I think I was two or three years old, I had certainly started walking and talking, when my grandmother decided to hire help. The household chores were overwhelming her; she could no longer keep up with everything: shopping, cooking, and cleaning, and in addition, taking care of me and her elderly mother. She made many trips to the local employment agencies to find a live-in maid. Finally, my grandmother arrived home accompanied by a young woman of about 25, thin, with brown hair, a pale face with a slightly flattened nose, prominent cheekbones, thin lips, small blue eyes, narrow and slightly slanted, hidden deep in their sockets, and a dejected expression. Her clothes were almost rags, and the slightly sour smell she carried suggested neglected hygiene.
"This is Ileana. Ileana Gagia. She will stay with us. She will sleep in the kitchen for now," said my grandmother with a determined air that no one could object to, and a silence fell over the room. Then she took out some older clothes, a towel, and a pair of slippers for Ileana to use, showed her where the bathroom was to wash, and finally, where the summer kitchen in the yard was, with the bed she would occupy during the night. Then she addressed Ileana:
"As you can see, the situation is exactly as I told you at the Allocation Center. Your job will be to help me with the child, clean the house, and chop and bring wood for the fire. That's all. I'll give you food and a place to sleep. I hope you understand. Do you agree to stay?" my grandmother asked Ileana, speaking slowly.
Ileana nodded in approval, took her new clothes, and locked herself in the bathroom. My grandmother took advantage of her absence and explained to Lina (the great-grandmother):
"I'm tired of going day after day to look for a maid who isn't from Bucharest. There are only women who come for a few hours and then go home. This girl isn't a perfect solution, but I hope I'll manage with her. She's Russian, she doesn't know much Romanian, and besides, she'll have to undergo treatment for a venereal disease. Until then, she won't enter the house; she'll only do chores in the yard and cellar."
Lina remained speechless for a few seconds. Seeing how determined her daughter was, she didn't know what to say. She sighed deeply and finally stammered, worried: "Your business, but don't let her touch me or the child."
And so Ileana, the Russian, entered our lives.
Ileana, the Russian
At first, Ileana was viewed with suspicion by everyone, especially by my great-grandmother. She came from Siberia, she said, but details about her life were few and confusing, and she wasn't able to tell them. In the first months, she was forbidden to enter the house without permission, being suspected of a venereal disease discovered upon hiring. She started the treatment indicated by the doctors at the Allocation Center, who conditioned Ileana's employment on my grandmother's commitment to take her to the dispensary for the necessary regular check-ups. In a short time, Ileana was cured, and everyone in the house breathed a sigh of relief. She was gradually accepted into the household chores. After a few weeks, my grandmother, taking advantage of a small room becoming free at the back of the yard, moved Ileana there, and things finally returned to normal.
In her little room, there was nothing to do but sleep. It was an extremely small space, barely 2x3 m, which held a narrow bed, a chair, and a small iron stove (godin) with which Ileana warmed herself in winter or prepared a tea. Under the floorboards was a cellar where Ileana was to keep her firewood. This wood was ordered and when it was finally delivered from the wood depot, it was unloaded from the truck at the gate of the yard, from where it then had to be carried log by log along the entire yard to the back, where Ileana's room was. Once there, the log was thrown from the door through the open trapdoor into the cellar. I think I was three years old when I also wanted to help Ileana, carrying logs from the gate to her cellar. Unfortunately, along with the log, I threw myself into the cellar as well. From this incident, I ended up with a split head; it required stitches, and I will carry that mark until I die.
Speaking of the rooms in our yard, they were actually built by my great-grandparents for an inn they managed; they weren't designed to be inhabited by someone long-term, but only for a night or two. The housing shortage in the post-war period made such miserable dwellings acceptable not only for single persons but also for families, and not for a few days, but for a lifetime. Ileana stayed for over 30 years in that sordid little room and seemed satisfied. Meanwhile, her rent was no longer paid to my great-grandmother, but to the state, which in 1950 nationalized both our house and all the small rooms in the yard.
Under Ileana's Supervision
Ileana's main task was to watch over me when my grandmother was at the market or busy cooking, or when she was taking care of her mother. Then, she had to do the heavier work, such as: washing the laundry, hanging the washed clothes on the lines in the yard, scrubbing the floors and carpets, chopping and carrying firewood for the kitchen and for the stoves in the house during winter, carrying buckets of water from the tap in the yard to the kitchen, and accompanying my grandmother to the market when there were heavy loads to carry: green tomatoes and bell peppers for pickles or potatoes for winter.
