Just a Monumental Summer: Girl on the train (4 page)

I turned around and said to Alexandru, “Ok, I will be here at five tomorrow.” I hung up the phone.

I went to the balcony. Alin was watching the sea. 

“Sorry. It’s a friend, a good friend.”

“Do you fuck him?” His tone was icy. I slipped one hand across his broad shoulders and was disappointed when he did not react. He remained frozen in place, glaring across the vast distance of waves.

“Look, Alin, we just met,” I replied.

“We did…but the train. I thought it was real.”

He was right. And though I felt the same, Instead I said, “But I have my life, and you have yours…”

“No, I don’t!” he interrupted and looked squarely at me. “Mona, there are girls, yes, and we get crazy sometimes. I mean, not all of us. Vladi has a girlfriend; he is not allowed. Anyway, I don’t have any girlfriend, and I want you to be my girl.” 

He took my face between his hands and kissed me. He seemed tall, and I felt powerless. It felt like everything was too early and too late at the same time. “Look at me,” he said. “Who are you, Mona?”

And here it was, the question I’d never asked myself. A question I avoided because I was afraid to find out the answer. I didn’t want to know who I was. I was nobody. I was almost twenty, and I’d failed the exam for university. I had no job. I had several lovers, most of them married and much older than me. I was living
la vida loca
and didn’t give a damn about anyone. Always running away from home. I deceived men. And I was a spoiled bitch. 

“I don’t know what you mean, Alin. I am twenty, for God’s sake. I don’t get it.”

“I want you to be together with me. Be my girlfriend. You can stay with me for the whole summer. My band shares a huge villa; each person has his own room and bathroom. You said you are about to get a job here. We could be together the whole summer, enjoy the sun and the beach. We’ll have fun and make love.”

I felt my heart melt.

That was the moment I fell in love with Alin. The lead singer of Silent Delusion. He was the star; I was just a girl. He was sexy and about to become famous, and he wanted me.

“Alin, we just met, and you think you’ve figured it out? What about after? When the summer is gone and we all have to go back to where we came from? How old are you, anyway?”

“We will figure it out,” he said simply. “And I’m twenty-five—not a big deal. You’re twenty.”

The sun was going down. I could hear the murmuring and laughing of tourists as they left the beach, coming to the hotel and getting ready for dinner.

“Let’s go inside,” he said. “I want to show you something.” He took my hands, and we both walked into the room. “I travelled the whole night and tried to write a new song. I’ve had the melody in my head for a couple of weeks, but I didn’t have the words. Now, I think I do.”

“So, is Silent Delusion all your work? Your melodies and the words?” I was surprised. He wasn’t just the pretty voice; he was the brains of the group. He took his guitar, smiled at me, and placed his fingers against the guitar strings. I liked watching him with the guitar. I couldn’t help but notice the way his arm muscles rippled as he gripped the fret.

“Yes, so far, all the songs are mine. Listen and tell me what you think.”

He touched the guitar gently, trying to find his rhythm, looking down at it. I couldn’t stop a smile; he looked hot.“It will be a simple piano melody, with rich acoustic guitar sound. Ready?” he asked.

You stepped into my life

And felt that I could die

The night found shelter in your eyes and hair

And felt that I could breath no air

I scattered your hair and your thoughts,

Everything feels like the first time with you.

This moment will not be here tomorrow

But this love will forever be true.

Fate and desire, drew us together

Two souls in a train that is rumbling on.

If infinity decides to bind us forever,

I care not if worlds pass into oblivion.

Do you have another?

Is this all a dream?

Your lips would tell me no,

But your eyes, another thing.

My heart was beating hard. “Did you just write a song for me?” I asked.

“Do you like it?” He put the guitar down and held me. 

“I love it. You just need to make the words rhyme.” 

“It will. Eventually.”

“How do you compose?” I was curious still struck by the fact that those beautiful words came out of such a handsome, hunk.

“It starts with the melody.” He pressed his fingers against his temples as he explained. “It starts floating in my head. Then, I put the words together.”

I was proud of him.

“Only music makes you forget or remember everything.”

I liked his passion. It impressed me that he believed in something so strongly.

He continued: “Music may be the most important thing men have ever created. We should appreciate music more. Do you know how much work is required to make a simple violin? A violin contains about seventy different pieces of wood. Anyway about the song: I need to know how it will end.”

“Alin, it’s your song. It’s up to you how the song ends. I am not your dream girl. You don’t know anything about my life, and you don’t want to know.” I didn’t know what to really say.

“I do know. More than you think. Babe, we’re here in paradise, so let’s be together.” He noticed my hesitation and scowled. “Damn, why do women have to be so complicated?”

“Don’t compare me with other women. You don’t know me,” I snapped, which I regretted.

“Mona, you opened up to me…the train was our moment. I know you, Mona!”

His voice staggered for words…the “right” words…the kind of words that one never seemed to bring to mind when they were needed.

You don’t, Alin. Nobody knows me,
I thought, but instead I answered:

“Ok. Why not?”

***
8 July 1989

Everywhere I go I hear murmurings, worries about our country, communism, and the future. I have inside information.

Alexandru always opens up to me. Is this not what men do? Confide to their mistresses?

He told me more than once that Ceausescu’s fate is sealed by his own actions. Alexandru’s opinion was that our ‘dear leader’ had lost touch with reality. That, coupled with his huge ego was going to lead to his end. Alexandru knows what is he talking about, he is one of Ceausescu’s trusted people. I don’t know what his real job description is. He may be in charge of his security, maybe presidential guard, or he may be his advisor. He never said; I never asked.

