A portrait and a family history, as they have remained in my memory.
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It was afternoon. The two of us, my grandmother and I, were sitting on the edge of the bed in my parents’ room, bent over a book. While my grandmother read to me, I held her by the shoulders with one hand, while the other rested on her knees. Grandmother had no more housework to do, her mother was asleep, and so she could devote an hour of reading to me until my mother came home from work.
She herself chose the book for me from the library full of volumes that we had in the sitting room. It was Legends of Olympus, the sixth edition from 1924, by Gheorghe Popa-Lisseanu. The book, as was written on the first page, had been awarded at school as a prize to one of my grandmother’s children, and she thought it was suitable for the grandson who, to her great surprise, seemed to enjoy what was being read to him.
She certainly knew nothing of the scandal from the time of Octavian Augustus, provoked two millennia earlier by the licentious stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the poem from which Popa-Lisseanu had drawn his inspiration. In that poem, Ovid — a writer whose themes were predominantly amorous — reshaped in verse and handed down to posterity the best-known tales of ancient mythology, centered on the phenomenon of metamorphosis. Had my grandmother known this, she would have thought twice and probably chosen another book, a more innocent one, more suitable for children. Ispirescu’s tales were also there, in the library, but they were not the first books my grandmother found. And besides, the title said exactly what was needed: legends are for children.
Let us say that my grandmother, not having completed secondary school, had no way of knowing the content of the Metamorphoses. But the teachers who included these volumes among the books awarded as school prizes should have known that they were full of violence, betrayals, and controversial relationships (see some extracts in Fig. 1). At four years old, I understood little of those events, but a young boy of ten or eleven would have learned, too early, forms of behavior contrary to common morality.
Grandmother could not have known that Popa-Lisseanu had drawn on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, or that beneath the innocent title Legends of Olympus lay so much violence, betrayal, and amorous adventure. Had she known, she might have chosen Ispirescu’s tales, which were also in the library. But the title seemed harmless: legends were for children, were they not? At four I understood little of the more troubling episodes; the gods and heroes nevertheless peopled my nights.
Indeed, when I entered Nicolae Bălcescu High School, my father, proud that I had been admitted among the first, offered me as a gift ten books that I could choose for myself from bookshops and antiquarian bookshops. I still remember all the books I chose. Among them shone Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in a splendid 1957 edition, the first, I believe, after the war. Reading it, my childhood memories of Greek and Roman mythology — which I had been proud to have used in learning to read — were reconsidered. For better, for worse? I do not know. I do not know how I would have evolved without knowing them, but I certainly would have been more innocent. Ten years later, at the end of adolescence, I would have understood the Metamorphoses in yet another way. I would have understood differently, for example, why Juno had to marry Zeus after warming under her clothes a poor cuckoo chilled by the cold.
Almost forty years later, during the communist years, another book was published, also entitled Legends of Olympus, also in two volumes, with the same source of inspiration — Ovid’s Metamorphoses — but by a different author: Alexandru Mitru. The events told are the same; another generation of young people had to learn about the crimes and amorous adventures of Zeus and his companions, gods and heroes. Is that good, is it bad? I do not know.
Grandmother followed the text with the index finger of her right hand, bent by arthritis, its nail eaten away by the lye with which she washed the pots. From time to time she stopped on a word and asked me to read it too, letter by letter, then to divide it into syllables. She corrected me or praised me, as the case required, and then went on spinning out the stories of gods and heroes that were already filling my thoughts, especially at night. At each illustration she stopped to explain it to me, after I had first syllabified its caption. I had recently turned four, and this is the first memory I have vividly in mind. What happened to me before that I know from other people’s stories or from photographs. Of what happened afterwards, I remember only vivid flashbacks, between which I try to fill in my unfolding life with suppositions. But the first memory that suddenly comes to mind when I think of that period of my life is connected with my grandmother reading Greco-Roman mythology to me and with her effort to teach me to read. Around five in the afternoon my mother was due to come home from work. My grandmother would interrupt the reading and lift me onto a chair by the window so that I could see when my mother got off the tram and wave to her.
I had called her “Mama Linica” from the time I first began to understand the world. I do not know who first used that name, but to me it expressed the truth: my grandmother was also my second mother. Only after her death did I learn what she had endured before becoming the woman I had known.
The story of Mama Linica that I try to reconstruct below, marked by so many hardships, is for me a lesson in resilience and courage, as well as in unconditional love for one’s family. She had learned that lesson from her own mother, Lina; she would pass it on to my mother, Zizi, and, without ever putting it into words, to me.
Linica, the second child of my great-grandparents Lina and Andrei Nicolescu, was born into what would become a large family in Dealul Spirii, in late nineteenth-century Bucharest. From an early age she showed unusual maturity and took on responsibilities that were far from easy for a child: she helped with the housework, cared for her younger siblings, and tried to support her mother in everything that needed doing. In a lively household where duties were a daily matter, Linica learned what it meant to look after others. From Lina she learned that a family is held together not by words, but by what each person does for the others, day after day.
I learned only late in life about one of the hardest episodes she had endured. Linica became pregnant at seventeen, and the identity of the child’s father was never established with certainty. In the world of that time, blame fell unquestioningly on the woman. Lina arranged her daughter’s marriage to Ahil Păunescu, a confectioner undoubtedly attracted in part by the dowry recorded in the marriage contract. My great-grandmother hinted that Ahil himself might have been the rapist, but the truth can no longer be established. The marriage was marked by physical and verbal abuse. Knowing the grandmother she later became, I imagine her enduring it in silence for a long time, perhaps burdened as well by the unjust feeling that she was being punished. In 1914 she obtained a divorce and remained with her daughter, Marioara.
A crucial moment in Linica’s life was the family’s retreat during the First World War. The journey from Bucharest to Botoșani, amid chaos and danger, was only the beginning of their trials. The epidemic of exanthematic typhus struck the population and the army cruelly, and it did not spare my grandmother, who fell gravely ill. Fortunately, she recovered, showing extraordinary inner strength. After being admitted to the contagious-diseases hospital, she continued to work there as a nurse until the end of the war.
During the refuge in Botoșani, her destiny took a new turn, this time a happy one. She met — probably through a matchmaker hired by my great-grandmother Lina — Petre (Petruș) Iliescu-Melchisedec, a clerk at the Military School in Bucharest, a forty-four-year-old man, stout, slow and reflective, calm, balanced, and cultivated. Sixteen years older than Linica and an incorrigible smoker, Petruș wore an imperial-style moustache that gave him an air of distinction.
