Letters to a Young Gymnast (17 page)

It was a six-hour drive to the Austrian border. No one was following us or watching either car. We were one step ahead of the Hungarians and Romanians. At the border, the Austrians stopped cars randomly to check for identification papers. Constantin decided to leave us at a café while he drove through to see whether he would be stopped. When he returned, he told us that he had, in fact, been stopped and that it was too dangerous to try to drive across the border with us. We would have to cross at another spot . . . at night.

What can I say of that moment? You just go on. The idea of another night crossing wasn't high on my list, but what else could I do? Constantin once again said he'd be waiting just on the other side of the border. I had to trust that he would be there because there were no alternatives. In gymnastics, I could kind of control my destiny—if I did well, I'd be rewarded with the esteem of my country.
But life is another story, and the process of dehumanization in Romania and the perils and uncertainties of defection showed me just how little control I had over the circumstances of my life.

Constantin told us where to cross the border. We waited for darkness to settle and then began to walk. I was more frightened than the first time, probably because I was closer to my goals and because to have them snatched away at this point would have been more devastating than getting caught in Romania. Stay in control, I told myself. Focus on your breathing and being silent and not getting lost. Focus on staying alive. There were seven barbed-wire fences to climb, and though I don't remember feeling their bite, my body was covered by cuts from the sharp metal. I'm incredibly coordinated, but there's no way to avoid getting cut by barbed wire. Most of the group was covered with blood. It took about two hours to get over all of those fences. I was exhausted when we saw the road where Constantin was supposed to pick us up. He'd instructed us to stay hidden on the side of the asphalt because there might be police cars passing by. Constantin said that he planned to break one of the headlights on each car so we'd know when to come out of hiding.

We lay on our bellies, hidden by weeds, and watched each car pass by, straining to see one with a broken headlight. When we saw two in a row with only one headlight each, we leaped to our feet and piled into the cars. That night, all of us slept on the floor of a single hotel room. The atmosphere couldn't have been more different from that in the hotel in Hungary. We were celebrating. There was an air of relief and sheer joy in that room.

Once in Austria, everyone except for me was on his or her own. Most of the group went to a homeless shelter for refugees. They were given a place to live and sleep until someone came and offered them jobs. Once they were given work and had sponsors, they could apply to the government for citizenship. I was thankful that I wasn't on my own in a foreign country where I couldn't speak the language. Constantin stayed with me and took me to the American embassy. He knew that I wanted to go to the United States, and he seemed very willing to help me get there.

It bothered me in your last letter that you just wanted me to tell you “the dirt” on Constantin. You've heard all the rumors, and maybe you believe that he controlled me, kept me a prisoner when I came to America, tried to make money off my defection. I will get to all of that and to what truth there is to the rumors. Remember that no one is purely good or evil; we all have a little bit of the angel and the devil in us. For now, let me tell you how things unfolded.

Constantin took me to the American embassy in Austria because I wanted to ask for political asylum. I remember walking through the doors and telling the first person I met that I was Nadia Comaneci and I wanted asylum. It created quite a spectacle and a flurry of activity. I felt like every paper had been dropped at the mention of my name. People in the embassy stared at me as if I were a ghost. An official told me that the people in the embassy had heard I'd defected but that no one knew where to find me. If I'd had the ability to communicate better, I would have told him that over the last few days, I didn't even know where I was myself.

“What do you want to do?” the official asked me.

“I want to go to America,” I replied.

“When?”

“As soon as possible.”

“There's a Pan Am flight leaving in two hours, you're on it,” he said with a smile. I was considered a “person of special ability,” which is a category for scientists, artists, and others who can contribute to American society; such people are fast-tracked through the system. Strange how hard defection had been until that moment, and then suddenly, the pieces slid into place. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Everything was going to be easy now, a veritable piece of cake. I'd fly to the United States and get a great job and make tons of money. The public would admire me for my past accomplishments, and I'd be rewarded in terms of my shining future goals. But if you believe that is how it happened, I have a bridge in Romania to sell you.

The embassy completed the necessary paperwork and then put me in a police car with an escort. The Pan Am personnel were extremely generous and seated me in first class on their flight. First class! I wouldn't have cared if they'd put me in the cargo hold. I was finally free, and I was on a flight to the United States of America. The fact that I was fed a lovely meal and given wine and champagne was just icing on a cake that was already iced.

I thought a lot about my brother during that flight. I wished that I could call him and tell him that I was safe. The Romanian government was probably saying that I was dead, with a bullet in my head. There was no way for me to contact him and tell him the truth. I also wondered, with the same lingering anxiety, what was going to happen when we landed in the United States.
Constantin told me that I was going to live with his wife and children for a bit. I never questioned him.

Please don't be like everyone else was, my friend: Don't tell me what I should have said to Constantin on the plane or what I should have done when I arrived in America. I'd spent my entire life being an object. When I was young, my coaches instructed me about how to train and live. The Gymnastics Federation decided if I was to compete or withdraw from competitions and exhibitions. The government moved me from place to place. I do not remember one moment when I lived as an entirely free person, when what I thought actually mattered, when I was given a voice. As an elite gymnast, every word I said to the Western media was scripted. Big brother watched and followed and listened. I had learned to live with secrets and mistrust and to keep my mouth shut.

