Mother Maftidia Grancea’s sufferings, told by her disciple
For over forty years I’ve been a disciple of Mother Maftidia; I know her from the convent of Dealu, from ’67, ’68 … I don’t even remember the year when Mother was a masseuse at Dealu, just released from prison. She was in prison for four and a half years; that’s where we met (at Dealu Monastery) and then we were together until we died. When we sat at the table to eat, she used to say how much she had suffered in prison; she couldn’t eat anymore … she was just crying … She said she was tortured … like in the communist prisons, not like in the prisons now, because now, you have to stay there, because I heard many people say it was better in prison than at home.
Now they have food, they have television, they have everything. But in Her Holiness’ time it was a great torture: sleeping on the floor on cement, with only a mattress with three strands of straw in it and a blanket to wrap it in … a life or death matter. She was so weak! She was just “skin and bones”, but God strengthened her and – if God wanted me to know her, I helped her. All the nuns said: “Oh, God has chosen you for her, because the poor thing has been dying since the beginning of time. God has chosen her, what can we do?”
There, in prison, they didn’t even allow her to pray, only when she was lying down; when the lights were out, she could say something like that from her bed, whatever she knew in her head. All day long they kept her on her feet; there were sixty of them in one room, think, Father, sixty; and there they did their necessities … forgive me! But, imagine, sixty people in a room, the window – whether it was winter or summer – was open, it was impossible to close it.
They ate in two rows, that is, you started from one row, as if: tomorrow you start from this end. And the militiaman said: “It’s not because we don’t have mesh tins, it’s to torture you”. There was another one who said: “We have plenty of mesh tins, but to watch the others eat… until it’s your turn”; yes… that’s what they did. How many things that poor mother told me!
She used to tell me that she would take them out for 20 minutes, but only with their heads down, so that they wouldn’t look anywhere, that if anyone looked up or anywhere, he would lock them in the cell. There were sixty of them, one behind the other, looking down, neither to the right nor to the left, just with their heads on the ground; they were not allowed to lean on anything. Later they were allowed to get a postcard once a month, that’s all; and after a while they took them out to work; they were also allowed to get a parcel with just that: some sugar, sweets; As for clothing, they gave them their civilian clothes and prison outfits.
All day long they were not allowed to sit down; from morning till evening they stood only; they walked, they walked, till night they walked around in the cell. But I don’t know if they were allowed to speak. I don’t think they were allowed to, because the militiaman at the door said he would look through the bean slot and if he heard anything he would put the keys in the door and they would all shake with fear.
They would take them to the investigation and – if they didn’t realise it – ask them when and what so-and-so said outside; they didn’t know they were being taken to the investigation, they thought they were being taken somewhere else. They called the investigation the mill because it was something that made noise; they blindfolded them so they couldn’t see where they were going and how they were going. Someone else would take them, blindfolded, and when they went past, there was so much noise and fright that you shuddered. And they’d ask them: do you know where you are? And they’d say: “At the mill”! Well, it was hard, hard for her, poor thing, but God helped her and she escaped.
There, in prison, there was communication between them, through the Morse code. There were some who knew the Morse code and communicated with those in the next cell; the mother didn’t know how to communicate, but others did; they talked to each other.
My mother was also sick, she had a slipped disc and couldn’t walk, she was carried by two people. And then she said the doctor came and gave her some pills and – from these medicines – she hasn’t had any problems with the hernia to this day; she got better.
They brought them water to drink with a big stick and they didn’t have enough to drink at least once. They had a bean slot in the door and the militiaman would look and if he saw you sitting down he would take you out or if he saw you working on something or with a book, God forbid, you were not allowed. She took care of a girl in prison who was ill, and then the girl asked to be taken care of by her mother, there … well, and he gave her permission. The nun allowed both of them to sit while she nursed this Christian girl. The mother said that the girl had lung disease and the others had fallen ill and she didn’t want anyone to look after her for fear of falling ill. But she said, “I wasn’t afraid, God protected me” and he gave her a cup of milk, a cup of water; and the girl kept saying: “I don’t want anyone but Mother Maftidia to stay here to watch over me”. Now she is still alive and has even visited us a few times, she is from Sibiu and her name is Maria Constantinescu.
When she got out of prison, they told her not to say anything about what she was, what she did, how she was, and … she didn’t say anything. My mother only told me that I was in the house, but no one else. Another doctor came from Bucharest and was also imprisoned; he bought a house in Viforâta a few years ago and still comes and lives here in the summer. And he also came her to ask mother some details, to write a book, and mother told him: “I can’t give any details, I don’t know any more, because I’m old now”. And she didn’t want to give him any details, she was afraid. What are you going to say now that you’re old!?
In the convent, the Most Reverend Justinian received her; he sent her to Dealu because there was no position there; he took her from the convent, now she was Mother Xenia. He had made an asylum for nuns in the convent, here, in our house, so he sent her to Dealu and put her there. She stayed in Dealu for 12 years and retired from there and then came here and retired. And I went to Dealu with the service, and then I came too, after a year or two, after her holiness came.
In the last period of her life she was ill… very ill; she had a leg pain, she had a problem with a leg – from childhood – which she had operated on several times. Now, the last time before she died, six years ago, she fell in the house and broke her leg, then she broke her hand twice; she was dizzy because she was weak and she was getting dressed – I was doing some washing in the bathroom – she fell and broke her hand.
I went to Azuga with her, and they put her hand in plaster and kept it there for six weeks, then she fell again; she broke her leg from the hip down, and then she was in Azuga for two months in the summer. I stayed there with her. She could only walk with a frame; I gave the frame to a nun in Căldărușani. I had a pram and for six years I took her to church with the pram and she walked with the frame from the front of the church to the church and back. Before she died five months ago, she was paralysed. In the morning when we went to church she was paralysed – she was dressed and her speech was gone.
She was paralysed on the 27th of February; she was conscious and didn’t speak for five months; she struggled to write because I didn’t know what to give her and she couldn’t write. A little bit touched her brain, but she was conscious, she just couldn’t write anymore. And before she died, I said to her: “I’m going to the kitchen to get a cup of milk so we can have some here”; and she nodded because she did. I was going to boil her a soft boiled egg to see if she could swallow it. Because she couldn’t swallow even a little bit, five months … just think! How I struggled with the food for her because she couldn’t eat.
When I boiled her egg and peeled it like this, on the top, to see if I had made it soft, suddenly I hear from the house that she is calling me: “Come! – She who had not spoken for five months. Suddenly she calls again: “Come on!” Alas, but how now … I thought she’d lost her voice, but from where? When I ran to her, she grabbed me by the neck and I picked her up like this… and I saw her boiling like a pot and I put her back on the pillow and her liver poured out. She started to vomit and vomited something so red, then she blew three times like a baby and … it was over, I was already there with the candle in my hand. It was 27 July 2008, the feast of St. Panteleimon.
(M. Tatiana Boier, interview conducted by Monk Siluan Antoci on 19 October 2010 – Orthodox Nuns bearers of light in the communist darkness, Vol. II, Doxologia Publishing House, Iasi, 2012, pp. 56-63)