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

At dawn, a wholly alien rumbling shattered the silence of the street. Old man Hrib leapt
up as through scalded, ready to hurl himself, old as he was, through the window into the
garden and take cover in the bushes, for fear of Russian tanks. A column of ten lorries
was trundling up and down, in search of the rubbish pit which, although it no longer
collected stagnant water, continued to play host to refuse transported there in buckets or
iron basins, in spite of the now rusting interdiction. Moreover, the children used the
blue signboard as a target for the chipped bottles and jars that were not accepted at
school as part of their quotas to meet the central economic plan.
The lorries were loaded with rubble.
The demolitions, in another area of town, had begun.
The rumbling and the terrifying rumours brought the street’s inhabitants, young and old,
out of their houses. Hurriedly dressing with the first thing that came to hand, the folk
gathered at the lip of the chasm to see what was happening. With towelling dressing
gowns over their night-shirts, with hair dishevelled or quickly slicked down with a
wetted hand, with rumpled faces, with untied shoelaces trailing behind them or wearing
unmatched slippers, they made a comical sight. They were holding their sleep-flushed
children by the hand. In the brisk morning air, the folk of Willows Street groggily
looked on as the first tonnes of rubble tumbled down onto the garbage in the chasm.
The thick black exhaust fumes from the lorries shrouded the gathering in mourning
weeds. And Hleanda, the madwoman of the street, arriving from the end near the
railway station, was keening fit to break their hearts. She was keening so terribly that
Traian Geamba§u, who had never spoken to her before in his life, felt indebted to dash
up to her: “Shut the hell up, you madwoman, you’re frightening the children!” The
bricks rolled down like rotten apples, and the chalk dust rose like a cloud of mosquitoes.
After the spectacle of the first three lorries, part of the folk returned to their homes
which, amazingly, were still standing.
For how much longer they did not know.