In cell with Aurel State

… So there I was, languishing in my cell, when the door opened and the dog-like guard spoke to me in a mercifully soft voice:

I’m putting you in another cell. You see, there’s this crippled man called State. He’s lying on the floor and says he’s going to stay there until he dies. I don’t want any trouble. You’re an educated man. Get him up. I’m going to report this to the Colonel.

So I’m taken to the cell where Aurel State was indeed lying on his back in the middle of the cell. Luckily for him, he had ended up in one of the relatively “warm” cells with no water or urine on the floor.

I introduced myself and we quickly became friends, as Aurel was from Schitu-Golești, near Câmpulung Muscel, and we had a number of mutual acquaintances.

Although he didn’t consider himself a legionnaire (according to the rule that officers shouldn’t be involved in politics), he was obviously a sympathiser of ours and had many friends, such as Puiu Atanasiu, Popescu Vorkuta, all well-known legionnaires.

Aurel explained to me that from Bucharest he had always had the right to his bed, but here in Aiud, because he had had a heated and contradictory discussion that had infuriated Christmas, he had given up his power to suspend this right, which was essential to him.

Besides, he said, a mountain hunter is trained to sleep on frozen ground, and we never did that in our campaign against Bolshevism.

The guard, of course, looked through the peephole, saw that Aurel State was not getting up and went to report to Col. Crăciun. Since he had probably done something illegal by taking Aurel State’s right to bed, a right granted to him by the higher authorities in Bucharest, Col. Crăciun became frightened and ordered State to be taken back to the Zarca and left there to lie down.

And so I escaped a dozen days of solitary confinement, because I was taken out with Aurel State and placed with him in a cell on the floor of the Zarca.

(Puiu Năstase – Temerarii, edited by Gheorghe Andreica, Metafora Publishing House, Constanța, 2004, pp. 394-395)