by Nicuţă Tănase (1924-1986)
excerpt FURTHER ON YOU WILL FIND OUT THAT I HAVE A GOOD MOTHER, A NAGGING SISTER AND A FATHER WHO ALWAYS YELLS Why should we lie, I know that you don't know my Christian name, nor my surname either. You have all heard that I am called Cry-Baby. Well, I was unfairly nicknamed that way. Were we to show good judgment, then all the children in the world should be called Cry-Babies. Why, don't you cry, too? Don't you? Let's get serious! I should conk my sis for this, since she is to blame. I once hit her with a trumpet (this happened back when I used to play with trumpets, drums and lead soldiers). As I was saying, I hit her in the head, which caused such a lump… for fear I might take a knock from my mother, I started to cry. Have you never done such a thing? Don't lie to me! Ileana felt her head where I had hit her, swallowed hard, and when her tears started to run down her cheeks, she began to laugh, a forced laughter though, for she was in pain. I was crying and looking at her from the corner of my eye to see what she was doing. "You Cry-Baby! He hits and then cries, Cry-Baby!"Hence, my name has been Cry-Baby ever since. Now, be honest, nobody deserves a nickname for such a trifle, do they? They don't, you say? Well then, my dearest, I'll let you know that my real name is Victor. Victor Condrut, also called Victoras. I live at 138 Arcului St. and our yard is all asphalted. In case you feel like paying me a visit (my mother's marmalade is the best…), I mean it, if you want to drop by, please do, you will find me very easily, honestly.You may forget the number of the house. Don't fret. Start walking up the road and have a look at every house. Wherever you see an asphalted yard, an American well with a pulley and a big round handle, do come in, that is my dwelling. Don't be put off by the door plate reading "Bad Dog." It has been there since we had Shepherd. What a dog! By dusk, nobody could enter the yard; it would jump on anyone like a panther. It was taken by the dog catchers. I wish God took them along, too. "Mom." "Yes, Victoras." "Would you mind if some children paid me a visit?" "Why should I, Victoras?" "Mom, I bragged that you would make the best marmalade in the world. Will you give them some marmalade?" "I will, why not, Victoras?" You have heard her, do come by whenever you find the time. I have a good mother. I know you do, too. But I am afraid that mine is one of the kind. We are the apple of her eye. I will never be able to part with her. When I grow up, I will continue to live with my mother. "No, Victoras, you won't. You will get married and you will forget me." "No, Mom, I won't. I won't get married. I will live with you forever." "All children say so and then, when they grow up…" "Mom, I won't forget. I will never forget." "Let's hope so… Victoras, where is Ileana? See to her, she shouldn't go out in the street." "She is playing. She is with Sanda, madam Parota's daughter, in the garden."We also have an orchard: peach trees, apricot trees, autumn plums, as big as a fist. From one gate to the other there is a vine vault. It is heavy with grapes. Both black and white. You won't be seeing us buying fruit from the market. Do come by, and you will never want to leave again. Your mother will tell you off for being late. You can bet on that. This beautiful house is not ours, it is my grandpa's. That is to say, my father's father. My mother didn't have a house when she got married. She didn't have many things either. She used to be a washerwoman. And you can't make lots of money out of washing. How could she have? Father brought her in his house. It would have been better if father hadn't had a house either. It would have been much better! But what can she do? She just swallows hard and says nothing. Sometimes, when father comes home drunk, but wait, you don't know anything about father. Not even what he looks like. You may have seen him. He is tall, with long bushy eyebrows. You'd think he frowns all the time. No, it is just what he looks like. He speaks little and he is an unmatched foreman. He works for Grivita Railways. He was praised many times and he was given a decoration. When he comes from work at four, he washes his hands, he eats, and after that he will not stay still. He sweeps the yard, although mother has already swept it, he waters the flowers, he prunes the grapevines, the trees, fixes an air-shaft, puts the rubbish in the barrow and takes it to the rubbish dump. (He made the barrow. Out of some scrap iron. If you could see what a good barrow he managed to make!) He won't stop working until the evening comes. Then he washes. Mother heats some water for him to wash his feet too. And after he has washed, he climbs in bed and he starts feeling his calluses, which are rough and painful! Afterwards, he takes the newspaper he brings from work everyday and reads. "What did you do at work today, Costica?" "I