The years spent in our house were probably the most peaceful period of Ileana's life. She did her job with almost robotic obedience and, although she sometimes drew reprimands from my grandmother, she rarely complained. Although Ileana was a strange presence, she soon integrated into the rhythm of the house. Knowing Ileana's wilder traits, the difficulties of others in communicating with her, her inability to perform typical female activities, I slowly became convinced that my grandmother hired her more out of pity. She was impressed by her story, never explicitly told by Ileana, but understood by those who tried to understand her.
The relationship between Ileana and my grandmother was a mix of authority, pity, and surprisingly, a certain affection—let's call it gratitude—from Ileana. My grandmother, although a practical and firm person, had a weakness for vulnerable people, and in Ileana she probably saw a lost being who needed guidance. However, my grandmother's direct nature left no room for excessive indulgence. She told her clearly what her expectations were, without hiding her disappointments at times. "Ileana, bring the wood from the yard and prepare the tea!" my grandmother would command, with a firm but not harsh voice. Ileana, with a "Yes, ma'am!" spoken in broken Romanian, hurried to comply. Nevertheless, my grandmother did not hesitate to offer her moments of rest or small favors, such as a thicker blanket for cold nights or an extra portion of pastries from the oven. Many times, my grandmother expressed her dissatisfaction with Ileana's clumsiness. "That's not how you wash the floors! Look, you left a streak of dirt!" But behind these reproaches was a quiet care, a desire to teach her to be more prepared for life in the city, even outside our house. If she were to find another house to work as a servant, she would need to know certain things.
Proof of my grandmother's soft spot for Ileana was the fact that, although hired for 24-hour availability, Ileana's schedule ended in the early afternoon. My grandmother gave her lunch, asked for a service or two more, and then released her, taking care of me herself. Ileana returned to her little room at the back of the yard, changed, and went out to the gate on a small stool to watch the passersby.
There was also another protective side of my grandmother. When neighbors expressed dissatisfaction or even contempt towards Ileana, my grandmother defended her. "She's a girl with a good heart, she didn't have the chance to go to school and doesn't know how to behave, but she'll learn," she would say, quickly changing the subject.
In the first years of her employment, Ileana mainly took care of me. After I turned four, my parents sent me to kindergarten. The kindergarten was on Izvor Street, down in the valley, across from an entrance to the Republic Stadium, about a 20-minute walk from our house. In the morning at 8 o'clock, Ileana would take me to kindergarten, holding my hand tightly, and bring me back from there around 12. It wasn't hard; one just had to descend and then ascend the slope of Dealul Spirii. There was already tram 8 that went up, but Ileana preferred that we walk. Along the way, she would sometimes sing something to me, probably a Russian tune, and try to explain what the song meant. It was as if, in her strange way, she was trying to offer me a fragment of her lost world.
At kindergarten, I had fallen in love with a little girl, Didina, with whom I went for walks hand-in-hand with the whole convoy of children or sat on the bench together in the kindergarten yard. When Ileana came to pick me up, it was a tragedy to part from Didina. I think in that relationship only I was devastated by the separation. The other party just endured my advances with stoicism.
For me, Ileana was more than just a servant; she was a constant presence, a figure strange in her clumsy and sometimes unpredictable way of reacting. In the absence of my parents, busy with work, and my grandmother, involved in household problems, Ileana was the one who offered me company. Even if she wasn't able to tell me stories or understand my games, her presence gave me a sense of security. Sometimes, I would watch her doing chores in the yard, whispering misunderstood tunes or murmuring words in her language. "Why do you talk like that, Ileana?" I would ask. She would smile and reply simply: "That's my language."
When I returned home with scraped knees after a day of playing in the vacant lot, Ileana was the one who washed my wounds, grumbling in her language mixed with broken Romanian. Sometimes she would scold me lightly for my restlessness, but I never felt she was without care for me. My feeling was one of camaraderie rather than maternal care from her. I don't remember her ever pampering me. That's why my relationship with Ileana was marked by a mixture of curiosity and childish compassion. She was different from all the other adults in my life, and this difference intrigued me. Sometimes she seemed like a comic character, other times like a clumsy friend, but she was part of my world as a child.
