You don’t want Liliana.
Liar. You want her more than ever.
You’re angry. Be angry at her.
That’s garbage. You’re in love with her.
I quickly slipped back inside our apartment.
The low hum of our radio warbled with news. Bunu shivered. I put a brick in the stove to tuck under his blanket for warmth. And then I stood next to Cici, listening.
??Satellite states formerly aligned with the Soviet Union are quickly breaking away from communism. We’ve yet to receive a reaction from other Eastern Bloc allies such as Cuba, China, or North Korea.??
I shook my head. Poland, Hungary, and even East Germany, they had all marched toward freedom. “What about Romania? We’ll be left behind,” I lamented. “All these countries will be free, and we’ll be left behind.”
“No,” whispered Cici, putting her arm around me. “Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria aren’t free.”
True. We weren’t entirely alone.
Maybe it just felt like it?
40
PATRUZECI
Czechoslovakia was next.
November 17th. The beginning of the end.
The Velvet Revolution, they would call it.
Czechoslovakia had endured forty-one years of one-party rule. Nearly half a century under communism.
And now that was crumbling.
41
PATRUZECI ?I UNU
Bulgaria.
Our neighbor on the southern border.
Their leader of thirty-five years had forced the country’s Turkish minority to take Bulgarian names. He was unpopular. Even Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev disapproved of Bulgaria’s leader.
The country began . . . to oust him.
42
PATRUZECI ?I DOI
Poland.
Hungary.
East Germany.
Czechoslovakia.
Bulgaria.
Their communist regimes had all fallen.
“Yugoslavia will be complicated,” said Bunu. “They have six republics to balance. Conflicts since Tito died.”
If Yugoslavia would be complicated, what did that mean? Was Romania the last ring holding the Iron Curtain? I shivered in my closet, making entries in my notebook.
Do you feel me?
Heating a brick To warm my sleep Drifting into dreams In search of myself, In Search of a conscience, a country
* * *
? ? ?
Later that week, Starfish appeared in his black boots and a brand-new suede jacket. He pulled me aside on the street.
“Nice coat. Where’d you get it?” I asked.
“Forget the coat, did you hear? Nadia Com?neci defected. She trekked through the woods, made it over the border into Hungary, and requested asylum.”
“What?” Romania’s star Olympic gymnast, Nadia Com?neci, had defected? “Where did you hear that?” I asked.
“Tass, the Soviet news agency. I know someone,” said Starfish. “News about it has been blacked out here.”
News was blacked out. But we soon heard it on Voice of America.
Nadia Com?neci had arrived . . . in the United States.
One of Romania’s biggest celebrities had no access to a passport, no privacy, and no freedom. Of course not. She had been considered property of Romania, owned by the State. Until now.
Nadia’s international attention probably enraged Mother Elena. After all, there was room for only one hero in Romania.
Him.
I began the slow march to the entrance of my gray apartment block. Had Mr. Van Dorn helped Nadia? How many others were trying to run through the snow toward the Hungarian border? If Romania’s superstars were suffering, would the world finally understand the terrible plight of the ordinary Romanian people?
No. Of course not.
How could we expect others to feel our pain or hear our cries for help when all we could do was whisper?
43
PATRUZECI ?I TREI
I wanted freedom. I wanted Romania to fight back.
I filled my notebook with statements, lists, and information about our country, cries for help that I hoped Mr. Van Dorn would share with others. I created a section called Ganduri—Thoughts—which contained musings like these:
Paradise: If communism is Paradise, why do we need barriers, walls, and laws to keep people from escaping?
I raked my hands through my hair, thinking. There were probably rules. Rules preventing diplomats from knowingly accepting something controversial. I needed to get around that, make sure Mr. Van Dorn couldn’t refuse the notebook. Think of ways to encourage him to share the information with others.
What if the notebook just appeared? The author, unidentified?
I took a breath and wrote the following on the cover:
SCREAMING WHISPERS
A ROMANIAN TEENAGER IN BUCHAREST
BY ANONYMOUS