The long-suffering Constantin Oprișan, in the torments of hell at Pitești

Suddenly the door was pushed aside and the room was filled with people. Barefoot and with hats in their arms, they looked at us and at the order in the room in horror. Behind them came Mr Țurcanu, walking with measured steps! There was silence, as if waiting for a verdict. Most of the newcomers looked older than us. Mr Țurcanu, after moving them around, addressed the one on the far right of the row: “How are you, Costache?” To which he made a gesture that should have meant, “As you can see!”

The big boss showed him the seat he had “reserved” for him. First on the bed, facing the window! But also next to the window! Next to him he pushed another one of about the same height: “Come and stand next to him”. He turned and changed between them and the others.

I hardly recognised Cornel, the partisan: “What’s wrong with you?” asked Țurcanu, who turned him towards us. “Do you recognise him?”

Could it be Pop Cornel? He had become a shadow of the one I knew. He had been a handsome boy. Now his hair had thinned and changed colour in places. Only his moustache and black beard remained, like the ears of wheat. He probably hadn’t had a bath or a shave since they’d taken him out of a sudden.

“Tell him, boy, where the hell did you come from?” grinned Turcanu. Cornel replied, “From the house! I hadn’t heard of it, nor did I know what Casimcă meant. As I looked at him, I imagined that it was the common name for “neagra”.  Or “the insulator”! (…)

I had become disenchanted with such mutilated features, which reminded me of the faces of those who had preceded us in the debunking, later surpassed by some of those who followed. (…)

I saw them as they were… on the edge of the bed reserved for them. Now I understood why the mattresses were filled with chaff rather than straw. And why they had no sheets or blankets. Dirt on their faces, they smelled like a cellar. Their clothes were almost rotten, torn to shreds, though they held on by patches. Everything hung from them like scarecrows, so skeletal were they! As Țurcanu walked through them, changing their order, the poor men stopped struggling once they had escaped his grasp. They wondered how these dead men could become stiff and still stand. Satisfied with the impression he had made on both himself and us, I heard him:

“I thought I told you. We’re going to increase the number of the Brotherhood of the Cross Tartars by fourteen. Here they are! I have brought them so that you may see in whom you believe and whom you care enough to touch with your hand! They themselves will come to admit that they’ve been forged. And that the morality and discipline they made such a fuss about was a fad”.

Suddenly he turned to them: “Tell me, Oprișane, how many cadets did your harem of Sisters of the Cross consist of?”

The one at the head of the right-hand bed, after straining his voice, choked by the symptoms of a dry cough, replied: “You know very well! I have told you so many times! I did not have subordinates, I had brothers! Not ‘sisters’. Our young women came as part of a delegation. They would periodically present a progress report. We would accept it or propose some measures. Then they would leave.”

Țurcanu let him speak alone, then turned back to the camera: “Did you hear him sticking to his narrative? Do you believe him?”

“Tell me, Virgile!” As soon as he heard his name, Bordeianu jumped as his face changed: “What should I believe, Eugene? One day he says it, the next day he denies it! If we confront him, everyone will see, he’ll admit what kind of discipline it was”.

“That’s why I told you we’d have to deal with these dangerous bandits!” Then he turned to Oprișan and said: “Hey Costache, look, I have witnesses, I’ll give you a few days to get your head together. Remember how you admitted with your own mouth what kind of bombings, what kind of orgies you had at night, there in the command. I’m not the only one who’s heard you tell the story. Why do you want to turn it around now?”

When Oprișan tried to answer, he pressed his mouth menacingly and I heard him growl:

“Not now, Costache. Not now! Right now you’d better answer a question for which you took such a beating. Try to remember why you went to Germany and why you came back. The song says: why did you go, why did you come? Come on, let’s have your own syllogism, you claim to be a philosopher, a logician? Because, judging as simply as any mortal, you must admit that you ran away from a devil, and when you came back, you ran into a bigger one! No?”

When Oprișan was ready to answer, Țurcanu beat him to it: “Don’t you think it’s worth telling us what was in this skull of yours? (Twice, not once, he knocked him hard on the forehead.) Or more directly, what mission did you leave with and what mission did you return with?”

But when Oprișan started to answer, the chief put his hand over his mouth again and whispered:

“No! Now think it over, because this is the last time I have the patience to listen to you. So I’ll give you time to think before I seal your fate!”

