1.

Amelia, a school girl. She wears the red tie of communist pioneers. She is praying.

...and please protect Vitea and Lulu and Gramps and Babooshka.
And please God, take care of maman's soul,
and papá's
and Archimedes'...
wherever he may be,
'cause he was the apple of Gramps' and Babooshka's eyes.
'Cause he cost so much cash.
When they sold all the shiny things from the box we'd saved
from the old house, 
when maman left.
The green stone sparkling ring bought us the cow,
the long gold chains got us the hay.
Gramps' old watch,
the one with the engraved lid,
became two giant sacks of corn flour;
and the pearl coronet, we turned into Archimedes—
even if Archimedes wasn't his real name,
'cause Gramps was the only one who knew it
and when he whispered it into his ear,
oh, how the swine would enjoy it,
like a doggie, he would even sit up on his hind legs and squeal.
When they slaughtered him, Babooshka was so mad she got drunk again.
She cried and shouted:  singe him gingerly,
scorch Joseph Vissarionovitch,
may his gory soul burn in hell—
and she cried so hard
that Sasha and Gramps had to gag her
and carry her into the house
so that she wouldn't cry any more for poor Archimedes. 

And please God, watch on Gramps' soul,
even if Babooshka didn’t love him as much as she loved Archimedes,
'cause she didn't shed a tear when Gramps kicked the bucket.
For about three weeks she didn’t even speak a word.
She quit bickering over the smallest little things.
Then she left home without telling anyone.
And forgive us God for being so happy
when she left us with Sasha.
But eventually we missed her
`cause Sasha wouldn’t exactly feed us
and he left us all alone all night long, slept all day long,
wouldn’t play with us like he'd used to,
back at the old house.

And thank you God that you've decided to bring Babooshka back to us,
even if she is so skinny now with purple and green patches on her face.
'Cause we love her even if she's all bald,
even if she's now so ugly she looks like Baba Yaga.

Oh, and God, you can forget about Lulu,
'cause he bit me very hard when I said that maman was an angel,
and he rolled on the floor and roared like a boar.
And he follows me wherever I go,
and throws stones at my pecan tree,
where Vitea and I’ve made a tree house
where I study every day,
like I promised maman I would,
back at the old house,
on the terrace,
that evening when we were looking at that rocky black road,
and people and animals kept coming on and on,
poor them,
they were coming very slowly
and some would stop at our gate,
and Babooshka fed them –
no, not all of them, only some.
And Gramps would shoot at the others with his old rifle—but they kept on coming on and on and they would never stop coming...   

And after some time maman would start the breathing lesson:
she would teach me how to become an angel,
just like her.
You have to breathe deep, very deep.
You breathe deeper and deeper,
you move your arms, like this,
and, after some time, you take off, slowly, and rise.
You keep on breathing deep and you find yourself floating
higher and higher,
until you disappear in the distance—
and never touch land again.
Like she did, when she found out about papá.
Everybody was crying, even Gramps was, but not her.
She just started to breathe:  deeper, and deeper...
and then she took off.
I wasn't there, but I am sure that's how she went to you—
and she is better off there.
When you come across her,
please tell her
I have not forgotten to breathe
and I’m learning to become an angel myself one day.
Just like her. 

And please, also tell her that, after she'd gone,
we had to leave too.
But we left on that rocky black road
and everybody was crying again, 'cept for us:
me, Vitea and Lulu,
'cause we loved to travel with that old little cart
and bounce so hard and we couldn't even speak,
we just bleated, like this
(she hits her chest with her fist, breathing out, as children do),
with every breath...like this...rrrrrrrrrr....beeee...teeeeee..... Gooo-hoo hooo...hooo...oood.

