But, back on that 22nd of December, 1989, my sister was still watching the TV rejoicing at her new freedom but somehow worried. It was already getting dark and shooting had started around all the Revolution hot spots, the TV station and the Central Committee building. Later that night our new leader, self-elected with the memorable expression “with your permission I’ll sign my name as the last on this list” spoken the moment he wrote his name ABOVE everyone else’s, Ion Iliescu, was delivering a speech from the very balcony Ceauşescu last spoke to us, and shooting began, but nobody shot at him, they all shot at the buildings around the square. The National Museum of Art was devastated, dozens of paintings forever lost, the University Library was set on fire, thousands and thousands of precious books and documents forever lost, some homes around the square were reduced to ashes along with the people inhabiting them. Their memories were lost forever. Who were they?
But we didn’t miss any of Iliescu’s speech and we came to love him the way we used to love Ceauşescu. He looked invincible. Speaking from that balcony while everybody was shooting around. Surely the terrorists were lousy shooters. Nobody in that lighted balcony got killed, but people didn’t notice the absurdity of it. The evidence. All they wanted to see was a new leader to believe in, a new leader to follow.
And Romanians followed him. In the May elections held in 1989 Iliescu won the same way the late Saddam Hussein won in Iraq when he was still alive and dictator, but again I was very young and I didn’t know all that. That part of history hadn’t happened yet, we still had time to change it and prevent it, but we did nothing at all. I sat myself down beside my sister, tried another sip of the now very cold cocoa, and watched the TV like in a trance.
Actually it was captivating. It was like a good movie, a kind of thriller being played and made at the same time. The terrorists (it was made clear by Iliescu that all those shooting their guns were terrorists hired by Ceauşescu to help him get back in power) were ruthless and they were attacking the squares where Ion Iliescu and Petre Roman, a nice guy with no neck wearing a sweater, were.
God, I hated the terrorists.
Night fell and my father came back from work. He came back from the city hall where the revolution was in full swing. And because he was a good storyteller he wanted to tell us that particular story in a much better environment, so my mom came up with a crazy idea and we all started to prepare my father’s set. The idea was to bring a dining table up to the room my sister and I shared and dine together while we watched the televised revolution and listen to my father’s story. So we started by folding up my bed, which transformed into a couch, we took the armchairs into the next room and brought from downstairs a dining table and chairs. My mom went into the closet and pulled out the most expensive embroidered white tablecloth we had and glasses followed, then the porcelain and it looked like a party, only that this party was held in front of a TV set and in an unlikely place, the kids’ room.
Now, when you picture this kids’ room, think of bookshelves holding half of my father’s books, two very decent beds draped in cobalt blue covers, one heavy wardrobe that would make proud any granny in Old England, the TV stand, full of books under the TV set, and a blood red carpet, so the room didn’t look like a kids’ room looks in American movies. Still I was shocked. It was my room and all the adults in my house had gathered there to watch the televised revolution AND eat, another unlikely event.
It was the end of communism and the beginning of freedom, my father told us, so why not, we had to somehow acknowledge that freedom, that we had somehow gotten, and that party was just a way to express it, I thought.
Soon white bread, pickles, meats and zacusca were on the table and my mother promised us more homemade delicacies were awaiting us the following day. Nobody stood with their backs to the TV set, and for the first hour we just watched in silence.
“You know, the mayor was literally sent home to wash dishes by the Marsa Mechanical workers”. The mayor at the time was a woman. Never before and never again since. She wasn’t elected mayor but selected by the communist government. All nearby cities had women as mayors and all of them were sent home by the angry people “to cook for their husbands and wash dishes”. It all went off “with no violence”. That was the slogan the crowds in Bucharest chanted while they were being shot at by the hidden terrorists. Although, not all of them went down without a fight. My father lowered his voice when he spoke of how the mayor of Cisnadie was stripped of her clothes and paraded naked to her house by the town’s “revolutionaries”, and I was sure he didn’t like it.
“You should have seen them, lots of people happy and celebrating, but even more drunk”. “They destroyed everything in the Town Hall”, my father went on. Lucky for us, the town’s self-proclaimed Revolution leader was Mr. Tatu, my best friend’s father. As a veterinary doctor he was a guarantee of honesty and good conduct.
“All my life I dreamed about this moment”, he said when he entered the Town Hall’s mayoral office, and he recalled the time his father, a priest, was imprisoned many years by the communists for just being a priest and how he, his son, was expelled from medical school before graduating, how he was denied the right to a higher education. How he had struggled to become a veterinarian, in a place where people had no pets but only animals that served them. Cows and horses to be helped birthing, pigs to be castrated so that their meat would taste good, and chickens to be vaccinated. In Avrig nobody bothered to name their cats and dogs. They were just servants, cats to chase away mice, dogs to chase away thieves. Nobody cared if they died. They could be replaced immediately, and for free, so nothing to occupy a vet.
Mr. Tatu was to become the first MP from Avrig to serve in Parliament from 1990 to 1992. We saw him on the TV a few months later, and we were proud. The people in that first parliament tried to build a democratic regime without knowing what a democratic regime is, they had no more idea what a democracy is than we did, sitting at that table, on the evening of December 22nd, 1989. Entertainment, food, that was what a democratic regime meant to all Romanians, sober or otherwise. After pouring himself a glass of red wine, which, being homemade in late autumn, smelled fruity and fresh, my father continued his story.
“They completely destroyed the bookstore”, he announced looking us in our shocked eyes:
“And the library too”.
Now that was more than unsettling, it was really bad news. The bookstore was the store I loved more than any other. Next door to my auntie Anişoara’s house, it displayed not only books that I loved to buy but also stationery and toys. It was always crowded and would have been especially crowded this time of year. The reason was simple: that bookstore, destroyed and, as I learned later, looted by the revolutionaries, was the only spot my folks could buy me a Christmas present.
Felicia started to cry. She got it too. No Christmas presents this year. She didn’t believe in Father Christmas anymore. I had told her a couple of years earlier that our parents were the real Santa Claus, but still, she was 13 years old and was looking forward to that Christmas more than anything else.
I knew that my father would always wait until the very last moment to buy Christmas presents for us. He always did. He didn’t like to rush things and he was also afraid that we would find the presents hidden in the house before Christmas and that was unacceptable. Father Christmas had to come late at night on Christmas Eve, sometimes impersonated by one of my father’s friends, or, simply by putting the presents under the Christmas tree when nobody was around.