“THE KING IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE KING!”
Excerpts from a Teenager Diary

Donca Vianu

20.03.1964
Papa and me went for dinner at “Pescarus” and were mortified to see Dej (1) and Stoica (2) at one table (and security officers at the adjacent). Stoica invited us im-mediately to their table! First time that I saw Dej from so near. He looks majestic, and also very kind. He has a beautiful face and gentle eyes. Impossible to imagine that he has murdered so many people. To me he behaved like a grandfather. He asked me about my age, and when he heard that I’ll be 15 in one week, he ad-dressed me smilingly with “Missis”, rather sweet. He noticed that I struggled with the trout, bent over and removed for me all the bones. He asked me what I would like to be later, as a grown up, and when I said “actress” he burst into a hearty laugh. Then I realised that all his mistresses were actresses, and his favorite daughter is an actress too. My face burned and I knew that I looked like a tomato. Both he and Stoica were eating Wiener Schnitzel with a mountain of mushed po-tatoes. They and papa had red Feteasca, (3) I drank lemonade. The orchestra was playing rather loud, when they talked among themselves I could not understand what it was about. Gigi Marga sang “Ada Kaleh”, and “Scent of Lilies”– what a clear, expressive voice. I heard that she is one of Dej’s favourite singers. Papa was throughout very quiet. I felt that he was content that Dej’s attention went to me. One part of me was flattered and felt honoured, another was touched by Papa’s faith in me. He trusted that I’ll not say a faulty word, in spite of everything I knew from him about the Party and Dej’s past. An unforgettable evening! But I am not allowed to tell anybody about it. A pity, it would make such a good story at my birthday party.
02.03.1965
Papa came home with a long face and dark cloud around him. He ate little, and he held a book in front of him – he wanted to be left alone. I ate quiet as a mouse. After lunch he looked up from his book, and told me that Dej is seriously ill. I am
not allowed to tell this to anybody. Afterwards he left.
I called mamma, but the nurse said that she sleeps. She always sleeps when I call! I did not talk to her for at least one week.
I did not want to be alone home, so I went to Lena. The weather was horrible, the sleet had started again, and it was cold. I thought for the ten minutes walk I’ll not need an umbrella, and I left also without a cap and gloves. When I arrived my hair was wet, my hands were ice cold and my feet were cold and soggy from the slush. Lena’s mother put my shoes and socks on the radiator and gave me hot tea with brioches baked by Lena’s grandma, this was very nice. Lena has cut her hair! I think she is crazy, such rich long curls, she looked like a goddess, now, with her short curls and tiny movable body she resembles a poodle. It got dark, Lena lit the Tiffany lamp on her writing table, which spreads a diffuse purple light, and makes the room look very cozy. Lena and I perched on Lena’s bed, warped in woolen blankets. We talked about Dej’s illness, she knew about it – he has cancer with me-tastasis all over. Later her mother brought us steaming dumplings, soooo good. Lena opened again the topic “Foris”, (4) she is obsessed by it. But what she told me this time made a difference, for both of us. She told me that Foris was not shot. He was beaten with a crowbar, this is how he died. Pintilie (5) himself beat him. We were asking ourselves if it makes any difference, the way he died, he died anyway. But no, we came to the conclusion that it makes a big difference. To die by a bullet still resembles an execution, while to be beaten to death with a crowbar, well, this is to be murdered with the method of a thug. So Pintilie is just a thug! This explains a lot, though I cannot say what. Pintilie is the author of the Pitesti penitentiary, (6) and he has sent one million people to the Death Channel (7) (this papa told me). And he is an ordinary thug. Somehow this makes him less mythical, more approachable to deal with, although I don’t know how. Lena felt the same. And then I made for the first time an association which froze the blood in my veins: Pintilie’s wife is Ana Toma, mamma’s boss. Or she was mamma’s boss before mamma got ill. Does this mean something?
The dinner last year with Dej seems sooooo long ago. I wish I was still so naïve as then. I wish I knew for sure that papa and mama are safe. I wish I knew when I will die. When we were at “Pescarus” Dej had no idea that he had only one more year to live. Nobody knows when death will come. How can I plan my life if I don’t know how long it will last? I find this so absurd.
Lena’s dad brought me home, he did not want me to walk alone in the dark. Papa is not home, the apartment is empty and silent. I go to bed.

