After you are afraid for so long it’s very difficult not to be afraid anymore. We were like caged animals that wouldn’t leave their open cage. Brucan was aware of this simple fact, and so was Iliescu, but we weren’t and that’s why we accepted the new power made by people that served Ceasusescu and his despotic regime and that’s why we rejected the unknown, the Liberals and Christian Democrats.
The four branches came off that 30cm long tree end and my mom wired three of them together. They were beautiful. I wished I had such long branches last year instead of the plastic tree I bought in Japan for my kids. These are the times we live in now…
Back upstairs with my sister, after Teodora had left with her fairytale little girls, the brandy for her shot and drunk husband and the Christmas tree branches, we started to decorate our tree. First we attached the biggest glass ornaments, then smaller ones until the tree looked like it was supposed to look. Only then did we add the candies wrapped in colored paper and finally the candles.
The candle business was a delicate job, we had to carefully put them in place making sure they would burn without setting the tree and our house ablaze. But even that job couldn’t compare with the placing of the tree topper.
Usually my dad did it, but that year I had decided I was man enough to do the job myself. However, a chair to climb on was not high enough, and even a table was still short. Therefore it had to be a table, a chair and me on top of that.
Felicia was already starting to panic and in her usual way threatened me in a loud voice that she would call mom. But she didn’t. She wasn’t a snitch, so she had to stay and help.
I got a table close to the tree and put a chair on it, close to the edge facing the tree. Then I carefully climbed on the table, and from the table on to the chair.
I was afraid of heights. My knees were trembling when I lowered my hand to take the tree topper handed to me by Felicia.
It was a nice topper. It looked like a potato being screwed by a huge carrot — in one end, out the other. My father always laughed and called it a “dick”, and I didn’t understand what it meant, but our secular communist society had earlier rejected all Christian symbols and transformed the star-shaped Christmas Tree toppers into carrot screwed potatoes. Communism was about to end and I was about to find out that we had been missing a star on the top of our tree. But again, I didn’t know all that. My mind was glued to only my careful movements, the way I stood up and reached with my left hand to the tree top while my right hand was holding the topper tighter than it should. My body was tense when, holding my breath, I put the topper in place.
At that very moment many things happened at once. First my left hand released the tree. The tree snapped back and I thought it was going to fall down so I tried to reach back to hold it, but then I lost my fragile balance. The chair slipped off the table, my feet still on it, so I did the only thing I could do, I pushed it by suddenly straightening my knees so it fell with a loud crash on the floor while I was flattened, face down on the table. Felicia was shouting, pointing at some scattered glass decorations on the blood red carpet, but the tree was still standing so I closed my eyes and tried to understand something above the rush of adrenaline that suddenly flowed in my body.
No matter how big the adrenaline kick that I got falling down was, it was nothing compared with the one that Colonel Kamenici was experiencing at that very moment.
He was the commander of the military unit to which the Ceauşescus were brought on the 22nd, but at that moment he wanted to be anything but the man in charge.
He was biting his nails, turning in his head, over and over again, the words of General Voinea, the head of the First Army. “You can, Colonel, can’t you?…Understand that you are finished? It’s you or Ceauşescu. Only one of you will survive this Revolution. Remember, it’s you or him”.
That was the night of December 22nd, and he wasn’t stupid. So he called General Stănculescu and asked for more troops to guard the dictatorial couple, but he was denied. “Then, if we are attacked and outnumbered, be sure, my General, we won’t hand over the Ceauşescus alive”, he said bombastically, like he was the main character in an American movie. But the answer that he got was not the one that he expected:
“That’s a good plan. When you hand them over be sure they are dead”.
That was the reason he was biting what was left of his nails. He was watching the TV like any other Romanian at the time and saw that the same people that ordered Ceuasescu dead on the 22nd, pretended for more than a day that they were still pursuing Romania’s president and battling his terrorists. Was it all fake? Perhaps, but he knew it was him or Ceauşescu, so he had to get Ceauşescu killed as soon as possible.
Only it was something quite difficult to do. He was still nervous about the missed opportunity from the previous day. Somebody called their unit and said that in 30 minutes they would be under heavy air attack so he turned to two majors he had in his commanding room and barked:
“Mares, you go and execute Ceauşescu! Tecu, you execute Elena! Now!”, and they went and everybody was waiting. They were listening for aircraft noise, but he was listening for shots, but those shots never came.
It turned out that his majors, Ion Mares and Ion Tecu, were waiting for the bombing to start before executing his order, so, as the bombing never started, they refused to obey. “It’s you or him”. Those words were ringing in his head, louder and louder. There had to be something else, he thought, something that would get him out of this unscathed.
I was getting down from the table while my sister was gathering the shattered glass globes on a piece of paper. She was using a real duck wing for the job, instead of a miniature broom. We always kept the duck wings for they were good for dusting and sweeping furniture, floors and carpets.
In the next room, our room, the TV set came to life. After switching it on it always took five minutes to start blasting out images and sounds. It had no transistors inside, only lamps, the same technology that was used in the western world in 40’s and early 50’s.
The revolution was continuing, it seemed. The terrorists were still attacking our dear soldiers and there were reports that they wanted to set Ceauşescu free.
While Felicia was finishing collecting the broken glass, I took a candy from the tree, unwrapped it and hung it up again, empty, on the same spot, and then I put the table and the chair back in their place.
We were done, and that tree was simply too beautiful. My father told me that Finul Moisică climbed full grown pines to cut off their tops for us and his family. Finul Moisică said the tops of full grown trees looked much better than young trees and the forest would stay intact. I didn’t care what part of the tree we had there, an entire one, or just a top. All I cared was that the tree looked beautiful.
I was still admiring our work when I heard a car stopping at our gate. I took a look from the window and I froze. It was a military car. If I had looked better I would have seen that it was an ABI, but all I saw was a young soldier behind the wheel. With my heart pumping even more adrenaline than a few minutes before when I almost broke some bones, I started to run outside. I had to put myself between that soldier and my family if they had murderous intentions. I had to.
I was very close to the gate when the handle went down and it opened wide. The Colonel was there and behind him was my smiling father.
“Boy, you should eat more, you’re thinner than the last time I saw you”, said The Colonel in his usual happy voice. “Tell Nuţa we are here, and send her upstairs with food and wine”, ordered my father while he was showing The Colonel upstairs.