He came closer and growled:

“I’ve had enough of all the nonsense you’ve told me so far. We both know why you’ve ventured this way and that. But it’s time they found out. Who believed in you as their big brother on the cross! Because it was you who instilled in them the great dream of the legionaries, to make Romania a beautiful and holy land, like the sun in the sky! When you betrayed them, you left them when it was most difficult. Didn’t you? And when you came back, you did it to fight against your beloved country from within! Tell her that’s not true!

All the time that Țurcanu was throwing all this at him, Oprișan was shaking his head, and Țurcanu was looking at him hypnotically, but he didn’t touch him! I don’t know if I was the only one who had an opinion about the infallible Țurcanu, but from that moment on I suspected that he was riddled with complexes about his former superior. I find it hard to believe that Țurcanu was never a sincere admirer of this young man, who (still) embodied the elite of legionary youth by his moral and cultural behaviour. Even he, now at the end of his powers, had not lost this innate nobility! If Țurcanu was a robust, windy young man who dominated you with his extraordinary energy, Oprișan imposed himself without imposing himself*. He had an immense inner strength, so that the torments of hell no longer frightened him, and he looked at them with the serenity of a lover. Everything that happened to him he received and endured as if it had been given to him. Without a trace of sadness or frown! But above all, without a moment of fear! Only with that infinite resistance and spiritual strength of the weak that drove the powerful and “invincible Turcanu” mad.

And since the contradictory comments between Mihai Vintilescu and Mihai Livinski had given me a much clearer idea of the fury of the characters in The Idiot, now that I had witnessed the confrontation between Oprișan (who was not allowed to say a word) and Țurcanu, I had the illusion that Prince Mâșkin was incarnated in Oprișan and the brute Ivan Karamazov in Țurcanu!

In the evenings that followed, I witnessed some “dialogues” between the two that will never be forgotten. Costache Oprișan took it all in with an unearthly calm; in the midst of the excitement, which was overflowing with hatred and bestiality, he remained calm and so natural that I myself doubted that he existed here with us. As if out of his mind, Turcanu dropped a punch. And when he saw that he had been struck like a thunderbolt, he called out to those who stood in his way and turned away: “See if he’s acting crazy again?”

By the time anyone tried to pick him up, Oprișan was struggling to overcome his helplessness. Helping him, a Zaharia or a Rosca, would have been tantamount to a shower of slippers or heels, prolonging his impotence. Especially as he didn’t even give them the “pleasure” of hearing him moan when they hit him in places that even interrupted his breathing! That’s why they often stopped beating him!

As in the case of the “Three Churches”, there was an exchange of platoons. Once a week I had to fill in the background of the wall newspaper, so at night, in the first shift, I took on the responsibility of being a lookout for the bandits. (…)

It was only then that I found out that most of them had been heads of legionary organisations at various levels! (…)

I, for one, felt how they “weighed” us with their fictitious eyes! Oprișan and Bogdanovici, Pop Corriel and the others whose names I had not yet remembered. It turned out that they were all perpetuating the convictions of Antonescu’s time. The fixed gaze of the people opposite had become a real punishment that we had to endure! But what must they think of me? It had been an obsession for a long time! But I didn’t dare ask them with my eyes. Maybe that was the reason for the nightmares that made Țurcanu ask me suspiciously one morning: “What the hell is wrong with you, David? Why have you been screaming so much lately?” I literally froze! My guardian angel must have put the most appropriate words to my lips: “All I can tell you is that I’m lucky I never remembered my dreams, and even now…”

Indeed, the only one on my side who had never experienced such a crisis before was Țurcanu! And on the other side was Oprișan! For me, they were the two poles of existence here. I kept asking myself, what would be left of me as long as I was afraid to look at them? In a way, I was afraid of the sentences in Oprișan’s eyes and, for another reason, of the sentences in Țurcanu’s eyes. I had hoped that Oprișan’s level of observation would have allowed him to see me from the inside, but that he would see me from the outside as a mere caricature! I hoped that he would have understood me. All the while, Țurcanu’s eyes terrorised me. They took my breath away when I realised that he could read my thoughts and throw me back into the Gehenna under the bed of the tortured (…).

