Client of the Securitate

Over the years, I had two episodes that drew the attention of the State Securitate to me. I suspected from the beginning that both figured in my Securitate file. Just as I suspected what consequences they had on my career. Curious is that, long after these events, life threw in my path a character – a Securitate colonel – who was to confirm the recording of these small "deviations" with letters of fire in my file and, in a surprising way, to "erase" them.

In 1972, the UNDP program was approaching its end, and the funds for specialization scholarships abroad were running out. From our department, all those who were part of the department at the time of its founding, in October 1969, had left on scholarship. Those who arrived later in the department had not, rightly so, been planned to have a scholarship. Among them was also me, employed in the department in March 1970. Then, a few more graduates from the Faculty of Electronics came, and in September 1972, a young graduate, valedictorian of the first series of "computer specialists", Florica M. Finally, there were a few more engineers from the Computing Center of the Polytechnic, which administratively belonged to our department. All these did not benefit from scholarships, and the department leadership tried to plan them for shorter stages, as the budget became increasingly tight. Some of them managed to leave for three-month scholarships. I, however, did not.

Toward the end of the year, seeing that colleagues younger than me, recent college graduates, were also going abroad, I addressed the department head, Professor M.P., to find out if I am or not planned for a scholarship. The professor looked at me long and, smiling in his slightly sarcastic style, told me: — L., if I were to propose you for a specialization scholarship, I would be told that you, as a graduate of the Faculty of Mathematics, are already "super-specialized".

In the face of such cynicism, I remained speechless. Finally, after a while, I find out that I am on a list of three candidates for scholarships. Besides me, on the list were colleague Florica and the head of the Computing Center, N.P. I didn't know at what university the scholarship was to take place, but I felt satisfied that, anyway, justice was done.

An Unwanted Rendezvous

One evening, I receive a phone call at home. I answer, and a male voice introduces himself:

— Good evening, I am Lieutenant-Major X. I would like to speak with Comrade Professor.

— It's me. What is it about? I answer, feeling a thread of fear slipping into my soul.

— I wish to speak to you personally, X replied.

— Can we see each other at the faculty one of these days? I try to take control of the conversation.

— I'm waiting for you now, at the corner of the street, in front of the Alimentara, X replied implacably.

— Wait a few minutes for me to get dressed, I replied submissively.

At the corner of the street a man of about 35 was waiting for me, dressed in civilian clothes. He came to meet me smiling – proof that he knew me. It was clear to me immediately that he was a Securitate employee, even before he officially introduced himself. He suggested we walk and talk. After a few exchanges of pleasantries, he entered directly into the subject:

— I know you are to leave with a scholarship abroad. Do you know at what university?

— I wasn't told. Moreover, officially I received no notification in this regard, I answer.

— You will find out soon. Precisely about this scholarship I wanted us to discuss, he said on a grave tone, adding: All your colleagues have been away on at least one scholarship. Now it's your turn to follow their path.

I thanked him for the appreciation, but I understood quickly that it was not a recognition of merits, but a masked invitation to proceed like "the others".

— You will see new places, you will have much to learn, you will participate in projects, exactly like your colleagues, X continued. I nodded affirmatively, without understanding exactly where he wanted to go.

— You will have access to a lot of documents and new technologies, some even secret, which foreign colleagues will put at your disposal. Many of these can interest also your country.

— You realize that any information useful for the country that I receive officially from colleagues or authorities, I will bring home, as probably my colleagues also did, I answer him, pretending not to understand.

— It's not about such information, but about the secret ones, with which you will come into contact with or without the colleagues' knowledge, X said, revealing the real reason for the meeting.

I could answer evasively, but that Don Quixote spirit that seizes me sometimes in limit-situations made me react sharply:

— Comrade X, if you want to propose to me to become a spy, I assure you that I am not interested in this profession. I learned for something else.

After a pause, I added, sweetening the tone:

— And anyway, I don't think I would have a talent for that.

Seeing his eyes wide open with wonder, I added:

— As I told you, I will learn as well as I can what will be required of me during the scholarship, I will bring everything that's useful in the country. It's clear to me that the state makes an effort to send me, and it's normal to return its trust. But please, don't put me to spy, it's not the kind of activity I'm good at.

— I understand. I will report your decision. But, à propos, there are also other colleagues on the list. For example, do you know N.P.?

— Yes, I've known him for many years. We were high school colleagues, then university colleagues, now also at work. We like each other, but we are not friends.

