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

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arms like two watermelons. Well now, I almost felt sorry to be leaving the CC, where it smelled so nice and it was so cool, where people played poker and smoked cigars until they dropped, but I realised that it wasn’t for the likes of me, although I would have got on marvellously there. As there was still something puzzling me, so as not to die stupid I asked mister Hulk as I was leaving: “Comrade, allow me to ask, how did you guess from the start that I’m Moldavian?” “Well, that’s simple, mister! Only a Moldavian would tap out Morse code on the door when the bell’s over there on the right. See it?” The hulk was right, there was a doorbell, but I hadn’t so much as glimpsed it. I thanked him and legged it straight to the station. You never know, he might have got annoyed out of the blue, and then you’d be back pushing coal trucks. When I arrived home, the Dacia was in front of the block.” “But, gaffer Mitu, how did you know it was your Dacia? Did he tell you the registration number?” “Hark at him, the curious brat! Can’t you find anything more clever to ask? How do you think I knew? I know how to read and on the windscreen there was a card which read ‘For Mitu’.” “Alright, gaffer Mitu, what of it, you don’t have to lose your rag over it.” “But where’s the car now?” “Well, I sold it the very next day, because I didn’t have a driving licence. Cheers, lads! My mouth had gone dry!” “And what did you do about being late?” “Hark at them! You’d think it was the Gestapo! That’s enough, I’ve closed the story. Ze end. And on a green broomstick I rode and I piss in the gob of whoever doesn’t believe me.” “Aye, that’s life for you, only the other day he was talking to Mitu over a spritzer, as you do, but now he’s six feet under and full of lead. Cheers, lads!”
Chapter 3 In which most of the inhabitants of Willows Street, recalling the period of systematisation and the curses of Hleanda, hopefully wait for the Colonel’s house to fissure The street was broiling like a cauldron; it was buzzing like a hive. Only in the Colonel’s house and in that of the Socoliuc family did there reign an oleaginous silence, which isolated them from the electrifying tumult. It was as though the two buildings had temporarily moved to another street, an adjoining one such as Drummers Street, whence the houses on Willows can be seen very clearly, as though in a play of optical illusions… The reasons for the silence that had laid its dominion upon the two households were, however, very different. Neither before nor after Milica made that telephone call, thanks to which everyone gained an idea about the interior of the castle, had anyone from the street ever crossed their thresholds. In fact, if we were to look back, the Colonel had been greeted by a smouldering hostility from the very day the building work on his house commenced. Although the neighbours, in order to justify their reticence or even aggressiveness towards him, used to put it about that any newcomer should be treated prudently until he had showed his true colours and proved his respect for the longer-standing residents of the street (some of them born and raised in the shade of the willows), each one of them in fact had his own reasons for displaying coolness. Upon hearing that the proprietor of the villa about to be erected had been a colonel, Mr Geamba§u’s face darkened, and he could barely conceal his bellicose air. Up until then, he had had the most esteemed occupation and the highest position: chief accountant at the Town Hall. Although as pensioners, as most of the street’s inhabitants were, there existed a certain equality between them, “his lifetime’s work” (Mr Geamba§u) imposed respect, be it only due to the different memories he could spin out or the different people he had once known. Many years ago, he, Traian Geamba§u, had stood in the same room as Ceau§escu. And genuinely so, not like Mitu, who used to brag in 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 and 12: Chapter 2 In which Mitu tells the s
Page 13 and 14: potatoes as big as coconuts and soy
Page 15 and 16: slyly. “Wait here, I’ll go and
Page 17 and 18: you got milk for the children?” I
Page 19: an idiot. “That one, he’ll flay
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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