I was about to lock the smokehouse behind me when I heard them. Since the gate had to stay closed at all times I rushed not to the gate but upstairs, from where I could see the street. When I arrived my sister was already there, expectantly, eyes gaping wide.
Two MLI armored personnel carriers, maybe the last two to ever be finished at Marsa Mechanical, were passing by. On them were people we knew, guns in hand, bottles in hand. They were happy and shouting. They were on their way to Sibiu, to help the Revolution. It was the first time for me to see armored vehicles actually being driven. Usually I saw them covered under military camouflage sheets, loaded on big trailers while they were shipped out of our town.
They looked crazy and beautiful, and half of me feared them and the other half envied the people driving them. A few seconds after they passed I heard the boom. And the bang, and then all the swearwords the Romanian language can muster, in all possible combinations. My sister turned red.
What had happened was that the second armored vehicle had taken a corner too tightly and crashed into the Barna’s house. That was the fourth house up from ours, the other three being the Olog’s, David’s and David’s.
The Barna’s house it was and that military machine with all its ammunition stayed pinned in there more than two weeks, well after the Revolution was over. People from the first vehicle wanted to pull it out, but after hours of trying and failing they said they should go to help in Sibiu anyway.
“Help what?” their wives were shouting from the small crowd of Revolution lovers that had gathered around the poor Barna’s house. The Revolution started in a very unfortunate way for him, but, although he was unaware of it, in a few years the entrepreneurial freedom the Revolution brought would turn him into a well-off business man.
“Help what?”, the echo turned into engines roaring. The “Revolutionaries” got into or climbed onto the MLI, all very drunk, with no exception.
That day the people in Sibiu were fortunate. Although many were killed around the military garrison, the drunken revolutionaries never made it to their city. They were stopped by a wise military patrol and ordered back to Marsa Mechanicaclass="underline" they were driving a military vehicle with no army markings!
I was following my father onto the street to see the MLI that had gotten stuck in the Barna’s house but I only got a glimpse of it. He ordered me back inside our front yard and, reluctantly, I followed his order. Almost all old Transylvanian houses look like small fortresses, and despite ours having more garden space around it, a heavy gate separated us from the rest of the world. We could easily withstand a siege if karma turned someone or something against us.
The front yard was deep in snow. The trees were white with icicles. Breathtaking. I stood there for a long time waiting for my father to come back inside and ask him about the accident. Eventually I got cold and took a leak. It was fascinating to see the yellow urine melting the snow, creating a deep crevasse in it. I smiled. My folks would go crazy (again) after seeing the “evidence” left behind by the animal they were feeding. We always had guests, friends or relatives, twice a day or even more often. Now that Christmas was just about here, we could expect even more people dropping in. The thought of it made my silly leak look more shameful than it was, so the moment my father entered the gate I stamped my foot into the snow to cover my dirtiness. What a trained animal I was.
At first, my father said nothing, as we were walking toward the kitchen. The kitchen and the bathroom were separated from the rest of the house and we used the back door to get to them. The smell of the fried meat my mother was preparing got stronger as we got closer.
“Let’s have some ribs with white bread”, my father said, suddenly hurrying me towards the kitchen.
I could have easily fainted as I entered the kitchen. Four large glass jars were lined up and my mother was already filling one with fried ribs. On the stove in the biggest frying pan that we had, other ribs were changing color to cinnamon brown, the meat retreating towards the bones.
“I’ll have two. With sour cabbage”, I told mom.
When it came to food, I wasn’t polite to her. As the young man of the house I was imitating my father who used few words to ask for food or drink. It took me many years to get rid of that habit, and even now, at 34, when back home I still expect her to fetch me water or bread when I need more.
Sitting down, my father started to devour the lard-fried ribs and bread and talk about the armored vehicle that had crashed near us. My mom was taking it seriously. She was white — she usually was — but now she was whiter and scared.
“The Marsa Mechanical workers are marching. They’ll be here in a few minutes. I’m going with them”, my father said almost whispering.
“No, you can’t do that, you have to stay here with us”, my mom replied, shaking the long fork that she was holding at him. “You don’t understand”, my father loudly retorted, “I have to go with them. I should be at the Town Hall, it’s safer for me, for us, if I go with them. Look, if something happens I’ll be on the side of those throwing the stones not the ones getting them in the head.”
Now that was smart, I thought, but it was a short-lived thought. The Marsa Mechanical workers were already passing my house, so my father jumped to his feet, took his coat and vanished.
I tried to run after him, but my mom’s eyes stopped me short. I never saw that kind of look on her face and, shocked as I was, I decided to stay and comfort her. It turned out to my advantage in the end anyway. I got to finish my father’s ribs too. With sour cabbage they were delicious. And that year’s cabbage was especially good. We made it as always, about 200kg in a huge plastic barrel and, during the long months of winter it was present, in one form or another, every day on our table. But we couldn’t finish it all so on special occasions we used to give some pickled cabbages to our gypsy neighbors who were always happy to receive them.
After eating my father’s ribs I didn’t leave mom for the TV. Together we continued to fry new ribs and put them in the big jars. They were salty and smelled good. A few months later, when completely covered in opaque white lard, every once in a while I would take one out with a fork, and eat it with white bread and onion. The truth was that I preferred to eat the ribs with fresh tomatoes, but when the tomato season started the ribs were already gone. My auntie’s house in Brasov was where I had had ribs with fresh tomatoes in the middle of summer. My aunt had no children, so their pig was always too much for them, and that was why it always lasted so long.
Felicia, my sister came to call us upstairs to watch the Revolution together.
“‘We’ took over the TV station. The revolutionaries are speaking on TV, you have to hurry”, she said hurrying herself with pickles and a super sized fried sausage. That ‘we’ that she used was the same one used when supporting the Romanian national team in soccer games. ‘We’ against the ‘others’, but on that particular occasion I didn’t know who the ‘others’ were. I only knew Ceauşescu, and we were all against him.
My sister always ate pickles, and, when we had them, sausages. We grew up together but I cannot remember her ever eating soup. Or staying at the table until everyone had finished. Maybe that was the reason she was so small, so thin. Too many pickles, and to hell with everything else! Even now that she has turned 33, I don’t think she is a gram over 40 kilos.
Before following her upstairs with a snack and a hot cocoa for myself, we had to help mother put the jars in the cool room. This room was adjacent to the kitchen, built so the sunshine never touched its walls. Its floor was non insulated concrete and it had two small and always open windows — one at floor level, and the other one under the ceiling — so even on a hot summer day the temperature inside never climbed above 9 degrees centigrade.