“Mrs. Voinescu, we were colleagues!”
In another wing of the prison (n.n. Jilava Prison), in the women’s wing, in a damp and dark cell, two inmates were having a heated conversation. A young prostitute and an elderly gypsy woman. They were telling each other episodes from their lives. The gypsy was a pickpocket and, in a burst of altruism and detail, she told the other how, on a tram, with great dexterity acquired through long practice, she had cut open the pocket of a “customer” in order to steal his wallet.
Sitting in the next chair, one listens with the tense attention of someone accustomed to delving into the most hidden depths of all the aspects that the human being can reveal. A tall, slender woman in a black dress, her face framed by white hair like a bright nimbus, had turned her eyes upon them, eyes endowed with great power to penetrate souls. A smile, almost angelic, broke her lips, and a voice, vibrating with an inexpressible warmth, interrupted it: “Măndițo, when we get out of here and meet in a tram, I hope you will spare me”. The dark palm of the hand, the fingers tanned by the burning tobacco, slapped the cheek of Măndi’s mouth: “Oh dear me! May He who is above strike me! How can I treat you like a nobody? We were colleagues, Mrs. Voinescu!”
…The one (n.n. Professor Alice Voinescu) who had been mistakenly put on the list of new prisoners and was wanted among the men, had been lying in Jilava for more than a year, enduring the cold and hunger; swimming in the mud and sleet in the yard of the cell where she went for walks, or washing herself in the cold water of the bathhouse while her feet were knee-deep in mud.
She was in her late 70s and had long suffered from a relentless heart condition. The communist regime in Bucharest had seen fit to imprison the professor, adored by her students, and the lecturer, too appealing to an audience that flocked to the halls of the Dalles, the Athenaeum or the Royal Foundations to listen to her eagerly. The myth of Alice Voinescu had to end! She had to be silenced. She had to be made incapable of influencing young people with her bourgeois mentality.
As darkness fell, the prisoners – weakened by the lack of food and the stuffy air in the cell – fell asleep on the bare planks that served as their beds. In the silence of the night, awake, Alice Voinescu recounted her life, trying to decipher the meaning of the destiny that had thrown her there at an age when it was time to reap the fruits of her more than five decades of work…
She was investigated by a number of illiterates in order to explain her role in the cultural life of the country. During one of these interrogations, the investigator, furious that he did not understand any of the accused’s arguments, raised his hand to strike her. With a ferocity that was unheard of in that frail body on the verge of senility, Alice Voinescu scolded him: “Don’t you dare hit me, I’ll bang my head against these walls and you’ll have me on your conscience!” Of course, it was not the threat of the remorse of a trial of conscience that stopped the brute’s hand, but rather the fascinating spiritual power of the look with which she had targeted him; the fact is that she did not dare to carry out his gesture.
A deep sigh marked the end of this review of so many episodes in her life, while her lips murmured the prayer that sprang from unshakeable Christian conviction: “Forgive them, Lord, for they do not know what they do”…
(Andrei Ozana, “Mrs Voinescu, we were colleagues!”, material available at altertativaonline.ca)