The path you set ablaze

TW: Mentions of physical violence.

Some stories shouldn't be told by me, especially stories such as this one.

Regrettably, you will find this story bruised by my thoughts, my bias, my voice, all things of mine that shouldn't belong here. I bruised it while trying to hold on tight, as it twisted, turned, and writhed in my hands, trying to escape. “I don't belong to you.” It shrieked. I felt guilty digging my nails deeper into these stories, knowing none of these memories were mine to exhibit.

Yet, all of them are true.

There's a reason why you are not reading the words of my father, my mother and my neighbors. There's a reason why my father learned Russian instead of English, why my mother doesn't revisit the past with ease, and why some of my neighbors left imprints of blood on the streets of my hometown, instead of the safe marks of ink on paper to be remembered by.

I knew the reason, but I listened.

First, I listened to the silence left behind by neighbors I never met. Then, I listened as my father explained. I listened as my mother sighed. I listened as they remembered.

And then, I started telling their stories, no matter how much the story fought back to be untold, unwritten and forgotten.

Because others should remember too.

—

December 21st, 1965

“The generous principal of School No. 4 in the city lent us this microscope today,” the teacher announces. “Let’s test it out. Who has something tiny they’d like to examine?”

My father beams with excitement, running his fingers over his woolen patched sweater, searching. He giggles as he plucks a teeny black dot from the itchy fabric, proudly showing it to the class.

“Would a flea do?” 

His classmates groan, disappointed that they didn’t think of this quicker. The fleas in their coats and caps and knitted pants wiggle merrily, happy to be living and itching skins for another day.

While the classmates grumble and the fleas squirm and the teacher nods heartily, the portrait of my father’s hero looks down upon him. It is perched just behind the teacher's desk, its filigree frame valued more than the borrowed microscope, than the school furniture, than the children's lives. 

At ten years old, my father doesn’t yet know about the Mona Lisa, but I do, and I can safely say that his hero’s eyes follow my father’s movements much like da Vinci’s masterpiece.

Except, there is no softness in those portrait’s eyes, no warmth in that smirk. 

And yet, do you ask for softness and warmth from a hero? Do you search for a soothing cradle in the grip of a leader? Do you look for scents of apple pie and mother’s milk and your puppy’s wet breath in a commander’s office?

Forgive me for posing the questions - perhaps there are no right or wrong answers. All that matters right now is my father’s joy as he marches to the microscope with his doomed flea. He stands barefoot, itchy, scruffy, but proud when he looks up at the portrait, waiting for his teacher to adjust the microscope lenses. Impatient and merry, he starts humming the tune to one of the songs they were taught that week - unaware that the future listened too.

Thirty-six years later, I would listen to the same tune crackling in our record player, while he would stand by me in his polished leather shoes, soft linen shirt, tidy haircut - and no longer proud.

But shuddering while he remembered.

‘We are children, from this time forth, 

Filled with wonder, love, and worth. 

We see your guidance, clear and bright, 

Heaps of flowers and palaces in sight.

You promised us gold and bread and stew.

You are heroes, strong and true,

And one day —

We'll be heroes too.’

—

December 21st, 1989

Mother hides my sister in the guest bathroom as soon as she hears the gunshots.

“Bullets can’t reach you here,” she promises. “The walls will keep you safe”.

She does feel safe and snug as a bug in a rug in the heart of their small apartment; the walls of their bedrooms and hallway form a protective rib cage around her. Mother told her, in an unfortunate bout of honesty, how little girls died in their own homes, struck by stray bullets from outside. The guest bathroom is the only place that has no windows and no walls facing the street.

My sister ignores the thump-thump of her own heart, her palm pressed against the shield-shaped badge that is pinned to her red neckerchief. She traces the lines of the hammer and sickle, the symbol etched in the depths of her metallic pin. She imagines Him - the Genius of the Carpathians, the Hero of our Homeland, fighting the bad guys beyond the bathroom walls. 

At ten years old, my sister doesn’t yet know this, but I do, and I can disclose that our father counts as one of the bad guys. 

But maybe my sister knows somehow - the thump-thump of her own heart isn’t subsiding no matter how hard she squeezes that damned pin.