Petruș’s discreet and patient courtship won Linica over, and the two were married civilly in Botoșani in 1918. After the war, their marriage was also blessed religiously in Bucharest. Although their union was probably not the result of a burning passion, but rather a choice dictated by circumstances, the relationship proved to be extremely solid.
In trying to reconstruct the relationship between my grandmother and grandfather, I can only make assumptions, based on scattered information about their characters. Petruș must have been attracted by Linica’s beauty, temporarily dimmed by her convalescence after typhus, but also by her pragmatism and determination, qualities well suited to his own methodical nature. Linica, in turn, had found in him a steady and trustworthy partner who could offer her an anchor in a troubled world and an uncertain future, both for herself and for Marioara.
But how did Petruș’s courtship unfold? It is hard to say. Was he capable of sentimental gestures, of declarations that could win Linica’s heart? Probably not. Yet, in his reserved way, Petruș succeeded in conveying to Linica a feeling of security, a solid basis for the future, even if he was not a passionate partner.
Their first night was never spoken of in the family either. I can only imagine it as a moment of mutual discovery. Petruș does not appear to have been a man of much experience; Linica, mature and practical, probably guided their intimacy with tact and gentleness. It was not youthful passion, but trust and the wish to build something lasting that must have marked the beginning of their relationship.
Marriage to Petruș marked the beginning of a stable life for Linica, one of rebuilding and hope. Despite their financial difficulties, they managed to start a family. They had three children, each with a distinct personality, who became the center of their world. Grandmother was a devoted mother to them and an example of courage and determination.
They came into the world almost one after another: Zizi, only ten months after the marriage; Draga, fifteen months after Zizi; and Pirică, only ten months after Draga. This rapid succession speaks of a functional relationship, but also of their desire to establish a family as quickly as possible, at a time when uncertainty hung over everything. Unfortunately, a fourth child, Romeo, died before reaching the age of one. Were three children already too many for Petruș’s modest salary? Or perhaps his age — he was fifty — played a role in their decision not to have any more children? Who knows?
My grandfather, Petruș Melchisedec, Linica’s husband, was a man of contrasts, a combination of bureaucratic rigor and human sensitivity. Secretary at the Military School of Engineering and Artillery in Bucharest, Petruș devoted his life to his modest work, and his salary, though steady, was not enough to provide comfort for a large family; the family’s financial situation often also depended on the rents from the two houses on Puișor Street, received by Linica as a dowry from her mother.
It was said in the family that Petruș sometimes received small gifts from the parents of pupils at the time of their enrollment, in order to speed up the admission procedure — a practice tolerated at the time — but I have no other confirmation.
What is known with certainty is that one of Petruș’s passions was betting on horse races, an activity that rarely brought him winnings — quite the contrary. After every loss at the races, Petruș would return home with a guilty smile and a package of cakes for the family, a gesture that did not spare him Linica’s remarks: “You lost again. When will you settle down?” she would ask, but the children’s laughter and the smell of cakes sweetened the tension. In their relationship, seriousness sometimes gave way to humor and indulgence. Petruș liked taking Linica to the cinema. He liked dramatic films and was a great admirer of Greta Garbo. When the “Divine” retired in 1941, it was a great blow to him. He continued to watch her older films when they were shown in neighborhood cinemas.
Petruș’s greatest love, however, remained his children, whom he raised with gentleness and affection. His favorite was Zoe Ana, known as Zizi, my mother, who stood out for her good behavior, excellent school results, and responsible attitude at home. Petruș’s wish to give her a complete education led him to pay for violin lessons, a dream that, unfortunately, was abandoned because of lack of money, but also because Zizi did not have sufficient musical talent. “It was only an attempt,” Petruș would say, looking indulgently at his daughter.
In 1930, his career as a clerk was suddenly cut short by the global economic crisis, which led to the forced retirement of many officials close to retirement age. He wrote numerous petitions to the authorities, hoping to be reinstated, but all his attempts were in vain. His stubborn determination to maintain order and dignity in the midst of these hardships was admirable. With a pension significantly lower than his salary, Petruș found himself in a difficult situation as he tried to provide his family with a decent life.
Although times were hard, Petruș, marked by financial difficulties, preserved his love for his children and his respect for his wife. Linica tried to make him useful in household chores, but with little success because of his “lordliness,” whether innate or acquired during his forty-five years of bachelorhood. The two nevertheless found a balance in their relationship, based on mutual esteem. Petruș, with his rigor and methodical character, and Linica, with her capacity to adapt and administer daily life, formed a team based on complementarity. Linica was the soul of the house, managing everyday chaos and turning it into a warm routine, while Petruș found refuge in order and discipline.
Indeed, one defining aspect of Petruș’s personality was order and discipline, traits that probably came from his profession as a bureaucrat. In the sitting room stood a massive safe, where Petruș kept little money but, above all, all the important family documents, impeccably organized. Beside it, a tall bookcase, with six shelves and a glass door locked with a key, housed the family’s collection of books. The library represented a true sanctuary of knowledge, built carefully over the years. Among the meticulously ordered volumes one could see: the four-volume Encyclopedia of Romania, published during the last period of Carol II’s reign, art albums, books from the interwar “Library for Everyone” collection, as well as numerous other volumes received by the children as school prizes or bought for their studies.
All these books had covers wrapped by Petruș in pale green paper, each bearing on the spine a label on which a specific code was written: a letter followed by three digits. The letter was the first letter of the author’s name, and the three digits represented a serial number in a catalogue that Petruș kept up to date. The catalogue was in fact a repertoire, written in calligraphic hand, with the authors and titles of the books in the library. This exemplary rigor reflected Petruș’s passion for order and his desire to create an accessible, orderly system amid the daily chaos otherwise splendidly managed by Linica. In his moments of relaxation, he would withdraw into the salon to read or to enter new acquisitions in his personal catalogue.
Much later, when the catalogue came into my possession, its yellowed paper still bore the trace of my grandfather’s pen and his impeccable calligraphic letters. I felt that something of his soul had reached me. It is a pity that we, his descendants, did not have the qualities needed to perpetuate the “Petruș style.”
For lack of activity, Petruș became increasingly melancholy and morose. He smoked a great deal. He walked all day in front of the house, hands behind his back, smoking, looking left and right at what was happening in the neighborhood. Although I did not know him, the stories about Petruș remained alive in our family. I imagine his walks on 13 Septembrie Street as more than a simple habit — perhaps they were a way of preserving his dignity in difficult times. He would sometimes stop at the street corner to talk with an acquaintance from the neighborhood, and he returned home only at mealtimes.
