Nichifor Crainic, an accomplished orator in every field

Nichifor Crainic was a treasure, a vast storehouse of the purest grey matter. So many things from him have remained in my memory that have served to erase a good part of the suffering that has accompanied me all my life. One day, sitting at his desk, he told us a story that was a typical example of what “communist heaven” meant not only for our country but for the whole of humanity.

He was in the Tsarist camp, under a regime of slow but sure extermination. Any movement or gesture that could be interpreted differently by the illiterate and imbecilic guard, Nichifor Crainic, would have cost him his life. One day, during the evening programme, Nichifor Crainic and a cellmate, whose name I don’t remember, “confessed” to the guard on duty – Barabas, it seems to me. After closing time at 1900, the two were taken out of the cell, led naked to the toilet and, after the windows had been removed and placed in the corridor, the door was locked. It was a terrible winter, the snow crunched underfoot and even the stones seemed to crack from the frost. The two prisoners were left there, this time by the guard who had the power of life and death over them.

In order not to freeze, from evening until morning these men embraced each other, sat sometimes facing each other, sometimes with their backs in each other’s arms, massaged each other and slapped each other with their palms, touching all parts of their bodies.

The toilet was the last room facing south, with a wing opening out at 90 degrees, and opposite it was a bakery where no bread was baked, only flatbread – a mixture of unbleached flour with water and a little salt. Two or three common criminals worked there, their boss being the notorious Berilă, convicted of a triple murder. A sadist of rare sadism, Berilă proved that somewhere deep in his soul there was a spark of generosity. Understanding what was going on in the toilet, he pocketed four freshly made bread bites and carefully – because carelessness would have cost him his life – threw this heavenly manna out of the window.

The bread bites were his salvation. Nichifor Crainic contracted double pneumonia, but he was more resilient than his colleague, who died within a few days.

*

In the summer of 1956, I stayed with Nichifor Crainic in the second section of the prison, in the same room as Kurt Mott, the Macedonian professor Gheorghe Zima (who died a few years later in Aiud) and one of the Cioculescu brothers. Our position was near the door, to the right of the entrance, on the first level, and Crainic sat on the second level of the prici, diagonally to the left. He was such a great man that I always wondered how he could fit into such a cramped, unventilated place, with a dirty tin can in one corner, and more importantly, to what did I owe the honour of sitting in the same room with him, with the great Nichifor Crainic.

At eight o’clock, at the other end of the room, the doors opened and a guard’s voice shouted:

– “Stop talking! One by one, take a walk in the courtyard!”

The damned guard was one of the three Maier brothers, from the commune of Păjida, on the left bank of the Mureș, all of them jailers of the cruelest, most cursed and diabolical people. Vasile was considered the most cruel, followed by Gheorghe and the other brother, whose first name I no longer remember. They also had two sisters who were said to be prisoners in Mislea, in the Prahova Valley, a prison for politically convicted women. A family of executioners, then, and I don’t know if the Samson brothers, who carried out the executions in the Place de la Concorde during the French Revolution of 1789, were more cruel than these Maier brothers.

At one point, one of us turned to Nichifor Crainic:

– Professor, speak to us!

I must say that this great man was an accomplished orator in every field. He could speak for hours without stopping, without a single pause for “um” or “ah”, at any time, at any hour, awake from sleep or before falling asleep, hungry, sick or in any other captive state. In that dark period of my life, I listened to many personalities from the cream of the Romanian intelligentsia, but none equalled this mountain of a man, Nichifor Crainic.

And the master began to speak. We remained in the position we were in when he opened his mouth, nobody moved. His words came out as if from a fairytale source, from a fountain of light, they came down as if on milky, astral paths, on rays of light. All of us in the room listened in rapt attention. I still wonder how God could have given so much grace to this man, and why such an illustrious personality had to be thrown into one of the dirty dungeons of Communism?

Hours went by, and we, stolen by Crainic’s divine melody, did not notice when the doors stopped opening for the walk, or when the cooks brought the food papers into the corridor, or when the distribution of those filthy broths began.

Suddenly there was a thud and the door slammed against the wall. In the doorway stood a peasant, who rushed up to our master and cursed him:

– Crainic! Give me the book!

– What book, sir?

– Crainic, give me the book, I say! Haven’t I been sitting behind the door for two hours listening to you?

– I haven’t got a book, sir!

Then some of the prisoners in the cell intervened and tried to explain to the guard, who was out of his depth:

– But it’s Nichifor Crainic! He wasn’t reading. He spoke!

The guard looked at him for a long time, pondering – if such a quality could be ascribed to a being like him, then, turning to leave the cell, he said:

– Hey, Crainic! Fuck off mate, you’re a smart guy!

(Grigore Caraza, Aiud însângerat, edited by Adrian Alui Gheorghe, 5th edition, Tipo Moldova Publishing House, Iași, 2013, pp. 81-83)