She tucks her badge in the folds of her neckerchief, tucks Teddy in her arms, tucks her innocence too, and waits for the shooting to end.

—

December 21st, 1981

A loving neighbor ruffles his son’s hair.

“Whom do you love more, Mom or me?”

The boy doesn’t hesitate.

“Ceausescu!” 

At ten years old, the boy cannot notice the terror flashing in his father’s eyes at his son’s response. 

But I can.

“Darling, we feed you and look after you-” 

“Yes,” the boy cuts his father off. “But Ceausescu provides for you so that you can provide for me. I love him the most!”

—

December 21st, 1989

A mother’s love towers over any mountain, no matter how tall. It absorbs and consumes and hisses when challenged, so my father understandably takes a step back when met with my mother’s glare.

“Don’t you dare go out there,” she commands, rather than pleads. “What if they shoot you? We have a child! We need to look after her!”

My father looks out the window, watching neighbors scramble in the streets, holding their wives, their hopes, and their futures. Their steps seem reluctant yet defiant as they refuse to turn back. They reject the shelter of their own guest bathrooms, nestled in the heart of their apartments; they refuse to clutch their shield-shaped pins for comfort; they refuse to think of innocence and safety. But most of all, they reject the values their hero instilled in them - obedience, discipline, conformity.

There is one value that the hero taught them, which backfires horribly, which my neighbors don’t reject -

Unity.

“I want to help.” My father whispers, as if bullets could hear him through concrete walls. “I want things to change.”

“So what if things change?” My mother retorts. “The regime is replaced by another, woop-de-doo. Who knows how long it’ll take for that new guy, that new hero, to steal and hurt?”

I don’t know if a mother’s love walks hand in hand with a mother’s fear, or if they’re sworn enemies, if they challenge each other and hold each other back, taking turns glaring at my father. I don’t know that, but I do know the answer to my mother’s question - it takes days for the new guys to steal and hurt. I mention days out of reluctance to attest to hours, or even minutes, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Still, their harm isn’t worse than the bullets now hitting my neighbors, than the army tank rushing past, knocking one of them down, the street now stained with shades of crimson and cherry and maroon, their blood as diverse as the ages, the haircuts, the pitches of their screams or the tints of their rage. 

A woman jumps atop a tank and holds on as the armored vehicle moves steadily through the crowd, unaware that she would later be called Cluj-Napoca’s Joan of Arc; all she thinks of right now is her husband, trapped and exiled in France, and their ten children whose love is riddled with questions - “When is daddy coming home? Does he not love us anymore? Why did he leave?”

A man rips his shirt, the buttons falling to the ground with the same clink as the bullet casings around him. He points to his bare chest and yells at the soldiers nearby - “Shoot me! I have one heart!” They listen to him, they indulge him, and they shoot. But when he falls to the ground, that clink reaches my father’s ears.

It’s not the clink of a button, or a casing, or a twenty-nine year old’s body hitting the ground - it’s the tone of the song my father had been humming in his classroom, under the watchful eyes of his hero’s portrait, back when he was ten:

“We are children, pure and keen

To make our land a springtime scene.

Life will be grand, our spirits free,

As heroes, just like you —

We'll be."

—

December 21st, 1987

It smells of baked apples and woolen blankets. It smells of warmth so that their bones wouldn’t feel the cold as much.

My mother prepares hot water bottles and places them under quilts and blankets and pillows. What used to be granny’s old kneading trough is now my sister’s wash basin. Mother lights up the spirit lamp and starts scrubbing my sister’s body, the coarse sponge biting at their skin. My sister doesn’t wince, she doesn’t feel tortured by its rough texture, because she thinks of no alternate reality where coarse is soft and water stays warm and kneading troughs are forgotten in the attics of long-lost grannies. 

The water already goes cold by the time my mother finishes washing my sister’s feet. Her teeth chatter lightly as she speaks proudly of her day.

“We took the oath! I knew every single word, it goes like this —” she clears her throat, drawing her bare shoulders back. My mother, instinctively I think, draws back too, the tiniest of inches away from my sister and her speech. 