Meals were conducted with a certain solemnity, imposed by him, as he had experienced in the house of his half-brother George, where he had lived until the age of forty-five.
Speaking of brother George...
It was said that before his marriage, while living in George’s house, Petruș took part daily in the meals organized for the whole family, including George’s six children. As often happens at meals in families with children, the children were either not hungry or did not like the food served, the result always being a conflict with the parents, who would have liked to stuff them. It seems that between George’s children and their uncle Petruș there was great complicity, so whenever the food was not to the children’s liking, Petruș, in league with them, would put down his cutlery and declare that he could eat no more; all the children would then hurry to do the same, thus escaping their parents’ admonitions. Petruș’s spirit of camaraderie also manifested itself in his relations with his brothers-in-law, Linica’s brothers, who often visited the Melchisedecs when they came to see Lina, their mother. But what deserves to be noted is Petruș’s respect for Lina, his mother-in-law, in whose house he was, after all, living.
The 1930s were devoted above all to the children. Being retired, Petruș had time to take care of the education of the three children, following their schoolwork, going to school to talk to the teachers, and buying the books they needed.
As the two girls grew up, they caused him headaches in the choice of friends or suitors. Zizi in particular created problems when she fell in love with a young man two years older than herself, who came from a more than modest family with an uncertain past. Petruș was forced to intervene, and if he could not break off their relationship, because of Zizi’s stubbornness — she was madly in love — he at least succeeded in making them postpone the wedding until after their university studies. The wedding took place in March 1943.
Draga, although she had been a more difficult child, also caused him more than a few sentimental worries. Being very beautiful, she had many suitors, which worried Petruș, but in the end she herself chose a classmate from the Faculty of Medicine, two years older than she was, a serious man, Igor Bodeanschi, who in 1943, when they married, was already a military doctor. Igor was deeply in love with Draga, which made her “spoiled”: unlike Zizi, Draga did not wait to finish university and hurried her marriage to Igor in January 1943, when she was in her fourth year, then interrupting her studies with Igor’s consent.
By hurrying to marry, the girls nevertheless allowed their father to witness and enjoy their weddings before his death, which occurred shortly after the two weddings. The cause was a heart attack against the background of angina pectoris aggravated by Petruș’s habit of smoking. On July 1, 1943, at four o’clock in the morning, the tenants in the entire courtyard and the neighbors in the surrounding houses were awakened by Linica’s heartrending cries: “Petruș is dead! Petruș is dead!” He was seventy-one years old, and his absence from the house was felt for a long time by the whole family.
Petruș’s unexpected death was a devastating blow for Mama Linica. Linica seemed disoriented, as if her whole world had collapsed. Petruș had been the pillar of the family’s stability, and his loss left her in a state of confusion and profound suffering.
Petruș’s funeral was organized with great pomp by Marioara, his stepdaughter, who loved him like a father. The lead coffin with bronze ornaments was placed in Spirea Veche Church, where a procession of priests celebrated the funeral service together with a choir from the Opera and a crowd of participants. From the church, the funeral convoy, made up of black cars following the enormous hearse drawn by six horses dressed in black and with black feather pompons on their heads, took the road to Ghencea Cemetery. There, after another funeral service, the lead coffin was walled up in the family vault, where Linica insisted that she too should be walled up when she died. I respected this wish thirty years later, after Linica had survived Petruș by that length of time.
Despite financial difficulties and their differences in character, the relationship between Petruș and Linica endured. Without exuberance or grand declarations, over twenty-five years of marriage they built a life founded on mutual respect and discreet affection, with their children at its center.
Today, when I look at the photographs of Petruș, I see not only a modest clerk, but a man who loved his family above all else, the head of a household. Perhaps I did not inherit the “Petruș style,” but I did inherit respect for the simple values that keep a family united.
For several weeks after Petruș’s death, Linica was overwhelmed by grief. She no longer had the energy to manage the daily tasks; the routines that had once kept her busy were now abandoned. She no longer had the energy to cook or look after the house, and the room where they used to sit together seemed empty without Petruș’s presence.
The family had to rally around her and help her recover. Jean, Zizi’s husband, with his pragmatism and devotion, took the initiative in offering practical support. He helped Linica obtain a survivor’s pension, which gave her a small but steady income. Beyond the financial help, the gesture showed her that she was not alone. Jean’s position as the only man in the house became more firmly established, and the relationship between mother-in-law and son-in-law, though never perfect, improved greatly.
With the family’s support and thanks to her determined nature, Linica gradually regained her balance and carried on with the dignity that had always characterized her.
In the years that followed, times changed rapidly. Nationalization brought new tenants into the requisitioned rooms, and the former privacy of the house became a memory. Linica accepted the changes with resignation, concentrating on what she could still control: the well-being of her children and grandchildren. She resumed her small daily routines and continued in her role as the family’s executive head.
I remember how, despite the shortages, Grandmother always managed, as the Romanian saying goes, to “bring something out of the earth, out of the green grass” and put a hot meal on our table. She knew how to make the little we had last, a skill probably acquired during the hard years of her childhood and the wars.
One year after Petruș’s death, while Linica still carried in her soul the mourning for the loss of her husband, life offered her a new ray of hope. The family had taken refuge in Tântava, a hamlet beyond Domnești, twenty kilometers from Bucharest, to escape the Anglo-American bombings that had begun on April 4, 1944. Zizi, pregnant, was going through a difficult period. The pregnancy had not been planned and brought with it a mixture of fears related to the harsh times of war and her desire to spend more time without responsibilities beside Jean, before beginning the complex process of raising a child.
The decision to keep the pregnancy was not an easy one for Zizi. In a moment of hesitation, she had resorted to a series of injections meant to help her terminate the pregnancy, a common though risky practice at that time. Marioara, Zizi’s elder sister, intervened firmly. With tears in her eyes, Marioara begged her not to abort and promised that if Zizi did not want to raise the child, she would adopt it herself, because she could no longer have children. Linica, who longed ardently for grandchildren after Petruș’s death, joined Marioara’s pleas. She told Zizi that a child would bring joy and meaning back into their lives. Under the loving pressure and support of the family, Zizi allowed herself to be persuaded to keep the pregnancy.