I once read about a psychology experiment in which a dog is put in a cage with a bottom that can be triggered to electrically shock him. If the shock consistently comes from the left side, the dog learns to live on the right side. The reverse is true if the shock comes from the right side. But if the shock is inconsistent, coming from left or right randomly, the dog will eventually go crazy. I left Romania because I was going crazy. To learn that not everyone is as inconsistent as my government or the world of gymnastics or Ceausescu did not come easily to me when I arrived in America. I needed time to adjust.

Is it so unlikely that I would have done just as Constantin instructed on the plane, which was to trust him and follow his advice? Back then, I believed that if I listened to the instructions of the man in charge, I would have a better chance of survival. I also sincerely believed that the Romanian government would send someone to
try to kill me. The officials would not let “their Nadia” defect because it would be an embarrassment to the country and a personal insult to Ceausescu. If I got hit by a car or fell off a tall building once I was in America, no one would question my death. I was sure that was how the secret police would do it.

When my plane landed in New York, people waiting for my arrival had packed a conference room at John F. Kennedy Airport. Following a ten-hour flight, I was rushed through customs and straight into a news conference. With Constantin at my side, I told reporters in my best English (which wasn't very good) that I knew life would be different in the United States but that “I was nine times in the States, I know the life here.” Looking back, that statement wasn't just grammatically incorrect, it was horribly green. When asked how the Romanian government might feel about my defection, I said, “It's not my business.”

Those statements were the beginning of my downfall in the eyes of many Americans. They thought I appeared cold and wooden. But consider that I'd just defected from my home and left behind everyone I loved. I'd trudged through freezing water and across icy fields and climbed over barbed-wire fences, all the while expecting to be shot. I'd prayed for asylum in Hungary and again in Austria, then I'd sat on a flight for ten hours next to a man I barely knew, contemplating a life that once again was out of my control. After all of that, I stepped into a room packed with journalists shouting questions and flashing cameras. Suffice it to say that I was shell-shocked.

You've asked if I knew that Constantin had a wife and four children at the time of that first news conference. I knew he was married, but the details didn't concern me,
and that's what I told the media when they asked. My exact words were, “So what?” Constantin had offered to help me defect, and I'd accepted. I assumed that his wife knew that he was going help a handful of Romanians get out of the country and that I was one of them. But what people took from my two-word answer was that I was a home-wrecker. Nothing could have been further from the truth. In hindsight, I understand that I'd made a very poor choice of words.

Constantin had plans to become my personal manager upon our arrival in the United States. I didn't know that, but he'd promised to help me get settled, and I guess I just accepted his involvement in my future career as fair payment for the risks he'd taken. People died every day trying to defect. They drowned attempting to swim the Danube, got bullets in their backs for trying to cross the border, or risked suffocation in containers buried in the holds of ships bound for America. Some people believe Constantin kept me in a virtual prison, but I look at the situation a different way because he helped me come to the United States.

Friend, I will not apologize for my actions when I arrived in America. There are all sorts of excuses. I was in my late twenties, and I should have known better than to trust someone I didn't know. I wish I could take back the way I spoke, acted, and dressed. Of course, you remember all of the bad things—the harsh, overdone makeup; the fishnet stockings; and the short, tight skirts. I thought that was how I was supposed to look. The funny thing is, I thought I looked good. Don't you ever look back on pictures of yourself and wince?

Old friends in the United States—Bela Karolyi and Bart Conner—strained to learn news of my plans. They
tried to contact me by telephone, but Constantin did not relay their messages. One day, Bart read in a newspaper article that I was scheduled to be on Pat Sajak's show. He recalls wondering both why I was going to do a mediocre talk show and why it was still impossible for any friends to contact me. Bart had worked as an announcer for NBC at the last Olympics, and he had a friend, Michael Weisman, who had been the executive producer of NBC Sports. Michael had moved on to be the head of late-night programming for CBS, which is the network that ran the Sajak show. Bart called Michael and asked about my scheduled appearance. I was set to appear that very night. They chatted about my defection and the fact that none of my old friends had been able to contact or see me.

“It would be great to have you on the show, too. Can you be in LA by 5:00 P.M.?” Michael asked. “We'll put you on the air.”

“I don't know,” Bart replied. “I'm in Oklahoma, but I'll check the flights and call you back.”

Bart found a flight, grabbed a bag of clothes, and raced to the airport. He went for two reasons. First, he wanted to see if I needed any help. The press had been harsh about Constantin and me, and many old acquaintances thought something fishy was going on. Second, Bart knew that I might need work, and he had an established business in Oklahoma that could possibly support me. There was nothing romantic about his motivation. It was based on his desire to help a young woman he'd met once who was an icon in our shared sport.

■
Doing Time