...and, God, you know what?
When you have a little time to spare,
please make Lulu grow green warts on his ass.
He always calls me Cozenka , baaa-baaa-baaa-
and he smells of rabid squirrel piss.
But God, isn't it true,
since they teach us at school
that some people come from apes,
Lulu comes from a rabid squirrel?
I come from a polar hound, I am sure,
and Vitka from an Arabian dancing stallion.
Maman clearly came from a pheasant,
and papá from a musk ox.
Uncle Milutz—from a wild goat,
and tante Jeanne from a goose
—I promise you.
Sasha is a tiger, has long black and red stripes on his back—
I saw them with my own eyes;
but Sasha went to a place where he cannot be visited
as we visited Uncle Milutz who also worked so that all the peoples of the world
should live long in peace and prosperity.

It's just that...I don't understand, God,
how somebody who has lungs as weak as Uncle Milutz,
who barely moves and breathes
and is so poorly dressed
in those grey and torn clothes...
just don't get mad at me, God,
like Babooshka.
She always snarls at me not to ask so many questions
and she encourages Lulu. Who pushes me,
pulls my hair and treads on my feet:
Cozenka, baaa-baaa, polenta fingers, empty head.
So what? Uncle Milutz died too, hah!
and then we were allowed to pray for him.

But God, why aren't we permitted to go to the church
and why, when Gramps kneels and crosses himself
and bows at every corner,
Babooshka would whine and die of fear,
Bodje moi, Bodje moi, come on, come on papushka ,
paidjom! I think Babooshka comes from a hen.

And God, please help Sasha,
bring him back home,
and do not let him do what maman did.
'Cause he's got no idea of breathing.
And he won't soar.
Better take him to Bucharest, have him work for the people, for the Revolution,
for which you must give away all you have.
When I grow up, I’ll work for the Revolution too,
and have my head shaved,
just like Babooshka,
and have yellow patches on my hands
and black broken fingernails
and such a long-long face
and moan at night
and yell in my sleep
and get drunk on National Holidays and on Victory day and the 1st of May,
because I heard on the radio it's Theinternationaldayoftheworkerswhouniteinallthecountriesandmarchandsinganddance. 

And thank you, God, that you rid me of those stupid piano lessons
and that moron of a German nanny and the boring French classes.

And please, God, help me grow up and sing songs for grown ups,
like the workers brigade
who flutter the red banner of the Party in the wind,
and Vitea will leap from roof to roof,
like a wonderful flame, as we saw in a movie at the theatre,
when we were still at the old house,
and they were not running these amazing Russian movies with cranes.
Vitea will dance and I will sing—
and not play that old junky piano—
I will sing for the workers who rule and are the heroes
and they work, and work, poor souls,
in the mines and in the factories,
and in the big socialist plants
and who are building our future.
He will dance from The Swan Lake and The Nutcracker and Scheherazade
and maybe he will also dance to that funny music, without rules,
that makes you vibrate so,
and...well, maybe I will play then, but not the piano,
No! nothing could make me play it again—
maybe I will play the saxophone, like I saw when we were back at the old house.
They came to our place,
the whole band, all black,
as if they were coming straight from monkeys, 
I promise you!            
Oh, God, I can hardly wait to paint myself all in black
and play and sing for the wooork-iiiing claa-aas,
and Vitea will dance. As for Lulu, let him sell the tickets.
Amen!

2.

Amelia is breathing—a half-breath, fragmented long sob.

Where have all the little things gone?
The little things that are no more?
Where is the tea that I drank this morning,
the year 1960,
the colored pictures primer,
the song I just sang,
Misha, the teddy-bear I dropped in Gramps' grave
and nobody would get it back for me,
Gramps—where is he—
where is Vitea, where is the Paris, that city that maman and papá kept talking about,
saying we would go there, that we would all move there...?!

In the Yardlergard , that's where I’ll go.
And the Yardlergard is watched by a Gramps,
but he is not at all like my own Gramps,
but more like papushka-Stalin, with an old rifle.
Boom-boom says the rifle
each time someone uninvited
comes too close to the Yardleygard.
Bang-bang at its gate all the things that are no more
and want to escape and scatter again in the large world.
Bang-bang-bingo-bing...dot-dot...says Vitea. Battement grand jetté, says le Paris.
Pashlee na Yardleygarda says papushka-Stalin
and all line up, wait for their turn and go in, nice and quiet.

3.

