TE19 Iberian Adventure

Three Stories

Oneday, a colleagueof mymother’s rang the bell. I thought perhaps she was also bringing me something and wasn’t afraid to be seen doing it. When I opened the door, though, she pushed me aside, took out some paper, a pencil and a measuring tape and started to measure up the walls. She told me not to worry, she just wanted to know if there would be space for her furniture if the apartment were to be allocated to her. In the flood of words that came from her mouth, all silvery and larded with smiles, the secret word, the one that mustn’t be said aloud, cropped up three times. She probably would have moved in too, if the TV hadn’t been taken over by a team of emotional men the very next day. They were on all day long, posed as if for a group photograph, wiping away tears and talking over each other as they held forth. At that time, my Romanian still wasn’t good enough to follow everything they were saying, so at first it just struck me how often they were repeating the same words we heard at other times on the TV: freedom, the people, revolution. Regardless of this, something was fundamentally different. Earlier, the well-groomed announcers had had no difficulty speaking those words clearly, but the scruffymenannouncing the newrevolution had a catch in their voices. When they tried to say the words, some of the men even burst into tears. The tableau meanwhile was being continually rearranged. They were determinedly trying to achieve the perfect composition. As more and more faces, fighting back the tears, were turning up in the shot, others were being squeezed out of it. A few of themwere doing their best to get into the shot as quickly 245