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

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