There’s a revolution going on
somewhere, but I don’t know it, and I am busy, anyway. I am ten and I am
doing my holiday homework. I am learning by heart a New-Year carol that
praises the President, Leader of the Romanian Communist Party, and his
Wife.
My teacher said that we need to soften our voice and say her name with feeling, as if she was our mother and we loved her. If the teacher said so, it must be so. As I walked down the stairs of the quiet school to go to the toilet during that lesson, I stopped and sat on the stairs looking at their portraits on the wall. I asked myself, “Do I love these people?” I knew who they were, everybody knew they were the Parents of the Nation. “Do I love them?” “No.” I was ashamed. It was as if I didn’t love my mother. I kept my secret and softened my voice with feeling. Nobody else said they didn’t love her.
Right now I am on holiday and my brother is lurking around the empty house, bored. Mum and Dad are out, perfect time for him to bother me. He likes nothing better than to pick fights. And he knows only too well how annoyed I get when he interrupts me from study. I am quite deep in it right now, so he takes my pen. I tell him to leave me alone, he tugs at my book. I try to slap him, miss him, try to ignore him, but he makes off with my book. Now I can’t study and can’t ignore him any longer either.
I get up, he runs to the kitchen and slams the door in my face. I follow him and push the door with all my strength. He is holding it closed from the other side. When he lets go and I stumble in, he pretends to rip off the page. I fly into a rage. I shout at him to stop, tumble into him, hit him with my fists, scratch him and yell at the top of my voice:
“Give me back my book!”
“Scream as much as you li-ike, no-one will hear you!”
He holds the book high above my head where I can’t reach, he is taller. I jump and yell and scratch. He laughs and screams when I leave red lines on his arm with my deliberately long nails. He knows he can do this when the grown-ups are away. Nobody can make him give me my book back, but at least my scratches hurt him.
The phone rings and it’s Mum. Maybe she knew we were fighting. My brother looks guilty. She tells us to switch on the TV. That is strange, it’s Wednesday noon and the two hour-long TV programme only starts at 8pm. She hangs up quickly, she doesn’t usually say much over the phone. There are clicks on the line. I don’t have time to tell her about my brother and the book.
He forgets it and we both go to the TV. On the screen there’s a man with his hands stretched sideways, calling urgently:
“Brothers, the tyrant has gone! Come to the TV Station!”
There are images of crowds in the street without the usual portraits of the President and slogans of “Long Live the Communist Party”. The crowds chant, the man on TV talks with an excitement that we catch. We forget to breathe. This is nothing like the usual tractors we see on TV every night. He talks of gunshots, as more frowning men gather behind him in a stiff line-up, like an old family photograph. One has a white beard and boots. They wear old, faded jumpers and scarves, nothing like the usual suits of TV presenters.
After a while, the man on TV and the crowds start chanting:
“The army is with us!”
And we smell the scent of victory in their voices, although we don’t make sense of the words.
“Come to the TV station!”, the man keeps repeating.
We are in a different town, but we hear people shouting in the streets, and a rabble passes our dusty window with a flag. There’s a hole in the middle of the flag where the emblem used to be. I go and pick up some charcoal from the terracotta stove, because I can’t find the pen my brother has taken, and write on paper torn from my school notebook: “Ceausescu is gone”.
When Mum and Dad come home, they bring in the smell of snow. We all lie on their bed together to watch TV. There are images on a loop of the President waving as usual from a balcony at a crowd that shouts the usual slogans, then looking scared, leaving the balcony, a helicopter flying off the roof of the building, the crowd no longer chanting anything we know. This time there’s a loud, threatening roar, which builds up into “Ceausescu go away”. The TV station takes breaks and plays on repeat an old revolutionary song, “Wake up, Romanians”. When the images come back, they show naked, white corpses, with red gun wounds and black pubic hair. I forget to tell Mum about my brother taking my book.
This winter salami is rationed as well, not just the oil and eggs. Five slices per person a week, if you queue for it in the cold. I hide everybody’s ration that night at the back of the fridge. I have a plan. I don’t tell anyone about it, so I have to endure Dad saying I ate it all. But the next morning I take it out to fry it into a bigger omelet for the family breakfast, and he says he’s sorry.
At the table I tell Mum I need to learn the long carol about the President and his motherly Wife.
