22. It occurred in Bucharest, on the planet Earth
“Stop the engine!” cried a man gesturing.
A man in an overall, a worker runs to the tractor cable tied to the jagged wall of the villa.
“Stopped!” he cries.
But it is too late. The mechanic had already received the signal to start, the engines were running, nobody could hear the voice of the alarming man. The mechanic stepped on the pedal: the huge tractor jerked. Pulled down by the cable the wall cracked, moved, turned over, and made everything crumble. A terrifying roar was heard. The earth shook under the feet.
A cloud of dust. Next come the firemen’s vehicles, water jets wet the debris to clear the air so that the excavators and trucks can start working.
The alarmed worker’s voice is heard again:
“Hey, fellows, I think there was a man in this house. You have crushed a living man!”
All the equipment stopped working one by one.
The worker explains waving his hands. He says that at a certain moment he seemed to have seen a man moving inside the building. He says:
“A bearded guy, a shabby fellow.”
“Are you sure? When? Where?”
“So it seemed to me. I couldn’t see very well from afar. But there was a shabby man standing near the window. I’ve seen him before, walking around; he avoided us and used to sleep summer here.”
“Yes, have you seen him of late?”
“Yes, a guy beginning to get bald, a drunkard or alike, they say a doctor or something like this, a scholar, crazy, I think. If that was the man at all. He may be the one. A homeless guy. We were driving him away but he used to creep into and sleep in the evacuated houses.”
“Doctor Sandu, maybe?”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
They started looking for him. Teams were formed to clear away the overturned walls. They worked systematically, rummaging around.
Foreman Pavel Manolache turned up. He was desperate but he wouldn’t show. He pretended not to know anything. He was spurring his workers:
“Come on, guys, you who worked with the victims of disasters before, in the earthquake times. Come here, you who have such an experience.”
Pavel had got his experience by working with the clearing teams after the earthquake. But one day he said that had been an insignificant experiment as compared to the fury of the demolitions.
They rummage in the debris. They carefully lift the concrete in the beams. Perhaps he’s still alive somewhere squeezed between two beams. Perhaps he is blocked under a wall edge. There have been cases before. As they cleared the debris away, others were loading it into the trucks.
“Maybe he was not inside”, said a worker hoping to save their faces.
But at 4.00 p.m. a soldier found among the ruins one hand, one arm.
The right hand from elbow to palm.
The ‘militia’ man made a report.
When I reach there I find the place full of people. They are still gathering. The sun sets down and people keep gathering. It is the same sight as when Sandu Tariverde told me pointing to the petrified crowd: “They seem to have come to my funerals”.
It’s cold, it’s a snowless March. Lit candles are everywhere.
I elbow my way through the crowd. I come closer to the place: a piece of linen on which lies a human hand.
Foreman Pavel sees me. He introduces me to the forensic doctor from the Medical Legal Institute and to the ‘militia’ man. They asked me whether I could identify the body.
Sandu Tariverde’s hand. One can see the bruise of the cudgel blow he got during that night when the church was pulled down. I told them:
“Yes, it’s doctor Tariverde’s hand.”
They asked me to keep in touch with them until the final confirmation of his identity.
“Do you know any relatives of the victim? Who else can we contact?”
“He doesn’t have any relative. His ex-wife lives somewhere in Dobrudja.”
It was settled that I should take care of the decease certificate.
“If only we could find a coat, some documents, perhaps the identity card”, says the ‘militia’ man.
“He didn’t have any documents! I tell them. He didn’t have an identity card, either. His documents are just one sheet of his identity card and his doctor’s diploma; they are at my place.”
“Bring them to us, please”, he said.
“I will.”
They searched until the night fell. But no other remnants of the man’s body could be found.
The people around surround me and look at me with a respect I do not deserve. I realize that echoes of Sandu’s sacrifice bring credit to me now. Once Sandu told me that he owed me a lot, at least for the last ten years when he had no salary. But what he gives back to us now obliges us all and all our successors.
