What happened, mister, I say, is that the lady is the wife of a Romanian airforce pilot and they recently received, by care of our State and Party, an apartment in the new aviators? neighborhood, the big one in the north of the city, near the lakes. The blocks are finished, but the roads aren?t, so there is no public transportation, and in order to get to the office in the morning, this lady has to walk for about 15 minutes, then she crosses the Herastrau Lake by ferry, and walks to the trolley station next to the Casa Scinteii, and then travels by bus up to the I.P.C.T. So, for part of the route, she has to travel on water. Yesterday morning, she saw that the tin mini-store next to her block ? for there were such tin stores at the time ? had canned Chinese mushrooms on sale. Not only that, but there was no amount restriction, you could have as much as you wanted, which is crazy luck! So she bought a whole pack, imagine how happy she could be. It was late, no time to go home, so she runs to the jetty, pack in hand. She gets there a second late, the ship had just left the shore. She takes a feline jump, and lands safely, except that the pack falls loose and one can drops on her small toe and breaks it. This was our colleague?s shipping accident, I finish my account. What can I say, some explanation was needed, the delegate thought I was mocking him with the shipping accident. (I. N., 10)

GUARD

We all had to keep guard. Women in the afternoon and men at night. We had to protect our institutions from burglars, from catching fire or what else. Some men were thoughtful enough to come earlier and replace the women, before nightfall. At night, the building of the Institute for Ethnologic and Dialectologic Research, where I worked, simply gave you the creeps: the old wood squeaked like hell.

We were provided with a barely twinkling torch and had to search the building every night. In the morning, we had to write military-flavored reports in the guard register: ?During my guard nothing special happened.? We could report, for instance, that one tap did not turn off properly. We slept on a camp bed. There was a blanket for us, too. Once, in early morning, I opened the heavy iron gate for Vasile, the stoker, and one fold broke away and almost crushed him? I held the gate and ever since I?ve been Vasile?s savior. He?d buy me beers many years after on account of his life. I was on guard even on difficult days, when a double guard was needed. On the ?89 Christmas night, I was on guard and was anxious to watch the video tape with Ceausescu?s death on TV. I had with me a hunting knife, which I thought could protect me from terrorists, but I realized how stupid I?d been. I could well get checked by a patrol of ?revolutionaries? and be taken for a terrorist myself.

I?d go to meet my wife who kept guard at the Institute for Fine Arts and who was always scared by some rat or some porter with a criminal face. These were the times of total surveillance, day and night. (7)