In the fall of 1950, after the death of my great-grandmother, I had to go to school. I was only 6 years and 2 months old when I entered first grade. Ileana took me to school for a few weeks until my father intervened, telling my grandmother that I could go by myself: the school wasn't far, just two tram stops, and I shouldn't appear favored compared to the other children who came to school alone. So Ileana was released from this task.
Meanwhile, Ileana had begun taking liberties that were previously unallowed. On Sundays she was free and, consequently, she was away from home all day. In the evening she would return drunk, accompanied by a soldier, always a different one, with whom she locked herself in her room until morning. The next day she appeared hungover and in a bad mood. My grandmother scolded her, but took no other measures.
Another two years passed like this and I had to leave with my family for a year in Banat, where my father had managed to find a job. In our absence, only Draga and Radu, her new husband, remained in the house besides my grandmother. So my grandmother decided to dispense with Ileana's services due to both the lack of chores to entrust her with and she could do, and the chronic lack of money in the house.
Detachment from the Family
Ileana found a job in a sawmill that produced parquet, floorboards, and other wood products. The work in the factory was hard, but she didn't complain. Her entertainment remained the same: in the evening she went to "Maramureș," a nearby pub, where she consumed plenty of beer and left from there hanging on the arm of a soldier, always a soldier, maybe in memory of a military lover, maybe because a soldier is easier to approach. She came home stumbling, accompanied by the somewhat shy soldier, and they locked themselves in her little room until early the next morning, when she had to go to work and the soldier to the barracks. It is difficult to say if these relationships were just a continuation of a pattern established in her youth or if they had become a source of income, but the question is legitimate. It's possible that financial need pushed her to transform these episodic relationships into a way to survive. Due to the depraved life and alcohol, her physical condition soon degraded: her cheeks had thickened, and the red spots on her swollen legs betrayed increasingly failing health. Her legs, once only slightly bowed, like those of a Yakut horsewoman, had moved further apart and her gait had become jerky.
Years later, when we met in the yard, we would greet each other and that was it. From her behavior towards me in those years, I deduced that she had not become attached to me, as would have been natural when I was a child, just as, for that matter, she had not become attached to anyone else. She lived like a wild creature in a hostile environment, looking fearfully left and right lest some intruder appear.
At my grandmother's funeral, I saw her in the cemetery waiting for me to give her the alms package (pomană). She wasn't crying, she wasn't emotional, she was just shivering from the unusual cold for that March. Besides the package, I also gave her the bottle with all the wine left after distribution, knowing it would give her pleasure. Indeed, she looked at me gratefully. In the following days, I also gave her some of my grandmother's clothes, in the hope of awakening a tender memory of the one who helped her survive.
When we moved from Calea 13 Septembrie, shortly before the demolition of the neighborhood, she was still living there. What happened to Ileana after that, I no longer know. I like to think that somewhere she found a bit of peace, but the reality was very likely different. The details of her life, clues about her complicated past, were lost with her and the passage of time. I am probably the only one in this world who still remembers her. In a way, Ileana remained for me an enigmatic character, a troubling presence from my childhood, whose complete story I have not managed to discover until now. But I will try in what follows to imagine some possible scenarios starting from a few concrete elements.
The Shadow of a Mysterious Past
Ileana never managed to learn Romanian well, but we could understand her, accepting without problem her accent and the fact that she mangled Romanian words. I can still hear her sharp voice calling me when I was playing with friends in the vacant lot:
"Vieni cua! Vieni in caza subito!"
The meaning of the call was clear, but I suspected the language used was Russian. Much later, years later, when I already knew Russian quite well, I realized that the call was not in Russian, but in Italian, and a scenario began to take shape in my mind that I could not verify for authenticity because Ileana was no longer available. This happened in the early '70s, when I saw the Italian film "I Girasoli" (The Sunflowers) at the cinema, directed by Vittorio De Sica, with Sophia Loren (Giovanna), Marcello Mastroianni (Antonio), and Lyudmila Savelyeva (Masha).
The subject of the film was very sensitive for the Italian public then because it dealt with the return to the country of Italian prisoners of war from Russia immediately after the end of the war.