— All the better. How does he behave in society? Does he tell political jokes? Does he plot against the party? You know he's not even a party member...

— Comrade X, as far as I know him, I haven't heard him telling political jokes. His, few as they are, are rather dirty, I say, trying to relax the atmosphere.

However, in my ears were ringing the political jokes that N.P. told out loud right in my office.

— My request is for you to check Comrade N.P.'s loyalty toward the government and state. I will phone you again in the following days for news, he added at departure, shaking my hand with hope.

— But what news? I told you all there was to say. I have no way to help you, I answered him annoyed.

— We will see then, X said with a cunning smile.

After about ten days, the same phone, at the same hour, the same meeting, the same walk, the same questions, the same answers. I tried to tell him that I lead a retired life, I don't socialize with colleagues in the department. Nothing to do:

— I will phone you for news in the following days, X repeated at departure.

An Audience at the University Center

The perspective of regular meetings with the head-securitate man of the Polytechnic terrorized me day and night. I had believed that their world was far from me. I knew it, vaguely, but I ignored it. Now, in direct contact, I only wanted to be left in peace. I no longer desired to go abroad, I knew that this would be the punishment for refusing to collaborate. I decided to act. Not having someone among acquaintances to help me, I addressed on the hierarchical line my boss, M.P., who was also the party secretary. I started telling him, but, at one point, he interrupted me:

— Dear, I don't want to know anything. Please, don't continue. Moreover, I forgot what you told me. Otherwise, in 24 hours I must write a denunciation. M.P. was simply terrified.

— But, Mr. Professor, if I cannot complain to the party secretary, to whom else should I address? I told him with an almost crying tone.

It seemed he understood, but he shrugged and dismissed me. I left even more dejected. I no longer had anyone to defend me from terrorist X. But it was not so.

In the evening, I receive a phone call from M.P.:

— Thursday, at 17:00, Comrade Cornel Pacoste awaits you in audience at the University Center in Onești street. For me, this subject is closed, he warned me.

I thanked him. The news calmed me somewhat. I knew that Pacoste was a good friend of M.P., but I also knew his role in intimidating the students and the teaching staff in the student manifestations of 1968, which probably facilitated his access to the position of first secretary of the University Center.

In the waiting room at the University Center I was alone. The secretary invited me into the cabinet. Pacoste, a blond man, relatively young, was waiting for me at the desk. He invited me to take a seat and state the reason for the audience, as if he didn't know anything. He listened to me calmly, then stood up, shook my hand and told me:

— Comrade, be without worry. From now on, no one will disturb you anymore.

And it really was so. No one from the opaque zone of the Securitate looked for me again. But neither did I leave on scholarship. I found that in the following years Cornel Pacoste had a brilliant career in the party and government, as Ceaușescu's trusted man. In this capacity, he also had an important role in the repression of the protests in Timișoara, in December 1989. As former first secretary of Timiș county, he was Ceaușescu's special envoy to Timișoara with the task to calm the situation in the city, which however Pacoste did not manage. For this last role, he was sentenced after the Revolution to ten years in prison, years that he served. He died immediately after release.

An Unsuccessful Trip

In the year following the episode with the UNDP scholarship, in the first week of April, together with several colleagues from the department I made a trip to Timișoara, to the Polytechnic Institute there (IPT), to participate in a session of scientific communications organized by Aurel Soceneanțu, head of the Computing Center, and by other Timișoara colleagues. I had prepared two scientific communications together with a few colleagues and students, but the trip to Timișoara had for me also other objectives. One would be to see Gabi R., my friend from the army, whom I hadn't seen for several years and who in the meantime had married and also had a child. Whenever we spoke on the phone, his refrain was: "When are you coming to Timișoara?". Another objective was to take a trip to Cheile Nerei, where I hadn't been until then and of which M.P. spoke to us enthusiastically. He had taken together with the family a trip in the summer of the previous year and they remained impressed by the cascades and the wonderful natural lakes in the natural park that had Cheile Nerei as main attraction. I decided, together with my friend Florian (Bibi) M., a former university colleague and now a colleague in the department, to return to Bucharest two days later, after a detour in the weekend through Cheile Nerei.

Finished the communications at the IPT session, performed the visits at Gabi's house, Saturday very early in the morning, with backpacks on our shoulders and a state of enthusiasm that made us forget the fatigue accumulated in the days of the symposium, me and Bibi presented ourselves at the Timișoara-Sud station to take the train toward Oravița, the most important locality in the Cheile Nerei National Park. At that time Oravița was still connected by railway with Timișoara. From Oravița, on foot, we could then reach with ease our objective: the Cheile Nerei gorge.

