It’s October 14, 1989, and everybody knows that communism will last forever. 

“Good afternoon . . . Miss Adriana? Is that right?” Mom nods, surprised that this stranger in dirty overalls knows her first name. “I am from the phone company,” he says. “We received a report about your faulty line.”

“There is nothing wrong with our line!” Mom snaps, suspicious. 

“Oh, are you sure? We certainly got a notification for this address. Let me take a quick look,” he continues, shoving his ID and a request for service form under Mom’s nose, and pushing through the partly open door.

Reluctant, Mother shows him the phone placed on a round macramé doily atop a vanity desk. I peek from behind her, as we both watch the technician remove the rotary dial. Unscrewing the plastic top cover, and the lower end of the handset, he manipulates the core parts and pulls out two wires, red and yellow. Noticeably smug, this man pokes through our phone. He then smirks, wiping his sweaty forehead with his sleeve: 

“Can I have a glass of water, Miss Adriana?”

Mom motions toward me and I get him some water from the kitchen. The technician drinks it down and proceeds to reassemble the phone. Before leaving, he makes a quick test call to the phone company headquarters. The empty glass covered in oily fingerprints rests quietly on the doily. 

About an hour later, father has returned home after picking up my brother from violin lessons. 

“We had a visit . . .” Mother whispers. 

Catching the gloom in her voice, Dad becomes alarmed:

“It’s about your travel, right? . . . Who was it? What did they want?”

Silent, Mom points to the phone. Dad picks up the handset: it’s clearly heavier than it was this morning. Pressing his index finger to his lips, Father signals for us to remain quiet. During the ensuing pantomime, my brother and I watch, more amused than frightened, Mom literally tiptoe as she brings the toolbox from the pantry. After unscrewing the lower end of the handset and unbraiding a few delicate wires, Dad detaches a round black device with a metallic rim. We all gather around to look at this small thing lying in the palm of his hand. 

“What is this, Dad?” my brother asks.

“This is a miniature omnidirectional microphone,” Father answers placidly, and I cannot tell whether he is scared or thrilled.

“I’ll put the microphone back in. We don’t want them to know that we discovered it. But, from now on, be careful when you talk on the phone and around the house,” Father says, and reassembles the phone’s handset.

In a few days, Mom will travel to West Germany to visit her father’s cousin, Elsa, who emigrated legally from Romania more than a decade ago. Several years from now, when the Romanian political police’s archives will be declassified, Elsa will be granted approval to see her pre-emigration surveillance file. 

Everything will be there: copies of her birth certificate, high school and university transcripts, paystubs, work performance reviews, appliance purchases, movies and bookstore receipts, lists of library loans, and countless notes by Securitate informants reporting on her daily routine, birthday celebrations, visits to relatives and friends, jokes she told, and jokes she laughed at. Misplaced (or maybe hidden?) between a series of phone conversation transcripts, the enigmatic copy of a bank transfer between the German and the Romanian governments will appear. The object of the transaction was Elsa herself, a “category C immigrant” sold by the Romanian Communist authorities for 11,000 German marks—the pricey category C applied to university diploma holders. Elsa was just one of nearly a quarter million ethnic Germans from Romania who were allowed to emigrate, between 1968 and 1989, on the basis of a secret agreement that brought the Communist authorities about one billion Deutsche mark. 

—

A few days before Mom’s departure, Uncle Dan, Father’s younger brother, shows up unannounced at our door:

“I am worried,” he says. “Where can we talk?”

Dad brings an ashtray for my uncle and sets up kitchen stools for us all to sit crammed around the sink in the bathroom. We take our seats silently, watching Uncle Dan lighting up a cigarette. He nods and my father turns on the bathtub faucet at full volume. 

Bewildered (or maybe angry?), Uncle Dan looks at my mom: “So, I hear that you are traveling to West Germany . . . How on earth did you manage to get a passport and a visa?” 

Just a few years before, I would have found Uncle Dan’s curiosity foolish. To me, the question was not how but why would Mom visit a capitalist country. In middle school, we watched a documentary about America: jobless people lining up at food banks, emaciated men injecting heroin on the streets, thugs shooting each other in trash-covered back alleys, and student protests quelled by police in military gear. But then, returning home, I would find the shiny boxes of German marzipan that Elsa sent us for Christmas. And I would see Disney movies at the underground watch parties organized by our neighbors, on their VHS player smuggled all the way from Belgium. And what about the pop albums trafficked across Yugoslavia’s border by contrabandists? Or the “Voice of America” rock ’n’ roll broadcast that we would secretly listen to, despite Securitate’s attempts to distort the radio signal? But now, at sixteen, I cannot reconcile the capitalist hellscapes of unemployment and drug addiction with the heavenly smell of the Fa soap bars smuggled from Austria via Hungary and used as currency on the informal market. What is really going on beyond the Iron Curtain? 

