Power, Food & Shelter

"my best unbeaten brother, this isn't all I see..."

Power, Food & Shelter

“my best unbeaten brother, this isn’t all I see”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned this past decade, it’s that I’ll have to wait at least fifty years before this country finally celebrates the injustice done to me and my brothers behind bars. By then, I’m sure, they’ll have incarcerated some other poor soul in the abstract name of another false ideal, but the reason behind it will remain the same. It always does. You can find it in the Old Testament.

It always starts with some fat lawyer with a sardonic smile or a bully with dark, mean rings beneath his vengeful eyes, bellowing the first hateful shouts. And we ignore them. We, the intellectuals, the well-read, the well-traveled, laugh from our sofas as we binge the latest Netflix faux-historical show, swapping clever reels on our phones. But while we sit comfortably, huddled together in digital isolation, some quiet, angry mass has already voted those men into power over their hearts. And by the time we’ve finished our shows, the snowball has already begun its inevitable tumble, rolling down the mountain in a steady, relentless avalanche.

When they canceled the elections, we changed the news to the last episode of The Toucan, that sordid crime show which looking back now doesn’t seem that sordid. I guess that’s why we like to watch evil on TV because we can see it and name it. By comparison, the evil within our hearts is formless and has a thousand names, the first of which is Indolence and the second is Neglect. We cannot be held accountable for the first, even if ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it, there is no law against Indolence. But it is against Neglect, you can find it in the New Testament, this time.

It was the Neglect of a moment that brought the Tribe of New Dacians into power, it was the Neglect of more than three decades that festered into anger that birthed the Tribe, and I am sure that it was the Neglect of my loved ones that brought me into this predicament. But let’s not dwell on this, I say to myself. I saved some good memories of how things were before and I would like to look back and smile, if only for a moment.

It was in the drowning heat of midsummer when they put up the billboards. What use were they? I can barely remember their first names or their smug faces, or even if they were smug. I'd rather focus on something nicer for now, something I’ve been saving up for some time: the smell of grilled sausage, the black-shining char on their red skin, the bitter cold taste of beer as I shifted in my chair.

“You like them overcooked, don’t you? Makes that hot sauce of yours all the sweeter, dear boy,” said Uncle Nae, flipping the sausages with quick, graceful motions while lighting a cigarette. He offered me a drag when he was done.

I stepped out of the shade and into the lazy smoke rising from the grill.

“Oh, don’t be stupid,” Uncle Nae said, pulling me back. “We all know you smoke—you don’t need to stand there getting yourself smoked out, smelling like sausages, mici, and pork shoulder. You’re a good boy, and everyone appreciates that you try to hide it. But trust me, it’s a nasty habit. I’ll kick it by the end of the year.”

“You say that every year, dear uncle. What makes you think this year will be different?” I asked, taking a sip of my beer.

“Elections.” He flipped another sausage. “With the candidates we’ve got this year, whoever wins will have me smoking two packs a day. And though my body would hate it, my wallet just can’t take it.” He finished his sentence with a deeper, longer sip than mine.

“But you don’t vote, Uncle.”

“All the more reason for it,” he said with a shrug. “I think you should get us another, f it doesn’t mess with your medication.”

I told him I was off it for the summer.

“Maybe that’s best, dear boy. We all get anxious and depressed… oh, things were simpler when I was your age. You kids grow up too fast. Maybe it’s better this way. After the divorce, I thought I’d never be the same. I even went to a shrink myself. Me at a shrink!” He laughed, shaking his head. “She even talked about medication, but I told her I’m not interested in those zombie pills. So I started working out. I go to the gym every day.”

“Yeah, Uncle, looks like you lost some weight.” It didn’t look like he had, but his muscles were bigger than six months ago.

“I know, right? Some of the guys at work even talked me into running a marathon next year. You game?”

“You know I hate running. I only do it because I have to.”

“What’s stopping you from walking? I’m not going for the running—I’m going for the chicks. I want somewhere nice like New York or Tokyo… somewhere I’ll be exotic.”

I went into the kitchen to grab two more bottles of Ursus.