The local train toward Oravița was formed of three old wagons, without compartments, with six rows of polished wooden benches, face-to-face two by two, with high shelves for putting luggage and windows that squeaked when you opened them. The wagon in which we boarded was empty — an almost unreal silence for a passenger train. We took down our backpacks and settled comfortably, with the windows wide open. It was a serene spring morning, and the air entered in fresh waves, like a promise of liberty.

The train set in motion. Being a local train, we couldn't pretend it runs like an arrow, the distance was 100 km, so the predictions were to arrive in Oravița around 10:30-11:00. Sufficient time to reach by evening Sasca Montană or Șopotu Nou, where we wanted to spend the night. From there, on foot toward Cheile Nerei — a route about which M.P. had spoken with such passion that it had become almost mythical in our minds.

After about an hour, in our still deserted wagon, two soldiers with rifles on their shoulder appeared. We greeted each other, believing they were in passing, but no! They sat next to us with the rifle between their knees, framing us and forcing us to tighten up. Suddenly, the bench on which we were lounging seemed to us too short. Then they asked us for our identity cards. We handed them over without comments. They studied them lengthily, like some suspect documents. Then they tucked them into the pockets of the uniform, without saying anything. We didn't protest, but we looked at each other consternated. It was a silent exchange, almost complicit, but our eyes betrayed the anxiety that was starting to rise in both of us.

Arrived in Oravița station, the soldiers "invited" us to get off. On the platform four other soldiers were waiting for us, with the same inexpressive air and rifles held visibly, almost ostentatiously. We tried to explain that we want to find a tourist information point for the route. No answer. Then, a short sentence:

— Come with us.

— Where?

— To the garrison.

— Is it far?

— In the center.

Ok, maybe there we find the information point. We thought that there we will obtain a map, a recommendation, an urge for a start of trip. But the look of the soldiers, that combination between pity and contempt, froze our thought. We set off on foot, in a perfect choreographed single file: three soldiers in front, us in the middle, other three in the back. Our steps echoed on the deserted sidewalk of the city like a drum beat in mute. It was a quiet Saturday morning, but for whoever saw us, we were already condemned: two individuals escorted by six armed military — an image hard to forget.

Arrived at the garrison, they confiscated our backpacks. A soldier picked them up like some suspect objects, with slow and exaggeratedly careful movements, as if we could hide in them a plan of invasion. They separated us without a word. I was in a room with gray walls, smell of old moisture and oppressive silence. I sat on a chair feeling how the anxiety starts to make its place in the chest, like a deaf beat inside.

After a time — maybe ten minutes, maybe an hour — the door opened. A lieutenant entered: young, thin-faced, with an air of a man who doesn't sleep much and doesn't forgive much those who sleep. He had in his hand my identity card, which he flipped through absently, like a book you already know by heart, but pretend you read it once more.

— Who are you?

— You have my identity card, it's written there.

— Tell me yourself. I want to hear from your mouth.

I answered calmly. Who I am, where I come from, why we are there. I told him about the conference, about the planned trip, about Cheile Nerei. I spoke clearly, limpidly, with the confidence of someone who knows he did nothing wrong. But the man didn't want answers. He wanted a confession.

— Why did you want to cross the border? he asked me with a cunning air, almost whispered.

— What border? Where is this border? I asked, sincerely curious.

He smiles briefly. That kind of smile without lips, in the corner of the mouth, which doesn't express humor, but a kind of petty satisfaction.

— Well you passed with the train at 500 meters from the border with Yugoslavia, the lieutenant said, fixing me with a cold curiosity, as if he was about to see how well I know how to lie.

— I didn't have the slightest idea, I answer. And even if I had known, do you realize what it means to jump from the train, in full speed, with a backpack on your back?

— That's what you all say... But if we weren't vigilant, you'd all throw yourselves into Tito's arms without blinking, wouldn't you?

His tone had a hard-to-bear sarcasm, but not violent. It was rather the attempt of a man who plays a poorly written role. He wanted to seem in control, but the hesitations in the voice and the mechanical movements betrayed him. How to convince him that I am a banal tourist, if they are convinced that all tourists who pass through here want to flee to Yugoslavia? What to seek in this corner of the country without having leaned an ear to the Western propaganda? I realized that, regardless of what I would have said, the verdict was already spoken in their mind. In his eyes I was not a professor with a taste for nature. I was "a case of defector".