On July 15, 1944, in Tântava, in the midst of a family gathered around her and assisted by the village midwife, Zizi gave birth to me in the afternoon, at 2:20 p.m. Everyone was moved, but especially Jean, who had come especially for the event from the garrison where he had been mobilized. He was delighted to have a boy. Marioara, who had also come from Bucharest, had brought white clothes — neutral, because no one knew the sex of the child — and an elegant pram, also white. In those moments, the family forgot the noise of the war around them and focused on the miracle of birth. At my baptism, my godparents were Marioara herself and her husband, Luca, both extremely involved in the first months of my life.
The return to Bucharest took place at the beginning of September, after the coup d’état of August 23, 1944, when Romania turned its weapons against its former ally, Germany, and after the German bombings of the oil fields in the days following the coup. The road back for the refugee population, in carts and trucks, was full of tension. Refugee families mixed with the Russian troops entering Bucharest, and stories of the deeds of Russian soldiers caused fear among the population of the capital. Nevertheless, the family managed to reach the city again. The shutters were removed from the windows, the paintings buried in the garden were dug up, and the family tried to rebuild its life in a Bucharest marked by war, but full of hope for something better.
My birth was, for Linica, an emotional rebirth. She became my second mother, devoting herself to my upbringing with the same energy and love she had given to her own family over the years. A few months after the birth, Zizi began working as an accountant for an English company selling soluble coffee. For almost six months, she came home at noon to breastfeed me, according to a short break allowed by the company. After I was weaned, feeding me with artificial milk, which was difficult to find in those times, passed into Linica’s care. After all the children she had raised — her younger brothers and sisters and her own children — she was a true expert in the matter. She found comfort and joy in every moment spent beside me, whether holding me in her arms, teaching me my first words, or showing me the world through her eyes. Amid the turmoil at the end of the war, she found in me a new source of purpose and joy.
Grandmother did not have only me to take care of; she also cared for her mother, Lina, an old and sick woman. Besides all that, she had to do the shopping, cook for the whole family, and keep the house clean. Around me, the family bonds grew closer: everyone tried to overcome the hardships of the time and raise me in a protective environment. Linica found her purpose again, and I, without knowing it, became the center of her universe.
I have a clear memory of that period: a photograph in a white pram, in a vacant lot beside our courtyard. I was probably less than a year old. Linica was sitting on a chair beside me, in the sun. It was of course an afternoon (judging by the shadows cast by the sun), because in the morning she was always busy with housework and kept the pram in the courtyard, in the sun, near the kitchen door.
When the time approached for my mother to come and breastfeed me during her lunch break, Linica held me in one arm at the window of our room, which looked toward the tram stop, so that I could see my mother getting off the tram. When I recognized her, I became excited and waved with joy. I was hungry, but more than that, I was happy to see my mother again, even if only for a short time.
I also have a memory connected with Christmas. In the large room of the house, beneath its enveloping ceiling over four meters high, a huge fir tree shone, carefully decorated, reaching almost to the ceiling. The atmosphere was magical, and the presents under the tree were beautifully wrapped for all the members of the family. Santa Claus, whom I later learned was my father, brought a touch of magic to those festive evenings.
When I had grown a little, was already walking and even talking, my grandmother took me with her to the market, because she could not leave me alone at home with my great-grandmother. We went together to the Great Market (today Unirii Square) by tram. I was fascinated to watch her buying vegetables, fruit, and other provisions. Sometimes she held me by the hand; at other times she stopped to rearrange the heavy bags full of purchases. Once home, she set about cooking in the summer kitchen, while I sat on the kitchen bed, watching closely everything she did. I think that was when my interest in cooking was awakened.
I think I was two or three years old, and certainly had begun to walk and speak, when my grandmother decided to hire help. The housework overwhelmed her; she could no longer keep up with everything that had to be done: shopping, cooking, cleaning, and in addition looking after me and her old mother. I think she made many trips to the local employment offices to find a maid who would stay permanently, day and night. At last, one day, my grandmother came home accompanied by a young woman of about twenty-five, thin, chestnut-haired, with a pale face, a slightly flattened nose, prominent cheekbones, thin lips, small blue eyes, narrow and slightly slanting, sunk deep in their sockets, and a downcast expression. Her clothes were almost rags, and the slightly sour smell she carried with her suggested neglected hygiene.
“This is Ileana. Ileana Gagia. She will stay with us. For the time being she will sleep in the summer kitchen,” said my grandmother with a resolute air, to which no one could object, and a silence fell over the room. Then she took from the wardrobe a set of older clothes, a towel, and a pair of slippers for Ileana to use, showed her where the bathroom was so she could wash, and finally where the summer kitchen was in the courtyard, with the bed she would occupy at night. Then she addressed Ileana:
“As you can see, the situation is exactly as I told you at the allocation center. Your work will be to help me with the child, to clean the house, to chop and bring in firewood. That is all. I give you food and a place to sleep. I hope you have understood. Do you agree to stay?” my grandmother asked Ileana, speaking slowly.
Ileana nodded in approval, took the new clothes, and shut herself in the bathroom. My grandmother took advantage of her absence to explain to Lina:
“I am tired of going day after day to look for a maid who is not from Bucharest. All one can find are women who come for a few hours to work and then return to their own homes. This girl is not an ideal solution, but I hope I will manage with her. She is Russian, she does not really know Romanian, and, besides, she will have to undergo treatment to cure a venereal disease. Until then she will not enter the house; she will do only chores in the courtyard and the cellar.”
Lina was speechless for a few seconds. Seeing how determined her daughter was, she no longer knew what to say. She sighed deeply and finally muttered, worried: “It is your affair, but do not let that one touch me or the child.”
And so Ileana, the Russian woman, entered our lives.
Another unusual figure in my grandmother’s circle was Alexandru “the Gypsy.” I think my grandmother met him during the war, when problems with the supply of firewood began.
Heating homes throughout the city was done with wood cut from forests and distributed in the city through the network of state depots. If at first one could buy as much as one wanted from the depot, at a certain point firewood became a strategic resource and was rationed. This was not because the country’s forests had diminished or because the cutting of trees had been forbidden. Like other Romanian resources, timber took the road of export to the Soviet Union as payment for colossal war reparations. The economic convention of January 1945, following the Armistice Convention, with the war still underway and the Romanian army engaged with heavy losses in Czechoslovakia, marked the beginning of a period of profound economic deprivation, the country’s vital resources — from oil and grain to equipment and maritime fleets — being directed toward the reconstruction of the postwar Soviet Union. The Sovrom companies, appearing like mushrooms after rain, drained the country’s wealth for years beyond the Prut.