“You boys be careful with that,” Grandma said as she sliced crisp cucumbers and fat tomatoes for the salad. “You’re both on medication.”

“I’m not—not anymore.”

“Good thing. Those pills were expensive.” She clucked her tongue. “They even wanted your uncle on medication? With his alimony payments?”

Grandma, may her grave hold her lightly, started cutting the onions, holding back tears with the rhythmic gaping of her mouth. I stared at the deep lines of her wrinkled face for a long moment, as if searching for some ancient wisdom etched into her skin. Then I opened the cold beer bottles. Even after all these years spent in this cell of summer heat, I still miss the touch of cool glass against my palms.

The barbecue was bountiful. Grandma and Grandpa sat at opposite ends of the table. My parents, cousins and I were crammed together on one side of the oval table, while my uncle sat on the other for quick access to the meat. We ate in silence until my uncle proposed turning on the TV. I argued against polluting the air with daytime programming.

“Oh, don’t be pretentious now,” my uncle said, getting up and grabbing the remote. “It’s Saturday. They’re bound to have something lighthearted and slightly interesting on one of those news channels. Anyway, it’s better than hearing any of you chew.” He headed outside for a drag from the butt he’d left smoldering in the ashtray on the porch.

The air inside felt thick and still, heavy with the lingering smell of grilled meat and cigarette smoke. I can’t remember what happened next. I probably took a nap, one of those blessed naps meant only for rest, not for forgetting like they are now in this cell. Those naps were never cold, only just a little too warm. I never woke up shivering from one of them, only soaked in sweat. It was probably on the living room couch because the next thing I remember was Grandpa.

The sky was orange when Grandpa took out the John Wesson Original American Bourbon from the cupboard under the TV. He had bought it on a discount from the German supermarket chain. Grandma, seated just an arm’s length away, hunched forward in deep focus. When Grandpa popped the bottle open, she swatted him like a pesky fly without even turning her head. The man on TV, a well-dressed historian gesturing dramatically, was rambling about how the Dacians were actually the ancestors of the Romans, and how Latin had supposedly originated around the Carpathian Mountains, not far from where we were.

Grandpa poured us men precisely measured shot glasses, his hands steady and practiced, and we drank in silence. The bourbon burned warm in my throat as we listened to the man’s voice, a rambling monotone, oddly soothing in the way it rose and fell, like a tide lapping at the edges of consciousness. Grandma muttered something under her breath, but Grandpa didn’t flinch. He sat back, grinning to himself as if he’d won some small, invisible battle.

I cherish this memory because it was the last time we were all together. The months that followed were a haze. I’d like to pretend I understood how I ended up in this predicament. Still, if prison stripped anything from me, it was my well-honed skill of lying to myself, a particularly inconvenient loss, given all the time I had to confront my self-made blind spots.

Take my uncle, for example. These days, I think he should be holding some kind of office, perhaps one significant enough to make my ex-aunt regret leaving him. I don’t know, we political prisoners don’t have access to newspapers. I find it ironic that I was indicted as a political offender. I am the most apolitical person I know, but I guess that being apolitical is somehow against the Tribe. Everything would be more clear if I knew what I did wrong.

Sometimes, I dream of watching TV. It flickers in my dreams, as it did quietly in the background during those long smoke-filled evenings, the dim light catching the edge of Uncle Nae’s wolf pendant as he leaned forward just a bit too much, showing grainy footage of street protests and angry crowds waving banners no one in the family recognized. “Just a bunch of crazies,” Uncle Nae would mutter, half-smiling, half-scowling, never taking his eyes off the screen. The rest of us barely noticed, more concerned with finishing dinner or arguing over some reality show. But now, thinking back, I see how his hand would tighten around his beer, how he’d linger a little too long when the news cut to those leather-clad bikers with iron-stamped flags. We all thought he was just indulging his habit of cursing the world from the safety of the porch, but maybe he was memorizing faces, counting numbers, and watching the tide swell in slow, inevitable waves.

