When the Place Is a Map, and the Map Is a Maze (1)

An invisible hero story

---

With this piece, I’m starting a series of fiction under the theme of the invisible hero. These will be stories of characters who are driven by hidden voices, life scripts, or beliefs; who have long repressed and forgotten something; who see something that others don’t — and other, similar figures. They will enact the invisible intuitions, voices, whether destructive or rescuing, revelations (or the refusal to have any).

In this first story, a British journalist is returning to modern-day Romania to get a pulse of the place and reveal the real Romania. But is it Romania that he will discover, or maybe a fictional place? And what will he discover, or remember, about himself? This is part 1 (of 3).

So this is Peter Schild, reporting on Romania. Strange country. Even Swiss Air goes wrong there, I can’t exactly figure out how this is possible. But flight trouble is bound to come up when flying to or from there.

I flew Swiss Air to Bucharest after a terrible row with Sharon, my head editor, who’d booked me without caring to ask if I didn’t need at least a night’s rest at home after two months in Chile. I don’t think I’ve spent more than three days put together with my kids this year, and it’s December!

I was so tired and fed up at the check-in, that when the guys told me the tickets were no good, I couldn’t make anything of their words. They had to explain to me that Swiss Air had no flight to Bucharest for that day, and that I had to take the plane to Belgrade, which was the nearest destination they flew to, with a stopover in Paris. I asked how come I had a ticket and a flight number for a plane that did not exist – to which they replied it was not the plane that did not exist, but the destination.

I requested a local guide this time, because I had no brief except for “get the real pulse of the place”, which sounds to me more like digging than going for the highlights. Highlights used to be an easy job in Romania.

Right after checking in at the hotel, I had a nice young lady sitting a bit nervous in the lobby, with a cup of black tea in front of herself. Mona. She’d been waiting for a while.

“Sorry, I really can’t help getting anywhere too early, it happens all the time. Sometimes I wish I could be at least two minutes late, you know, to avoid the embarrassment, but no good.”

She spoke fast, almost gasping, as if her brain wasn’t sure whether it was talking or breathing that should have priority.

She was in her early twenties, still a university student. Dressed almost too smart for the casual onboarding conversation we’d agreed to have, in a sort of power-lady business suit, as if she was trying to look older, I suspect fully aware that she looked like a kid. The outfit, the discreet make-up, the chic haircut couldn’t counter the impression you got watching her face, which bore that taut, streamlined single-mindedness of youth.

Introductions and small talk were quickly dispensed with. Mona didn’t seem to be the waffling type; she was eager to get down to business right away. Maybe eager to prove herself. Maybe that was why she couldn’t help getting anywhere ahead of time?

“So let me first tell you a bit of what I’m doing here,” I started. “We’re interested in the soft part of Romania, you know, not the VIP interviews, not the political or economic analyses – we’ve long done that, and others have done it too. It’s roughly three decades now since such analyses and reports have been dripping in, but we still somehow can’t figure out Romania, you know what I mean? I love Romania, really, I’ve been here many times and met a lot of people, but somehow it still puzzles me –”

“It puzzles us all every day, if that’s of any comfort,” she butted in, as if to reassure me.

“Right,” I said laughing, “so, in brief: I’m here to explore another side of Romania, not what everybody can see. Basically it will mean talking to people, just like you, your friends, your family, simply about what it’s like to be living here. Real life. The real Romania.”

She raised an eyebrow smiling, as if amused by the word “real”, or “simply”, but I carried on. It was too early in the day to get philosophical.

“I’m going to be here for about a week, so I’ve got plenty of time for the Romanian experience. You can help me by arranging meetings and logistics, but I’m quite happy for you to come up with your own ideas, especially as I haven’t got a particular brief for now. What do you think?”

She paused for a second looking down, then raised her eyes and said almost out of breath:

“That sounds great. The Romanian experience.”

This was three days ago. The office had arranged for me to meet the editor-in-chief of a large newspaper and a Health State Secretary. Not very helpful if you’re after the real place, but the conversations were nice enough.

And then, Mona got me clearance to attend a Parliament assembly meeting.

Mona is dynamite, I can tell you. Her English is natural and fluent, and she’s a great guide, with incredible stocks of backstories to everything we come across, from architecture to news to biographies. And of course, gossip. I love her gossip. She knows the juiciest of stories about VIPs, but also about, say, how the Town Hall made a fiasco out of the traffic reorganisation in the city centre, or how a sky-scraper was erected without the proper licence next to an eighteenth-century church and then the order came for it to be pulled down. It’s still standing, though, after a decade: they are scratching their heads apparently as to how to let a bulldozer loose in a historical district. Plus, the money’s gone.