Each family, according to the rooms occupied and the number of family members, received a ration card by which a quantity of firewood was allocated, with which it had to make do. The cards, in different colors, provided the population with food as well as firewood: bread, oil, or sugar. The same goods could also be bought “freely,” but at exorbitant prices. In addition, in the cities the supply of food and wood was inadequate.
The lack of food and firewood led to an increase in anxiety and fear for tomorrow. Rural communities faced a darker reality, in which survival depended on the limited resources available. Families that failed to obtain firewood for heating were forced to find desperate solutions, such as burning fences or illegally cutting trees from the nearby forest.
Let us say that after repeated interventions, at last the wood allocated to the family arrived by truck or cart at the gate of the house. It was hastily thrown down in front of the gate, and the fortunate beneficiary then had to hurry to store it in a safe place, from which the wood, now a precious good, would not disappear.
But the wood distributed by the depots could not be used immediately, being too large: stumps or “slices” cut from thick trees. They had to be cut into small pieces, just large enough to fit through the little door of the stove. And here enters the figure of the urban “woodcutter.” Woodcutters came into people’s yards and began cutting the wood, for a day or two, until they finished it. Sometimes a saw was needed: a rectangle made of two wooden pieces as the short sides, tied on one long side with a taut rope and having on the other long side a steel blade with sharp teeth. In general, however, the axe was enough. The woodcutters, most of them Gypsies, roamed the city around wintertime with an axe on their shoulder, announcing themselves loudly with: “I cut wood, I cut wood!” Human voices, in fact, reigned supreme in the streets of Bucharest. Pot-tinners with their “We tin pots,” glaziers with “Glass panes!”, knife-grinders with “We sharpen knives!”, yogurt sellers, milkmen, greengrocers, water-carriers, and others loudly offered their products or trades.
Alexandru was such a professional woodcutter: a Gypsy over sixty, relatively tall, with hair and beard almost white (Fig. 9). He was somewhat shy in the presence of strangers, talkative with his regular clients. He did not speak Romanian correctly, but in the end we understood one another. He smoked poor-quality cigarettes when he was not picking cigarette butts from the ground in order to roll, with his knotty hands, cigarettes in newspaper. He lived in our neighborhood toward Ghencea, in the Sebastian area. Once, my grandmother sent me, because she absolutely needed him, to look for him at home. A normal, clean house, a wife bustling about in the kitchen, small grandchildren playing in the yard.
Alexandru appeared periodically at our gate, and my grandmother usually found something for him to do. She rarely sent him home without giving him food in the kitchen, some of our worn clothes, and a little money. Everyone in the house liked Alexandru, except for the smell of his cigarettes, and he, usually calm and imperturbable, returned our sympathy as best he could, refraining from smoking in the house.
My grandmother trusted Alexandru blindly when it came to tasks such as cutting firewood, cleaning the courtyard, repairing various utensils from the kitchen or storage room, cleaning the stoves, or organizing the cellar.
The cellar was Alexandru’s specialty. It was located under half of our house, more precisely under the dining room and bathroom. It was a large, dark space, in which we could store not only firewood, but also old furniture and objects, barrels of sauerkraut, jars of pickles, and could keep root vegetables such as parsnips, celery, or carrots cool and dark, buried in sand. Once a week, Ileana went down into the cellar and brought up several armfuls of wood — previously split by Alexandru — with which she heated the tile stoves in the three rooms and the cooking range in the kitchen.
Alexandru also brought us once a year a team of pot-tinners, acquaintances of his, to tin the large copper cauldron in which my grandmother made tomato sauce and plum jam in the autumn.
The rituals with the cauldron took place in the middle of the courtyard, in front of the summer kitchen, far from the tenants’ houses. Set on a tripod, with a lively wood fire underneath, the cauldron was filled, as the case may be, with crushed tomatoes or with split plums without stones, which were then left to boil for several hours, toward evening. All this time, my grandmother, seated on a chair beside the cauldron, stirred the contents with an enormous wooden spoon. The tenants, passing toward their homes, greeted her, spoke with her, then brought small stools to sit and chat by the fire. When the contents of the cauldron had thickened enough, they had to be passed through a strainer that held back the skins, and only then began the ritual of pouring, with a funnel, the tomato sauce or jam into the warm bottles or jars placed within reach near the fire. The cork stoppers waited too in a small pot with warm water, ready to be pushed into the necks of the bottles with a special corking device. The jars were covered with cellophane, tied with string wound several times around the neck. Thus prepared, the bottles and jars wrapped in cloths ended up for an hour on the cooking stove, in pots filled with water, in a bain-marie. Their final destination would be the shelves in the cellar, to await winter.
My grandmother, a provident being, panicked when Alexandru gave no sign of life for a longer period. “You will see, Alexandru has left us. How am I going to manage without him?” Then, a few days later, Alexandru would appear, facing my grandmother’s reproaches without a word. Until, when I was already in high school, Alexandru no longer came. Rumors said he had died, and my grandmother had to resign herself. It was not hard: by then firewood had become useless, gas had been installed for the stoves, in the kitchen we had a gas stove with a bottle, and the other heavier tasks Alexandru used to do were entrusted to more skillful neighbors.
When I was four years old, my father decided that it would be good for me to learn to play the piano, so that I might become a famous pianist and travel all over the world, escaping the already well-defined inferno in which the country found itself. It was one of his dreams for me. They found me a teacher, Mrs. Teodorescu, who lived nearby, on Sirenelor Street, and I began lessons at her home. At first Ileana, the woman who helped my grandmother with household chores, accompanied me, then I went alone to the lessons. Soon my parents bought a Schiedmayer & Soehne upright piano, a beautiful vertical piano with a bronze frame, so that I could practice at home. My grandmother made sure there was quiet when I practiced the piano, just as she would impose silence when I studied for school or university.
Sometimes my grandmother allowed me to play in the courtyard with the neighbors’ children. Nelu, Titi, and Sandu, children from our courtyard, were my playmates, but Linica was always vigilant. She always made sure they were trustworthy children and came out of the kitchen from time to time to supervise us. She had a sense of responsibility that did not allow her to leave anything to chance. If I did not remember to come indoors in time, the exercises and piano lessons were announced to the entire neighborhood by my grandmother’s or Ileana’s prolonged calls from the gate. I had to leave the play and my friends from the vacant lot and come into the house, chastened.
At five, I was enrolled in kindergarten, where Ileana took me and from where she brought me home every day.