Amelia, 16, in the hospital, with IVs. She is writing a letter.

To the Green Yard Protection Bureau
District number 5
Bucharest

Dear Comrade Commander!

The undersigned Amelia Anastasia Valerie Greceanu-Voican,
I report that your name means nothing
to the District 5 militiamen
of the city of Bucharest.
Because I had often told them I was on a secret mission
to collect information
from the soldiers
from the embassies
of the neighbouring and friendly countries
where you agreed that I should infiltrate
and obtain top secret information
and food remains for Fanny,
that you agreed
we were allowed to keep
and who, as I wrote you at that time,
was bought by Babooshka last Easter
because all the lambs had gone
and she had spent
most of the money
on homemade alcoholic products,
sold by the peasants in the market. 

The militiamen who had not heard about you,
Pretended not to know about Fanny as well
and our working undercover
and, after having shoved her in the van,
they came back to take a statement from me.
They even searched me—
I didn’t know that’s what you’d call it.
I just hope they didn't search Fanny,
because it hurts really bad.
Then I realised they weren’t so different
from the guards
at the embassies,
only they weren’t so handsome and so blond
and didn’t give me either food or chewing gum—
but maybe they were short themselves,
poor them,
'cause they were so thin
and smelled bad:
of raw onion, perspiration, and Mozaic.

Because, if you don't know, Comrade Commander,
let me inform you
that you can’t get another antiperspirant spray in the whole country,
but Mozaic. It smells very nice,
it reminds me of the clean toilets of the militia headquarters.
You’d stand in line three days to buy it,
nevertheless, people line up, because people perspire, comrade commander,
they sweat a lot, sometimes
not even the Mozaic helps
so you can smell perspiration and Mozaic everywhere,
in the bus, in the trains, in the streets and restaurants,
so that this whole country smells so nice,
like some huge militia headquarters
with recently cleaned toilets.
Unfortunately I keep throwing up all the time—
at first I thought it was from the Mozaic,
but now I think...I am not sure,
but I think it comes from the day they searched me,
as I’ve already told you.

Now I’m writing from the hospital
where I got because after Babooshka and Fanny went away,
I don’t know what happened to me.
I didn’t remember absolutely anything til yesterday,
when I suddenly remembered my name,
and that wasn’t good.
Because other things
also came with it.
But I don't want to speak about me—
this isn’t the reason I am writing.
I am happy and don't need anything.
I am very well
taken care of.

No, the reason I dared to disturb you is
I haven’t heard anything from Fanny.
I miss her so much...

She was so nice when I got her:
she had this blue, yellow, and red ribbon round her neck
and she was so small...
she couldn't even squeak or squawk, as pigs do.
She just screaked like a kitten. In our block of flats,
it was strictly forbidden to keep pets like cats and dogs.
But since the Party never thought about pigs,
you let us have her, and that’s why I thank you
from the depth of my heart.
And also because you taught me how to feed her.

Every day, on my way to school,
I went by Springtime street
or all those streets with names
from the Geography book,
chapter eleven:  "The Capitals of the World":
London street, Madrid street, Montevideo street...even Paris street.
I wasted a lot of time, but at least got some nice food for Fanny:
half-eaten sandwiches, bread and cheese crusts, fruit peels.

Then, as you’d advised me,
I made friends with the guards
in front of the embassies.
Young men, not much older than I was.
Sometimes we went behind the fence,
and played the mama-meets-papa game.
After that they let me dig around in the garbage cans.
That way I learned a lot of things.
Take, for instance, Denmark. Denmark is a very beautiful country:  all wrapped in beeswax, like the one they use for the Cheddar cheese.
England is horrible:  full of rotten eggs
and a kind of sweet disgusting polenta, that Fanny was craving.
Why don't you go there, when you grow old enough to travel—I used to tease her.

The Germans would throw away a lot of sausages and,
very rarely, sponge cake. Gross.
The Hungarian garbage was full of sauce,
you dirtied yourself all over and eventually got nothing.
There were only empty bottles in the Russian garbage cans,
and, at times, smoked fishheads. Do those people ever eat anything?!