19.03.1965
Dej has died today. I cancelled my birthday party on 27. I’ll be 16. Papa came late home. But I talked to him. I wanted to know why he is so upset – the dark cloud has not left him now for weeks. It is because of Dej’s successor. Papa thinks that it will be Ceausescu, (8) and that he will be a calamity for the country.
Before dying, Dej has asked for Patriarch Justinian. He has confessed his crimes and the Patriarch absolved him of guilt. This I am not allowed to tell anybody.
How can an atheist ask for the Patriarch to absolve him of his crimes? Did Dej re-ally believe that the church has this power? And what kind of church is this, which forgives mass murderers just like this?
On the radio were funeral marches, eulogies and solemn promises “to strengthen the Party struggle” and “the unity of the people around the Party and the Central Committee”, and all the other slogans everybody knows by heart and nobody means, recited with a feigned seriousness ready to slip into hysteria.
I wanted for a change to listen to Adamo’s “Tombe la neige”, but papa dissuaded me. Neighbours could hear, and we still don’t know if the living room is not bugged.
We called mamma. Her voice was squeaky. Papa conveyed the news. Then I cried, not of grief but of nerves. Then papa and I went out, just for fresh air. It was cloudy and windy and the streets were almost empty. The few pedestrians we came across were looking down, no one made eye contact.
I am glad that it is spring break, and I don’t have to go to school this week.
23.03.1965
There are rumours that Dej was irradiated by KGB in January in Warsaw. Papa does not believe it, although the Soviets would have had reasons. Papa told me that Dej has distanced himself from Soviet Union and opened Romania the last years to the West not because it is in the interests of the country but because it was the surest way for himself to secure his position. I don’t remember papa’s ar-guments, but they sounded logical.
However, the Party has decided to immortalize Dej: all his speeches will be edited, biographies will be written, statues will be raised, public spaces will be named af-ter him.…..I wonder when will all this be demolished, erased and renamed, as it happened with Stalin?
Now I start to feel sorry about my birthday party. Flora has promised to make pasta salad, Lena’s grandma to bake a chocolate cake, and Lena to borrow me her black shoes with high heels. It would be the first time that I wear high heels, not very high, perhaps 3 cm, but still. They look so elegant! And match so perfectly my “petite robe noir”! I look like a lady, so exciting! With my hair loose, of course. When does a woman start to wear a bra?

24.03.1965
Today was Dej’s funeral. I followed it on the radio. The solemnities started at 10.30 A.M. Thousands of people, many crying, endless speeches. The embalmed body of “the beloved leader of our Party and people” was deposited, after a long march, in the Mausoleum of the Heroes of the Struggle for the Freedom of Man-kind and the Homeland of Socialism – I cannot think of a more pompous name. The funeral ended with cannon volleys, and the sirens of all factories and plants, sea and river boats and church bells sounding simultaneously. Then three minutes of silence. I cried, again of nerves.
His successor is Nicolae Ceausescu.

 

1 Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej: the communist leader of Romania from 1947 until his death in 1965
2 Chivu Stoica: member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1945 until his death in 1975, and of the Politbureau; Prime Minister of Romania 1955 – 1961; President of the State Council of Romania (de facto head of state) 1965 -1967.
3 Feteasca: Romanian wine
4 Stefan Foris: the legitimate General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1940 – 1944, chosen by Comintern; he was captured and toppled at gunpoint so that Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej could take his position; 1946 he was assassinated by order of Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej with the approval of other members of the Politbureau
5 Gheorghe Pintilie: Director of the “Securitate”, the Romanian version of KGB, from its beginning in 1948 until his retirement in 1963; Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej’s henchman
6 Pitesti penitenciary: a prison where the largest and most intensive brainwashing program in Eastern Europe was effectuated between 1949-1952; it was meant to “reeducate” through uninterrupted tor-ture young political prisoners: supporters of the Fascist Iron Guard, members of the National Peasant’s and National Liberal parties, Orthodox and Catholic priests and Zionist members of the Romanian Jewish community; the goal of the torture round the clock, whereby prisoners were forced to become them-selves perpetrators, was for prisoners to discard past political and religious convictions, and to alter their personalities to the point of absolute obedience
7 Death Channel: the Danube-Black Sea Channel: a forced labor camp, the Romanian Gulag, 1949-1953; it is estimated that one million people were deported to work at the channel, and 400.000 died of ex-haustion, starvation and ensuing illnesses
8 Nicolae Ceausescu: General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989. He was also the country’s head of state from 1967 to 1989. Until 1971 he followed the policy of his predeces-sor of maintaining a relative independence from Soviet Union, opening to the West and an internal re-laxation of the control and coercion; 1971 he visited China and North Korea; both Mao Tse Tung and Kim II Sung became role models; in only a couple of years he literally plunged Romania into darkness and hunger through “austerity measures” and transformed the whole country into a concentration camp by unleashing a terrible terror