No matter what is waiting for her in West Germany, Mom’s trip seems indeed miraculous. One cannot cross Romania’s border as they please. Unless, maybe, with an organized group traveling to one of our neighbors, all Communist allies: the USSR, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Eastern Germany are also acceptable destinations, at least in theory. If you have high connections with Communist cadre, you may get approval to visit even China, North Korea, or Cuba. And nobody really wants to go to Albania or Mongolia. 

My parents claim that it wasn’t always like this. Apparently, our leader, Nicolae Ceauşescu, whom “Voice of America” now calls a dictator, was once hailed by many as an anti-totalitarian hero. My father told me that when the Soviets invaded Prague in 1968, Ceauşescu was the only Communist leader to denounce their aggression: “Romanians were joining the Communist Party in hordes. This was the only time when people in our country became Communist out of conviction.” 

Overnight, Ceauşescu became a star not only in Romania and Czechoslovakia, but also in the West, who embraced his dissidence as subversive and politically useful during the Cold War. In 1975, Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger hosted Ceauşescu in the Oval Office, and three years later Jimmy Carter reinvited him to the White House. The same year, at Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth held a reception in honor of Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena. Yet, by the late 1970s it became obvious that Ceauşescu had not defied the Soviets on principle. His ambition had been to create what in retrospect historians would label “national communism”: an isolated, totalitarian state. Source of inspiration: North Korea. Now the Ceauşescus and their acolytes make us all call their administration “the Golden Era.”

The water is hammering the bathtub and the cigarette smoke sketches lazy arabesques in the humid air of the bathroom. Uncle Dan, who ranks as captain in the Romanian Air Forces, recounts: “A week ago, I was summoned by the airbase commander to the headquarters. A Securitate officer was waiting there for me. First, I feared it was about my copilot. He always tells these droll jokes about stupid party activists . . . you know the type . . . Anyway, it was not that. The Secu guy warned me about your travel to Germany.”

Putting out the cigarette in the ashtray, he stares at my mom: “Adriana, if you defect, they will kick me out of the military. My career will be over.”

With a ceremonial slowness that I would see many years later in a Japanese Noh theater performance, my brother and I turn our heads in unison toward my uncle, then, again in unhurried sync, to my mom. Muffled by the obscure workings of traumatic memory, the water overflows the bathtub.

—

Exactly two weeks and five days after she leaves for Germany, we receive a package with Mother’s cursive scrawl on the shipping label. There are so many wonders inside: a one-liter oblong tin can of sunflower oil, half a kilogram of muesli with dried tropical fruits, a box with one hundred pure cane sugar cubes, a shiny dark-green and gold bag of Jacobs coffee, four gigantic Milka chocolates with whole nuts, and several Rexona soap bars featuring a promise that I don’t understand: läßt Sie nicht im Stich. The whole package has the scent of “Germania”: a mix of ground coffee, ripe mangoes, smooth hazelnut chocolate, and clean soapy perfume. Mom’s handwriting, so delightfully plump and unassuming, has the astonishing power to bring her back to us. I can easily imagine her mouthing silently our names as her hand scribbles the label. Still, all the complicated German letters and the exotic smells arising from the package shroud her in a bitter, distant strangeness. And for the first time I understand that Mom is gone.

Inside one of the chocolate wraps, we find a note:

My dears, 

I am doing well. Elsa says hello. I will try to call later (long distance calls are so expensive!!) How is our neighbor, Mr. Săvulescu? Is he still donating blood with the Red Cross these days? 

Much love, Mom.

In a postscript, she listed all the items in the box, and we discover that the custom employees snatched one pack of coffee and two chocolates. But that is not unusual. It has always been like that with Elsa’s Christmas packages. What is odd, however, is Mother’s sudden interest in Mr. Săvulescu, who is not even our neighbor anymore. Maybe she meant Mr. Rădulescu, who lives at number 7? And what does donating blood have to do with anything? But my father gets the hints in Mom’s cryptic message. 

“It happened five years ago, too long ago for you to remember,” he tells my brother and me. “Săvulescu defected to Austria and then he pledged the International Red Cross to grant refugee status to his wife and daughter. The Romanian government had no choice but to let them join him.”

But times have changed and my father’s inquiries about securing refugee status through the Red Cross for the three of us prove fruitless. More totalitarian than ever, Romania is not caving anymore to international pressure. Weeks later, my brother comes up with an idea. His best friend is a member of the Baptist Church. Barely tolerated by the atheistic authorities, the church is nevertheless well connected with US pastors who have in the past lobbied Romanian officials to approve “family reunion” immigration on humanitarian grounds. It would be unholy to keep the children away from their mother, especially when the American Baptists pay the Communist cadre up to five thousand US dollars per family member to facilitate their move across borders. The idea is sound, except . . . Dad won’t hear about adopting a new religion when we can’t even practice our Orthodox faith. So that’s another dead end.

Days later, with windows, blinds, and curtains closed, we listen to the evening broadcast from “Voice of America.” As always, the signal arrives from far beyond the Iron Curtain, distorted and congested. Speakers’ voices overlap, fade away, get drowned out by random musical fragments, and regain temporary clarity, only to get lost again in a cacophony of buzzing, rasping, and hissing radio interference. Father bends the radio’s antenna, trying in vain to capture a sound free of scratchy distortions. The broadcaster’s voice reemerges shortly from the ocean of a full-blown piano concert to announce that the Berlin Wall has fallen.