I couldn’t get rid of the obsession: “What was Oprișan thinking of me? Would he have noticed that I was pretending not to touch him?” Just as I had noticed Holdevici and Banu, who had spared me as much as possible.

The fact that he looked at me without a trace of disgust made me hope that this man, so intelligent, so beaten for so long, who seemed to float above so much misery, would have noticed my attempts to spare him. Intercepting his occasional glances, I still caught a glimpse of his thoughts for me. He seemed to be whispering to me: “Keep doing what I see you are trying to do, to save yourself first. To save as much of yourself as you can from your own conscience.” That’s how I encouraged myself, Oprișan whispered. Judging by the reactions of the others to him, I could believe that the “uncoolness” with which he endured it, compared to our “coolness” to get along with Țurcanu, to get rid of him at any cost, had awakened their spirit! I had learned how to purify myself through suffering. I felt how far away I was from such salvation, because after suffering more than I could have imagined, instead of being relieved of resentment, I was burdened with even more hatred. (…)

Aware that the dawn, however bright, was for us the harbinger of another nightmare! We were not given the slightest respite to meet ourselves! On the contrary, we were to be subjected to even more diabolical trials to see if we had met the man in us?

Little did I know that I was about to witness another horrific scene. The way Țurcanu had behaved, both with us and with the fourteen, I could not have guessed what was to happen that evening. They had gone through our kicks and punches one by one, not once. Even the most bestial of acts seemed to have lost their horror.

Just as I was beginning to wonder why I had avoided Oprișan so far, he entered the room like a fairy, and Țurcanu went straight up to him, snatched him from the bed and dragged him into the middle of the “magic circle” (as he called it)!

Due to the ankylosis caused by the long sphinx position (which no one had forgotten)*, Oprișan was unable to stand. Unlike on the other side, there were only a few people to make fun of. He certainly hadn’t regained control of his legs, that was the first impression. Țurcanu held him like a puppet, dangling in one hand, twisting him like a hanged man to get a good look at him. Suddenly he let go of him and Costache (as the boss kept “caressing” him) collapsed on the mosaic, rubbing his calves furiously, barely able to contain the painful sensations we remember so well. After staring at him with his arms folded on his hips, I heard him muttering to himself: “I’m going to loosen you up, Costache!” And he began to play with him like a bear, crushing him with all the weight of a well-drunk man. He lay down on his chest and went down on his heels to his abdomen, systematically searching his stomach, then his liver, pancreas and intestines to crush them. Oprișan couldn’t even whimper under the weight and heavy stamping of the chief. He tried to speak several times, but with his breath coming in short gasps with each blow, no sound came out. Turcanu must have turned his back to him so as not to see his face (precisely because of the complex I had sensed), worried that none of the unfortunate man’s guts would escape from underneath him. (…)

Oprișan closed his eyes and choked on his suspicious cough, which irritated the executioner, who kicked him in the ribs a few times. “Are you playing dead? I’ll bring you back to life! Don’t worry! You’ll still die by my hand, but not now, when I want you to!” And he burned a few more slices. After waving to Zacharias, he said to Mărtinuș: “Take him away. You know how to stretch his legs.”

They picked him up from the ground like nothing. A club appeared as if from nowhere, and with inhuman swiftness they divided two tables parallel to each other, flying the ‘tablecloths’ around, and with the club between them, they twisted a binding from their own rags, with which they bound his legs together at the ankles, and with a twisted towel they bound his hands together at the calves. Someone pressed down hard on his shoulders and shouted at him to sit on his bottom. Zachariah put the stick between his knees and arms, lifted him up and put him on the stick between the two tables. Poor Oprișan swung upside down several times, as if in a cradle. They stuffed his mouth with his own handkerchief and then turned away, panting, looking at Țurcanu, who told Zaharia to kick him over his boots until he stopped.

The whole room watched as if it were business as usual. Zachariah began to kick the soles of his boots, slowly and hard. Unthinkable for a music lover! Especially as I could see him getting excited as he kicked, radiating joy at what he was doing! I’d learnt in Brașov that he could feel every blow in the back of your head. Pain that lingered for days, weeks, the feeling that your head was tightening like a vice. At any other time, I think I could hardly bear to watch such torture. But now even the touch of sympathy I had felt down at the Three Churches was gone. Zaharia didn’t stop when he clearly saw that Oprișan was no longer responding to the blows, nor when Țurcanu raised his hand. It was only when the boss’s authoritative voice shouted “stop” that he “froze” with the bat in the air. And when he stopped, he turned to Turcanu in surprise and even frustration.