worked, what else…" And father goes on reading. Mother knows he worked but she wants to have a chat with him. When father reads the newspaper, me and Ileana whisper to each other. But we don't talk, I usually read to Ileana fairy tales with Princes Charming and beautiful Ileana Cosinzeana. "Am I Cosinzeana, too, Victoras?" "Shht, father is reading." "But I want to know!" "No, you are just Ileana." "No, I am Ileana Condrut, I live on Arcului at 138, the daughter of Constantin Condrut, but more of my mom's. I am not only Ileana, am I, mom?" "You are not, darling." Mother knits and glances at father and then at us. Sometimes, when father comes home drunk (very seldom, indeed, but I wish he wouldn't at all), then he likes to talk, the drinks put him in the mood to chat. If possible, mother would disappear from the face of the earth when she sees him blasted. "Why have you washed my father's laundry?" "Costica, don't get angry. He is your father. Why shouldn't I wash it?" "Let him hire himself a washerwoman. Now you are no longer a washerwoman. You are Madam Condrut. You are a lady. Do you hear me? You are no longer a washerwoman. You used to be. I made you a lady. I brought you in my house. I want to forget that my wife was a washerwoman. Yes, I do, and you keep washing his laundry. Why don't you go wash the neighbors' laundry as well? You should. The wife of foreman Condrut should wash the neighbors' dirty laundry. Do you hear me? That is what you should be doing." "Shut up, Costica. Go to bed." "I brought you in my house! Foreman Condrut brought you in his house." "When we got married, you were not a foreman yet, Costica." "No, I wasn't, but I am now. You were a washerwoman. I am foreman Condrut." Mother starts crying. We cry along with her and we don't know why. When he wakes up, father is silent again. Mother cries for a long time. Days on end. Weeks on end. She sees to her chores, she cooks, with tears in her eyes. When it is four o'clock, she washes her eyes, so that nobody could tell she has been crying. Father comes in, eats and starts working around the house. He washes his feet, pampers his calluses again, and reads his newspaper. "Costica darling, let's move house." Father drops the newspaper and watches mother. "Why should we move house?" "Let's rent a house somewhere, so that you wouldn't be embarrassed when I walk next to you in the street." "Where should we move?" "Anywhere. Let's just go away from here. You think that the people laugh at you because you married a washerwoman. You are wrong, Costica. People don't say anything bad about me. They think you are the one who has gone mad. I mean it, Costica, let us look for a house in another neighborhood." Father resumes his reading. Mother says it is better this way. She wouldn't tell him the truth. The truth is that mother has tried every possible way. In secret, she washed my grandpa's laundry, but father found out. Then she refused to wash his clothes again. Grandpa got angry, too. "Very nice of you, you wouldn't wash a shirt for me, would you? You all live in my house for free, when I could rent it to get some money, and I don't have any clean shirt. You got married, you forgot the time you were the washerwoman of the well-to-do." "Father, I would wash your clothes, but I can't." "The washerwoman got rich." Grandpa puts tobacco in his pipe, puffs, presses the tobacco with his forefinger and starts smoking. Mother cries again. She cries until father comes. She washes her eyes again so that nobody could tell she has been crying. But our orchard with apricot trees, peach trees and autumn plum trees is very beautiful! And then again, the asphalted yard with a vine vault from one gate to the other is even more beautiful! Please, do come! You won't even suspect that mother has been crying. By the time you have entered the gate, mother will have already washed her eyes. She will laugh with us, she will caress us, she will speak in a sweet voice, because that is my mother like. She is kind, very kind. You will see that her eyes are red. You will see that I have been crying too, but you won't call me Cry-Baby, will you? Aren't washwomen entitled to a life? What are washerwomen? What have they done to deserve to cry? What harm do they do? They wash laundry, all women wash the laundry. One day, Ileana came from grandpa with tears running down her cheeks. "Why are you crying, Ileana?" Mother took her in her arms. "Tell me, Ileana, why are you crying?" "Grandpa told me that I am the washerwoman's daughter." "And why are you crying?" "Well, you cry too when father calls you that." Mother hugs her harder, covers her with kisses and tries to hush her. But then mother starts crying too. Tears fill her eyes and then tears fill my eyes too. Then I ask Ileana to come with me in the garden. What a beautiful garden! Mother enters the kitchen and wipes her eyes. She comes out and shouts at us