Around the 50s, the Danube was a mosaic of waves which never hit the shore, where WW2 scars intertwined with Cold War uncertainties. In Galați, a city nestled amongst its curvatures, the Haiduc family found its roots since borderless times. Liliana Haiduc, a woman with unyielding courage and compassion, spent her days caring for her husband Răzvan, whose eyes now carried the weight of a tore-down war banner, and their son, in a modest home. Their lives simply unveiled slowly against the backdrop of Danube’s ceaseless flows, with the breeze serving as a gentle reminder of the sand that was lost and stories it carried. Vis-à-vis, a river too far away, across the verdant expanse of newly imagined Bessarabia, a different story surfaced. Liliana’s parents, carried their wisdom on a land once full of vitality and tradition, witnessing how the red bear’s grip began to engrave itself into the nation. Today a bit, tomorrow a lot, until the sovietisation became a dam against the very soul of its people, shredding them piece by piece. In this amalgamation of chained freedoms, the Haiducs could only escape the regime’s gaze through a sporadic field of black rows. So close, yet so distant. One sombre evening, as the sun dipped into the red horizon’s water, Liliana received one of these tiny marbles, worn down by the hands it passed. The carvings were from her parents, but the seeds of meaning seemed to be drowned by disheartening terrors’ weight. A true Golgotha was painted with every comma, portraying the faceless soviet atrocities, with every new death row embroidering the region’s fabric. The mill’s wheel passively turned, and the Haiduc’s efforts to send even the slightest hope across that dreadful blue abyss, seemed to get lost in the maze of oppression tactics. The pages of the „other” shore, bridging these communities since the willow can remember, were filled with a chasm of anguish. During this storm, the family found anchor in the memory of bountiful dinners, where every member had its place at the wooden table, right across the shared joys and sorrows of uneventful days. When the sky tucked itself into smoky chimneys, with her son putting constellations across the tree, a knock echoed through. On the doorstep stood a stranger, with his nutcracker uniform. In his pouch a letter from one of their neighbours in Bessarabia, now a solitary monolith standing guard over a community of flowers and candles. As the clock stroked this time, the blank snow contained 3 tiny voids, a cascade which filled Liliana: They have disappeared. Knowing what’s like to be caught in the regime’s clogs, she clung to the letter, her tears blurring the inked shadows of unfathomable suffering. One meagre drop into the river of tears. The Danube, once a gateway into the Black Sea’s unknown and Europe’s heart, now felt like a dormant guard, an unmovable leviathan shattering destinies. Lighthouse without boats and boats without sails.Decades pass, and Galați moulded in the metallic modernity, with the family standing still, as stories of loved ones became just whispered legends. Yet, Danube’s hushed calm might also wash sorrows, carrying away into forever the stories of all forgotten heroes in the crowd. Nowadays, their testament portrays what happens when border float on the map of interests, as a region turned into two countries. Even amidst the horrors, the currents of hope can never be extinguished.
© Radovici Christopher 2023-08-29