There was no big deal in France, either—just cheese leftovers.
I can't figure out how they never get tired
of food that tastes like unwashed human genitals.
I don't even want to think what that food was made of,
camembert, for instance.
The croissants were different.
I liked them myself, and if I found any, Fanny would fast.

I never got so far as the American embassy.
It was too close to the main boulevard
and, besides, their guards were all black
and I like blond,
and that's that. 

But Fanny was growing too, ten times faster than any other normal person.
It was quite hard for us, Babooshka and I,
but what did she care?
There was food she wouldn't even consider touching.
Like fish balls or polenta and lard.
She didn't give a damn how hard it was
to get her crackers or melon peels every day.
Lucky us
that we lived not far from the suburb market
and the women who sold vegetables there
would feed her all summer long.
She made friends easily and they gave her overripe tomatoes,
cabbage heads and pepper stalks,
marvelling at her eating all so nice, so polite...
as if they’d never seen a sow before.

Every morning and evening I’d take her out—
she was so clean, so civilized...
and I let her graze the grass among the blocks of flats.
The neighbors didn't say anything.
I think they were jealous of us,
Comrade commander,
and they were looking forward to Christmas and The Pig Slaughtering Feast,
so that they’d taste a bite of poor Fanny.

But of course I wouldn't dream of slaughtering her.
We’d become very close.
We used to sleep in the same bed
and I sang to her,
every night before going to sleep.
"Arise ye workers from your slumbers/Arise ye prisoners of want..."
That one was my favorite,
because after they’d kicked Vitea out of Ballet School,
he practiced in the barn,
back when we lived in the countryside
and sometimes he told me:  "Sing a song for me, Snow White ,”
and I’d sing:  "Republic, oh, my glorious hearth"
or " I have got my first pioneer tie"
or "Cross, ye, Romanian battalions, the Carpathians"
and he’d say, no, not the "Romanian battalions" one
the "arise ye workers" one, 'cause it's the best,
you can always count on it.
Since then, I have loved this song
and, when I hear it,
I can see Vitea doing his pirouettes
and counting and grumbling
because the floor was very slippery
because of the muck,
and once he fell and hurt himself badly...

"Arise ye workers from your slumbers"...
you should have seen Fanny,
how she would hum, every night before going to sleep, 
with that kitty voice of hers.
Hush-a-bye ye workers from your slumbers...
she was so sweet...

Right. But Babooshka's opinion was different.
Therefore one night, just a couple of days before Christmas,
when she was a little...hm, tipsy,
she tried. She jumped with the knife at Fanny. 
She probably thought she was another pig of ours, one
Archimedes, that we had had back at the countryside...

Well now, Fanny was rather spoiled,
as I have already told you.
She was rather hot-headed and rowdy
and she weighed by then about 200 kilos
and, all by mistake, as she was stepping aside,
she pushed Babooshka who fell over the balcony.
Because the door wouldn't shut. Or the windows.
To let the air come in, Comrade commander, because that's what the Party has taught us, to sleep healthy and sound, with the windows open,
even at 30 below .
And it's true, look how healthy and sound we are today! 

So, as I was saying, unfortunately Babooshka pulled Fanny along over the balcony.

Luckily, we had a doctor living in the basement,
and he called the ambulance.
They plastered her foot on the spot,
or, who knows what might have happened...
it's a shame only that a nurse surreptitiously cut a piece of her ear.
I saw him chewing something,
but how could I have known! Gosh, what a criminal!

As for Babooshka... it was too late when they got to look at her.
She had fallen into the chopper. See, that's what gluttony does to you!

We buried her on Christmas Day.