Mona’s quite critical, too, which helps when you’re after the real sense of living in a place. Hearing the people’s criticism is a shortcut for us reporters. It tells us how to interpret what we see. Mona can even be a bit grumpy sometimes, but then I suppose everyone tends to think no place on earth is as frustrating as their own. The reversal of home sweet home.

---

The morning before the Parliament appointment, she woke me up knocking at my door, as usual well ahead of time. I stumbled out of bed and let her in while vanishing into the bathroom. When I emerged a few minutes later, she had already poured hot water for tea for both of us.

Actually I prefer coffee. But then again, she had taken pains to anticipate what she thought would be my wish, thinking that Brits will have tea, won’t they.

She was ready to go into the eventful day. Almost rubbing her hands in excitement.

“So? Excited about it?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, absolutely. I heard lots of things, watched extracts on TV, read journalists’ commentaries about such meetings, but now – I’ll be there to watch it live! To experience it!”

High expectations and big words: I couldn’t help a wry smile.

“So you’re going to experience it,” I echoed her somewhat paternally.

“Of course! And so are you!” she confirmed with emphasis.

I nodded busying myself with the tea.

“Do you know the agenda?” I asked.

“No.”

I waited for more, but nothing seemed to be on the way. I raised my eyes and she sensed my enquiring look.

“Should I?”

I took one or two seconds to shrug.

“I’m not sure it matters to them either,” she added, as if reading my thoughts. “They will just discuss whatever comes up. Agendas!” she scoffed.

“No dress code, I suppose,” I said, going through my mental checklist.

She laughed as in ‘oh, you candid Westerners’ and I took the point.

Outside it was full daylight, but grey. I stood up and went out on the balcony. It felt like stepping into the air. Frosty. I could hear some muffled traffic noise, but seeing? – nothing. Thick milky fog, which you could almost clutch at, shrouded every shape out there in deceptive whiteness. The world was all good from the tenth floor of the Intercontinental.

“Any plans for afterwards?” I asked when we were sitting in the taxi.

“Afterwards? You think there’s an afterwards?” Mona replied.

“Oh, so you think we’re going to be swallowed by a hole in the earth?

“Say goodbye to your people before we vanish into the wormhole, don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

“Okay, fine with me, I guess. Do you know where we can have lunch together in that area?”

“Why, you want an interview with me?” she teased.

But let me skip here. The Parliament meeting was excruciating for anyone trying to make sense of what they hear. I’ve heard a few politicians in my career, as you can imagine, but Eastern Europe beats lots of them.

In case you’ve never really heard of it, nor seen any of my reports on it, the House of Parliament in Bucharest is a stupefying thing. Just to spare you the search on Wikipedia, it’s the largest civilian building in the world – with one thousand and one hundred rooms, and a floor area of over three hundred thousand square metres. To give you some sense of proportion, Bucharest’s central gardens would comfortably fit in – on each floor.

The Parliament assembled to inaugurate the debates on the new constitution, whatever a new constitution was called for. I stepped into the crushingly huge hall, casting my eyes around in wide circles like flashing a torch in a dark cave.

The stately air proper. So much stateliness that you’d wonder where the Romanian state was. Or where the people were for that matter.

The chairing board made their solemn entrance with long faces, tottering on to a podium like an opera stage.

The rest from here was a tedious hotchpotch of phrases vaped out. Allow me to just jot down some of them, in no meaningful order, as I can still recall them.

The communist dictatorship has left us an economic, moral, spiritual inheritance, which has pervaded all the paths of social life, and, worst, the people’s minds. These poisoned remains must be extirpated and the only heal is liberty.

What a beneficial feeling it is when you are free, in your actions, in your inner interlocutions, what a creative power is unleashed by this feeling! To feel protected by the law, defended in your dignity is a priceless achievement. And this is not awarded because you are Somebody, but simply because you are anybody.

Gentlemen, regardless of the party we belong to, the nationality or nation we belong to, of the traditions and education we bring here, there is in front of us all a formidable imperative, that of giving the country a law. Remember, I come from a stream of peasants, for whom the law, no matter how it was, was the law. My peasants must have been Romans.

Beyond doubt we are against privileges and there are people who claim privileges for groups. I am determinedly against privileges. I am against rights too. It is not rights that I want, but rightness, justice. No matter what it is.

Chairmen, prime-minister, senators and deputies, ladies and gentlemen, Mona was chattering on next to me, as if in a trance. No trace left of her edginess, of her perpetual pointed commentary. She kept her eyes closed at times, while her lips were continually moving, droning out surrealist translations.