He’d had enough of kicking and counting. He had stopped at just under twenty! When they put him down and untied him, Oprișan’s head bobbed and his eyes seemed to stare. They pulled the handkerchief from his reddened mouth. He was experiencing the panic of losing his breath from the bleeding that made his throat gurgle with blood. Țurcanu even said in disgust: “Wipe the borscht out of his mouth! What are you staring at?” And he even pushed a man beside him. Zaharia immediately executed himself. He washed the handkerchief on the tin and brutally wiped it from his face, making a non-medical grimace!

Seeing that he was still recovering, Țurcanu ordered him to take off his shoes and play on the wet cleaning cloth. Țurcanu looked at him with a well-expressed irony and whispered something very cheerful to Mărtinuș and Zaharia.

Meanwhile, while the torture lasted, Țurcanu had made his “rounds”, trying to capture the effect on our faces. When I felt his gaze burning into my profile, I froze, wondering if he had guessed my identity. But even we were not yesterday’s newcomers, immersed in Gehenna, so we did not always put on a mask to hide our true feelings.

The shivers came over him and he couldn’t control them. Who wasn’t familiar with how the body reacts to a beating like that? The big boss must have never experienced anything like that, because he was the only one who mocked him: “I didn’t think you were making much of a fuss, apart from your philosophising. Look at him trembling with fear” (…) He then turned to Bogdanovici, who, when he heard his name, jumped as if struck by lightning. Like him, they all stood still.

“At your command,” he replied, without flinching or looking at the chief. “See if he’s got any extra trousers. Let him wash them like he knows how!” Oprișan instructed Sura to look for those who actually wore them in winter as indispensable. They were overdressed, called “izmene” in the country side.

He grabbed him by one arm, almost took him by the arm and walked out of the room with him. Meanwhile, the cleaning crew had been called into action, and the floor began to shine again.

Just before dinner they both returned. (…) He looked different. Only he was choking again and again, without being able to stop himself. Țurcanu ordered someone to help him: “I alone saw that he couldn’t do it.” Rosca rushed in and made him suffer again, as mockingly as possible. But Martinus whispered to the chief: “I still can’t fit!” Then Țurcanu ordered him to get on the bed and take the punishment position. (…)

Apparently, Oprișan still noticed him, because when he returned to the room just before curfew, he called him to order again: “Come on, come on, you can’t get away with one or two. What can I do to you if you want to be in charge of the young people? You’ve confused them too much so that I don’t have to explain to them what you’ve really done! And how much you cared about their future and the future of the country!”

Țurcanu sat on the bench, his elbows resting on the table behind him. From this position, he could see Oprișan, who seemed taller and more truthful than he liked. Tired of looking up at him from below, which made him look oversized in her eyes, she stood up and undressed. He wanted to at least match her in height, though he knew he couldn’t. She thrust her hand into his chest and caught it, shaking it violently. Then, in his most threatening tone, he said through his teeth, “I don’t suppose you’ve forgotten that I gave you time to think and one day to tell me openly, for all to hear, which of the ‘Sisters of the Cross’ did you love more? Which of your harem did you take with you to Germany? Come on, speak up, why did you run to the Germans and why did you come back? Explain it to them, because some of them still consider you their exemplary comrade, morally speaking; it is not for nothing that you were appointed head of the Brotherhood of the Cross in this country!” And after he had shaken him free, he asked him with a cynical smile: “What do you say, isn’t it normal to hold them accountable, especially now that you have convinced yourself that it was also your fault that so many ended up in prison?”

Sensing that he was exhausted, he carried him a few steps, almost hanging on by one hand, and slammed him against the wall, whispering wearily, “Hold on tight if you don’t want me to trample you in my feet again!”

Every time he tried to speak, Oprișan was stifled by the lack of air and the choking sputum gurgling in his throat. In a coughing lull, in a choked voice, I heard him say: “I have told you, and I repeat: only and only the truth. Everything you have said here has not been my words but yours. If you mock me, no one will stop you and it means nothing. But you want me to mock the Legionary Movement. For which you know very well that I have suffered more, both here and in Germany*. I’ve never had any advantage or made a fool of myself, as you claim. The Security Service knows what material advantages I’ve had. My file bears witness to this, as it contains no such accusations”.