Meanwhile, somewhere, in another room, Bibi was passing through the same ritual, following that what he said to be confronted with what I said. They had taken us separately not out of efficiency, but because that's how the paranoiac logic of the regime worked: two tourists are always two versions of the same lie. But not even our statements were to matter. The verdict was not pronounced except by the colonel, the head of the garrison. And he had not arrived yet.

Until the colonel's arrival, our luggage was returned to us — searched without result — and we were sent under escort to the city hotel. We were to stay the night there, guarded, "so as not to flee". It had started to get cold; at the beginning of April the nights are cold. The accommodation was summary. The room was austere: two wooden beds, a thin blanket, a trembling lamp on a small table that seemed brought from another century. The soldiers settled at the door, and we collapsed in silence. The air smelled of cheap detergents and suspicion, but after a whole day of tension, we only wanted a blanket and a bit of quiet. We fell asleep hard, strained and chilled, without telling each other too much.

Early in the morning, escorted by soldiers, we returned to the garrison. It was Palm Sunday (Floriile). On the streets, the silence of an unofficial holiday: celebrated by everyone, but discreetly. The garrison courtyard was empty. No one was in a hurry, no one seemed interested in our fate. Locked in a room, this time together, without interrogations, we were waiting for something, but what? Hours had passed. We spoke little, like two prisoners who know they cannot change anything from their fate. Then, after lunch, he appeared, Colonel Preda, the head of the garrison. The tunic unbuttoned, the tie crooked, the face congested. The smell of alcohol announced him before the door had closed completely after him. The eyes, with a turbid gloss, betrayed him: he didn't come from church, but, rather, from a prolonged party in honor of a Florin or a Florica. He measured us with the look — a heavy, stony one — and started without introduction:

— Verifications were made.

His tone was solemn, although the lips seemed to run from under his control.

— At the Polytechnic of Timișoara the symposium was confirmed. In Bucharest it was confirmed that you are teaching staff. But... (he stopped theatrically, to emphasize the absurd) ...no one knew of your trip to Cheile Nerei.

He pronounced it as a serious accusation, as if he hadn't understood that we didn't plan a plot. There remained, therefore, in place the presumption of guilt: that we would have wanted to cross illegally the border. The colonel let the silence float in the air, then concluded with the sentence:

— You are free to go. But not toward Cheile Nerei.

He went out with us to the garrison gate, swaying slightly, and showed us with a wide and theatrical gesture the direction on the road in front:

— Take it this way!

It was clear that the direction was toward the north and not toward the south, where Cheile Nerei were: the route toward Cheile Nerei had been closed for us through an order of a drunk and suspicious colonel. We were no longer under arrest, but our liberty remained strictly delimited by the line of an outstretched arm of a man smelling of bad cognac and with a decrepit authority.

On the Way Back

After Colonel Preda "freed" us with a wide and imprecise gesture, we set off on the indicated road, a highway along a river. But where did that highway lead? How will we reach a train to take us to Bucharest? After a short while we clarified when we met the first milestone. The road led to Anina, up to where there were 14 km more.

Anina. That word opened a door in my mind — a door that led back, by two decades, to the year spent in Steierdorf with the family when I was in the second grade. I started telling Bibi about my childhood among mountains, about the clean air, the thick forests and the quiet people. I spoke with a strange relief, as if that old story would have held the place of a map, of a direction. We decided to take advantage of the failure of our expedition and see as much as possible of this area.

As we advanced on the perfectly asphalted road, the valley narrowed more and more between the slopes of increasingly high hills, and the river next to us changed its color, from turbid green to leaden. The forest climbed steeply on the coasts, with the beeches moistened by a fine fog that was starting to set over the crowns, like a steam come out of the earth. From time to time, a small glade let be seen, above the trees, the smooth edge of a plateau, but the road remained always down, caught by the thread of the water.

The air had cooled suddenly, and the afternoon light had thinned until a dull glow, as if someone would have slowly pulled a gray curtain over the mountains. Our steps were heard empty on the wet asphalt, in a silence in which only the river, invisible in places, kept its constant murmur. No car passed; we had the sensation that we are the only people left on that road, between the increasingly heavy sky and the increasingly thick forest.

Meanwhile, the sky had closed. The first drops came almost unnoticed, like a general rehearsal. It started raining more seriously, first in small gusts, then constant, drizzly. Then, suddenly, the rain settled determinedly, as if it intended to push us off the road. I took out the rain equipment from the backpack: the windbreakers and the plastic sheets we had at disposal in case of bad weather. Dressed in windbreakers, we tightened again the backpacks on the back, wrapped them well in the plastic sheets, and continued to walk, with the head down, through the curtain of water. The horizon had disappeared; there remained only the line of the road, the murmur of the river and the thought that, somewhere ahead, there must exist a place where we can stop for the night.

