on a tartan blanket on the lawn. Then she lay back and pushed her sunglasses into her hair, letting the sun into her eyes. Her shirt rode up, revealing the skin of her midriff and the top of her black pants above the line of her jeans. I had not seen much of her body, but I wanted all of it and most of all I wanted the taste of her skin, close and perspiring and smelling of Chanel and sweat; skin so smooth and so deep that it seemed to be tanning in the sun as I watched.
The earth had just been watered and the hexagonal domes of the greenhouses were quiet but for the faint sucking of soil hydrating. In the tropical palmhouse, the plants were livid, leaves like upturned hands supplicating something beyond the glass that held them in. Many had leaves edged with brown: sudden drops of temperature, too much or too little water. They were dying slowly, from the outside in. This was more like a sanatorium than a greenhouse, full of gasping, stricken patients. Coal fires were gone to ash and electric two-bar heaters stood disconnected in corners. In between the resident exotic flora, dandelions grew to terrific proportions, fat and bloated dockleaves had crept in and begun replicating across the mounds of humus while bindweed curled and twisted around every stalk and trunk.
‘So, what made you come to Romania?’ Cilea rubbed a leaf between her fingers, smelling the plant’s scent: exotic, mentholated, clean. She asked it as if it were a trick question. Perhaps the only trick was in the answer: my simply having no idea I was falling in with the machinations of Leo, Ionescu and who knew how many other people I didn’t know and might never meet? I told her instead that I had wanted to visit a country whose language I could learn, and that I was politically in sympathy with the ideals of communism if not, or certainly no longer, their execution.
‘I think you knew nothing,’ she said, matter-of-factly.
‘That’s true, or else I wouldn’t have come. I’m glad I’m here though.’ That second statement was not strictly true, or not then. I tried it out and it sounded plausible. By the end, which was not so far away after all, I meant it.
‘No one knows about Romania, about us, our culture, our problems. We’re the forgotten country. We’re not sexy like the Czechs or plucky like the Poles. We don’t have our Havels and our Walesas…’
‘You don’t look like you’ve got that many problems.’ I looked at Cilea, then thought of Rodica in her hospital: ‘You’ve got Greek wine, Italian sunglasses, you dress like a westerner – better than most westerners… you drive your own car, no sorry,
you get driven around in your own car
… you – you personally I mean – you don’t look like you need any Havels or Walesas. Not sure about the majority of your compatriots though…’
‘I’m not part of all this…’ she said, gesturing at all that lay nearby, outside, beyond, ‘if that’s what you mean…’
‘
Part of this?
Part of
what
exactly? It’s not your fault or you just don’t have to go through what the rest of your people go through?’
I thought I’d ended our relationship before it had begun.
‘You don’t know – you’ve got no idea, and I’m not going to explain to you, some gap-year deprivation tourist…’
Nice phrase. I wondered if she’d prepared it. Cilea flushed, and when she was angry I seemed to smell her more: the closed spicy scent of her perfume and body heat.
‘Are you sure you didn’t come here so you could be part of something you’d never need to live with?’ she asked, as if she were sorry for me, as if I were a stranger to my own motivations. I didn’t answer. The sun hid for a moment behind the clouds and the temperature dropped.
‘Come, I want you to see this…’ Cilea pulled me up by the hand and took me to a small, immaculate glass dome set apart from the rest of the gardens and guarded by a man in green overalls with a walkie-talkie and a holstered
The earth had just been watered and the hexagonal domes of the greenhouses were quiet but for the faint sucking of soil hydrating. In the tropical palmhouse, the plants were livid, leaves like upturned hands supplicating something beyond the glass that held them in. Many had leaves edged with brown: sudden drops of temperature, too much or too little water. They were dying slowly, from the outside in. This was more like a sanatorium than a greenhouse, full of gasping, stricken patients. Coal fires were gone to ash and electric two-bar heaters stood disconnected in corners. In between the resident exotic flora, dandelions grew to terrific proportions, fat and bloated dockleaves had crept in and begun replicating across the mounds of humus while bindweed curled and twisted around every stalk and trunk.
‘So, what made you come to Romania?’ Cilea rubbed a leaf between her fingers, smelling the plant’s scent: exotic, mentholated, clean. She asked it as if it were a trick question. Perhaps the only trick was in the answer: my simply having no idea I was falling in with the machinations of Leo, Ionescu and who knew how many other people I didn’t know and might never meet? I told her instead that I had wanted to visit a country whose language I could learn, and that I was politically in sympathy with the ideals of communism if not, or certainly no longer, their execution.
‘I think you knew nothing,’ she said, matter-of-factly.
‘That’s true, or else I wouldn’t have come. I’m glad I’m here though.’ That second statement was not strictly true, or not then. I tried it out and it sounded plausible. By the end, which was not so far away after all, I meant it.
‘No one knows about Romania, about us, our culture, our problems. We’re the forgotten country. We’re not sexy like the Czechs or plucky like the Poles. We don’t have our Havels and our Walesas…’
‘You don’t look like you’ve got that many problems.’ I looked at Cilea, then thought of Rodica in her hospital: ‘You’ve got Greek wine, Italian sunglasses, you dress like a westerner – better than most westerners… you drive your own car, no sorry,
you get driven around in your own car
… you – you personally I mean – you don’t look like you need any Havels or Walesas. Not sure about the majority of your compatriots though…’
‘I’m not part of all this…’ she said, gesturing at all that lay nearby, outside, beyond, ‘if that’s what you mean…’
‘
Part of this?
Part of
what
exactly? It’s not your fault or you just don’t have to go through what the rest of your people go through?’
I thought I’d ended our relationship before it had begun.
‘You don’t know – you’ve got no idea, and I’m not going to explain to you, some gap-year deprivation tourist…’
Nice phrase. I wondered if she’d prepared it. Cilea flushed, and when she was angry I seemed to smell her more: the closed spicy scent of her perfume and body heat.
‘Are you sure you didn’t come here so you could be part of something you’d never need to live with?’ she asked, as if she were sorry for me, as if I were a stranger to my own motivations. I didn’t answer. The sun hid for a moment behind the clouds and the temperature dropped.
‘Come, I want you to see this…’ Cilea pulled me up by the hand and took me to a small, immaculate glass dome set apart from the rest of the gardens and guarded by a man in green overalls with a walkie-talkie and a holstered
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