I try not to dwell on the possibility that he might have thrown me under the bus. When people began marching in the streets, he scoffed. “Let them believe we’re descended from fearless men,” he said. “Let them talk about the warrior spirit deep within us. But where are the warriors? They are dead, while the cowards live on. Who do you think had more children, the man who charged at the Turks or the one who fled to the hills and forests? Sometimes you’ve gotta be the wolf, not the sheep. And I think now may be the time,” he would shout under the roaring rain, chaining cigarette after cigarette, protected only by the porch's sunroof and his new biker jacket. I should have known then that something wasn’t right, who buys a motorbike in October? “You like it, don’t you? I got it cheap. Plenty of guys my age buy one, ride it once, and realize it’s not for them. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but I am no dog, I am a wolf. I joined this pack, swell guys all of them, from all walks of life, you should come around to the club house sometime. I think you would fit right in,” I didn’t. I would rather not think about them, but I would rather amuse myself with how Uncle Nae came wearing that beanie, sporting a shaggy greybeard like he was Decebalus Supertramp.

“You know what’s the problem nowadays, the problem with Romania? We lost sight of the simple things, the important things. Everything it’s too damn important, and everybody is out there clutching their pearls” he said pacing through the kitchen and playing with his wolf’s head pendant.

“And what is best in life, uncle?” I asked opening a beer.

“The older I get, the less I know. But it sure as shit ain’t all this?” he said gesturing towards the appliances, then to the grey blocks that neighboured grandma’s, rotating on one heels like some leather-clad ballerina pointing to everything and nothing.

I think he said this to me that Christmas when we were all gathered in Grandma’s apartment, cozy but cramped. Grandpa had passed in November, a week before they canceled the elections. When we took him to the hospital, he joked with the nurses that he had to get better to vote. Looking back, I doubt he ever voted, a habit ingrained from the old regime, when votes didn’t matter. I’m not sure that ever really changed.

“You know, Christmas ain’t what it used to be. You have more stuff but less time to enjoy, we are all more connected but what use is seeing your family through FaceTime?” my uncle said between breaks of viciously stuffing his face. He blamed his appetite on the fact that he quit smoking.

“And what should we do about it?” I asked, sipping profoundly on my thirdish beer.

“There is nothing to be done. It’s just the way things are now. But we have to change the system, shake it up. Restart the world,” the last sentence formed a strange smile on his face, one of joy but not happiness. I should’ve seen it coming when he started talking about ‘resetting the world.’ But back then, it was just another one of his rants.

“Restart it how?” I asked gesturing discreetly for a smoke break.

“We don’t need a revolution. We had one of them, and look what it got us. We need order, we need a civil society and we need the rule of law. But we must do away with legalism. Nothing good ever came from the law, look at slavery, look at the Holocaust,” he said, lighting up a cigarette and taking a long drag.

“Uncle Nae, I understand what you are saying, but I don’t know what this thing you are speaking of?” I asked, a bit tipsy.

“We can’t tell until we have it, can we? Everything will improve, how it should have since the Revolution. Nothing will change, except for the most vital aspects. We need a more equitable system.”

“So you are proposing communism?”

“Better dead than red, eh?” he said as he guffawed, and then coughed violently. I joined him in laughter, and when he finally refused his speech: “What is best in life? I don’t know. But I know what we need, even if it’s basic. And you promise that you will go and vote in spring, for the little guys. We have it, we take it for granted, but they need it.”

I promised him that I would go and vote, but I didn’t. Of which I have no regrets. Because it wasn’t votes that put a madman in power, but a slogan backed by a rifle. I say this poetically, though those who stormed the People’s House carried shovels, pitchforks, and maybe even machetes. They were led in a solemn procession by a group of bikers bearing the tricolour with a wolf’s head on it, and Uncle Nae was the man to lead the band. They had no plan, only a slogan.

Grandma was really proud of it, almost as proud of the fact that her only son was on TV. When Uncle started doing the talk show circuit, she was glued to the screen, more so than before. At least Grandma died happy.

Sometimes I still see him there, frozen in that flickering light, his voice calm and steady, explaining himself to the world. I don’t know if he ever believed the words he said. Maybe it doesn’t matter. People believe what they need to.