When the Revolution started to spread on 22nd, Dan was at home in Odorheiu Secuiesc. That small and beautiful city, where my mother’s cousin was married to a Hungarian, had a majority Hungarian population. Romanians were few. Some, like my mother’s cousin were teachers at the school, teaching Romanian as a foreign language to the local kids, others like Dan were working in the Army, Police or Securitate. Although the local Communist Party Organization was almost 100% Hungarian, the local folks somehow perceived the Romanians as “dictator lovers” so for them the local Revolution was more a Revolution against Romanians.
Dan was at his job that morning when he sensed the danger and decided it was time to get his young wife out of town before it was too late, and decided it was best for them to flee in a military truck. They were packing when the revolutionaries marched from the local factories where they worked to the City Hall to take over. Thousands of people marching in unison, shouting in Hungarian anti-Ceauşescu slogans.
That was the image that Dan’s best friend, a Hungarian, saw when he suddenly realized that people would recognize Dan’s car, parked so close to the City Hall, as a car driven by a Romanian. The number plates said it all. They were from an area with very few Hungarians, so he had to be quick. He smashed a window and got in. He tried to start it by connecting wires as he had once seen in some American movie, but people from the steadily closing march started to run towards the car. They knew the car! They could see the license plates!
In a second Dan’s best friend was surrounded. He tried to get out and talk some sense into those workers, to tell them there was no need to vandalize that car, his friend’s car, but he was punched in the head through the broken window. He tried again, but there were already too many people around the car and they started to hit him as they turned the Dacia upside down.
He was confused when they did that and, because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt, was on the car’s ceiling trying to figure out how to best get out of the car but also the best way to get away from the boots that were trying to reach him through the shattered windows. He still wasn’t afraid. He believed he would get out eventually, so he was more sorry for Dan’s car than for himself. But then he could smell it and let out a scream. And he screamed until the flames of the torched car entered his lungs, and kicked, trying to get out and got kicked by heavy boots and…
People were already leaving when Dan went to pick up his car to park it inside the military unit and he saw it was burning. He wanted to leave immediately but something had caught his eye, so he casually walked towards the car until he was standing beside it and could look inside. It was there. That leather jacket that his friend had bought from Hungary last summer. There were no other jackets like that in the whole of Romania and that burning jacket was on something that was definitely human. His eyes started to fill with tears, for the first time in so many years. He hadn’t cried since his mom died when he was still a child, but he was crying then. He felt the world falling apart and started to run, to get away.
The first victim of the Revolution in Odorheiu Secuiesc was a Good Samaritan. But the second was not. The second was the head of the local branch of Securitate, and the people who killed him took his head out of the building they had set on fire and played football with it. What a happy mood there was, communism was collapsing and they were using their freedom for what western people usually use it: leisure!
But at four in the morning on Christmas Day I was oblivious to all that. I didn’t know that Kamenici was still waiting in his TAB to hear shots in the other. I didn’t know that the most mysterious man of the Romanian Revolution, Gelu Voican Voiculescu, the same one that was about to become Romania’s Ambassador to Tunisia, was assembling the men who were about to judge Ceauşescu in a kangaroo court.
Iliescu himself signed a decree on December 22nd, minutes after he got confirmation that Ceauşescu had been captured. I didn’t know that 20 years after people and journalists would still be debating whether that signature was valid or not, whether Iliescu was officially the head of the new power or whether he was still just the head of the Technical Publishing House.
So I was innocent in my sleep and, when I woke up for the second time that morning it was already 10:00am. My mother used to let me sleep in during holidays. I often stayed up reading books way past midnight. Liviu, Dan and their young, beautiful wives were already gone and our gate was closed. Christmas Day was a day when nobody went out, so nobody came to visit. Christmas Day was a day when even the Church was closed. The Christmas mass started and ended before the roosters rang in the morning at 8, so why bother keeping the gate open all day long?
In the kitchen I refused breakfast, favoring, as always on Christmas, fruitcakes, cakes and cookies. I was washing everything down with a mug of hot milk — my mom was there so cold milk wasn’t an option — when my father announced the day’s schedule.
“Today they’re gonna kill Ceauşescu, and I plan on watching it. Let’s go all upstairs and play Scrabble or a card game of twist, sing carols and watch the television”.
Now that was a first. We usually stayed in my grandmother’s room and listened to her stories. Before that we used to listen to my grandfather’s stories, and they were so interesting.
My grandmother had interesting stories too. Her best one was about when her sister died. She was with her, in her final moments.
“Floare”, she said to my grandmother, and that’s “Flower” in Romanian.
“Floare, can you see that white dove on the stove?” her dying sister asked.
“No, my dear, there’s no white pigeon on the stove!” my grandmother replied.
“Oh, Floare, you can’t see it because He didn’t come for you. He said that you still have to wait. But He’s here for me. The Holy Spirit, Floare, the Holy Spirit! He’s here for my soul. God bless you too.” she had said and her soul was taken, probably by a white bird that waited for her on the hot stove, to say goodbye. It was the year I was born, 1975, during the winter. And the bird was right, my grandmother, despite being the first born, had to wait for it another nineteen long years.
So there we were, half watching TV, playing Scrabble with my unbeatable father and listening to carols. My grandmother only came for a couple of hours, she went to her room. She didn’t like the TV and the news it spread. On Christmas one had to think about the miracle of Nativity not about people being shot. “The world is going to end. People killing each other in the Holy Week of Christmas, nothing good will come out of this!” she half shouted and left, leaving my father and me smiling. We were the idiots. We smiled believing that grandmother was too old but the fact remains, she was the only one that got it right. But in less than five minutes my grandmother was back with terrible news. Our neighbor, Comrade Stoica, a devoted party member who really believed in communism despite living in a huge house that others could not afford, had died. He was really young, not even 40, but even more terrible was the news that he had died with his wife and youngest son. The old ladies’ net work was functioning and my grandmother said she would go with candles to mourn them and invited my parents too. Eventually they went the next day, shocked.
“I hope they didn’t commit suicide”, my father said.
“Ceauşescu doesn’t deserve such gratitude.” And he was probably referring to the Japanese General Nogi, the same one that visited Romania and befriended our queen who committed suicide with his wife after his Meiji Emperor died.
“No, God take care of their pure souls”, they died in an accident. You know last night was windy, and they took a bath, after listening to the ‘Joseph and Mary’ carol. It was carbon monoxide. The wind had pushed the exhaust gases back into the bathroom and they didn’t stand a chance, my grandmother told us. She was already candles in hand, going to give the news to other old women in town. How sad Christmas had suddenly become. Three days later their funeral was the talk of the town.