Fluent in Three Languages at age 3

On Quiet Evenings

Quiet evenings without television or other entertainment has led me to expand my catalog of short stories. I put one here on the blog for your reaction. If you like it, I’ve got more. If you would rather have non-fiction, let me know that as well. My email, if you prefer not to comment on the blog is snowridge2000@yahoo.com but please do pass on your criticism.

Parkul Centru

It was posted for the world to see. The listings were taped to the outer door of the courtyard. Any passer by needed only to take three steps from the strada and they could read.
She had hoped so much. She had tried so hard. It wasn’t a surprise to her, she had feared it coming, but still in the back of her mind was a faint hope that a miracle might happen, that God might smile upon her. Here, though, pasted on the door was proof that there was no miracle.
Zona was the bottom of the list and that made it worse. The professor had taken the trouble to arrange the tabulation for top grade to poorest. Had the list been left alphabetical by last name, she would have been in the middle somewhere so hers would not be so easily spotted as the lowest grade.
She was ashamed. She had given it her best effort. She had studied, asked help from classmates, even had special assistance from the professor. The grade was not as much a failure of Zona’s intelligence or her work ethic as a rupture in communication from the text and instructor to her brain. Whatever reason the failure, as she stood there seeing her final grade she felt naked to the world.
Her husband was a lout and would never make anything of his life. He preferred beer and football above all else. They lived with her mother-in-law who chained smoked her way through the day watching Latin soap operas. Zona had a child and lost it to an accident and now refused thought of another. The class had represented a way up for her and now that way was taken.
She would have made a fine young, urban professional, although she was nearing the end of the time for the young. She had the looks for it, the wit, the drive. Her manner was a little too friendly, but that could be overcome. She dressed well, although if you saw her often you’d realize that she didn’t have many changes of outfits. She had stood tall, yet unbowed by the troubles of life until, seeing the posted results, her name at the bottom, she slumped.

Gheorghe lifted his long, tubular fishing rod and the line picked up from the water. He checked his bait and tossed it out again, the float landing nearly exactly where he had aimed. Gheorghe was an old man, but not an elderly one. He was retired and one of his favorite pass times was meeting Florin and walking down together to the lake in the park to fish. They hardly ever caught enough to make it worthwhile, but that was a side issue. It was their friendship, the sunshine and the act of fishing that were more important than any catch.
In Romania everyone under a certain age is slim. Nearly every one over a certain age is not. It is not a gradual thing. The older folks are overweight, with extended bellies and stodgy walks. Not everyone of course, but Gheorghe and Florin were. They’d lived in the same block of apartments for the last forty years. You would think that they had talked over every idea there was to talk about in that time, but still they gained knowledge from one another in an easy sort of way.
It was a quiet morning in the early fall. The water weeds had grown in the lake and it made the fishing more difficult finding the open spaces to lay down the hook, but the weather was ideal. The pond was still as there was no breeze and the paddle boaters had not taken to water yet. There had been no sign of a fish, but that was only a secondary consideration.
“Window shopping, Adriana always said I could window shop,” Gheorghe stated as fact.
Florin looked around to see what window it was that Gheorghe would have been shopping in. Often times pretty women strolled by the path along the lake, and something must have jogged him into thought. Florin didn’t see anything worth looking at so brought his eyes back to his bobber.
“As long as I didn’t touch the merchandise,” Gheorghe finished after a pause.
He was a man and had all the conceit of a man, but at his age and in his condition he knew that the only way he could touch merchandise was to pay for it and he hadn’t ever stooped that low and wasn’t about to now. He looked over to Florin, sitting on his cushion on the bank of the lake. He wondered why he liked Florin. Florin was not a philosophical man, Gheorghe was. Florin was a doer, always wanted to get things done. He had taken awhile to adjust into retirement. Gheorghe was a natural pensioner, not that he was lazy, but that he was mostly content with his thoughts.
“Ever touch any merchandise, Florin?” he asked.
That was not the kind of question that old friends ask each other. They respect each other’s privacy. Besides, if Gheorghe could remember, he probably had a pretty good idea if Florin had ever strayed from his wife.
“Not in the last two weeks,” came the diplomatic answer.
“Hah, not in the last twenty years.”
“I guess we’re too old and ugly to fool around now,” Florin added as a point of fact.
“Look at us Florin. What woman would want an old, flabby bull like us anyway?”
“Some old cow might,” Florin commented then added, “but why would we want another old cow, we each got one now.”
Gheorghe looked out across the lake. It isn’t a large lake and the benches can be easily seen one side to the other. There was a lady sitting on a bench across the water. He hadn’t noticed her there a moment ago, but she was there now. She was not a regular in the park, Gheorghe knew by sight, if not by name, all the regulars. He hadn’t seen her before.
It was not so much her looks that caught his attention as her attitude. She would have been a fine looking woman, certainly worth window shopping, but even across the lake he could see that she was despondent. He thought that there may be few things as unappealing as a woman depressed.
He had seen all sorts of drama in the park. That’s one reason it made fishing such an interesting past time, because it gave one time to look around. He and Florin could have taken up chess down at the tables, but you become too busy with the game to see things. Fishing is better.
Gheorghe’s mind began to roam. ‘Why is it that one day a fish is drawn to my bait and one day not interested? Is it only hunger, or is there some communication beyond what we know.’ He watched the lady. She did not notice him watching.
He stood up with an effort and a grunt. He wiped his hands on his towel and said to Florin, “Watch my rod, I’ll be back in a minute.” He climbed the short bank to the path and headed toward the far end of the lake and the restaurant without further explanation.