A year later, the entire family dynamic changed. That year came “nationalization,” and changes intervened in our life. Because of the housing shortage, every space considered surplus in a house or apartment was requisitioned by the state and then rented to those who needed it. Thus, after nationalization, several rooms in our house were requisitioned and given to two newly established shops: a barbershop and a grocery. We found ourselves crowded inside our own house, but this was everyone’s fate; we had to be satisfied that we had not been thrown out.
Shortly afterwards, Lina, my great-grandmother, died, and the following autumn I began school. Mama Linica was freed from some worries, at least in the morning, although she continued to carry the whole house on her shoulders.
I remember the afternoons in our house on 13 Septembrie Street, when I was in school and had to do my homework in the large room, my parents’ room. They were at work, and Grandmother could no longer help me with my secondary school lessons, so I struggled over my books alone. Relieved of some of her household duties, she could distract herself by watching from the veranda the bustle on the pavement in front of the house (Fig. 10).
Grandmother Linica’s afternoons were special moments, when the house came alive with the bustle and laughter of her closest friends. Often Uncle Radu, her elder brother, or Aunt Itu, her younger sister, would join her; both lived nearby. They crossed the courtyard and the whole house, then withdrew into the veranda and sat with Grandmother on the two chairs beside the entrance. They would exchange the latest news and comment on the passersby, mostly people from the neighborhood who knew them and greeted them as they passed the veranda.
My grandmother’s relationship with Uncle Radu was perfect. They resembled each other in thought and opinions, never contradicted each other, and confided everything that was in their hearts; even when they said nothing, they understood each other. It was different with Aunt Itu, who was taciturn and very discreet. Sometimes Grandmother learned from Uncle Radu news about Aunt Itu that Itu had not mentioned the previous day, although she had been in the veranda. “Just look at this dark one! She was here yesterday and told me nothing,” Grandmother would complain, alluding as well to her sister’s darker complexion.
If there were more guests, the doors between the veranda and the hall were opened, enough chairs were brought in, and everyone settled in a semicircle so that they could talk freely while watching the people passing in front of the house. Those afternoons were accompanied by the aroma of freshly ground coffee. Mixed with a little chickpea to produce foam, it was prepared in the kitchen. The steaming coffee pot was then carried into the dining room, where Grandmother filled the small porcelain cups, each with its saucer. Some of her friends poured the coffee into the saucer and drank it from there, following a custom that I believe was Turkish or Phanariot.
For Grandmother, those meetings were more than a habit: they gave her energy and, for a few hours, drew her away from her daily worries.
As a child, I liked to hide in a corner and listen to their conversations. Later, when I was at school, my afternoon homework mingled with the hum of their voices as they exchanged family or neighborhood news. Many things I know only from those conversations; they settled, layer upon layer, into a store of memories of which I have remained the sole custodian.
Grandmother had a gift for maintaining cordial relationships with the people around her. She remained in touch even with people outside the closest family circle, whom I too began to recognize by name and appearance. Some belonged to my grandfather’s family, about which I knew very little at the time; others were old friends from the neighborhood. Grandmother treated everyone courteously, quarreled with no one and, if an argument arose among her guests, tried to calm them. Some of those people have remained in my memory through the stories of their lives as they emerged in their conversations with her.
Bibi Sorescu, a lady of sixty, retired, with bright, intelligent eyes behind thin metal-rimmed glasses, her hair completely white and gathered in a bun, a mole on her chin, had probably been a beautiful woman in her youth. She was a little younger than my grandmother and one of her favorite friends.
Bibi lived on 13 Septembrie Street, two houses away from us, in a courtyard made up of a row of five apartments, all with entrances protected by glass porches from the courtyard. They stood back to back with the little rooms in our courtyard. The similarity of the architectural solution between the two rows of buildings made me think that this courtyard too had once belonged to my great-grandparents, who had probably built them joined together but with different degrees of comfort for the customers who spent the night at the inn.
When the inn became unprofitable and the economic hardships represented by raising the children became too great, my great-grandmother separated the two groups of houses and sold this row to the Măicănescu family. The new owners maintained the apartments better than my great-grandmother and succeeded in renting them to more prosperous families. These apartments all had the same layout: a porch like a glass cage at the entrance, opening into a hall that separated two rooms, one on the left and one on the right. I think Bucharest, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was full of houses with such a topography.
Bibi had rented one such apartment, and the neighboring apartment was rented by a niece of hers, who lived there with her husband and children. Bibi also had a widowed sister who lived in the Popa Tatu area; the sisters visited each other rarely. Loneliness gnawed at her, and frequent visits to her friend, my grandmother, helped her to “set the country right” together. I liked her especially because she was cheerful, spontaneous in her intelligent answers, and well informed.
I reconstructed Bibi’s history from her discussions with my grandmother, which I overheard without wanting to, and from my grandmother’s conversations with other common acquaintances.
As a young woman, Bibi had worked as a secretary in the offices of lawyers or industrialists. At one point she was hired as secretary to a promising, relatively young undersecretary of state in a ministry, named Dumitru M., Mituș to intimates. Although married, he began from the very start to court the young secretary. Such things happen often. Bibi, who had had no other relationships until then, resisted Mituș’s gifts and insistence as long as she could, until she yielded and, more than that, fell in love with her charming boss.
Thus began an extramarital relationship — who knows which number in Mituș’s life — managed very well by him. His frequent visits to Bibi’s home were accepted by her in the hope that one day she would become more than a mistress, a hope nourished by his constant complaints about an unbearable wife.
The long-awaited moment never came. Instead, the postwar regime changes arrived, and Mituș, after a trial in which he was accused of treason as an enemy of the people, was sent to prison for several hard years. Bibi went from time to time to see him in prison, even more often than his wife, who actually decided to divorce him during his detention. For Bibi this was unexpected news, full of great hopes. When Mituș came out of prison, where would he go? Of course to her, to Bibi. And Bibi prepared to receive him with all honors.
The moment of M.’s release came, but he preferred to return to his former wife, who received him — charismatic he must have been, this Mituș! — crammed into an apartment overcrowded by the tenants introduced by the state after nationalization. It was a great blow to Bibi, who nevertheless did not give up: her love for Mituș was so great that she continued to receive him at home as before, but only for coffee, I suppose.
That was roughly the time when I had begun to understand these strange games of love, so frequent in the books I read, and my sympathy for Bibi, now doubled by compassion for an unhappy soul, grew. Most of Bibi’s confessions to my grandmother, which I could hear from my room even with the veranda door closed, concerned Mituș’s delicacy, his elegant behavior, and the sad life he led with his wife. My grandmother remained silent, not intervening so as not to upset Bibi.