After that I fully understood
the hopeless wickedness of people.
The second day of Christmas,
someone denounced Fanny to the militia,
that she had deliberately pushed Babooshka from the balcony.
And so they came:  they were four, plus the sergeant,
a whole patrol. Came in a car,
with a red light above and a siren,
neee-naaa-neeee-naaaa through the neighborhood, all the way to our flat.
It was useless to explain that it was...errr...self defence...
and I also told them about you, Comrade commander,
of our secret mission and Fanny working undercover...
but they didn't care.
They laughed and they said very ugly things about you.
Then they searched me, and they thrust her into the van.
And she was crying like a baby.
And had no clue to what was going on.
And as the van was driving away,
I just heard her singing. It was, so to say, her swan song:
"Arise ye workers from your slumbers/Arise ye prisoners of want/For reason in revolt now thunders/And at last ends the age of cant..."
And I started to sing with her:  "So comrades, come rally/And the last fight let us face/ The International unites the human race. So comrades, come rally/And the last fight let us face/The International unites the human race."

They sent me a note, on the New Year's Eve.
She had escaped from the escort.
Where could she have escaped, Comrade commander?
With a plastered foot..?!

And this is how I have been left alone, Comrade commander.
'Cause Vitea has left, as you told me,
to dance for The Beloved Leader,
Lulu, as you know, is at the Rehabilitation School for Underage Delinquents,
the wretched hooligan and miserable wreck!
Babooshka is with Gramps and maman and papá.
And Fanny...

Comrade commander, in the name of the Party and The Beloved Leader,
please punish those militiamen who do not respect your name
and pretend they never heard of you.
And, if you punish them, could you please ask them where they took Fanny?
'Cause I just can't believe she escaped from the escort...
She was so obedient...and with a plastered foot—where could she go?

With anticipated thanks, deep esteem and respect,
long live the struggle for peace, and The Romanian Communist Party,
lead by The Beloved Leader!

Amelia Anastasia Valeria Greceanu-Voican

student in the eleventh grade
evening courses
at the Industrial College number 324
Bucharest

4.

Amelia is breathing—a half-breath, fragmented long sob.

Thank you.
For my happy childhood—thank you.
For my quiet sleep
undisturbed by the underground moans
of the political prisoners—
thank you.

Because you electrified my country
and taught me how to read
in the deafening light of the electric bulb
syllabifying
from
your dailies:
The Red Star,
The Red Spark,
The Red Banner,
The Communist Beliefs -
thank you.

Thank you for the ration of flax oil
that we use to cook the five eggs
a month,
for
the salami mixed with brick dust
on which we feast
every Sunday,
for the coffee mixed with charcoal dust,
bitter,
to save the sugar—
which, however,
does not melt
is not sweet,
is not white,
actually,
is not sugar.
Thank you.

For the worriless present—thank you.
For the fear of every day
and every night
when—
thank you that you take our light
so that we don't see too much,
hear too much,
or get warm at the same fire
with
the Hungarians,
the Jews,
the Gypsies,
the Poles,
the Russians,
the Bulgarians,
the Serbs,
or
God forbid!
with the Germans
or the Americans.

Thank you that you don't let me wander about in the world,
all by myself—
in this world that belongs not to us
but to the Capitalists,
the country traitors,
who ran away
and left us,
this ugly and dangerous world,
where my country
is the only true haven and paradise.

Thank you
that you have taught me
what to speak
and how to speak—
beautiful words
such as
the work division,
multilaterally developed socialist society,
agricultural co-operative of production,
class struggle,
monolith,
five-year plan,
industrialization,
whinny-coffee
three-day queue,
censorship,
Tschernobal,
edible chicken claws,
Dacia 1300 horsepower,
luxury studio
of eight square meters
with toilet and shower
night tv-journal—

and forget
ugly words such as
passport,
Coca-Cola,
chocolate,
king,
psychoanalysis,
Greek-Catholics,
Mercedes,
oranges,
Europe,
freedom,
to be,
me.

For the enlightened future—I thank the Party from all my heart,
to the Beloved Leader,
to his dauntless wife,
our mother,
the mother of all of us.
In exchange for their caring,
we,
full of gratitude,
march, with open wings,
trustfully towards Communism.
And my beloved homeland
my country, my land,
gloriously marches on,
under your secure hand.

My country is a little piglet.
Her name is Fanny.
She was eaten not long ago
by the militiamen
led by Comrade commander.

For all these,
and for many, many,
many other things—
Thank you.