42
PATRUZECI ȘI DOI
oland.
Hungary.P
East Germany.
Czechoslovakia.
Bulgaria.
Their communist regimes had all fallen.
“Yugoslavia will be complicated,” said Bunu. “They have six republics to balance. Conflicts since Tito died.”
If Yugoslavia would be complicated, what did that mean? Was Romania the last ring holding the Iron Curtain? I shivered in my closet, making entries in my notebook.
DO YOU FEEL ME?
HEATING A BRICK
TO WARM MY SLEEP
DRIFTING INTO DREAMS
IN SEARCH OF MYSELF,
IN SEARCH OF A CONSCIENCE, A COUNTRY
• • •
Later that week, Starfish appeared in his black boots and a brand-new suede jacket. He pulled me aside on the street.
“Nice coat. Where’d you get it?” I asked.
“Forget the coat, did you hear? Nadia Comăneci defected. She trekked through the woods, made it over the border into Hungary, and requested asylum.”
“What?” Romania’s star Olympic gymnast, Nadia Comăneci, had defected? “Where did you hear that?” I asked.
“Tass, the Soviet news agency. I know someone,” said Starfish. “News about it has been blacked out here.”
News was blacked out. But we soon heard it on Voice of America.
Nadia Comăneci had arrived . . . in the United States.
One of Romania’s biggest celebrities had no access to a passport, no privacy, and no freedom. Of course not. She had been considered property of Romania, owned by the State. Until now.
Nadia’s international attention probably enraged Mother Elena. After all, there was room for only one hero in Romania.
Him.
I began the slow march to the entrance of my gray apartment block.
Had Mr. Van Dorn helped Nadia? How many others were trying to run through the snow toward the Hungarian border? If Romania’s superstars were suffering, would the world finally understand the terrible plight of the
ordinary Romanian people?
No. Of course not.
How could we expect others to feel our pain or hear our cries for help when all we could do was whisper?