On these living themes, of any contemplation, my will was to jump in the battle, to give my life for any cause that would ask for it, when my wife got home.
Noticing the state I was in, she had no clue of what she was supposed to do in order to calm down, knowing that in that moment it was impossible for me to “turn back” from my way. Someone rings at the door. It was a tapestry worker that had to fix the couch from the hallway.
– Good evening!
– Hello.
– Sorry to bother you, I’ve heard that unusual stuff are happening in the country, as you are watching TV, can I join you?
-Yes. Please, be welcomed. And we turned the TV on so we could see these things.
-Are you sure I am not bothering you?
-How come? These things involve everyone.
My wife quickly takes out a bottle of plum brandy (a last minute idea), so that he can see we aren’t upset with him, and serves us both. I take my camera and what I thought was important I recorded on the film. With all the shocking images shown at TV, the superposed messages over the image presented the participants from all over the country and all those movements in general made us believe that: “Romanian Television broadcasted live the revolution”. The drinks cumulated while the revolutionary from inside me was continuously imbibing after the retrace of the images in time, made by Brates and others. It seems that my wife’s calculation did not fail. In the end I went to sleep knowing that I will see Cluj… in December 29, when “the cold and fear” train stopped in Cluj. From it some got off, only some… Why not everyone? With my finger nail I scrape the carriage window from the ice deposed to it. Yes, we are in Cluj… It’s the final station. All the passengers should get off. Yes, but I see they don’t… I don’t get this “part”… I put my hand on the luggage and hand lamp (even in this type of city the movable lighting is necessary). I get off. Few passengers that got off the train hurry to leave the train station. I did the same thing. All people that leave the train station have the tendency to “throw themselves” at any type of transportation vehicle. I love too much Cluj to just travel in the speed of the railway.

I began to like Cluj from the moment I have seen it for the first time, when, after my opinion, it presented as an appealing, rather than towering city, like all the metropolis leave the impression, giving you the opportunity to discover it house to house, street to street, as if you would communicate with history, with those people that along the centuries have put their hands, soul and money to build this saucy Transylvanian city. Now I was being in a “over century affinity” and this thing was making me happy. I was trying to see those people that inhabited this city, how they behaved, how they were, how good, knowing that there the decision of assassinating Horea (today, a street name), Novac (whose torture wall still lasts) was taken. There were also bad people, but I believe that a lot were in pain from the sufferings of their heroes. Today people from Cluj are superior, they feel and understand each other better, and for their “intelligence” people are talking for a long time. From my getting off the train in the few lighted station this thoughts “grounded” me (this was also a kind of a psychic repression imposed to the whole people from the country through the missing of the street lights), in a city that is even less lighted. With a small luggage in this coldness I felt the need to “step” fast enough so that my feet won’t freeze. The city was waking up, but still the railways were empty enough. On the left side of “Horea” street, an armored car was patrolling. On the bridge over the “Somes” River the railways were going down the street with “bunches” in front of the door. The working Cluj was going on duty. Getting on the center of the city a little before 6 o’clock I did not find a door opened. A sign of fear? I don’t know, but there was nobody to offer you a tea, a coffee, a worm croissant, in such town not only that it was being unpleasant, inhospitable, it more looked like a sort of repugnance. The coldness “loved me” with a constancy to be envied. Since eight o’clock last night I was not able to feel the worm. I began to visit the graveyards with no dead men in it, the bread and sorrow graveyards with rests of candles. With the lamp on my hand in the full center of Cluj, I was reading the advertising, the imputes, the agony written in despair of the ones that have lost all they had worthful in this world at the so soon passed revolution. They mourned their sons, husbands, parents, brothers. The sidewalk from the front of the University’s Book Store was half full of crowns, bunches, BREAD, flowers and candles.

A lot of sadness … Here were murdered the youngest, the most enthusiast, those that in their short life “scientifically eaten”, and in the same time developed, the young people that in the moment of the parties oligarchy bunkers opening , tried to throw away a part of the aliments… Food that they have never heard of or seen before, causing parents and older people to break out in laughter tears. In this hanged up type of misery we were living knowing all around us. Not even biologically these children weren’t good enough. For them a fowl has never had other compounds than: head, nails and neck … Not even crest! That much food could not be bought in “IEPOCA” and even if you could, for a medium salary of 2600 lei they could buy daily only milk, bread, if you could find it, and what they would give you “on allowance”: oil, sugar and a maximum of 2-3 kg of meat/month, taken under the counter. In this case a batchler might be able to manage him-self but families have impoverished. The only amusement, officially legalized, was “standing” in line, from which in the end you wouldn’t get anything. The atrocity was that the “sitting in line” was enforced even for some inessential things like: toothpicks (what on hell did we still need that?), toilet paper, matches, and … (to hell with it!). The certitude of the products rarefaction was visible and felt by each person. Some have definitely disappeared from the market and it wasn’t about the imported products: coffee, olives or other delicacies, but imagine a country that has no …marmalade, beans, vegetables…to develop. In year ’89 “it so happened” that from April 27 until August 17 I haven’t seen any type of meat. There were some “national” fests when on allowance we could get ½ kg meat/person that for most of the times was a … BONE.
Seven o’clock. No invitation. No opened door… in all Cluj.
At the bridge over the “Somes” River the most insane tragedy took place. A guy, from a car, with an automatic weapon raked the population. Through the dead ones, two children, brother and sister, holding hands, have fallen on the pavement in front of the restaurant. The steel cross, cold as the times we were in, was blocking the alley. It was like a premonition: “who passes it, goes to chaos”. Besides the cold and black cross, there were on the sidewalk dight firs for the innocent soul of the young dead. There was a “grove” of firs planted in the memory of the young ones wedded …with death.