With Aspazia through memories
The trip down memory lane that I’ve been taking quite often lately is a battle with forgetfulness. It is a past that belongs to me and in which I find, sometimes to my amazement, another existence of my own. This past is not a fantasy world, but a painfully real one, from which, when I wake up, I don’t have the bitter taste of defeat, but recapture the atmosphere of that time, reliving moments that are hard to understand for those who didn’t know the evil world built by our oppressors and then transfigured and embellished by us, with our souls.
In this grey life, I feel like fishing for a few pearls in an ocean of poisoned waters.
We were in Mislea, in the “happy” period of working in the workshops, with the near prospect of our isolation in cold cells, with bars and thick shutters on the windows, in the famous Ciuc prison… It was during this time that I met Pazi. We met in the workshops, in the dormitories, in the yard during our free time. We met in prayer, we prayed together, we met in song, in poetry, in work. We met in sorrow and in joy, and at one point it seemed as if I had known her forever. I loved her warm voice, her bright eyes, her sincere determination. But thanks to an incident, I got to know her soul, which was as open as a book.
The episode I’m talking about was described by Pazi in her book “I cried out to you, Lord” – but I’ll just describe my mood at the time.
In the time between the “two shifts” we came back from the workshops. Tired, we breathed in the light of the autumn colours. It was a beautiful autumn, the end of October. The leaves of the chestnut trees were of an incredible colour… and on this amazingly beautiful day we were celebrating young years that were going to be wasted in this cruel and merciless “City of Keys”. When I arrived at my table, I shuddered with astonishment. My bowl was waiting for the “porridge” in a setting of chestnut leaves in all shades of yellow and red. It was a veritable floral arrangement, created by the meticulous hand of a colleague, reckless but a great artist. Unfortunately, my eyes could not enjoy this gift for long, because three victorious officers, including the “political officer” and the new headmistress, appeared as if from nowhere and woke me from my dream. I knew that the isolator was waiting for me.
The guards had to share the “joy” with me, without being involved, but as the “head of the workshop”, and we woke up in the “black”, in that heavy atmosphere, charged with the damp, grey substance of the signs of primitivism. Someone said: “Daily life and death are not explained, they are observed”. A great truth. Left in the darkness of the cells, without windows (the cells were connected by a narrow corridor of black sheep), we felt walled in by the living, in that golden autumn, when somewhere in the dense woods the leaves rushed over the deer.
And yet, thanks to Pazi, the heavy became light, beautiful sheep. A song we sang often enough celebrated this moment: ‘Beautiful days of youth/ Only once you are in us’. In fact, our years were in full springtime, even though hunger, cold and fatigue tormented us. In solitude, the days confused with the nights, the nights with eternity. I don’t even know how they passed. Thanks to Pazi. I filled them with poetry (he knew many verses by Lucian Blaga, Minulescu, Goga) and the prayers he said were like a song. Not for a moment did he reproach me for his suffering. That’s how I got to know his soul.
When they took us out, it was as if we were coming out of the ground. The light was too bright, the beauty of autumn too painful, but our souls seemed to have been touched by an angel’s wing. We were four girls in a small room and the fact that Pazi was with us made me know once again that “the burden would be lighter for me”.
The Ciuc prison was terrible. On the great gate at the entrance we saw in our mind’s eye the inscription on Dante’s Gate of Hell: “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che ‘ntrate”. Pazi wrote a lot about our life there in her book. I would like to remind you that we did not give up contact, one with the other, through Morse code and even letters. I communicated with a friend in a cell in the other wing of the prison. At great risk, I got hold of the letter when I went out for the daily programme. When I entered the cell, I quickly read the note, which was surprisingly written on a piece of paper (cement bag paper).
I usually wrote on canvas. A hole in the wall announced my search. I put it in my zebra pocket and we were outside, in the corridor, facing the wall, while two militia women were “massacring” souls. I reacted like an automaton. I pulled out the note, tore it into pieces and tried to swallow it.
A hand to my right reached out discreetly and I heard a whisper: “Give some to me”. Then all the hands demanded their share. I took that ‘mess of a paper’ to my mouth and began to chew, it was horrible. I don’t know how we managed to swallow. We got away with the strip search. It was a gesture of solidarity I’ll never forget. God, what if they’d found it? Investigations, endless punishment.
Years later, on the phone, I asked Pazi if she remembered the scene. She paused for a moment. Yes, she’d almost forgotten. It was natural for her. Then she said: “Yes, now I can taste paper soaked in cement! What about the emotions? When I slip into memory, I like to think of “good times”. Paradoxically, there were. And there I always meet Pazi, who tries to turn the ugly into the beautiful. Otherwise our cross would have been much heavier.
(Eugenia Damian, “With Pazi through memory” in Rost, Review of Christian Culture and Politics, Year VI, n. 64, June 2008, pp. 28-29)