There was no other station on the second main line, between University and Victoriei Square. The experts insisted on building an intermediary station, the Roman Square. Ceausescu refused, saying that people grew fat and should go on foot to keep fit. That was very odd but finally he was convinced and accepted it. Roman Square station was subsequently designed. That is why it looks so bad now: a dangerous platform and less than one meter wide. People had then other slimming methods generously ensured by the state and party leaders. (129)

Unemployment was disguised as unpaid holidays. When the factory did not have any raw materials left, the production stopped and the workers ? went home?. Nobody rebelled. The trade union couldn?t lift a finger. (111)

UNIFORM

I wore the uniform, too, and the memory of it was imprinted not only in my mind, but also on photographic paper. Like any kid who went through the ?young bud of the Romanian Communist Party? stage, I have a photo taken while in the 1^st grade. It doesn?t hang on the wall, though, but lingers in a drawer by the side of language primers and ?Cutezatorii? (?Audacious Youth?) magazines.

Last summer, a friend from France came to visit me, and I honoured the photo display tradition, as I wanted to show him what a beauty of a child I used to be. I took out the photo, large as a painting, wiped off the dust and put it under his nose. He immediately burst out laughing, so I had to search the photo I had already seen a hundred times for some defect, physical or other, that I may not have noticed before. Nothing, everything was normal, a nice-looking 1^st-grade kid was staring at me out of that photo. I waited till the laughter died away and nervously yet curiously asked what was wrong with my picture.

?Well, what are these things on your head that make you look like an alien?? he asked, pointing to my head stripe on which were fixed two huge ribbon roses, which really made me look funny. For the first time I looked at that photo with different eyes, and realised the futility and hideousness of my uniform, which had seemed perfectly normal to me. (11)