We are at Italy's entry into the war on the side of the Axis. Newlyweds Giovanna and Antonio are separated against their will by Antonio's forced enlistment in the army for the Eastern Front. After the end of the war, without having news from Antonio, but without confirmation that he is dead, Giovanna waits for him with the confidence that he will return, but he does not come back, and the young woman decides to go to Moscow to search for him in the Soviet archives.
Arriving in the USSR, Giovanna is accompanied by a Soviet official through the places where the Italian 8th Army fought. First in fields of sunflowers, where soldiers and civilians were buried during the war, then in war-haunted villages and through cemeteries. But of Antonio there is no trace. Giovanna rejects the idea of her husband's death and continues her search alone, finally reaching a town where some elderly women, seeing Antonio's photograph, show her an izba (cottage) in which Masha lives, a young woman with a small daughter, who, seeing a lady from the West, greets her by saying "buongiorno" in Italian.
Learning the purpose of Giovanna's visit, Masha, troubled and frightened, manages to explain to her, in broken Italian, how she found Antonio dying in the snow and nursed him back to life. Then she accompanies her to the small railway station in the town where Antonio works. The moment Giovanna sees Antonio engaged in work, she understands that his stay in the Soviet Union was the result of a choice. Overwhelmed by despair, she boards the train without saying a word to Antonio and, with a broken heart, returns to Italy.
When, after a few years, Antonio returns to Italy to look for Giovanna, he finds her married with a child, and when he asks her to run away with him, she refuses because she doesn't want to ruin the lives of the two children. The film ends with Giovanna accompanying Antonio to the station again, this time without hope of seeing him again.
What connection does the film "I Girasoli" have with Ileana? It has, or rather, it did, at least in my head, because in the meantime, while researching, I understood that the film was a propaganda film, that its plot was completely invented, and that there were no cases of Italian prisoners of war adopted by Russians even through marriage. The NKVD would have intervened decisively. However, based on the subject of the Italian film, the first scenario I imagined was a romantic one.
Ileana's Origin
Ileana claimed a few times that she originated from a region in Siberia. What I didn't retain exactly was whether it was Irkutsk or Yakutsk. The sounds of the two cities, both Siberian, are similar, but the belonging of a person to the community of Mongol Buryats (Irkutsk) or Turkic Yakuts (Yakutsk) is very different.
The Buryats are a Mongol ethnic group native to southeastern Siberia, who speak their own language. Under the pressure of Russian colonists, the Buryats left their lifestyle as nomadic herders living in felt tents, moving with their herds, and adopted a sedentary agricultural life in Irkutia, north of Lake Baikal. Most now live in permanent wooden houses, typical of Siberian peasant life.
The Turkic people of the Yakuts, who came from Anatolia and settled for a while on the shores of Lake Baikal, were pushed by the Buryats northeast along the course of the Lena River; they in turn displaced smaller populations in northeastern Siberia with whom they eventually interbred and who lived from hunting and reindeer herding. The Yakuts introduced the pastoral economy of Central Asia, mainly horse breeding, into their new habitat, Yakutia.
Both tribes are based on nomadic populations, but they differ in physiognomic features. The features of Ileana's face lead me to believe she was rather of Yakut origin than Buryat. In this sense, an analysis of Ileana's last name gave me almost certain confirmations. Gagea or, sometimes, Gagia, as Ileana appeared in documents, is a name that appears almost exclusively in Slavic Northeast Asia in the form Gadja or, in the Cyrillic alphabet, Гаджа. Whatever the origin of the Siberian Ileana, for the fact that she was only 25 years old in Europe, thousands of kilometers from her place of origin, there must have been a reason. And here my imagination was free to manifest itself.
A Romantic Scenario for Ileana
The romantic scenario I imagined based on the film "I Girasoli" would be that, enlisted in the Red Army during the war, Ileana participated behind the lines in various activities suitable for an illiterate woman with minimal ideas of European comfort and civilization. She could have done, for example, simple work in a field hospital or lived in a village where there was a prisoner-of-war camp, such as the one at Angarsk, in Irkutia, and there met an Italian prisoner of war, let's call him "Antonio" as in De Sica's film, captured after the terrible defeat at Stalingrad of the allied Axis armies in the winter of 1943. It must be said that these Soviet camps were usually not surrounded by high, impregnable walls, but were groups of barracks on the outskirts of a town or village fenced with barbed wire. During the day, the inhabitants of the village and the prisoners could enter or leave the enclosure without problems. The prisoners were utilized in useful labor such as harvesting, digging canals or roads, or transporting stones. There are also cases such as the camp in Suzdal where many Italian and Romanian prisoners were held. The camp used a large monastery, decommissioned during the communist years.
