John Ianolide’s care for a sick prisoner

In Aiud, in November 1954, Radu[1] fell ill in a cell on the third floor, on the north side. The illness began with the usual symptoms of influenza, but fever, sweating and a state of deep fatigue did not abate (…) Radu’s illness progressed. New symptoms appeared, including abdominal pain, which got worse and worse. (…) His fever was high. Mircea quickly took his thermometer and told him no more than “38-38 with…” (…)

After a while Radu woke up. He stood up on one elbow. He forced his eyes to open. He couldn’t make out what surrounded him in a kind of misty semi-darkness. A man’s shadow loomed over him, still trying to put a spoon in his mouth, holding a bottle in his left hand.

– Be still. Be quiet. Open your mouth. That’s right, sip from the spoon. It’s a good tonic. Look at me, do you know me?

– No… than… thank you. It’s your… very good. I don’t, I don’t, I can see you. Li… light!? (…)

Radu could hear, he understood what was being said. His memory was slowly awakening, but when he tried to form words, sentences, his tongue clenched, his mouth clenched, and his eyes struggled to penetrate the layers of felt that blended everything around him.

– A! Look at him, he’s smiling. He’s awake. You put your head back on the pillow. (…) There you go. Have another spoonful of the tonic that Mr. Ianolide so carefully offers you, and then you’ll sleep again, it’s good for you.

When Radu woke up the second time, his eyes showed him clearly everything around him. (…) At the edge of his bed, changing a compress on his forehead, helping him to his feet, embracing him with a gentle smile that escaped from under his black moustache, he recognised Ion Ianolide, the student who had spent his years in prison since 1941. For daring to raise his voice against the dictatorship of the time, he was sentenced to 25 years’ hard labour, a punishment that exceeded his age at the time. The next dictatorship, installed in March 1945, thundered and thundered against the previous one, because Ion did not understand the new communist order and did not understand the new dictatorship, except that the 1941 sentence was still legal.

(Mihai Pușcașu – Testimonies from the hell of communist prisons, Agaton Publishing House, Făgăraș, 2010, pp. 78,79-81)

[1] Radu is the memorialist Mihai Pușcașu himself.