This story is part of my published book: "Short Stories: The Story of a Refugee" I'm preparing a second edition.
MY HOUSE
The house we owned in Romania, the house I grew up in, the house that sometime I dream of, was an old house that my parents brought when they came back from Greece, in 1947.
The World War II had divided Europe in two: the free countries to the West, and the countries behind the Iron Curtain to the East. Romania was one of them. Greece belonged to the free World. My Father, who was A Romanian Citizen, working in Greece, as the Director of Romanian Schools in Salonika, Greece, was forced to come back to Romania. My mother who is Greek, worked as a teacher at the same school. There she met and married my father. I, of all the children was born in Salonika, Greece.
When my parent brought the house, it was a charming house, with wild roses climbing the thick walls, with Italian stuccos adorning the inside and outside of the house. The house had the main quarters up front, a total eight great rooms with tall windows full of sun, with high ceilings and gleaming hard wood floors. In the back, it had the servants’ quarters consisting of two rows of smaller buildings, set to the side of the main house toward the back yard. The main house had two entrances; the front entrance, which we used, leading to a beautiful hallway from which there were, to the right two front rooms facing the street, and the left a third room Also to the left was the entrance to the utility hallway, to the attic and basement.
The secondary entrance leads to a long back hallway leading to the last four rooms. Of course, originally the house was built to serve one family and its servants. The Communist Regine forced a lot of people upon us to live in the house. There were people who never owned anything in their entire life, and did not have a place to live, people who came in the Country’s Capital from villages. The Government decreed that every person has the right to inhabit so many square meters of living space. The fact that we owned the house did not matter. We were not asked. We were considered lucky that we were allowed to live there. In the beginning, I remember, we were forced into the front two rooms, facing the street, only. There were six of us: my parents, and us the three children, and a young girl named Vica, who lived with us and took care of us.
Then, of course each room of the house was housing a family. They all used the back entrance and the back hallway as their kitchen. There were two restrooms for the entire house, located at the end of the back hallway, next to the back entrance. The two rows of servants’ buildings were now occupied by other two families. Joyous events and tragedies happened it that house; children were born and people died in that house.
I remember the Rezman family, who lived in one of the servants’ buildings; the man was of German heritage from Timisoara, his wife Margareta, and their two little girls, about my age, Louisa and Simona. Many a time I played with Louisa in the back yard, with our dolls. Then there were Irma and Vasili Grigorutza. Irma was of Hungarian Origin. They had a little boy called Vasilica. Then there was Valerica, again of Hungarian origin who was married with Carol Viallard , of French origin, and there was Sandulescu and his wife who worked in the neighborhood shoe repair shop.
I remember the time when Grigorutza had an affair with Margareta, and they were caught by Irma. I remember that afterwards Margareta willed herself to die. I remember the Rezman family and my friend Louisa moving back to Timisoara.
I remember Valerica trying to kill herself. I remember the Sandulescu family , both of them dying and other families moving in. I remember the Vlad family who wants to take the back house from us and sued us. I remember Gica, who was a drunkard, and sang all night long when the three of us had to study for the college exams.
I remember Engineer Vasili Rosu. Irma was taking care of him at the time. I remember when Irma hit the old man and broke his shoulder. Then, Engineer Vasili Rosu called my parents and asked them to build a wall to physically separate his room from Irma’s. And I remember my mother taking pity on him and doing so. Since then Engineer Vasili Rosu, a countrywide renowned Hydrotechnical Engineer, was part of our family. We would go summers in vacations and take him with us. We inherited “his golden bracelet”, his job trade, his profession, the three of us.
As time passed, and we grew older, the many families living in the house started to move out, to better living quarters. Gradually , the house became ours again.
Then, we started to remodel it. We were all students at the time. We took Vasili, a fine plasterer, in to stay with us for a whole year. And Vasili with our help restored the house to its original grandeur. We scraped away the many layers of paint and revealed the original gold painting of the interior stucco. Vasili plastered the walls for the entire house anew, and we choose different colors for each room to match the color of the antiques ceramic stoves. The house was again a grand house, with bedrooms, dining room, and kitchen as was originally designed. We installed a central heat system and remodeled the bathroom.
When we finished with everything, I left the country, and then my entire family left after me.
I still love that house, and often dream of it, as it is my house, and it is part of me.
After the fall of the communist regime in Eastern Europe in 1989, and the “iron curtain” parted, I succeed to go back to Romania for a short visit (in my two-week vacation).
I applied for, and the new democratic regime restituted our house back to us. We did some repairs to the house; installed a new roof, restored the façade, and put a new fence, all done in our short vacation time. We think to put is for sale, as we are established now in the USA, and nobody could live over in two continents- at least not us.
Yes, your house in Romania has had an amazing history. And it makes me wonder all the history that went before your father bought it in 1947. I also wonder if your father and mother were alive when you got the house back to see something they thought would never happen.
The expression, "if these walls could talk" comes to mind. Your detailed account brought your beloved home in Romania to life. I'm glad you and your family were able to have it back to yourselves to remodel and restore its glory. Your former home has a rich history.
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