I am not Harper Lee or Charles Dickens
The only aim of the happenings related here is to retrace the condition in which some questions appeared to me and, consequently, how I tried to formulate some answers, even provisional, partial or wrong. They do not have autobiographical intentions.
Here is one: Toward the end of the Second World War, my family was obliged to move temporarily to a small village, far away from the town where I used to spend my childhood. The cause was the profession of my father. He was an officer and, for their peace of mind, the authorities put officers’ families safe from the front fury. It happened in Romania. Several years later, I fully learned the disaster that happened under the Soviet Army and the new regime imposed by it. Now, I wonder how it is that the peasants from that small village knew better our future than some educated persons from my town, persons who took wrong decisions for themselves.
"Animal Farm" by George Orwell is a pertinent description of what occurred in the former USSR and was to follow us. He knew it in 1945, when his book was published, but our intellectuals were hoping for something different. A naivety!
Immediately following that period, I remember the slogan "The Americans come!" Certainly, it might be a hope for some people, but a new query for me. Why would they do it, if they did not do it until now? Is a new war ready to start, this time between the USA and USSR? Is someone interested in it? The question was beyond my understanding. Still, something was telling me that the answer was negative. Today, we know the hearsay was false. The Martians would come sooner. Europe had been divided into zones of influence, we were – unfortunately – under the Soviet one, and nothing would change for a long time. Clearly, the Americans and Occidental Europe abandoned us. The only preoccupation was survivorship. It remains the question: why did they launch that rumour, because of which people died or destroyed their careers? I still do not know. Surely not the communists! I remember, because I knew some persons propagating the hearsay, and they were intellectuals with pro-occidental orientations. The single conclusion is they were not realistic persons at all. Again, the same question: how is it that educated people could fall in such errors?
Some years later, I knew a very interesting gentleman, who was important to me. He taught me English language in a time when this idea was at least odd, as eccentric as dangerous. Before the war, he had been cultural attaché of Romanian Embassy in Paris and London. Someone said, "in major political events, man oscillates between heroism and cowardice". He chose the first variant and, immediately after the war, came to Bucharest, thinking that he must be here, not abroad. In the following fifteen years, he experienced was imprisoned and under house arrest in a very small village, surviving thanks to people’s charity. I met him just when they had set him free. As nobody wanted to give him a job, I helped him and, as recompense, he offered to teach me English. Again the same question, "how is it that he did not know what the Russians are able to do?" He used to be, not only an educated person, but also an expert of politics. Very odd!
A particular happening remained in my mind for its evocative power. I was about eight or nine years old, when, one evening, I was to go toward one of my aunt’s home, only a few blocks away. Another aunt of mine was visiting us. Before leaving, she asked me, "You are not afraid of walking alone in the dark?" I had never thought of it before. It was not just dark, but some trees with large crowns made the street even darker. In the quiet of the evening, I could hear faint noises caused by birds, falling leafs, twigs etc. That was when I realized that fear is an induced sentiment. Of course, my aunt’s question to a child was stupid. Yes, fear is a sentiment subjective and inoculated. Even as reflex, it is acquired and not innate. A child first burns his fingers, and then learns to keep himself away. Why do we need to be afraid? Who invented fear, and why? Religion uses it at the highest level. The politics do it too, obviously for manipulating people! Fear of evil divinities, fear of the Inquisition, fear of political police during the communist regime in Eastern Europe, or of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 50’s years and so on.
From my childhood too, I remember a scene in the middle of the street: a gipsy woman showed her back to a gentlemen who had criticized her for I-do-not-know what. I remarked then the helplessness of a civilized person face to an uncivilized one. So then, what is the use of the education?
These were some questions from a child’s mind. Are they important? The questions no, but the answers yes, because they will form him as citizen.