Everything culminated in tragic news. One day Bibi came to my grandmother in tears, telling her that Mituș was in hospital with a diagnosis of cancer. She had gone to see him and on that occasion had had to meet his wife, who was constantly at his bedside. Passing over every possible humiliation, Bibi continued to visit Mituș at the hospital until the inevitable happened and Mituș died. I never saw Bibi again after that. After a while I heard that her niece had found her lifeless in her apartment. She had poisoned herself. For her, without Mituș, life no longer had any meaning.
Mrs. Olimpia Polifronescu was a music teacher at George Coșbuc High School on Calea Moșilor, a girls’ high school in those years, which became coeducational toward the end of the 1950s. She was renowned for her strictness, but also for the success of the school choir in various music competitions among high schools. Her pupils adored her, and I wonder why her memory was not perpetuated over time as a component of the school’s tradition.
Professor Polifronescu, a tall, thin woman with a distinguished figure, cavalryman’s bowed legs, fierce eyes and gray hair, had an unforgettable hairstyle: a large semicircular curl, created by a roll hidden under the hair, began behind the ears and hung down to the nape of the neck. Another curl sat asymmetrically on the top of her head, making the professor seem even taller than she really was. Dressed in a suit, usually brown, when she conducted the choir, beating time with the heel of her shoe and her fingers spread wide, the chevalier ring with a large emerald surrounded by diamonds on the little finger of her right hand threw flashes of fire at the little girls in the choir, frozen with admiration.
When she became angry, she slapped her leg with her hand, stamped the ground with her stiletto heels, and exclaimed indignantly: “Not even if you were from Patagonia would you make so much noise.”
The professor lived with her sister on Sirenelor Street, roughly opposite my former piano teacher, in a wagon-style house, like so many others in the area, with a large, well-kept garden, many roses, and two imposing silver firs in one corner. The house had two entrances from the garden, leading to two identical apartments. The first entrance belonged to her sister’s apartment. The professor lived in the apartment at the second entrance. I did not know much about the two sisters, but my grandmother knew them quite well. Unlike her sister, the professor had been married, and Polifronescu was her husband’s name. It seems this husband had been a cavalry officer who died in the war. Sometimes, when I saw her, I caught myself laughing inwardly at the thought of what the two spouses must have looked like: he a cavalryman, she a cavalrywoman, when they went out walking.
Coming home from school, Mrs. Polifronescu got off the tram in front of the entrance to our house. Sometimes, seeing my grandmother in the veranda, she greeted her, and my grandmother signaled for her to come in. If the professor had time, she accepted; my grandmother opened the door for her, and the two sat down to talk.
When, at my grandmother’s request, I paid the professor a visit for an audition, I was impressed by the warmth emanating from all the furniture, paintings, and valuable objects in the apartment. The two pieces I played on the upright piano in the salon were well received by Mrs. Polifronescu, but I think it was rather an act of politeness toward my grandmother.
My grandmother told me that Olimpia had sung as a soprano at the Opera in her youth, but had lost her voice shouting at children, this time as a teacher. Indeed, when I knew her she had an extremely hoarse voice. What I did not know until much later — the professor had died in the meantime — was that “from her hands” came several good opera singers, among them, it seems, the great Ileana Cotrubaș.
A distinguished lady, tiny and slightly plump, who seemed young despite her nearly sixty-five years — that was Didinica when I first saw her. She was a cousin’s niece of Petruș, and my grandmother was especially keen not to lose touch with the Petrescu family, so she gladly saw all her nieces: Marcela, Ana, or Maria, who came from time to time to visit her. Didinica was a special figure: without being a beauty, she had a face without a single wrinkle, eyebrows drawn with pencil, eyes also made up, no glasses out of coquetry, perfect manicure, ballerina’s hairstyle: sparse hair perfectly smoothed to the head, parted in the middle and gathered in a small bun at the nape. Always perfumed, she filled the veranda and the hall with the smell of patchouli. Her discussions with my grandmother revolved around Petruș’s relatives. From time to time, however, the name of Radu, my grandmother’s elder brother, appeared: “How is Radu?” she asked my grandmother, who answered slyly: “What, you haven’t spoken to him?” to which Didinica replied: “Yes, but not recently. I wanted to know the news.”
Radu... There were whispers in the family of a possible relationship between Uncle Radu and this Didinica. I had heard this story too, but knowing Radu’s reputation as a womanizer and his many relationships with the fair sex in the neighborhood, as well as his habit of flattering any woman, I preferred to adopt a neutral position, amused by the ease with which the ladies he courted seemed to fall into a net probably emptied long before.
In any case, an intimate relationship between Uncle Radu and Didinica did exist; confirmation came to me many years after the events described, directly from Nidia, Uncle Radu’s daughter. Aunt Nidia told me indignantly that one day she received a phone call and answered without identifying herself. From the other end, however, the identification came immediately: “I am Didina Petrescu. I am calling to tell you that Radu is mine alone. He no longer loves you, if he ever did. We see each other often and have decided to marry as soon as possible. So Radu will soon inform you of his decision to divorce.”
Aunt Nidia realized that Didinica had mistaken her for her mother, Jeny. Determined to rebuke Didinica, she introduced herself: “I am Nidia and I want to tell you...” at which point Didinica, realizing her blunder, hung up. Of course, Nidia told her mother nothing, but this episode added another drop of venom to her relationship with her father, a relationship that had long been strained because of his intransigence regarding his daughter’s dubious friendships. And at the same time Nidia’s relationship with my grandmother also cooled, because although my grandmother knew the nature of the relationship between Radu and Didinica, she continued to maintain a good friendship with her cousin. “I never understood why Auntie still received that depraved woman in the house,” Nidia told me with bitterness many years later. She did not confess it to me, but seeing my aunt’s anger, I think Nidia had in mind that my grandmother actually facilitated the innocent meetings, this time, of the two in her veranda.
The Planta girls were, at the beginning of the twentieth century, three unmarried sisters: Didi, Marioara, and Lenuța, cousins of my grandmother, who lived on Sabinelor Street, at the corner with Acvila Street. Among my grandmother’s friends, the “Planta girls,” Didi and Lenuța, were the most picturesque. From a relatively well-to-do family in Dealul Spirii, they were connected to the Niculescu clan not only by kinship, but also by sympathies and a circle of friends. Although past their first youth, they preserved a special coquetry and an appetite for harmless gossip that enlivened any meeting.
