Life in a queue. A queue for chicken scraps. A fabulous queue that girdles the city many times over and will last twelve months. During this interval, Ionuţ, a trusty young pioneer, gets to know those who will be his neighbours in the queue for a whole year, picturesque characters who discuss everything from children, mathematics, boiled plum brandy, happiness and sausages, to love, Christmas tree decorations, death, pickles and university admissions exams. A queue that defies the hours, days, weeks and seasons, but nonetheless… Here, in this immense symbolic queue, people tell the stories of their lives, celebrate their birthdays, fall in love, get married, and even die.
The novel captures tales from the Golden Age – as the Ceausescu period was officially known – and excels in clear, straightforward and above all unsentimental storytelling. The plot, set in the grey everyday life of those times, is sad but at the same time brimming with humour. A novel whose magical power can make you burst into both laughter and tears, leaving you teetering upon the knife edge between these two opposing emotional states.
I didn’t start school straight away. First I had to do quite a long stint of agricultural labour. It was a lot of fun for us. Our parents were annoyed because they said it used up school time. Our grandparents said it was good, because it got us used to working in the fields. Those whose parents had connections got hold of medical exemptions so that they wouldn’t have to go. Mother wangled me a medical note once, too. She slipped the cleaning woman at the Polyclinic a packet of Kent and a Fa shampoo, and hey presto.
In the morning all the children would gather in the school¬yard, each holding a plastic pail. We would wait until the buses arrived, then we would board and set off to various destinations. I was deployed to pick tomatoes, green beans, grapes, and other crops. We each had a quota to meet. Once we had filled up a bucket, we would go to the comrade headmistress, who would put a tick in the register. And so on until we met the quota. Whoever was more industrious and finished first had to help the others who had been left behind. That’s what it was like back then. “Each according to his abilities, each according to his needs.”
At twelve o’clock on the dot there was a lunch break. Then we would gather in groups of friends, open the packed lunches from our parents, and eat together. I didn’t used to eat much of what was in mine, because I would be attracted by my classmates’, even if mother said that they weren’t as good. From a packed lunch you could see who had connections. Those who weren’t well connected used to come with mostly tinned food.
We, the lads, liked it when the lasses went off to have a piddle. How we teased them ! And how we liked to peep at them !
Most of the time it was tomato picking. We would come back from the fields with buckets full. Mother also used to give me a bag, so that I could bring back extra. That was how she managed to make tomato broth and pickled green tomatoes for winter. In the bus coming back we would sing at the top of our voices :
“Hey nonny, nonny, long live the driver, hey nonny, nonny, ’cause he took us there and back again, hey nonny, nonny, and we didn’t have to walk, hey nonny, hey ho ! Long live the bus, hey nonny, nonny, the bus that’s got enough gas to drive us, hey nonny, hey ho !
When we arrived back in town all hell would break loose. We’d be holding tomatoes at the ready and “whizz !” we’d toss them at people on the street. We preferred ladies dressed in white. Dreadful fun !
I never understood why they let us take stuff back home but not the peasants who worked alongside us. Especially when the “Agricultural Campaign” began, there would also be militiamen in the fields to keep watch so that no one stole from the communal goods. They used to hide in the cornfields. And when the working day came to an end they would watch the peasants as they left the fields, to make sure they were empty handed.
One day they nabbed granddad Ghiţă from Scaieţi. I was with him at the time, staying with my grandparents during a short holiday.
I’d gone to fetch him from the fields at around five in the afternoon. After we’d passed the cornfield, granddad saw a rabbit in a ditch. We went closer and picked it up. The rabbit was dead. Granddad took it and thrust it under his armpit, inside his coat. We’d gone no further than a few steps when we heard behind us :
“Hey, you, old duffer ! Stand still there !”
I looked behind and saw two militiamen. One was older, podgy, with curly hair and his cap thrust back, the other younger, short and tapering, like a ghost. We stopped in our tracks. The militiamen came up to us.
“Identity card for inspection !” they demanded of granddad.
“I haven’t got it on me, sir, because I’ve been working in the cornfield.”
“Don’t you know that this is a frontier zone and that you have to have your identity card about you at all times ?”
“Boss, when I’m picking maize I don’t need no identity card, ’cause I’ll only go and lose it among the furrows. It’s back at the house. If you like, we can go there and I’ll show it to you.”
“No need for that, we’ll let it pass, ’cause we’re reasonable men. But what’s that bulge in your coat ? Some corncobs got stuck to you have they ?”
“I haven’t got no corncobs, but I found a dead rabbit in a ditch,” said granddad, taking the rabbit out from under his coat.
“Hmm… we can let you off the once, but this is way out of bounds ! We go looking for one thing and find another thing altogether ! Don’t you know that game is banned out of the hunting season ?”
“But, for all my sins, what game would that be ?”
“What do you mean what game, when you’ve got a leveret tucked under your coat ?”
“But didn’t I tell you I found it ? It was dead in the ditch. The young’un saw it too ! Look, there’s no shotgun pellets or blood, and it doesn’t have a broken paw so that you could say I snared it, its head’s not bashed in, I’m not carrying a gun…”
The militiamen took the rabbit and felt it on every side.
