You went to see a play, Hamlet for instance, and you clapped your hands sore when he said his famous ?There is something rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark?. It was like letting it all out in there. The actors were really good at adding innuendoes and the meaning was made even more salient. It was Carmitru?s show with Dan Grigore?s music ? a miscellany of Eminescu?s posthumous writings. Close to the end of the show, after listening to all that really delirious and basically deranged poetry, you saw Caramitru writing something like mad on a blackboard and then wiping it, and writing again and wiping and so on. It was one single word: Help! You can imagine the whole audience was roused to insanity, they were applauding deliriously?But then it was so cold in the Atheneum hall, and so was it at home. I once fell asleep at the theatre. I slept through a whole Shakespeare play. (S. R.-B., D. R.-B., 137)

Lots and lots of people were going to the theatre back in those days; it was somewhat like a competition: who saw what and when. The trade unions bought the tickets from several theatres and you would have been a fool not to go. You could afford to do it, and then you also had nice clothes for the gala. A ticket was laughably cheap, something like the equivalent of a one hour?s pay. Some people made 17 lei an hour and the ticket was anywhere between 10 and 15 lei. (22)

THIRD DEGREE COMFORT (NO CONVENIENCES) 

Bula?s father dies and Bula wants to buy a luxurious coffin. He goes to the store and asks for a mahogany coffin with bronze handles, then for an oak one with forged iron handles, but they were all too expensive. In order to please the customer, the shop assistant asks him how much he is willing to spend on the coffin. When finding out the sum, the shop assistant throws his cigarette in a disgusted manner and offers him the no conveniences variant ? bring your father and I shall put some handles on!

In Ceausescu?s time, a new invention is concocted, the third degree comfort night pot, with handles on the inside. (90)

Note: In the ?80-s even third degree comfort one-room studio flats were built. They were destined to the young, they were minuscule, and the bathroom and kitchen were all part of the only inhabitable room. (125)