For the next few days, everybody whispers the news, perplexed and excited. In practice, though, nothing has changed for our family. If anything, Ceauşescu has become more paranoid and isolationist than ever. Mother’s repeated attempts to call us on the phone are interrupted just seconds into the conversations. And then, a few weeks later, more news comes, this time through the distorted electromagnetic waves of radio “Free Europe”: Nadia has defected! The poster child of Romanian athletics, the first “perfect ten” gymnast in the history of modern Olympic games, Nadia Comăneci has fled the country! On foot, at night, guided across the Hungarian border by a professional human smuggler. 

—

A bleak and snowless December is now upon us. Every evening, I go downstairs to check the rusty mailbox that opens with a squeak. It’s empty. Mom’s letters (if she sends any, and I am sure she does) don’t make it. Father has been having water-muffled bathroom conversations with a stranger whose face is covered by a long, unkempt beard. It’s unsettling that someone we don’t know is advising Dad in these secret encounters. But even more disturbing is this man’s wild facial hair. Despite razor blade shortages, respectable comrades maintain clean shaven faces. 

Then, one evening, Father takes my brother and me into the backyard. He whispers: “We are going to Germany to see Mom. But NO ONE else must know, do you hear me?”

We nod, frightened. 

Dad explains: “I hired Nadia’s guide, and he will take us by boat across the Danube into Yugoslavia, Thursday night. We cannot use the Hungarian border anymore. There is increased surveillance after Nadia’s escape.”

“So soon?” I ask. “It’s already Monday. How are we going to get ready?”

“We must be quick and quiet. We need dark coats, flashlights, lighters, water, and sandwiches. Get your backpacks and hiking boots ready.” 

I don’t remember much of the next three days. But here we are, in the hamlet of Sfânta Elena, ushered by—funny name coincidence—Elena, our guide’s girlfriend, on a rocky, slippery trail descending to the Danube. Like her pious namesake and village patron, Elena promises that she will protect us. Her boyfriend, Aron, my father’s bearded stranger, will join us shortly on the riverbank. Earlier, we had dinner at another local smuggler’s house. Having noticed our surprise about the handmade roof tiles and sculpted wooden gates, our host explained that the real name of the place was Svatá Helena. The village had been established by Czechs immigrants who came from Bohemia during the nineteenth century. 

Our host assured us: “This is a good place to cross the Danube, because the river is only about 250 meters wide. Even less now, with the winter drought. Plus, the night is cloudy, and the moon is waning.” 

Then he added, with a laugh: “The border patrol get drunk every other Thursday when it’s pay day. Just listen to Aron and you’ll be fine. Good luck!” 

A chunky inflatable boat awaits on the rocky bank. We are enveloped in what feels like thick underground darkness, listening to the hypnotic cadence of the river waves. Aron is late. I shiver with anticipation. What worries me is not that we are setting off to pierce through the Iron Curtain—which, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is more like a shredded drape. But rather I wonder about crossing the point of no return, from innocence to something unknown. I get that this is not an ordinary journey; it’s a replay of an ancient tale in which a ferryman, uncombed beard and all that, leads wandering souls into the afterworld. And I am afraid of the lure, the brutality, and the irreverent folly of whatever afterworlds I might encounter after communism. But for the moment it seems that I will be spared. Our wild bearded guide is not going to make it tonight. Word reaches us that he was arrested earlier today because he had helped Nadia run. 

—

It’s been ten weeks and two days since the technician bugged our phone. Christmas is approaching. Of course, nobody acknowledges that publicly, but everyone celebrates in private. There has been no sign from Mom since our failed attempt to join her. It seems like nothing has changed. But apparently something really big is happening by the border with Hungary, in the city of Timișoara. Every evening, our ears are glued for hours to the more distorted than ever signal of radio “Free Europe.” The Securitate must be desperate to stop the news from reaching us. Street protests, the army shooting the crowds, thousands of hidden dead bodies . . . Whoever compared rumors with a dragon whose seven heads grow back after being severed was right. The “revolution” of Timișoara sounds as fantastic as a mythical beast. I look through the window at the gloomy winter solstice sunset. Our street is dim and quiet. Asleep on the sofa, with his mouth open, father puffs at precise intervals of four seconds, and I wish for his torpor, so ripe with promise, to last forever. Because in a few days, purity will be lost not with a whimper but a bang. Instead of oars quietly dipping into the Danube’s waves, there will be Kalashnikov automatic fire. The deafening string of pops will bounce off downtown’s baroque walls. My brother and I will wander streets flooded with thousands of protesters waving ripped flags. We will join them in chanting about the dictator’s shameful helicopter escape. 

In the evening, the phone will ring. It’s Mom, who whispers, in a deliberately husky voice: “Hey, Secu officer, if you are listening right now, next time send a technician who has less oily hands!” ■

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