“No”, she says, “you don’t need to learn that anymore.”
------------------------------------------
My teacher said that we need to soften our voice and say her name with feeling, as if she was our mother and we loved her. If the teacher said so, it must be so. As I walked down the stairs of the quiet school to go to the toilet during that lesson, I stopped and sat on the stairs looking at their portraits on the wall. I asked myself, “Do I love these people?” I knew who they were, everybody knew they were the Parents of the Nation. “Do I love them?” “No.” I was ashamed. It was as if I didn’t love my mother. I kept my secret and softened my voice with feeling. Nobody else said they didn’t love her.
Right now I am on holiday and my brother is lurking around the empty house, bored. Mum and Dad are out, perfect time for him to bother me. He likes nothing better than to pick fights. And he knows only too well how annoyed I get when he interrupts me from study. I am quite deep in it right now, so he takes my pen. I tell him to leave me alone, he tugs at my book. I try to slap him, miss him, try to ignore him, but he makes off with my book. Now I can’t study and can’t ignore him any longer either.
I get up, he runs to the kitchen and slams the door in my face. I follow him and push the door with all my strength. He is holding it closed from the other side. When he lets go and I stumble in, he pretends to rip off the page. I fly into a rage. I shout at him to stop, tumble into him, hit him with my fists, scratch him and yell at the top of my voice:
“Give me back my book!”
“Scream as much as you li-ike, no-one will hear you!”
He holds the book high above my head where I can’t reach, he is taller. I jump and yell and scratch. He laughs and screams when I leave red lines on his arm with my deliberately long nails. He knows he can do this when the grown-ups are away. Nobody can make him give me my book back, but at least my scratches hurt him.
The phone rings and it’s Mum. Maybe she knew we were fighting. My brother looks guilty. She tells us to switch on the TV. That is strange, it’s Wednesday noon and the two hour-long TV programme only starts at 8pm. She hangs up quickly, she doesn’t usually say much over the phone. There are clicks on the line. I don’t have time to tell her about my brother and the book.
He forgets it and we both go to the TV. On the screen there’s a man with his hands stretched sideways, calling urgently:
“Brothers, the tyrant has gone! Come to the TV Station!”
There are images of crowds in the street without the usual portraits of the President and slogans of “Long Live the Communist Party”. The crowds chant, the man on TV talks with an excitement that we catch. We forget to breathe. This is nothing like the usual tractors we see on TV every night. He talks of gunshots, as more frowning men gather behind him in a stiff line-up, like an old family photograph. One has a white beard and boots. They wear old, faded jumpers and scarves, nothing like the usual suits of TV presenters.
After a while, the man on TV and the crowds start chanting:
“The army is with us!”
And we smell the scent of victory in their voices, although we don’t make sense of the words.
“Come to the TV station!”, the man keeps repeating.
We are in a different town, but we hear people shouting in the streets, and a rabble passes our dusty window with a flag. There’s a hole in the middle of the flag where the emblem used to be. I go and pick up some charcoal from the terracotta stove, because I can’t find the pen my brother has taken, and write on paper torn from my school notebook: “Ceausescu is gone”.
When Mum and Dad come home, they bring in the smell of snow. We all lie on their bed together to watch TV. There are images on a loop of the President waving as usual from a balcony at a crowd that shouts the usual slogans, then looking scared, leaving the balcony, a helicopter flying off the roof of the building, the crowd no longer chanting anything we know. This time there’s a loud, threatening roar, which builds up into “Ceausescu go away”. The TV station takes breaks and plays on repeat an old revolutionary song, “Wake up, Romanians”. When the images come back, they show naked, white corpses, with red gun wounds and black pubic hair. I forget to tell Mum about my brother taking my book.
This winter salami is rationed as well, not just the oil and eggs. Five slices per person a week, if you queue for it in the cold. I hide everybody’s ration that night at the back of the fridge. I have a plan. I don’t tell anyone about it, so I have to endure Dad saying I ate it all. But the next morning I take it out to fry it into a bigger omelet for the family breakfast, and he says he’s sorry.
At the table I tell Mum I need to learn the long carol about the President and his motherly Wife.
“No”, she says, “you don’t need to learn that anymore.”
------------------------------------------
A review of this story, after I read it at the South Bank Centre's StorySLAM themed "Freedom":
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