Zona sat on the bench trying to piece her future back together. The immediate future was explaining to her husband and her mother-in-law that she would be taking no more classes. She doubted that they would care much, except that he had welcomed the idea of her bringing home more money. There would be no extra money now.
The future that bothered her the most was the rest of her life. It seemed to stretch forward through the smelly fumes of old cigarette smoke. She was a failure. Everything she had touched was a failure.
She cried silently.

Gheorghe was not a hero. He was not a man to do heroic things. Between the two, Florin would be the better hero, but sitting on the bank on the other side of the lake, he had made a connection with this woman on the bench. He didn’t know what to do or what to say to her. He had gotten up, walked the long way around the lake so that he could buy a bag of popcorn from the popcorn vender. He walked towards her bench unsure if he should follow through and invade her privacy. He was not a hero. A coward would have kept walking past her and he was tempted, but he was drawn to her for some reason.
He sat down on the other end of the bench from her. As he sat, she made as if to leave.
“No, please don’t, I have something for you.”
She hesitated, looking at him. “Do I know you?”
He pulled out the hanky from his back pocket. It had recently been washed so he knew it was clean. He handed it to her. “No, I’m only a stranger with a clean hanky and a bag of hot popcorn.”

A Word about the Animals

Animals

Blog entry September 5, 2005

Much of Romania is blighted by wild dogs. These are strays and former strays and sons and daughters of strays. Most families have a non-stray that they use as watchdog, our Gazda family’s is named Bill Clinton. The watch dogs can be mean, the strays usually are not. In Rasnov and in Brasov the stray dogs would slink around corners and hide behind trees. Most were not aggressive but timid and fearful. All were thin. Many looked young. Some were even cute.

Many cities are overcome with these dogs. It is a real problem. In Luna de Sus however, we’ve seen only one stray dog in the month we’ve been here. We have seen lots of kittens. Perhaps it is the Hungarian influence. Stray kittens do have the advantage of keeping the mice at bay.

Last Friday I was invited to attend a targ. A targ is the market exchange for livestock. It’s also a flea market. For those of you that have been to the Elkton field days, imagine that combined with the county fair. Half of the carutsas in the county were there, and every kind of domesticated animal was available for sale. The folks I went with were in the market for a calf to raise for veal.

There were piglets in the trunks of cars and in crates. There were big hogs, too, if that was your pleasure. There were sheep and goats and puppies. There was a section of grain dealers. There were lots of horses, many weanlings, however, I didn’t get to walk over in that direction because my hosts had found the calf they liked and were ready to leave.

Yesterday, Saturday, Nancy and I hitchhiked down the back way to Turda. Turda is a medium size city formerly known for its salt mine. It was a pleasant place with a wide piati and several nice churches but we went to see the first annual Turda Fest. The Turda fest was put together with volunteer help. A few of those volunteers were Peace Corps folks. It was an agricultural based theme and I wanted to see if there were any contacts I could make there.

We had a good time, tasted some wine, bought a box of wine home in a punga, and saw a part of the country that we hadn’t seen before. We ate pig off the spit. And we registered to win a steer. Not sure what we would have done if we would have won it, but we got a good laugh. We even named it for our country director, Jim Eckstrom.

Today I strolled up the hillsides flanking town. I’ll try and enclose a picture. On the way back down, I was offered a ride in a carutsa and in faltering Romanian I tried to explain to my new friend about my horse running in a race later today in Virginia. It really is West Virginia, but that would have been way to hard to explain. Good Luck to Lucky Nell. If she does well, I’ll post that later in the week.

Turda Fest