They ask me:
“Who was the man? What did he do? What kind of doctor was he? Why did he sleep here? Was this his house? Did they demolish his house and he refused to leave the place? Did he commit suicide as a protest? Where did he live?”
I say: “He lived in all the houses that were to be demolished. From one end to the other end of Bucharest. He carries, thus, with him, everybody’s penitence. But he didn’t think of that. Maybe he couldn’t bear life any more. He just couldn’t.”
A woman is weeping.
Did Sandu Tariverde look for this particular end, where irony and defiance were emphasized by a tragic significance?
A ‘militia’ man comes closer and tells me:
“You would better go now. We must clear the place.”
That was Sandu Tariverde’s funerals. It was a simple and solemn watch. The news spread around. People come and go. A pilgrimage to his right hand.
People come, stay for a moment, looking fascinated at his right hand. Some of them stay there, whisper to one another. It’s getting dark.
They continued to search for him the next day as well. Nothing else of his body could be found.
That was Sandu Tariverde’s end. The report says “accident of work”.
I think it was a choice. He found that particular way to make his scream heard. I don’t want to idealize him. But this end reflects his style.
A man, I know nothing about him, gives a different account. He says: “Sir, the man came as drunk as a lord; it wasn’t the first time when it happened so. He went in and fell asleep. Sound asleep. I’ve heard he used to sleep in the evacuated houses, in-between their evacuation and demolition. The workers barely took notice of his sleeping there. Of course they checked before starting to pull down a house. But today that man wanted to sleep more, and they didn’t notice him. It was an accident, sir. They pulled the house down over him.”
There were some who did not believe this version. You mean he slipped in though he saw the bulldozers and all the other vehicles ready to start?
“Yes, sir! Says the man I know nothing about. One could have cut a log on him when he was drunk. He wouldn’t have got up.”
Sandu Tariverde’s existence seems to me a replica of our tragic and comic times. A replica of this harsh history of ours. His whole life is a replica of our times. I don’t know if it is the best replica, but I’m sure it is according to the times.
In rest, everything is possible. He might have been sound asleep while the bricks were falling onto his head and the engines were roaring. He might have been awake and terrified, as the worker who had caught a glimpse of him in the window had said.
It’s morning. There are few people around. Many of them came back during the next day and night. These ruins cherish the dust of Sandu Tariverde’s body. They lit candles. They felt he was one who sacrified himself for all the others. They feel stronger. Sandu’s body is mixed with the dust and the debris. The entire Mosilor Road is founded on a human sacrifice.
I see him, I remember him. He shakes his head as if “It doesn’t matter!”, he smiles. He lived with the feeling that his life was as it should be.
Sometimes, when he was very tired, he wondered whether he had failed or not: but that was the effect of certain comparisons, the pressure of certain mentalities, the echo of some insults. But generally speaking he lived on the border between defiance and freedom. Sometimes, a short illumination gave him the satisfaction of his superiority, the awareness that all of us lived a farce.
Other times he was incapable of acknowledging his superiority and a remnant of mental enslavement made him regret certain professional failures.
Or, out of a sense of contradiction, he said that he was Abel, the nomad with no herds. He said: “Cain’s race has disappeared and Abel grows more and more neurotic every day.”
Three days people came and lit candles in Sandu Tariverde’s memory all over the place of that demolished house. On the fourth day, topographers started to measure the place and soldiers to dig for the foundation of a supermarket.
I cannot tell you anything about the end of the second bird of the sky, Tofana. Sandu Tariverde got mixed with the dust of the town. What about Tofana? Where is Tofana?
It’s been a long time since I haven’t heard from her. Where is she? This book itself can be a probe thrown into the silence of the world: “Give me a piece of news about those who disappeared, people!”
First, I thought that her long absence confirms once again her typical conduct. It’s her style. She won’t give any sign for weeks and then she will rush into the silence of the town and make a mess of the precarious order as the monkey from the Chinese story did.
