VOA

“Actually, by nature Cosette was not easily startled. There was in her veins the blood of the gypsy and the barefoot adventuress.”

1995

When I ask Marius what he remembers about life before the revolution, he answers, ‘Voice of America. I had a cassette player and I would make tapes of western music.’

I was nearing the end of my year in Sibiu and I needed to complete a project for class. Although it was completely devoid of originality, I decided to do a paper on people’s opinions of the 1989 revolution.

Marius frowns at the memory, and I’m guessing he has a story like everyone else’s. He made a tape of some American music, shared it with a friend, and got called before some authority or another who gave him a stern warning.

‘What happened?’ I ask.

Marius looks at me and pauses. ‘Well, you see, I have a problem. I’m not normal.’

He doesn’t say anything for a moment. I ask, ‘Who did you give the tape to?’

He pauses. ‘A boy. A boy that I liked.’


* * *

We try to go hiking at least once per week, usually my host father, Doru, and Ana, one of his fellow pediatricians, a younger woman, very attractive, very smart. On this day, Ana’s husband, Tony, also a doctor, has joined us. Along the walk, Tony tells me that the revolution never happened. That everything was staged, and that the same people are still in charge. He says that times will be very hard, even harder than before, for many people, but that a few, such as he, will make out quite well. But there’s still no freedom. No real freedom.

I look behind us. Doru and Ana are walking together, very close together as they always do. He tells her something, very close to her ear, and she covers her mouth with her hand, covers her smile, makes it silent again, her joy, the way you do when the laugh is on someone nearby. He bumps her with his hip, and a lock of hair falls into her eyes, which she places neatly behind her ear.

Tony looks at me and says, ‘None of it matters. All of us are creatures placed on this planet by aliens. They’re coming back.’

* * *

I ask Alex what she remembers about the ’89 Revolution, the one that brought freedom to her country. 'Dirty movies,' is her answer.

She explains that before 1989, the only thing you saw on television was Ceausescu giving speeches. She does an imitation of the former dictator addressing an adoring audience. ‘Dear comrades and friends…’.

Following their televised execution, she said they were suddenly consumed with endless television watching, as the national TV station was turned into a sort of pornolodeon. They sat for days on end doing nothing but watching television, amazed and disgusted by what they were seeing.

‘Oh, and boiling water.’

I ask if there was some sort of cholera outbreak.

‘No, but everyone said that the Securitate had poisoned all the water.’

I don’t mean to laugh, but I do, as it seems absurd to boil poison. But I’ve never been through this. I don’t know what I’d do.

‘And everyone went kind of crazy. During the revolution, my mother dragged both of us to the square to join the protests. When they started shooting, my sister started crying to leave. My mother slapped her, and started shouting back at the bullets, ‘Jos cu Ceausescu!’. After it was over, my dad came home drunk every night for a week. Or maybe two weeks, I don’t remember.’

* * *

On the way home from the performance hall, I bump Alex with my hip, and she has to step off the curb into the street. Every alleyway along this path has meaning for me. I’ve walked this same way from my home to the Large Square for nearly a year. In the center, there is a memorial to the people who died, but their names are covered in graffiti. As of yet, Tony’s aliens have not returned to protest the defacement.