Evening caught us about halfway. The mountains became increasingly dark, crowding more and more threateningly around us. It was clear that we cannot reach Steierdorf until the fall of the evening. Chilled, because with the rain the cold also set in, we decided to stop anywhere we find a house to host us.

Indeed, not after long time, after a long curve we came out to a lake with a cabin on the shore. The cabin was a long and low wooden construction, with a peeling sign at the entrance. In summer, when the sun shone, probably, it was an oasis for tourists desiring beaches with a cold lemonade in front, but now it seemed abandoned, everything seemed to us gloomy because of the desolation that reigned around the cabin, of the cold and of the cold rain that continued to whip us. According to the sign at the entrance, the cabin offered a few rooms for sleeping and even something to eat. We climbed, optimistic, the wet steps at the entrance and knocked on the door. A surly cabin-keeper opened to us, grumbling: "Others?! Now, on rain?!", with the grimace of a man whose plans were spoiled. He had an exhausted face, a sharp voice and a clear dissatisfaction that other clients had come just now, after, he said, all day he had had many people and already he had made his calculation to go to the city to celebrate the Florii.

— Anyway, I have nothing more to eat, he said shortly, hoping we would turn back.

We however insisted on remaining to sleep there, enduring hunger until the next day. Grumbling, the cabin-keeper led us into a room with two beds, gave us each an extra blanket because the cabin was not heated, asked us money for that night and, with a last trace of generosity, explained to us how to close the main door in the morning, when we leave.

The room was simple: wooden walls, small and cold windows, the floor squeaking under steps. We changed the wet clothes with dry tracksuits, we got into bed, we covered ourselves with the blankets and turned off the light. It was still early. We told each other the impressions of the day, we laughed bitterly at the paranoia of the system in which we lived and we swore to reproach M.P. for the adventure that almost transformed us into delinquent fugitives.

Around ten in the evening, silence extended protectively over us, the warmth of the blankets had started, finally, to pamper us after all the cold endured, but we still waited for the sleep which didn't come. Suddenly, from a more distant room, some screams and repeated pleas of a woman were heard:

— No, please... No! Leave me... I don't want to!

The woman's voice was faint, but it passed clear through the wooden dividing walls. The silence of the cabin made each word seem even sharper. We both stood up, turned on the light. We looked at each other, strained, like two soldiers who don't know if the order was given or not.

— What do we do, Bibi? The cabin-keeper left. We have no one to complain to. Do we intervene? I tried to play the brave one.

Bibi, terrified too, didn't know what to say. We put on our shoes, we wanted to go out, to search for the room from where the screams were heard, when suddenly the screams ceased. There followed first a dense silence, of tense suspense, then there followed heavy sounds: grunts, gasps in jerky rhythms that left no place for doubt. It was too late to intervene. Returned to bed, sleep had disappeared definitively: both of us turned over under blankets until late in the night. What had happened? Who were those people? Had everything been real or just a staging of someone, to obtain something?

In the morning, we went out early from the room. The cabin was empty. I checked all the rooms — no trace of cabin-keeper, nor of anyone else. As if the last night had been just a bad dream. We closed the cabin, as the cabin-keeper requested us, and set off on foot further, toward the north. With the morning sun, now the lake shone, and the forest reflected calm in its clean water. It enticed you to find a sunbed to rest on the shore of the lake, where a small beach was arranged and there was also a board on which the place in which we were was indicated: Lacul Mare (The Big Lake). Everything seemed suddenly serene, enticing, almost unreal. What a difference from the gray and cold of the last evening...

Again in Steierdorf

After a few kilometers on the quiet road, with the sun illuminating among trees, I finally reached Steierdorf. The place seemed for me unchanged and yet different — like an old photograph become reality again. I searched for the house in which I lived two decades before. It was still there, with the facade newly painted, but easy to recognize in every detail. I knocked at the gate. A young woman with rollers on her head came to open for us. I told her the purpose of the disturbance. She assured us that there is no disturbance. She was with her mother-in-law in the kitchen, cooking. The specific accent of the inhabitants of Steierdorf I remembered with nostalgia. We entered. The courtyard and the interior of the house were unchanged. The owners of then still lived there. They recognized me after I reminded them a few details of our stay with them. Their smiles, warm and sincere, shattered for a few moments the whole cloud of suspicion, rain and absurd questions that had accompanied us in the last days. They invited us inside, they served us with a small glass of home-made blueberry liqueur and we talked about the past — naturally, as if two decades hadn't passed.

