Chapter 1 In which Mrs Milica gains ingress to the Colonel's house ...

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telling the stories of films at five o’clock in the morning and passing the penicillin around, especially when it was so cold that there used to be a hoarfrost inside the tram. We’d draw wallpaper on the windows and have a lark, because we were always up for something. It’s a well-known fact: whoever sparred with me would end up trumped. If I stuck a nickname on someone, then all his kin, as far as the seventh-removed, would carry it about like the mange. But that Litza was a good bloke… it was because of him that the Dear Departed gave me the car. Well, marrer, until Litza took that university course, we got on like brothers: we drank from the same bottle, we ate from the same bait box, we frequented the same scrubbers and, more importantly, we both turned up late to work together. Normally, they ought to have fined us, docked our wages, cut our bonuses, but as our Litza was a party member and head of the shift, I got away with it along with him. He would extricate himself by stringing them along with trams which made a mockery of the working class, which were a disgrace to the people, and suchlike. Just like in the Party, for Litza had the gift of the gab. If the Revolution hadn’t come, I could just see him in the Great National Assembly. He was an ambitious lad, he was, because of his father, who was president of the CAP up at Hunchback Valley, up his mother’s arse – I can’t remember what they called the village. His father wanted him to be a mayor at least, if not an engineer, which was the fashion at the time, because nowadays engineers are reduced to selling watermelons in the market. He couldn’t bear seeing him as merely head of shift. That’s why he sent him to some kind of evening university, for sub-engineers, more a kind of vocational school. He carted so much meat, cheese and plum brandy there to buy his exams for him that he knackered the co-operative tractors. And he promised him that if he behaved himself, spoke nicely to the teachers, didn’t lose his temper, didn’t swear at them, and graduated university, then he’d buy him a brand new car. The old pig had enough money for a helicopter, not just a Dacia, except that he wasn’t allowed to buy a helicopter in those days, because then, you can imagine, he would have been able to follow Ceau§escu when he fled… His father used to slaughter the calf or the lamb of the people whenever he felt like it, but especially when inspectors were sent by the Party, because they were only human too. They had guts that were rumbling with hunger too; they had children at university too. I’m telling you marrer, they used to thieve until they dropped. And there was plenty for them to steal: didn’t the reports used to groan with such huge harvests that those in the West used to make the sign of the cross with even their legs, like yogis? Didn’t there used to be corncobs as big as horse’s pricks – God forgive me – and
potatoes as big as coconuts and soyabeans as big as tennis balls? If lies could hurt, what a lamentation there would have been at the Party meetings, what groans and howls, like in the cauldrons of hell. And, as I was saying, everything was fine until he took that cursed course. As soon as he got his diploma, it was as if they’d clouted him over the head with a cudgel, for him to lose his memory. Half a year later, after he’d bought the drinks to wet the diploma, so that it wouldn’t tear, they promoted him to head of workshop. So, one fine morning, I find myself late for work not with the head of shift but with the head of workshop. We arrive, I go to the locker room to get my overalls, and he goes to the office. The new head of shift, a certain gaffer Apricot, comes and he says to me: you’re late, I’m docking you two hours’ pay, that’s the regulation. “Since when?” says I. Where do you think the order came from? From our Litza, who had only just been running to catch the tram with his tongue flapping over his shoulder. A week later, Litza was coming to work in a new Dacia, and we no longer saw each other at the tram stop. At the factory, he had started to pretend he didn’t know me. He would answer me as if he had glue in his gob. Hey, Litza, I would say. “Comrade,” says he, “we are in the process of production, let us address each other in a seemly fashion.” Bugger you then, our Litza, they did well to clout you over the head with a cudgel at university, but it’s a pity they didn’t clobber you hard enough. He had completely forgotten how we used to sit and drink wine, chattering like two old biddies, how we used to make pork scratchings from the CP pig, how we used to tell stories about the blokes on our shift, which of them was one of the lads and which was a snitcher, what plots they were hatching, which was a hard worker and which was a slacker, because otherwise he would never have been able to deal with with so many ne’er-do-wells. He’d forgotten, I’m telling you, marrer. It was as if someone had wiped his brain with a sponge soaked in vinegar. Well then, Litza, I told myself, the gaffer’s going to sort you out. Do you think you can put on airs with me? And as I was going to the factory on the tram one morning, I decided that I should go and have a word with Ceau§escu. So I didn’t get to the industrial zone, I got off at the station and boarded a train. I didn’t even buy a ticket, because I didn’t have enough money on me. When the conductor shows up, before the next station, and asks after my health, I tell him that I don’t have a travel permit, and to leave me be. “But where are you going?” “To see Ceau§escu,” says I. I was puffing on a cigarette. The conductor gives me a long stare, looks me up and down, and then goes his way without saying anything. I felt like I was in America: anything he might have said could have been used against him. He scuttled through the
Page 1 and 2: Chapter 1 In which Mrs Milica gains
Page 3 and 4: all those things in the house she h
Page 5 and 6: if you’re not, all kinds of other
Page 7 and 8: in the third place, when you are in
Page 9 and 10: one was taking any notice of her. T
Page 11: Chapter 2 In which Mitu tells the s
Page 15 and 16: slyly. “Wait here, I’ll go and
Page 17 and 18: you got milk for the children?” I
Page 19 and 20: an idiot. “That one, he’ll flay
Page 21 and 22: Chapter 3 In which most of the inha
Page 23 and 24: Just after the elections in ’92,
Page 25 and 26: making a show of their perspicacity
Page 27 and 28: ointment, the target was the advers
Page 29 and 30: Milica herself regretted giving the
Page 31 and 32: The news fell like a shower of fish
Page 33 and 34: At dawn, a wholly alien rumbling sh
Page 35 and 36: Then the dogs appeared. Dogs of all
Page 37 and 38: In the Geamba§u family home, Mr (C
Page 39 and 40: participant on the Danube-Black Sea
Page 41 and 42: “And hunger will be among you lik

Chapter 1 In which Mrs Milica gains ingress to the Colonel's house ...

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