not to eat unripe wax cherries (I have forgotten to tell you: we also have wax cherry trees). We sometimes do eat them unripe. "Why shouldn't we eat unripe wax cherries?" Ileana asks me. I answer: "If you eat may wax cherries you get sick and die." "Why do you die?" "Because you get sick." "Isn't it a good thing to die?" "No, it isn't." "Mother says it would be better if she died, I heard her once. Yes, she did say that." "She was joking." "Why did she joke, Victoras?" "I don't know." "I do." "Why?" Ileana picks up a wax cherry, takes a glance at me and throws the fruit over the fence. "Because father told her she used to be a washerwoman." I help her to dress her doll and give it to her to hug it. She hugs it and sings: "Sleep well, my baby." Just like her mother used to do when she was little. I lie on the grass and I start reading. "Victoras, mother won't be a washerwoman anymore, will she? I won't be either, because father doesn't like it." "No, he doesn't." "Why was mother a washerwoman, then? Wasn't she a good girl when she was little? I am a good girl." "No, you aren't. You won't let me read." "Well, I want to read, too." "Please, do." "But I can't. You won't read to me and I will tell on you." I read aloud Cinderella's story. Ileana listens, watches me and thinks. "Victoras, Cinderella wasn't a good girl either, was she?" "Yes, she was." If you drop by, I will take Ileana to some friends of hers to play with them. She is really nagging! I can't read a line because of her. She always asks me something: why this, why that. A baby! I used to be a baby once, but I wasn't so nagging as my sis. Most of our neighbors come to my mother. They have a chat. They sympathize with her. "Let it go, why are you wasting your life with him? Can't you see he has been so big-headed since he became a foreman?" This neighbor of ours is right. Since father became a foreman, mother has been crying much more. But why should she leave father? We wouldn't have a father anymore. We love him. I don't want it, Ileana doesn't want it, mother doesn't want it either. No, no, we don't want to be left without father. "What are you going to do, are you going to cry all life long?" "I care for him, he is my husband. We have been married for fifteen years. We have been together for better and worse. He is my man. I love him." "Then grit your teeth and stop crying. Swallow hard. For sometime he hasn't even said hello, he wouldn't notice people in the street, he has been keeping his head down…" Mother swallows hard. It's been ages since he took mother out. He goes out all alone. Our neighbors go to the cinema, mother stays home. There was a movie at the market. Even some artists. We went by ourselves. Me and Ileana. Mother stayed home. All day long father played backgammon with madam Albulescu's son-in-law and in the evening he got dressed and left. He said he was going to work to see how things were; on Sunday, to work! "Madam Condrut, maybe he has found himself another woman. He walks on the street as if he were in love…" I take Ileana by the arm and lead her to the gate. I let them talk. I sit on the bench in front of the gate and Ileana plays with the little bucket in the sand in front of the house. They have brought sand and stone to repair the street. Now we can play hide-and-seek. Now, at dusk, when it is getting darker and darker, it is good to play hide-and-seek. There are lots of places to hide. I wait for the other children to come and to start playing with them. Father has not come yet. He said was going to be in a meeting. So far I have read The Blue Cup by Arkady Gaidar. I have read it to Ileana as well. She listened very carefully and she started nagging me again. "Victoras, Svetlana hasn't broken the blue cup, has she? The mean gray rats are to blame, aren't they? Aren't they?" "Yes, they are." "Svetlana is a good girl, like me, isn't she, Victoras?" "You are a good girl if you let me play with children of my own age and you go in the yard or inside the house." "But I want to play with you." "You are younger than me. Besides, you won't be of much good in our games, you are a little girl." "But I will be a grown-up one day!" "You said you are a good girl like Svetlana. You aren't." "Why, I am, I am!" Then Ileana looks down the street and starts shouting: "Daddy! Daddy is home!" She runs to him. Father takes her in his arms and comes with her. He kisses me. He has been drinking again. "Is your mother at home?" "Yes, she is." He goes in. I stay with Ileana at the gate, waiting for my friends. Later on, there is scandal in the house. Father is yelling again. Ileana wants to enter the house. I keep her by my side. The children have come. They have started the game, without me joining them. I start to cry. Maybe the children are right to call me Cry-Baby! But I am not the only one who cries! Tineretului, 1957
by Nicuţă Tănase (1924-1986)
by Nicuţă Tănase (1924-1986)