At the end of the road, Steierdorf was not a simple mountain village, but the German neighborhood of the small mining town Anina, stuck between slopes and forests of beech and spruce. In the '70s, life there revolved almost entirely around the mine: shifts, sirens, short shuttles between colonies of houses and coal galleries. The old colonies of "stieriaci" still kept, under the uniformizing layer of communism, something from the austerity and order of a German community: aligned houses, worked gardens, temperate people, with Sundays divided between church, the local football match and the neighborhood tavern. It was an isolated world, but very dense, in which all knew each other, and the arrival of a guest – be he even just a young Bucharest man on the Oravița–Steierdorf road – never passed unnoticed.

After that, we slowly descended toward Anina, on the former main street of the city. Once full of life, now it had become a gray, silent alley, in a half-abandoned city. The walls kept the traces of a life that seemed to have left without announcing the absence. at the bus station, we caught a bus to Lugoj. We waited a few hours in the station, then we boarded a night train toward Bucharest. In the poorly lit wagon, wrapped in the thick blanket of fatigue, we were silent almost all the way. We had passed through too many in too little time.

Back to the Faculty

Wednesday morning we presented ourselves at work. M.P. spotted us from afar and started laughing. He didn't laugh just with his mouth — he laughed with his whole body, as one who knew exactly what we went through.

— I know everything! he told us among guffaws. All the adventure reached me before you, M.P. said.

I knew that in M.P.'s world news of this kind circulated rapidly: he had a direct line with the securitate man of the institute.

— You fell in that zone in a moment of tension with Yugoslavia. Until next year, it will return to normal. You can retry to see then Cheile Nerei. They are superb, M.P. laughed amused.

It was, in a way, the perfect final point. In a country in which nothing was allowed to remain private, not even a wandering through mountains could pass unnoticed by the Securitate. And M.P.'s laugh was the most bitter official reaction I received after all that long and absurd weekend.

Caught in the Trap

From the two episodes of contact with the Securitate ten years had already passed and, fortunately, no one had disturbed me anymore, especially to propose to me a scholarship abroad. Still, I remained with the conviction that my file contained those two "deviations" and that, because of them, my visas were refused when I wanted to participate in international conferences to present my research papers.

At that time, I was convinced that I had no possibility to leave definitively from Romania and I didn't even think seriously about that. My desire was to participate in international conferences, to share my research and to learn from what was happening in the scientific world. However, the Ceaușescu regime did not offer me this liberty. Each visa request was a beaten back road, refused, without any logical explanation, just because the regime considered that the outside world could put in danger the internal order. Thus, even in spite of the desire to extend my scientific and teaching horizons, I felt caught in the trap of a system that limited any possibility of interacting with the academic world from outside the country.

In those moments I didn't think truly about leaving. However, not having access to exchanges of ideas, to the information and research that circulated in the scientific world, I felt increasingly isolated. The continuous refusal of visas for participation in international conferences was not just an obstacle in career, but a painful proof of a regime that isolated, that refused you any contact with the outside world, and that prevented any form of free expression.

In the face of this system, I tried to continue my teaching activity and research, with all the imposed limitations. However behind these efforts was hidden a deep frustration, a feeling of bogging down, of imprisonment in a system that offered you only illusions of liberty, but not the possibility of living in liberty your profession and life as you wanted.

A Request Hard to Refuse

I was in the break of the class and I was in a hurry to reach the office to take some papers. In front of the office Professor Boiangiu from the Department of Mechanics was waiting for me. I had known him for a long time. In love at old age with computers, he came often to the Computing Center to run his Strength of Materials programs. He had learned FORTRAN and wrote his programs full of calculations, which only he understood. The problem of all non-specialists in programming was the debugging of these programs, full at the beginning of syntax errors. From here, the need for a specialist to help him with the interpretation of the cryptic error messages and with their correction. After corrections, the new instructions were transposed onto punched cards, gathered in voluminous packages and handed over at the center's dispatch office for re-running.

Professor Boiangiu was already a regular of the dispatch office and of the operators at the computer and at the card punching machines. Sent by these to me to help him with debugging, he had reached to consult me frequently. He had taken advantage, in a way, of my benevolence, born from a sincere admiration: this man, with completely white hair, in the threshold of retirement, was struggling to learn and run programs, instead of teaching "from inertia", as many colleagues of his did.