God’s existence is not to be discussed. Equally, this country’s existence is not to be discussed. We are told, some tell us at least, their ideal is Europe. Mine, only Romania. Thank you.

I shook my head as if to wave all those foggy speeches away and signalled to Mona “let’s get out of here.”

I can’t seem to remember how we found our way out, whether I was showing Mona out or we were both tacitly heading in the same direction. Like rats instinctively finding their way out of a tunnel to survive. When we were in the open air again, we were dazed as if we’d just been spurted out by a monster whale.

The morning fog was gone and a bright, crispy December sun made us feel thankful for the fresh air.

We stopped short on the broad sidewalk of the triumphal boulevard, suddenly aware that we needed an aim.

“Let’s have coffee somewhere, shall we,” I said looking around. Designer shops and insurance offices. Mona imitated me turning her eyes around, searching as if she had never been there in her whole life. Then she shook her head as from a spell and her alert, knowing air was back on her.

“Follow me.”

I think it was one of those few times in life when I was glad to hear that.

We disappeared through the gorge of a passage between the huge buildings. Once out of the concrete walled canyon, we found ourselves in a completely different scenery.

From http://www.ostarchitektur.com/buildings/romania/bucarest.

Behind the massive concrete buildings of the gigantic boulevard built under Ceausescu, there were old houses, once coquette, with rambling roses or – in a different season – blossoming hedges. A disused tram rail was still running along, embossed in the asphalt. A dog burst out barking just a few feet away, only a thin corrugated iron fence between us.

I followed Mona, a bit like explorers in a thick jungle who can’t walk side by side. Indeed, our way kept meandering between stationary cars, round electricity posts, occasionally round some ancient tree with roots protruding the asphalt, forsaken amid the urban development. The houses got ever more cramped into each other. Window panes under arches in the façade, iron-railed fan-shaped covers over entrance doors, paths neatly paved with smooth, fine-grained stone slabs, here a homely cottage, there a city villa of a past age, further away an architect’s fancy house, stairs, rounded corners or turrets and all.

I suddenly almost bumped into Mona, as she was pushing a wrought iron gate. The path to the house was made of fine-hued mosaic, fringed by small slabs, just discernible under thick low evergreen bushes, which looked as if intentionally left to grow wild and overrun borders.

As we stepped in, it got darker so I looked up; over our heads was one of those arches that are overgrown with wisteria, vine or ivy, so typical in the Bucharest of the old days, I am told. Bare in the heart of December, the knotty, tangled branches were making up a thick grid.

The path with its arch created a semi-obscure tunnel, which added a homely, but also enigmatic air to the place.

Passing by a cellar window, left ajar, I caught a whiff of musty smell, like dozens of books piled together and rotting away under their own weight in the humid air. Something twinged for a moment in my guts with a vague recognition before sinking back into nothing.

The house was on our left and we’d just reached the few steps to its massive door. I stretched my neck to see if there was something else beside the house, further down the path. While Mona reached out for the door knob, I saw: indeed, just next to the house on the right hand, was a small green spot with two full-grown hydrangeas. I froze in bewilderment, so that Mona had to turn to me and say,

“You coming?”

I looked up at her startled, then for a second glanced towards the hydrangeas again. Mona caught my glance and stepped back to where I was standing and took a look herself.

“What? Have you seen something?”

I just grunted looking down, minding the step.

Mona pushed the massive door open. No, it did not screech as in a horror movie, but it was heavy and slow opening. A dark oak door with a greenish hued art glass panel protected by a wrought iron grid.

There was an uncanny diffuse light soaking the place, so I looked up to see what lamp that was, but there was none in the tall ceiling.

It wasn’t a room actually, just an entrance hall. The walls around: intentionally rugged, covered in that washed paint of an indefinite colour, anything between grey, rosa and green.

Mona had swiftly taken off her jacket and hung it under the arch of an umbrella-coat-hanger, as if under an apple tree on a picnic day. I found myself for a few short seconds contemplating her as in a daze, at a loss for grasp.

“Well? Tea and coffee are out of this world here,” Mona said to entice me. “Won’t you take off your coat?”

I nodded hurriedly, like one just coming back from hypnosis. She helpfully took my coat and hung it next to hers.  She then started up the next few steps that were leading into the house itself. At the top of the stairs there were two doors with side panels fitted with the same hued art glass as the entrance door, the doors wide open to the inside. When I stepped across the threshold created by the glass panels, my head started spinning in an attempt to take bearings.

It was much more sophisticated than I could have imagined.

Go straight to Part 2 here.