It seemed probable to me that this "Antonio" existed in Ileana's life and that their bond lasted two or three years, during which she learned some Italian words, only to use them later in the calls launched to me on the vacant lot in front of the house. The fact that Ileana used Italian expressions thus made me believe she had lived with an Italian who had shaped her existence. Knowing Italian men, especially those from Southern Italy, it is not impossible that an "Antonio" paid assiduous court to Ileana for the purpose of obtaining not only coveted favors after months of life in trenches without contact with the fairer sex, but also a status of autonomy in the camp. It is not excluded that this relationship materialized in a marriage on the spot so that "Antonio" could leave the camp and settle in an izba in an isolated hamlet with Ileana, in full freedom, waiting for better days.
Assuming that this "I Girasoli" type scenario were true, how did Ileana nevertheless end up on Romanian territory? And here imagination continued to help me.
Of the 70,000 Italian soldiers captured by the Russians, at least 22,000 died during the marches and transfers in the first months of captivity. Of the 48,000 Italians who reached the prisoner camps, only 10,000 managed to return to their homeland. Already after September 8, 1943, and even more so after the end of the war, Italy was no longer an enemy country for the USSR. So, immediately after the war, the Soviet government opened the gates for the Italian prisoners of war, as many as remained. The repatriation was carried out by the Italian government with its usual slowness. The repatriation of soldiers took place between September 1945 and March 1946. Large groups of soldiers were handed over by the Soviets to allied troops stationed in Austria and Germany, but the continuation of the journey to Italy took place in a chaotic manner, sometimes with organized transports, but often individually or in small groups who traveled independently and took advantage of improvisations.
The repatriation of Italian prisoner officers was delayed at the request of the Italian government, for electoral reasons—the referendum for monarchy or republic—and took place after April 1946. The exodus of prisoner officers towards Italy had, mainly, two routes: through Odessa or through Bessarabia and northern Moldavia.
It is to be assumed that the two spouses, lovers, or life companions, Antonio and Ileana, took one of these routes and, for one reason or another, they separated. One reason would be that, not being married or the marriage not being recognized by the Italians, the Italian authorities did not allow Ileana to board the ship or the train. Another reason, sadder, would be that "Antonio" simply abandoned Ileana Italian-style somewhere in Bessarabia or northern Moldavia, eager to find his Italian sweetheart who was waiting for him.
Thus it was that Ileana was left alone in a foreign country, without any help or sufficient knowledge to orient herself. It is easy to assume that, in her wanderings, she fell into who knows whose hands and suffered who knows how many rapes. Just as it is not known what compassionate heart guided her to address a local labor allocation agency and, lo and behold, that's how she ended up on the list my grandmother received.
I often wonder why De Sica's film awakened in me such vivid disparate memories of Ileana's story. Perhaps those Italian words, spoken occasionally by Ileana, an illiterate Russian from Siberia, planted in my mind the image of an Italian man who slipped into her life, just as Antonio entered Masha's life, the Russian woman in the film.
The film "I Girasoli" by Vittorio De Sica is a deeply moving story about loss, sacrifice, love, and uprooting—themes that seem to reflect Ileana's life as I have described it. To the film, with its story of Italian prisoners of war lost in the vastness of Russia, people trying to survive in a strange and hostile context, belongs the merit of igniting the spark of my imagination regarding Ileana's mysterious past. The romantic and tragic story between Antonio and Masha gave me a lens through which to view what Ileana's life might have been. However, the reality of Ileana's past, hidden under layers of silence and hesitation, is perhaps much harsher and less charming. As I analyzed the details I know, the romantic scenario transformed into a series of harsher, but probably more realistic scenarios.
More Realistic Scenarios
How would it have been possible, in those years of war, for an Italian prisoner to turn the world of a young woman from Siberia upside down? I can imagine that he was a prisoner interned in a Siberian camp, caught in the web of destiny and war. Unlike Antonio in the film, the Italian in Ileana's life, if he truly existed, seems to have had a burning desire to return home, to Italy, at the end of the war, when the camp gates began to open, and he convinced Ileana to accompany him as well.