— Good day, Mr. Professor. With what can I help you? Where are the listings with errors? I am in the class break and in ten minutes I must return to the hall, I told him, trying to be kind.

— Thank you, but it's not about programs, he answered a little embarrassed.

I raised my eyebrows, puzzled. He made a sign to enter the office.

— It's about a student from Aerospace, 1st year, who does the Programming course and doesn't manage to understand the matter.

— But I no longer teach Programming there. My colleague, P.V., teaches. His office is the third on the hallway. But I don't think he's in the office now. If you want, you can wait for him. Or, so you don't stand on the hall, you can stay here, in my office.

— Oh, no, thank you. I knew that Mr. P.V. is at classes, that's why I came now.

Increasingly confused, I ask:

— And then... how can I help you?

— To tutor this girl at Programming. She has the final paper in two weeks and must take a passing grade. Otherwise, P.V. fails her. I ask you from the soul. I have obligations toward her and her parents, I want to help her.

Everything clarifies for me. Probably Boiangiu had tutored her for admission, and the girl, entered in college, did not face the university courses and asked him for help. Such cases were extremely frequent in the 1st year.

— Mr. Professor, I don't tutor students at Programming, especially those of my colleagues. In general, neither pupils for admission do I tutor. I make exceptions only for relatives or close ones. To be honest, I don't have time.

— Please, make an exception. The poor girl is scared of P.V.

I understood him, knowing my excessively severe colleague, but I still refused him:

— I don't want to repeat several times the refusal. Try with someone else.

— I always address the best one. Only you can help her, Boiangiu flattered me.

"Touché", I tried a more neutral variant:

— I give you a solution. Let her come to me. I explain the basic notions to her, so she can then learn alone.

— God forbid! If P.V. sees her entering to you, he leaves her repeating the year, Boiangiu said, alarmed.

— Don't exaggerate, Mr. Professor. P.V. is severe, yes, but correct. Students need also exigency. Ask mine and you will see that I don't joke either with grades.

— I asked them. You are... something else, he flattered me again.

— Mr. Professor, I will not fall into this trap. I said no.

His face hardened. He looked at me pleadingly. I softened.

— Let's say it's not tutoring, but some free consultations, two-three, until the paper. I will not teach her, I will only show her what she must learn, what programs to do and, in the end, to listen to her.

Boiangiu brightened up.

— I'm already late for the class. How do we proceed?

— You will have to go to her home, near Bitolia. The girl's name is Cornelia C.. Here is the address and the phone number, he said, taking from the pocket a note. Tomorrow she awaits you after 18:00.

And so I fell into the trap! Everything was prepared. Boiangiu knew that he will convince me. I said to myself, as revenge, that he lost his favorite FORTRAN debugger.

An Unexpected Meeting

The next day, at the indicated time, I reach an elegant old villa, in Moorish style, on a small street in the area of the Confederation Square. A lady opens for me who introduced herself as Mrs. C.. In the salon the student was waiting for me: Cornelia, a girl of 20, a bit chubby, blonde, with a forced smile and a banal figure.

We establish the program. I start testing what she knows. Zero. We were already toward the end of the first semester. I explain the basic notions to her, do two examples, give her homework: to modify my programs and run them at the Computing Center. I warn her that if she doesn't work, I withdraw. I think she understood me.

At the next meeting, I find that the girl gave her best, but the problem of her difficulties lay in her capacity to learn. She didn't know how to learn and she will probably have serious difficulties in the following college years. But that was not my business. I only had to transfer the minimum knowledge to her for a 5. She obtained 6. Everyone satisfied. Including her father — pardon, Comrade C. — whom I met in the end. A short, chubby and brunette guy, of about 50 years.

— How much do I owe you, Comrade Professor?

— Nothing. Professor Boiangiu told you that I don't accept money. I did it for him. And I'm glad the girl reacted positively to my lessons.

— It's not possible, he insists. I'm grateful to you. I must pay you back.

— It doesn't even cross my mind to accept money. I made an exception and I don't want it to repeat with other students, I said as kindly as possible while I hurried toward the exit.

— I understand. But I put the problem otherwise. I am a colonel at the Securitate, head of President Ceaușescu's personal guard. Can I do something for you?

He surprised me. What a house Boiangiu had found for tutoring!...

— I don't see what you could do. I only want to be left in peace.