There were rumors, but never facts about political unrest. Those rumors were quelled as fast as they began. But from Alexandru I learned the truth – there were protests happening.
There had even been a couple of revolts across the country during the past few years. In November 1986, labor uprisings spread through big industrial cities of Cluj-Napoca and Lasi.

Ceaușescu's insane debt reduction plan drove the collapse of the consumer market in major cities. Money planned for food production and distributions was diverted instead to debt payments to the Western world. The rationed consumer goods for the most basic commodities led to longer lines and increasing frustration among the people. That was happening everywhere in Romania. All these ingredients - economic depression, food shortages, plus suppression of discontent - simmered until the unrest boiled over in Brașov two years ago, when rebellion erupted on 15 November 1987.

That spontaneous revolt began at a truck manufacturing plant called the “Red Flag.” Workers gathered and began demonstrating against reduced salaries. More than 20,000 people left the factory and
marched toward the Communist headquarters in the city center.
Initially, they only chanted: “We want food.
We want bread.
We want electricity. You are thieves. Give us our money back.” Then, the other slogans, more subversive ones, evolved. Eventually the crowd was chanting, “Down with communism. Down with Ceausescu.
Down with the dictatorship.”

Later that day, Securitatea - the secret service - and the military managed to finally surround the city center and disband the revolt by force. Luckily, no one was killed, but more than 300 protesters were arrested and brought to the Bucuresti Police Head Department to give official statements.

Alexandru told me something interesting. The protesters weren’t allowed to write the anti-government slogans down as they gave their statements. They were advised by the police not to commit those statements to paper – it would be too dangerous. The police told the protesters, “Write down the slogans ‘we want food’ and ‘we want electricity’ – that will be enough. You don’t have to write down you chanted ‘down with communism’ and ‘down with …you know who’.”

I heard that the protesters had been sentenced up to two years in prison. Ceausescu’s strategy was to downplay the uprising as “isolated cases of hooliganism.” A harsh sentence would validate the rumors of widespread unrest, and he didn’t want that.

“He should wake up and realize sooner or later these revolts will be his downfall.” Alexandru would vent his anger to me, blaming Ceausescu for his inability to comprehend the warning signs.

People’s frustrations and revolts were not limited to Romania. After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Gorbachev, president of the USSR at the time, had a wake-up call and decided to open his country for reforms. When he announced that, Ceausescu was the only communist leader to oppose it. After Moscow officially announced glasnost and then later, perestroika, Ceausescu opposed it.  Alexandru told me this opposition to gradual reform would spell Ceausescu’s downfall. His isolation on the international scene intensified, and Russia and the US treated him as an obstacle to reform. Ceausescu was aware of the international and internal pressure, but still refused to compromise. He and his ego insisted that he knew better – that he could suppress the people’s drive for freedom and continue with the status quo. Because of this, he refused to allow Gorbi to tell him what to do.

Ceausescu’s plan was to buy back the eighty tons of gold from the vaults of the National Bank; these had been previously sold to redeem the foreign debt payment. His ego demanded that he show Gorbi he knew how to save his power in his own country. His plan was to show the world, by the beginning of the 14
th
Congress that Romania would not be just debt free but overflowing with gold.

Gorbi didn’t like Ceaucescu’s reluctance to implement political and economic reforms.
He tried first to reason with him. Four presidential meetings between Gorbachev and Ceausescu took place. One in particular was controversial and worsened the conflict between the two leaders.

“I don’t think there will be another meeting between them.” Alexandru confided in me. “Gorbi gave him enough chances. Ceausescu is done.”

Ceausescu defied Gorbi too many times, and Elena, his wife, followed his example. She couldn’t stand Raisa Gorbacheva and ignored her during their visit. It was a grave violation of political diplomacy. Gorbi poured oil on the fire as well. During his visits to Romania, he would talk with people about his reforms and encourage the people to talk about their problems, letting them know he was aware of the unrest.

Ceausescu did not like that. He felt that Gorbachev should have spoken to the people about the efforts and progress that he was making toward the “Gold Era” – Ceausescu’s plot to get Romania out of debt, not mingle with the people and actually talk about the problems in the country. Gorbi’s refusal to bend to Ceausescu’s will led to an impasse – Ceausescu became angry and overreacted; in turn, Gorbi did not sign Ceausescu’s “Book of Honor” – a guest book for all foreign Presidents to sign in during their visits tour country.

In the end, Gorbi let Ceausescu know if he wouldn’t align with Russian reforms, he would drastically reduce the supply of natural gas and oil to Romania. That was akin to a declaration of war. A war which Romania could not afford right now, giving the scarcity of natural gas and electricity already experienced by the people all over the country.

Ceausescu is extremely well informed by his secret service. His secret police told him the Kremlin and Washington plan to send their own agents to infiltrate Romania and help instigate a coup against him.

Some say Ceausescu knows
Gorbi is ready to give the green light permitting Russian secret agents to work together with Romanian conspirators to overthrow his power. That Gorbi keeps a close watch on Romania’s inner workings and has files on Romanians who are ready to turn their back on Ceausescu and betray him.

I don’t believe that. Ceausescu is a vengeful person. He put a two-million-dollar reward on Pacepa’s head after his defection. Pacepa used to be his right hand – the men who was ruling Securitatea. Pacepa fled because he refused to kill the famous Noel Bernard,
the director of Radio Free Europe’s Romanian program who had infuriated Ceausescu with his commentaries. If he knows – and has proof - why wouldn’t he just get rid of the people who are plotting against him?