Winter has gone. Spring has come. No news.
Today I remember the scene at the subway station when a man was caught by two ‘militia’ men, two more appeared and dragged the captive to the basement. I was trembling, but I made up my mind to interfere. Tofana told me: “Yes, there should be at least one witness to this capture… I fear that one day the same might happen to me. I fear I might be alone when they catch me.” I remember: it was dark, the subway ‘militia’ station, I was scared, but I knew I was protected – somewhere, on the platform, among the people, I had a witness. I entered the basement to be a witness. The chain of witnesses is, after all, our historical experience beyond time. Our memory.
That was a nerve-wrecking evening. I defended myself with a card. The photograph of a bearded man. The party and the state. In the beast’s paws. “Your people have sequestered a person. I was present when he was captured, it was brutish and degrading. I will speak to the Press division.” It was an efficient intervention. But for it, the young man might have been deadly beaten. When she saw me coming back, Tofana said: “Yes, press people still have a voice in this country. If only they would use it.” Then she continued: “Oh, God, where will you be when they grab me?” I told her: “Stop living with this obsession. Don’t make a neurosis of persecution. Keep your self-control. You haven’t done anything wrong. And, after all, you have an emigration passport.”
Then, silence.
A thought crosses my mind: to go to a few embassies to find out if she got the entry visa. I knew that she had applied for visa to 32 embassies. I could have started in alphabetical order with the countries she hoped to get visa from. But how shall I make such an investigation? Who will let me do it? These are insurmountable difficulties. First, the Romanian guards, who won’t let me in. Second, the suspicion of the foreign embassies who will wonder why I make such an investigation. Everyone is suspicious in this world.
There’s another hindrance. Besides the 32 embassies I know, Tofana might have applied for visa to some more during the time she didn’t call on me. I can’t find out what doors she knocked at after our last conversation.
I can’t fathom the jails either.
I’m thinking to contact the International Organizations for the Human Rights. I have a friend – a sailor – on a commercial ship; I’ll ask him to take a complaint to the Western countries.
Is she in jail? I wonder. Tofana was afraid of this perspective. The validity of her passport was about to expire and she was afraid she would be again at the discretion of the Romanian authorities. She was afraid of the decree no. 153 and of more than 100 other decrees. Did she learn well enough the exercises of resistance and the secret key that might help her easily endure the extermination regime in our jails?
Maybe she managed to leave. I can imagine her in this hypostasis: getting on the plane with her luggage of 25 kg – the wanderer’s suitcase.
“Good enough, she said. 25 kg… the great apostles wandered with empty hands and one pair of sandals. But I’m not worth of that simplicity. I’m not worth of anything.”
I imagine her leaving, flying. Breathing freely that she broke loose from her country’s cage. Free. I imagine her reaching a big city of her rebirth or perdition. Singing in a bar in steams of alcohol and smoke. Or dressing a nun’s robe in the Holy Land. There is so much life in her that hasn’t been lived yet. That is why I’ve always seen her exposed to two opposite devouring flames, a pray to her instincts and a pray to her spirit.
I imagine her traveling by the planet trains, permanently fretting, looking for her complementary half and not getting it. Obsessed to protect her virginity: her fear, her world war. Or, giving birth to an illegitimate baby and putting it on the steps of a cathedral and running away from the place… Fleeing into the world… Praying in foreign churches with the feeling that it’s a sin to pray in somebody else’s church: too naïve to examine the bond between religion and God. And always missing important meetings, staring at closed gates, living in a precarious eternity…
Out of everything I can think of her, true is only this: she has no sense of time, she measures time not in hours but in Sundays. She is in a mental hebephrenic state, in a continuous half-trance. Owing to this feature of her mind I feel her now returning to nothingness – not to dust as Sandu Tariverde. She returned to that debatable nothingness which is subtler than dust (Time?) – and which is our genuine origin, the genuine substance we were made of, long before the succession of the illusions send us onto what is called planet Earth.