But why did he take Ileana with him? Was it out of love or pure convenience? Did he seek in her a support, a traveling companion who spoke Russian? We will never know. What is certain is that her abandonment on the road, far from home and her world, excludes the hypothesis of a true love. The thought that such a decision completely changed Ileana's life deeply troubles me, adding a layer of sadness to her already complicated story.
Indeed, the fact that Ileana did not try to find a stable life partner in the over 30 years lived in Romania and preferred to frequent pubs to find one-night partners, always different ones, sometimes even paying them, suggests that this practice was not a novelty in her life. Perhaps in Russia too, Ileana found herself in a similar context, where fleeting relationships and multiple partners were part of her existence.
From these questions, another, darker scenario takes shape.
A Possible Beginning
A plausible scenario is that Ileana was a young woman without resources, caught in the whirlwind of war. Perhaps the extreme poverty in Northeast Siberia pushed her to earn her living in a way that offered her a chance at survival. Ileana came from a remote land where living conditions were harsh and resources limited. With her distinctive physiognomic features—small blue eyes hidden deep in the sockets and prominent cheekbones—she was a representative of the Yakuts, a non-sedentary people, accustomed to the struggle for survival in extreme conditions. In such a world, it is possible that the lack of education and economic resources pushed Ileana to seek solutions outside her community.
The Prisoner Camp and the Encounter with the Italians
If she lived or worked in the vicinity of the Siberian camps of young, desperate, and hungry Italian prisoners, Ileana could have come into contact with them, and it's not hard to imagine how she could have ended up being part of a circle of casual relationships. Pushed by poverty and cultural marginalization, she could have been attracted to a relationship with one of the prisoners, a man we can imagine as being "Antonio." Seductive, full of charm, and desperate to find support in a hostile environment, Antonio would have captivated Ileana.
The romantic hypothesis I initially assumed—that Ileana was seduced by an Italian prisoner who, with the charm typical of men from southern Italy, captivated a vulnerable young woman—could have a darker continuation, turning rapidly into a bond based on necessity. In the harsh camps of Siberia, a woman like Ileana could be a precious resource: a source of solace for men and, perhaps, a chance at survival in exchange for the protection she offered as a Russian. Their relationship, which could have started under the auspices of mutual attraction, would have soon transformed into a survival situation. "Antonio" would have shared her with his comrades, either from lack of options or due to group pressure. In prisoner-of-war camps, women who came into contact with detainees were often vulnerable to the pressures of groups and the context. In Ileana's case, love could have quickly become a compromise: in exchange for protection or resources for survival, she would have been shared among several prisoners. In such a context, Ileana would have been forced to accept a life in which relationships with multiple partners had become a habit.
If Ileana frequented the Italians' camp or if she received them in her house, there are two possibilities: either the initial love was strong enough for her to accept this difficult situation, or she simply adapted, seeing in these men a solution for survival. The fact that she learned some Italian words shows an attempt at integration into this temporary but unstable community.
Repatriation: A Moment of Separation
The repatriation of Italian prisoners from the USSR, begun in the autumn of 1945, took place in large groups and was not a linear or individualized process. Groups of prisoners were transported by the Soviets in freight cars, without any comfort or privacy. If Ileana had joined this group, it is hard to believe that she and any partner would have had a privileged itinerary. And if Ileana had been among them, she would have been a traveler in the midst of a mass of men desperate to return home. It is hard to imagine a single man, whether "Antonio" or someone else, being able to protect his partner in such chaos to carry her to the village or town where he was anxious to arrive. And what kind of partner was he carrying? A wild creature who didn't even know how to read. So it is likely that, in this agitation and confusion, once they reached the border, Ileana was abandoned by her initial partner, if he truly existed, or simply abandoned by the group. The abandonment could have at least two reasons: either the Italian wanted to rebuild his life without a woman he perceived as linked to a painful past, or the Italian authorities did not allow Ileana to board without a visa.
Left alone in an unknown country, Ileana found herself isolated, without resources and without the ability to navigate a completely foreign environment. In such a context, it is easy to understand why she would have been forced to accept the status of a marginalized woman, seeking temporary, questionable solutions for survival that also caused her the disease for which she then had to be cured while in our service.