We were surprised that Țurcanu had the patience to listen to him. He looked at him, his face full of hatred and anger, his arms crossed on his hips. With nerves on edge, he questioned him like a prosecutor sure of his case:

*”You are guilty of treason, for which you were tried in absentia by Antonescu!” And after a silence that seemed to him to be a sign of hesitation on Oprișan’s part, he continued: “What, you mean to say that the M.S.V. pronounced by the court martial at the time did not stand?”

Oprișan, trying to control his cough with a handkerchief to his mouth, forced himself to reply, “If the Royal Decree of ’44, by which we were all acquitted, is not taken into account, then yes! And since I have never been retried by the same court in my presence, surely that default judgment still stands!”

Surprised, Țurcanu asked him, this time genuinely surprised, like a future lawyer. “All right, but you were retried on the same charges anyway, when?”

Mărtinuș told him: “With us, in ’48! But he used him as a kind of prosecution witness. He recognised the division chiefs, some of whom are with him now, here!”

Țurcanu, feeling that his success was incoming, mocked him even more. “You see, Costache, even though you want to hide behind the peach tree, through legal proceedings, because your high treason against the country would not stand up, look here, face to face with those whom you denounced (to the court) as leaders of the Brotherhoods of the Cross, in various positions.”

Oprișan, who could have been thought to be completely confused and overwhelmed by the chief’s argument, overcame his irritating cough and made himself heard:

“As God is my witness, I didn’t pressure anyone. They took me there to compromise me, not in the eyes of my comrades in the box, but in the eyes of the room full of people who were complete strangers to me and to us. We were asked to die in a chorus, and that was before our interrogations had been recorded by the Tribunal. They knew that this was precisely why I had left the country, so that I would not be put in the position of having to denounce my comrades! And they fell into the hands of the Security Service at that time, because they had been targeting them for a long time”.

Țurcanu was on the verge of hitting him by interrupting him, but embarrassed by the clear conscience of his former superior, he failed. And Oprișan continued, quietly, between short gasps: “Exactly from the files of the former State Security, but also from the files of the Directorate of Prisons, he collected them again, although they had been pardoned. Me too. But they continued to call me as a witness for the prosecution, so that the courtroom would be packed and so that I would appear in the newspapers of the day as someone who had betrayed his former comrades. Both those in the dock and God are my witnesses”.

Țurcanu, probably outraged by Oprișan’s invocation of God as a witness for his conscience, turned on him again:

“Look at him, who brings him as a witness! God. Listen to him. Take God, let me fill you with God!”

And until he had brought him to his feet, he continued to beat him, especially on his vital parts, but as his rage was not appeased, he thrust his hands into him, forcing him to rise and remain leaning against the wall, shouting in his ear:

“Tell him, Commander, why did you stop? Tell him why you came back when you knew who had taken power? Come on, I’m not going to kill you now! I know when, you bandit!”

Shaken in every joint, Oprișan could not speak. I concluded that he had been summoned by Pătrașcu after the protocol with Ana Pauker, in which he assured that the movement would cease all activity. And the order he had to carry out was to stop the activity of the Brothers of the Cross! Having recovered his voice and his breath, he concluded:

“This is what is in the Security Service file, and I have confirmed it to you every time you forced me to say what you wanted!”

He was really astonished by this man, who resisted and repeated the same testimony over and over again, refusing to go along with the lies he was proposing to him, that, look, God, they had come with orders to reactivate the movement and, above all, to organise the struggle to compromise the communists, from the top of the country, through those arrested and in prison.

Țurcanu lunged at Oprișan again like an angry gorilla, shouting threats and curses: “What, boy, do you mean that you didn’t admit with your mouth why you were sent here?”

Oprișan must have given up trying to resist. He surrendered to fate. Țurcanu climbed back onto his chest, digging in his heels and pressing with all his weight. The looks I caught in the background were full of horror.