“I will learn and work to become a reliable cub of my homeland. I swear to be a good student, a diligent worker, and a true friend; to prepare thoroughly to become a reliable person for socialism. I swear to respect and follow my ideals and to be a true pioneer of the communist movement.”

A mother’s love stares down at the Pioneers' Oath, wishing to absorb and consume and hiss, but even a love that towers over mountains cannot overshadow the training of hundreds of thousands of children glaring back at her defiantly. She swallows the bitter taste in her mouth and rushes my sister under blankets warmed by the hot water bottles she prepared, tucking Teddy in her arms before kissing her goodnight.

She picks up my sister’s clothes from the bathroom; the Pioneer outfit is made of soft cotton and silk, but to my mother it feels coarser than the cheap sponge she had just washed my sister with, as if its symbols poke through the seams like splinters poking through wood. She runs her finger over the red neckerchief, the Pioneer badge safely pinned within its fold, searching for the familiarity she once felt when tracing the lines of the engraved hammer and sickle, back when she was my sister’s age —

Eight years old.

She knows, she feels there was a time when her own pride was sewn in the fabrics of that outfit, in those shades of red and white and blue, in those symbols that wouldn’t sting like splinters to a little girl. It meant she was considered the smartest in her class, the label “detachment commander” holding hands with her heavy pride, with her love for the hero that adorned her with honor and confidence and prestige. She can hear the trumpets and drums and cheers during her own Pioneer ceremony, while the flag is hoisted among the two fir trees in her school’s courtyard.

She was barefoot, but she wore her red neckerchief proudly back then, and that was all that mattered to her.

But today —

There are splinters poking through the seams, the red shades of my sister’s neckerchief burn under my mother’s touch and she can’t hear the trumpets anymore. She can hear the sponge grating my sister’s skin. She can hear the cold whistling through the bedroom. She can hear two tummies grumble and echo - my mother’s and my father’s, because a mother’s love couldn’t bear hearing my sister’s tummy grumble.

And earlier that day, she could hear her lip splitting as she hit the street curb, tripping over feet and boots and knees as she waited in line for her ration of bread. She came home empty-handed, but improvised semolina porridge with strawberry jam for breakfast — remnants of food she had sneaked inside their pantry, covertly gifted by charitable friends of friends.

Hunger is louder than trumpets, than drums, than an eight year’s old pride.

—

December 25th, 1989

‘At Christmas, we claimed our ration of freedom.’

As a seventeen year old brimming with excitement graffitis the words on the walls of some public institution I never learned the name for, the Hero lies motionless by a different wall, merely ten miles away.

This wall is riddled with a hundred and twenty bullet holes. I couldn’t tell you how many struck the Hero’s body, but he doesn’t stir, and neither does his wife, and the firing squad seems content when walking away, so I would say enough of those had reached him. 

The string once binding him to the pride and honor and confidence of ten year olds dressed in red neckerchiefs must have been struck by one of those bullets too, its shock rippling through the country, through my father’s village and the broken filigree frame no longer perched on the wall, through the fir trees in my mother’s schoolyard, through the guest bathroom where my sister cuddled Teddy merely days before. 

It will only take a few weeks, and my sister will no longer trace her fingers against the hammer and sickle splinters on her badge, but throw it away under empty boxes of chocolate she had easily bought from the shop and devoured.

When that 'hero' fell by the bullet-ridden wall, his fall didn’t sound like the clink of buttons and bullet casings, it didn’t have the tunes of the patriotic song he tried to brainwash my father with.

I wasn’t there - I wasn’t even born yet - so I cannot confirm this, but I think this hero’s fall sounded much like my father’s lullaby.

It sounded like the song he had created when I was resting on his shoulders, on our way back from the park. He improvised a tune for one of Mihai Eminescu’s poems - ‘Evening Star’ - and rocked me to sleep, my bones aching with exhaustion and adventure and laughter. I was too young to understand words, but I understood the warmth of his smile as he sang. The softness in his eyes. 

A father’s love is a beautiful portrait to perch on walls.

‘In sleep, your beauty is dark and deep,

Like a demon's haunting gaze;

But I will never follow, nor keep,

The path you set ablaze.’