“So, you’re more of a forensics expert than us ! How did it die, then, if you think you’re so clever ?”
“Comrade militiaman, maybe it died of old age,” said granddad to the older militiaman.
“Listen here, old man, in all my career as a militiaman I’ve never seen a rabbit that died of old age. They don’t die unless they’re snared, or hunted, for your information. And even if it died of old age, was this rabbit so daft as to die in a ditch so you could find it ? Just you listen to me : lugsy here might be daft, but he wasn’t daft enough to die in the road, let that be clear !”
“Maybe he died of some disease, then !” granddad stammered.
“What disease would that be ? He runs around all day, he eats grass in the woods, he doesn’t smoke… Have you ever seen a rabbit that was ill ?”
“What, am I supposed to have looked to see which ones were ill and which ones weren’t ? They must get ill sometime, too. They’re not made of iron, are they ? And if it didn’t die of old age or of some disease, then why don’t you tell me what it died of ?” said granddad, going on the attack.
“What ? Everything’s upside down ! Now it’s you who’s asking us ! I think you snared it and killed it. For example, you could have blocked its nostrils so that it couldn’t breathe and it died of suffocation. That’s why it doesn’t have anything broken, because you suffocated it. That’s still hunting, you know ! And because you hunted rabbits out of season, you get a hundred lei fine plus confiscation of the rabbit. Come on, get your money out so that I can write you a receipt.”
“But I haven’t got any money on me. I’ve been working in the fields.”
“Then let’s go to your house so that you can pay the fine.”
We set off homewards, the militiaman swinging the rabbit by the ears in one hand and we following meekly behind.
On arriving back at the house, granddad informed grandma :
“Silvia, we’ve come with the comrade militiamen to pay a fine because I found a dead rabbit at the edge of the field.”
“What fine ?”
“He says hunting’s not allowed.”
“What did you hunt ?”
“Didn’t you hear me say I didn’t hunt it, I found it ? Ask the little’un.”
“Why should you pay if you found it ?”
“He doesn’t believe I found it, says I hunted it.”
“Maybe you kicked a stone and hit the rabbit as it was running past. If that’s the way it was, then wouldn’t that count as hunting ?”
“Maybe I hit it, but I don’t think so, because I found it cold. If I’d hit it, it would have been warm, not stiff like I found it.”
“Listen here, Ghiţă, you know what I think ? They must have a Quota for fines, just like you’ve got at the Collective for how many furrows you have to harvest a day. Here’s what I reckon : you go and borrow some money to pay the fine until we get our wages from the Collective, and then I say we should cut a chicken, fetch some wine and treat them well, because these here militiamen are guests in your yard. You never know when you might have need of them. They likely know the mayor, the vet… Come on, and do as I say !”
After granddad went off to borrow the hundred lei, grandma brought out a table and some chairs into the yard and invited the militiamen to sit.
“Now that you’ve crossed our threshold, why don’t you stay until we roast a chicken over the coals, and fortify yourselves with a glass of wine, because you must be tired.”
“We came so that old man Ghiţă can pay his fine for hunting rabbits, but if you’re inviting us, we can’t refuse. It wouldn’t be right.”
The militiamen put lugsy on the table, unbuttoned their tunics and sat down heavily, next to the jug of wine. Grandma cut a chicken, scalded it, plucked it and roasted it over the coals. She set it on the table and invited the militiamen to tuck in. Neither granddad nor myself got so much as a mouthful. They picked it clean, those cops ! They also drained a few jugs of wine. We sat next to them and had to listen to them gabbing about work. At around nine o’clock in the evening, they decided to leave :
“It’s time for us to be going home,” said the older one. “Thanks for the meal, Silvia ! Old man Ghiţă, we’re sorry about what happened. Just you be more careful next time. Now… we’ve still got to give you the fine ! Because what if there were someone else there in the cornfield when we were talking and he were to say that we’d let you off ? We’d lose our jobs : you have to understand ! Look, here’s the receipt !”
“Comrade militiaman, keep your receipt, we don’t need it. Take the money and let’s hope that we don’t go making any more mistakes,” answered grandma, looking at granddad reprovingly. “I’ve fixed you up a bag with some flour, some corncobs, some eggs, all from our own back yard.”
“Thanks, Silvia, you’re worth your weight in gold for this village, you can take our word for it ! Listen – have you got any of those hot peppers ? I thought I saw some strung up on the fence to dry in the sun.”
“Yes, we have, of course we have,” said grandma, jumping up and taking down two nice strings of hot peppers from the fence and giving them to the militiamen.
“Well then… we’ll bid you farewell, good folk, and may you have good health, because health’s the best thing of all,” said the militiamen as they got up to leave.
We saw them to the front gate. They walked swaying, the younger one holding the bags of flour, with the rabbit tucked under his arm and a string of sundried peppers draped over each shoulder.
“Why did you go and give them both a bag ?”
“Oh, hold your tongue, Ghiţă, for that’s the way of the world !” grandma answered and shut the gate after the militiamen.
Translated by Alistair Ian Blyth
