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

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