The young girl’s coat now hung in shreds. Her wool mitten lay on the ground, splashed in blood.
“Were you bitten?” Liliana asked.
“I don’t care about a bite,” sobbed the girl. “My mother stood in line for months to get me a coat. Now it’s ruined. What if she’s angry?”
“She’ll understand. We’ll walk you home,” said Liliana. She looked to me. I nodded.
Liliana’s hand grazed the torn edge of my jacket. “They got you too,” she whispered. “You okay?”
Her touch on my jacket. Her concern. Suddenly, the dogs, my coat, and the meeting with the agent—it all faded into the background.
“I’m fine. You okay?” I asked. She nodded.
We said nothing after leaving the girl at her building. I wondered if Liliana’s thoughts mirrored mine. Being eaten by wild dogs—did kids in other countries have to worry about that?
We turned onto our street and I recognized the bowlegged silhouette.
Starfish.
He was a few years older and wore black-market Levi’s, Adidas, and concert T-shirts from the West. Sometimes he wore black boots with silver studs. It wasn’t illegal to wear clothing from the West, but it was difficult to get. And very expensive. And very cool.
When people asked Starfish where he got his clothes, he shrugged and said, “I know someone.” I tried to find an English word to describe Starfish and found this one: operator.
He lived in my building. We called him Starfish because he had lost an eye and the thick stitches pinching his eye socket closed left a scar shaped like a crooked star. Beside him trotted our community block dogs, Feti?a and Turbatu. Liliana’s building fed Feti?a. We fed Turbatu. But for some reason, the dogs loved Starfish best.
We stopped in front of our apartment blocks.
Mine on the right.
Hers on the left.
“Video night,” whispered Starfish. “Saturday. My place. You in?”
“We have school,” replied Liliana.
“You have school during the day,” said Starfish. “This is tomorrow night. Are you coming?”
I couldn’t see Liliana’s face through the darkness. I took a chance.
“Yeah, we’re coming,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll add you to the list. Ask your pretty sister.”
“Ask her yourself,” I told him.
“Bring your money. Five lei each,” said Starfish. He walked off, disappearing through a seam of black with the dogs.
I had never seen Liliana at a video night. Maybe her parents knew someone with their own videocassette player? A video player wasn’t illegal, like a typewriter. But it was expensive and hard to get. The cheapest video player cost thirty-five thousand lei, half the price of a car. Most families needed a Dacia more than a video player.
“You don’t have to go tomorrow,” I told her.
“Okay. But . . . what if I want to go?” she said. “Can I go with you?”
Did she really just say that? I tried to search her expression through the shadows. “Sure. Meet me outside at nine o’clock.”
We stood, feeling others nearby, but unable to see them. I was alone with Liliana, in a private wrapper of darkness.
“Cristian,” she suddenly whispered. “Do you ever wonder . . . if any of it’s real?”
“If what’s real?”
“The things we see in videos—in American movies.”
It was an odd question. Or maybe it felt odd because I had wondered the same thing but never had the courage to say it out loud. But it also felt . . . suspicious somehow. Too honest.
And then I was angry again. Not at her—at myself.
For months I’d been trying to talk to Liliana Pavel. We were finally alone, talking, agreeing to see each other on Saturday night and instead of being elated, I was suspicious?
Bunu was right. Communism is a state of mind.
But video nights were an escape. Gathering secretly to watch American movies dubbed into Romanian—it felt dangerous and exciting, like winning a forbidden prize. The worlds we saw depicted in the movies were oceans away. And the incredible lives we saw on-screen were all make believe.
They were, weren’t they?
7
?APTE
Ocean fish! No meal without fish!
The electricity in our building was on.
The television health advisory for ocean fish crackled behind closed doors. Since meat wasn’t available, we were advised to eat ocean fish. But we didn’t have fresh fish, just fish bones to make watery soup. Did that count? I paid little attention to the television. The English travel guide summed it up correctly: