugar, fill with water and shake. And shake. And wait for a day or two and then you can label the bottle “Matrafox”. It’s still a popular drink in Romanian prisons. It gives the euphoria that real booze gives and the headaches the following day too. Or maybe just the headaches, I don’t know for sure, since I didn’t have the guts to taste my homemade Matrafox.
But again, those were the times. People were made poor by Iliescu and his men, people became desperate.
But the bright side of those times was the beautiful silver plated Christmas Tree in my parents’ room.
My mom and my sister were looking at it and turned it around to find the best side that would face the door. Our house was already super clean and we were eager to start covering the tree with our glass decorations. The house was so warm. As usual in winter when the gas pressure dropped we supplemented the gas with firewood, twice a day, in the morning and before going to bed. The defrosting tree started to spread its perfume throughout the house.
That was the moment I was waiting for all year. The real smell of Christmas.
“If we’d had oranges it would have smelled even better”, said my sister, reading my mind.
“I’m sure next year we’ll have plenty”, my mom said as she left to start cooking and baking.
She was as usual, right. In less than one year oranges were as common as apples and we didn’t put them under the Christmas tree anymore. Strange as it was, our last real Christmas was in 1989. It died right there with the two Ceauşescus and nobody cared to notice.
Things turned so commercial afterwards. People bought plastic Christmas trees and pine scented air fresheners to replace the real thing, candles were forgotten and replaced with Made in China Christmas lights, candies were no longer hung on the tree and obese kids do not worship them since they fed themselves on Swiss made chocolate bars every day.
Maybe it’s wrong to complain like this, but as a carol singer you now are more likely be greeted with the same brands of Christmas cookies that everybody has, on the traditional rounds on the 24th, than the carefully homemade fruitcakes and cornulete.
I was still admiring our beautiful tree, before opening the boxes with the decorations, when my mom called me from downstairs. Teodora was about to leave and I had to cut the pine branches off the tree bottom for she was to take them home with her.
I had completely forgotten that the tree was always the same height year after year for the same reason. Vasile’s family didn’t have a tree so we would give them three branches they would hang and decorate in their living room. One branch was for Uncle Lulu who used to buy a tree for his living room, but a small one, and he always wanted a branch to decorate his kitchen, the place where almost all visitors were invited.
“Cut all four of them, Teodora will give one to Anişoara”, said my mom.
“Isn’t it too dangerous to go home that way?” I asked , thinking about the town center where the revolution was taking place, but my mom replied:
“They came that way, and apart some half burned piles of books and smashed windows everything is back to normal”.
I didn’t say anything but I wondered why nobody cared to lift the curfew on me and my sister since everything was “back to normal”, but I didn’t realize at that time that “normal” was just the fact that our town was peaceful. Nothing more, nothing less. That “normal” didn’t have a predictable future. The terrorists were still battling with the Revolution in Bucharest and Sibiu, the two Ceauşescus were caught and awaiting trial, their kids were imprisoned and their dogs were, to general applause, clubbed to death. What was next nobody knew, nobody dared to imagine. People were still afraid.