Florin Grancea - The Pigs' Slaughter

I swear to God, I was so young when he talked with me about why he cried when he listened to that carol that I couldn’t really understand him. I tried to, but it felt so strange to cry at that very happy moment. Only years later, in 1995, when my father had been buried 10 months, I started to cry the very moment the words “Joseph and Mary” hit my chest, and I cried like my father did and like my grandfather did before him, knowing everything my father used to know, and my grandmother was dead too. Only my mother, my sister, and I were left. We gave the young men money for their performance, because money was everything those days. Money had become more important than life.

However, back in 1989 we gave the young men the sweet cheese cake that my mom made for them and a kilo of smoked ham. That particular ham we made from the pig’s muscles situated along the back bone. It was kept in salt for one day and smoked for another two. We used to eat it raw if smoked more than 10 days. It was still fresh so the young men had to fry it before thrusting it into their stomachs. We also gave them 100 lei, the same amount that Ceauşescu promised everybody in his last speech.

The following year was to be the last year people gave those sweet cakes and meat to the carol singers. Romania wasn’t starving anymore and imported meat was available in food stores all the time. The young men didn’t fast and those cakes and the meat they got they couldn’t eat. So when they got drunk they had food fights with the bread and meat, and threw it in the snow, and the old people saw it, and we all just stopped giving those traditional gifts. And they got only money, until Romania entered the European Union in 2004 and young people migrated in mass to work in construction, as babysitters, as dishwashers and cleaning toilets for our wealthier European brothers and entire streets were left without their young people’s packs. I heard that the heads of families still cry. The only difference is that they cry not because they are hit with the lyrics of “Joseph and Mary”, but because there are no lyrics to hit them. No carols, except those re-mixed modern carols coming out of not old black and white, but new color TV sets. Merry Christmas, Romania, wherever you are!

It was already early when we went to bed, leaving, as customary, the gate open. That was for carol singers, whoever they were. Also sometimes friends or relatives came, even at three or four in the morning. But my father called it a day. He was sure that on that particular night, when the good people of Romania and its soldiers under the command of Iliescu, were battling terrorists and vicious forces of the former regime, we would have no visitors. So I got into my warm bed in which my mother had placed as usual at my feet a fire heated ceramic tile wrapped in towels. That would keep warm for hours, and I happily welcomed sleep. I was free, I had a happy and loving family, and I had nothing to fear. The only thing ahead was Christmas Day, the most peaceful and full of love day of the year.

Strange as it is, those warm feelings of love and peace were utterly absent from Colonel Kamenici’s head in Targoviste. Not that he was dead or he wasn’t capable of feeling love and peace. He could, but not on that bloody night. He was still cursing Boboc and Stoica for their lack of guts. Why didn’t those two suckers kill Nicolae and Elena? He could’t understand it. His orders were clear. At least clearer than those he gave to Tecu and Mares on the morning of the 23rd. Why the hell did them sonsof-bitches not comply?

“It’s you or him! You got it?” “You are finished”. “Only one of you will survive this Revolution alive”. The words of General Voinea, the head of the First Army, were banging ever louder in his head.

Half an hour later, as if his prayers had been answered by the God he didn’t believe in, their unit was attacked with gunfire from the north. So he took a TAB and drove it to the tanks’ positions where he had a long discussion with the tanks commander, lieutenant-colonel Mutu.

“How many tanks could he count on if they were to take the two Ceauşescus in a march to Bucharest?” was his question. “Sixteen” was the answer.

“And, if we are attacked on our way there?” he asked again. “Then we will stop, group the tanks together and fight”, was the answer.

“And, if we are outnumbered and overpowered?” he asked again and lieutenant-colonel Mutu said calmly:

“Then we kill Ceauşescu.”

Twenty years after that night we can only guess that that plan wasn’t pursued because it was impossible to overpower 16 heavy TR80 Army Tanks. To overpower them one had to have 16 brand new soviet tanks or 20 brand new Abraham tanks, and it wasn’t likely the invisible terrorists could get their hands on heavier artillery.

Maybe that was the reason why the two Ceauşescus didn’t spend their last night in military beds, as they had spent the two nights before, but seated inside a TAB armored personnel carrier, along with their impossibly stinky and sleepy guards. Kamenici ordered Nicolae and Elena to get in a TAB. They would be in danger, if the headquarters were stormed by hostile forces. First they didn’t want to but they had to comply. With them, their guards Stoica and Boboc and another one, an officer with Tragoviste’s Militia. The driver was a civilian. Those were the times. The Army started to fight for the people and not against them so they had to welcome civilians that wanted to lend a hand, not that they were in any need of civilians there. So the TAB started its noisy engine to start its heater and everybody tried to sleep while they waited for morning.

But that TAB wasn’t the only one with a running engine there. Behind it was another one and in this one Kamenici was waiting. He had with him lieutenant-colonel Dinu, and as a driver he had private Stoican; another one, named Birtan was holding an AKM. There was a radio man and another soldier. It wasn’t crowded, but they all started to breathe easy when Kamenici went out for a smoke, everybody thought. But as Kamenici was smoking he called his driver.

Many years after that night, private Stoican recalled: “Kamenici was smoking. He was wearing a pufoaică”. It was the same kind of winter coat that was turned into alcohol after being dipped in urine and shit by the Revolution-loving Romanian people.

“He had his hands in his pockets, and he asked me:” “You, you know who’s in that TAB?”

“So what could I possibly say? So I said:”

“Sir, I heard something but I can’t be sure, sir!”

“And he told me:”

“If you want a place in the history books, go over there and shoot them both”.

Stoican was trying to control his fear when Kamenici went to the TAB holding Ceauşescu and pulled the driver out. He told the man he was a civilian and it was Christmas Eve.

“Go to your wife and kids, thank you for what you did for the Revolution, Merry Christmas and God bless you and your family” he said, and asked the reluctant Stoican to take his place. “I didn’t want to, but I had no power to say no. I was almost crying. I begged my commander to change his mind because I wasn’t shaved and I couldn’t present myself before our supreme commander in the shape I was in. But there I was inside. Kamenici had to push me to get me in, but once I was in the driver’s seat I saw them. They were wearing military clothes and looked at me with bright eyes. Stoica and Boboc had guns on their knees but they were almost asleep. They tried to open their eyes but they were so tired that they couldn’t. If Ceauşescu had wanted to take one of their guns he could have done it. Paisie however wasn’t sleeping but his gun was sticking out a crenel (a shooting hole), and sometimes he would just speak with Ceauşescu”.