Noticing that his arms were flailing like a bird that had fallen from flight, Țurcanu, panting with effort, picked him up from the floor and pinned him against the wall again. He looked like a dismembered marionette in the hand of a puppeteer who had dropped his chopsticks. His head was bobbing, his chin hanging down to his chest. I thought he was dead, with a reddish streak at the corner of his mouth. But Țurcanu still felt him alive, and when he was convinced, he held him by the neck in one hand and turned with him to the people in the room, asking with eyes glued to him: “Who knew the chief of the Brotherhood of the Cross when he was chief?” Silence! “Who?” Țurcanu asked again. The silence became unbearable, frightening everyone, even though many had never met him. But Bogdanovici broke it with a desperate voice: “I saw him, but I didn’t know him personally.”

Țurcanu, slowly turning around with the former commander in his hand, without taking his eyes off him, apostrophised to Șura: “Who gave you permission to interfere, bandit? But since your mouth still smells of garlic, tell me, Shura, how did it look to you?”

Bogdanovici spoke linearly, like a plaster man, as he looked: “He seemed to me a phallic young man, who corresponded to the image I had formed of him as the head of the Brotherhood of the Cross!” Silence again! Which the chief broke by asking his victim: “Did you hear, Costache, how the brothers perceived you? There you are, as you are. You betrayed them first, and with them you betrayed the country! The country, man! The country!” and with his other hand he burned one of his heavy hands, then dragged him into the middle of the “magic circle” and held him like a hanged man. I could make out a few whispers from the former Commander: “You said that. Not me!”

As if stunned by his words, Țurcanu looked at him more puzzled than ever and then, at the end of his work, showed him to us: “Ecce Homo! Behold, the one in whom you believed as in yourself. And I’m not afraid to tell him that I too am a victim of him. Look at him! See if such a human fall resembles this one. Look closely. This is the real Costache Oprișan. He claims to have been the head of the Brotherhood of the Cross in this country. Take him and wash your hair with him!

Țurcanu, after throwing him around, wiped his palms together like sweat and began to walk around in the circled area, Napoleonic style! Before he collapsed on the bench he had been thrown onto, those who happened to be around caught him. They sat him down on the bench and began to fondle him mockingly, as if he were a “martyr” still alive!

“Look at him, how his hair is beginning to thin,” Mărtinuș observed, “stroking” his head. Oprișan seemed completely absent, he couldn’t feel, hear or see! But the big boss could not resist intervening: “Show your commander how proud you are to have carried out his orders. And how happy you are since you’ve been here!”

With every sentence he uttered, he stopped abruptly and punched him again: “You bandit, if you knew that this was all you could do, why did you stick to a job like this, you bastard?” At the big boss’s nod, we jumped on the first man from the debunking, whom we felt we respected, as we had respected no one before him. The bigger the pile got, the more you could hope to avoid touching him. It’s hard to believe that Țurcanu didn’t notice at least a few of these simulations. But perhaps he was out of the way because, to our great surprise, no one had been hit on the back of the head. Here and there we heard some of his cynics nudge him one by one, accusing him: “Do you pity me, boy? Do you pity me? You’re still a bandit! Look how a man like you fights. Look at you!”

When we had calmed down, Țurcanu got down from his seat, walked towards the door and left the room! (…)

After I was convinced that Mr Oprișan had recovered, this time escaping alive from our lynch mob, the evening did not continue with my usual excitement. I collapsed, and as soon as I laid my head on the lumpy trays, I fell asleep.

When I was awakened by the drums of the guard walking by the doors, I was drenched and felt more tired than the night before. I had no recollection of the monsters that had silhouetted me all night, but I was sure that I had narrowly escaped their clutches. I couldn’t remember if I was dreaming or if I had really been beaten and threatened as a bandit, but that was the impression I awoke with.

When I went to the toilet to wash up, I noticed that Mr Oprișan’s seat on the counter was empty. When I looked around, I couldn’t find him. Neamțu, who was standing in line behind me, and who must have realised why I looked so surprised, whispered to me: “They took him out of his room last night, he had another haemoptysis attack.”

As we poured water over each other to wash it off, I deduced that enough had been found to really, even viciously, hit him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have recovered so well, and overnight he wouldn’t have had this fatal attack…. Someone inside me was burning a hole in the back of my head. I shuddered and imagined why, and more importantly, for what? For the simple fact that I was all too sure that I had done nothing to bring him down, especially morally.

(Ștefan Ioan I. Davidescu – Journey through Hell, vol. II, Dacia Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2003, pp. 210-232)