— I'm sorry, but I remain indebted to you. I stand at your disposal for anything, he said, stretching out his hand.

I shake it. I descend the stairs toward the exit, but I turn back:

— I think I have however a request.

— Say it. It gives me pleasure to help you if I can.

— About ten years ago I had two incidents that the Securitate had no way to ignore. Probably they are recorded in my file. It would interest me to know if it's so. Maybe this explains the visa refusals at scientific conferences received until now. I hit "invented obstacles" like: "Well, you are not married." After I married: "You don't have children to leave as guarantee in the country." After I had the child, the situation continued. Sometimes the visas came out, but after the end of the conference...

— I understood. I'll inquire. And I thank you again.

I left asking myself if I did well to stir those memories. But I couldn't detach from them, they came back to my mind from time to time.

Confirmation

After a week, on a cold evening, I was staying at home, in the unheated room, working by the light of a candle. My wife and son were in the other room, where there was a gas stove to warm up. Around eight, the phone rings.

— Good evening, is Comrade Professor at home?

— It's me. Who are you?

— We are waiting for you at the corner of Drumul Taberei with Romancierilor. We are in a black car.

Taking me by surprise, I confirmed:

— I need ten minutes.

— Be without worry, we wait for you.

Outside it was about to snow. I put on my parka over the tracksuit, put on the scarf, announced to the wife that I'm missing for half an hour and set off in a hurry toward the meeting place. When I reached the area, indeed, a black car with tinted windows was stationary on the indicated corner. I approached and the door opened as if inviting me to climb in, which I did with a heavy heart. Inside, at the light turned on, I recognized Colonel C..

— I apologize for the trouble, but we had to talk personally. I saw the file. You are right, there are a few statements and reports that probably prevented the granting of visas.

I thanked him, greeted the colonel and the driver, and got off. On the way home I thought: "I asked the colonel to check if those events are recorded in my Securitate file. Now I have the explanation why they didn't give me a visa and I can calm down: I will never receive it. This is it."

Much later, through 2009, when I requested at CNSAS access to my file drawn up by the Securitate, the answer I received was that the file is empty. Colonel C. had done more than I had asked him. He had erased everything that was compromising from the file. I hadn't asked him for such a thing because I didn't imagine it was possible, but he was in a position to do it and he did it, knowing it was in my interest. Probably this was also the reason for which, a few years after C.'s intervention, in the spring of 1989, making on a whim a request for a tourist visa to Italy, I received the much-dreamed-of visa.

Epilogue: The Paradox of the Empty File

The meeting with Colonel C. was a turning point. He had access to my Securitate file and confirmed to me that there were reports or denunciations against me — the explanation for the repeated refusals of visa requests. Besides the reports about the two episodes, there could exist in the file denunciations coming from colleagues, acquaintances, maybe even students. Paradoxically, the news calmed me. Finally I understood why I was always stopped at the border of science, condemned to remain captive in a country that no longer had place for hope. No matter how much I tried to live normally, the regime had glued on me the label of "suspect" and I felt the consequences every time I dreamed of traveling. I left from there with a bitter certainty: I will never receive a visa. And yet, in the spring of 1989, to my total surprise, I received the visa for Italy.

Colonel C. was not an enigmatic figure, but a man of the system, Ceaușescu's guard chief, an integral part of the network that controlled destinies. But in the cynical logic of those times, a personal favor — the tutoring offered to his daughter — weighed heavier than any denunciation. Thus, my file was emptied. What another time stood in my way had disappeared as if it hadn't existed ever.

However an empty file doesn't necessarily bring spiritual peace. It was not empty because I was innocent or forgotten, but because someone, sometime, had the power to empty it. And he did it not from a sense of justice, but from personal gratitude. This was the true face of the repressive regime: the liberty of a man depended on a right phone call, on a well-placed "pila" (influence) or on a service done to whom it's needed. Rights had become currency of exchange. I had the luck — a bitter one — of such a transaction: a favor that opened for me eventually the road to the world. But how many others remained captive, not having what to offer in the absurd swap imposed by the Securitate?

Then I understood how absurd and arbitrary the game of power was. My liberty to travel had been "bought" with a few FORTRAN lessons. The liberty of a man did not depend on truth or justice, but on a convenient exchange, on a gesture of grace from those who had the pen and the darkness of the drawer. In the Romania of those years, a destiny could be destroyed or saved with the same ease — depending on who, from there above, had the interest to manipulate the "darkness of the drawer". When liberty must be bought with favors, it ceases to be liberty.