After the communists came to power, the family’s properties were nationalized, and the girls were left with two apartments in a neglected courtyard, with a depressed garden. In one apartment, at the back, lived Marioara, widowed and childless. In the front apartment lived Didi and Lenuța, both unmarried, with a significant age difference between them, Didi being the older, about the same age as my grandmother. Of the three sisters, Didi was by far the most successful, in appearance and intellect. Hair dyed fiery red, small bright eyes of a special color — blue-violet — shaved eyebrows drawn thinly with pencil, her face always covered with a thick layer of powder. A great teller of jokes and comic stories, Didi was liked by all of us, starting with Uncle Radu, whom Didi’s jokes amused enormously. In his last days, being ill in bed, Uncle Radu asked Nidia to bring Didi to him every day to entertain him before death. Lenuța, on the other hand, was rather ugly, vulgar in speech and gestures, what one might call “low-bred.”
When Didi came to my grandmother’s and three or four acquaintances gathered, there was continuous laughter and amusement sustained by Didi.
How had the two sisters remained unmarried? It seems that their parents first tried to marry off Didi when she reached marriageable age, as she flirted with one man and another but never turned the flirting into marriage. Then the parents resorted to matchmakers. It is said that one of the candidates brought by the matchmakers was invited to lunch in the Planta house so that the two young people could get to know one another better. After the meal was over and the candidate had left, Didi showed her parents the bread crumbs under the place at the table where the candidate had sat: “A boor, I don’t want him,” Didi dismissed the unfortunate man. Lenuța tried on her own to marry, finding over time several candidates whom she brought home, but Didi did everything possible to make all her sister’s marriage projects fail. She needed a slave, and Lenuța was Didi’s slave all her life, dominated by her sister’s intelligence.
It is possible that Didi and Lenuța inherited some money from their parents or had managed to sell some of their parents’ properties before nationalization, because they had a reserve of money which they used by lending at interest. Many of our acquaintances borrowed from the “Planta girls” when they were short of money, a situation not rare in those times. Some were simply economically dependent on the Planta girls: they paid the debt and interest in installments, and when they were about to clear the debt, they borrowed again. A true bank, these Planta girls!
In the last years there had been a rumor that the Planta girls were making their apartment available to more mature lovers, thus turning it into a rendezvous house. Could it have been true? I knew this because one of the Plantas’ neighbors warned my grandmother that Nidia had been seen leaving Didi’s at noon. “The lady should be warned not to go there anymore, because she might compromise herself,” was the message of the well-wisher. I remembered that I too had been twice in the house of Didi and Lenuța, sent by my grandmother with packages of coliva from the memorial services she held every year for the dead in the family. Had I compromised myself too?
When the demolition began in the Uranus area, Didi and Lenuța had to move to a block of flats, into a small apartment on the sixth floor. Didi, now very old, did not last long in the new dwelling and died. Lenuța, without Didi, felt useless and, in despair, threw herself out of the kitchen window into the inner courtyard below.
A special aspect of my relationship with my grandmother manifested itself while I was in high school, thus resuming the collaboration begun in childhood, when she had taught me to read. I had entered “Nicolae Bălcescu” High School, the best high school in Bucharest. I was passionate about reading, and the school library was a true paradise for me. Located on the top floor, at the level of the gallery of the theater inside the high school, the library, with enormous cupboards, housed thousands of books — those that were permitted. It was rumored that other books from the library, from the time when the high school was called Saint Sava College, stood, forbidden by the regime, in the library’s storage room. Every week, on Monday, I borrowed four books from the school library, with which I filled my satchel. I chose them carefully: not only those recommended at school, but also those that interested me at the moment (Romain Rolland, Thomas Mann, Aldous Huxley, William Faulkner, or Marcel Proust, but also Petru Dumitriu, Titus Popovici, or Marin Preda). There were classical authors, modern literature, theater, novels, reportage, Romanian and foreign authors — everything. When I got home, my grandmother was waiting for me to take the books out of the satchel, so that we could divide them between us, read them, and then rotate them. In the evening, coming back from high school, I would find her in the dining room, where her bed was, glasses on her nose, reading vigorously the book whose turn had come. It was incredible how she managed to keep up with me in reading, regardless of the genre of the books. It was also incredible how she did not get bored reading plays: Shakespeare, Corneille, Molière, or Dürrenmatt were all welcome. Those four high-school years were essential for the formation of my general culture, but also for our relationship, which blossomed with every book read. The exchange of books and parallel reading with my grandmother continued later, when I was at university.
For a long time one could see how old age and knee pain were taking their toll on my grandmother. I remember her climbing and descending the two high steps in the house by leaning her back against the door, each step an enormous effort for her. And there were dozens of such ascents and descents of those cursed steps every day.
After she turned eighty, cancer was discovered. It was a shock for everyone. She was still so present in our lives, so necessary to the balance of the house, that we could not imagine the day would come when she would no longer be there. We hoped it was a mistake, but the diagnosis was clear. She was admitted to hospital, where she began radiotherapy sessions. The harsh treatment she received brought her no relief, only more suffering. The medical methods of those days were severe, and the memory of her cheek burned by radiation still seems to me a cruel injustice. Although weakened, my grandmother never complained. She was as dignified as I had always known her.
Around Christmas 1972, I left for Păltiniș with Adina and a group of friends. I had barely arrived there when my mother called me to the hotel telephone: “Come quickly, Mother is dying.” I dropped everything and returned home. Mama Linica, despite terrible pains, lived another three months. They were difficult months, in which I watched the torments of the disease bring her down little by little. And yet, even then, my grandmother had a warm look for each of us.
My grandmother died in March 1973. Until then she had remained the same Linica, attentive to us even as her own strength was deserting her. After her death, the house suddenly felt emptier.
Mama Linica’s funeral took place in a terrible March blizzard. Petruș’s coffin was removed from the vault only with great difficulty because of its enormous weight. His bones were gathered into a hemp sack, sprinkled with red wine by the priest, and then placed in the modest fir-wood coffin that held Linica’s body. What a difference between the two funerals! Different times, different means: from grandeur to austerity.
Mama Linica was my second mother: she raised me, educated me, and accompanied me through childhood and youth. She had no advanced education, but she understood the importance of learning and books. She taught me to read and, years later, became my reading companion.
Of all she did for the family, what has remained with me is her devotion and strength, together with the memory of a love she never felt the need to proclaim: she proved it, day after day, in the way she cared for us.
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