Adaptation in Romania
When she came to work for my grandmother, Ileana already seemed resigned regarding her past. One thing is certain: Ileana never wanted to tell her past. Her past was a taboo subject, which she avoided at all costs. Even if her mangled Romanian would have allowed her to share more memories, their complete absence told everything: Ileana did not want those memories to be revisited and chose to remain silent. Shame, fear of judgment, or perhaps the desire to leave that past behind were stronger than the need for confession. It is possible that this silence hid an uncomfortable truth: Ileana could have become accustomed to a life based on ephemeral relationships, in which true love was missing, but which offered her a way to survive in a hostile world.
Even after she found a relatively stable place in our family, her behavior suggested that the lifestyle she had known before remained present in her mind. In the evening, when she was free, she sought the company of soldiers, as a continuation of a survival pattern she could not change.
This last scenario, although less romantic than the initial one, is perhaps closer to the truth of a woman who, although apparently simple, carried in her silence the echo of a complicated life marked by hard choices. One can, however, imagine another scenario with even darker strokes for the last part of Ileana's life, the one I know better. Here it is.
A Darker Portrait of Ileana
It is true that a painful past, combined with the lack of real emotional support, can leave deep marks on someone's personality. Ileana could very well have been a product of a world that offered her no real chances, and this could explain part of her behavior. If we explore this variant, we can see a woman hardened by experiences that transformed her into a pure survivor.
Solitude, combined with the brutality of the past, leads to a self-destructive cycle, and for Ileana, sex and alcohol could have become her only methods by which she managed to feel, even if only for a short time, less alone. It is possible she viewed any relationship—even with our family—through the lens of utility or an immediate gain. This doesn't necessarily mean she was incapable of feelings, but rather that she couldn't express or maintain them, or perhaps she had just forgotten them.
And then, any human contact—whether it was with me, an innocent child, or with the men in her life with whom she shared her bed—was only functional, never truly affective. In such a perspective, Ileana was not looking for affection or stability, but only temporary solace for a deep existential void.
In this vision, Ileana was a woman overwhelmed by the difficulty of her own existence. Her refusal to tell what happened to her before she came to us can be seen as a defense mechanism, but also as the result of a deep shame related to the decisions or experiences lived. Perhaps the brutality with which she was treated, whether in childhood or youth, or elsewhere, made her close off completely and avoid any type of emotional intimacy.
If we think of her relationship with alcohol, this, besides being a normal solution for Russians in the frozen climate of Yakutia in her youth, could also be a refuge to numb the pain, to suppress the memories that returned obsessively. Instead of being a simple distraction, alcohol could become a necessity—a shield against a past that still haunted her.
If we think of her relationship with men, Ileana did not seem to be in search of a stable partner. Perhaps because she didn't believe such a relationship was possible for her, or because she learned, in a cruel way, that such bonds bring more suffering than solace. The men she found represented only a temporary solution to fill a void and satisfy an already rooted need. In a life so devoid of hope, maybe she didn't even imagine another way. It is sad, but not at all impossible, that Ileana saw in sex a currency to receive someone's attention or to keep an illusion of control over someone. If this behavior started already in the camps in Russia, it would have become in her final years a survival mechanism—perhaps the only one she had at her disposal. The repetition of this pattern after she came to us could be seen as a consequence of the lack of emotional or social alternatives.
Such a portrait may seem cruel, but it is also realistic in the context of a life marked by trauma and extreme poverty. Ileana can be viewed not just as a lost woman, but as a symbol of human vulnerability in the face of a merciless destiny. The fact that she never found a way to detach herself from her past or to rebuild herself in a healthy way shows how important the support and empathy of others are in our lives.
A Story of Survival
Beyond the hypotheses and scenarios about Ileana's past, one thing remains clear: her life was a constant struggle for survival in a world that didn't offer her many options.
Whether Ileana was a young woman seduced by an Italian or a pragmatic survivor who saw in casual relationships a solution to secure her existence, her story remains a mix of darkness and accidental rays of sunshine hard to confirm. Her life, like the endless fields of sunflowers in De Sica's film grown from the bodies of innocent dead, is a melancholy landscape, dotted with clues of a continuous struggle to find a place in a world that was never kind to her.
Ileana remains for me a symbol of human fragility, but also of attempts at resistance in the face of a brutal and indifferent world. Her unfulfilled destiny is a testimony to the fact that not all stories find a happy ending, but every story deserves to be told if it can be useful to others.