Excerpt
And as the distant murmur of the town filtered toward
us—as though from the deepest layers of the world itself, trying to
send us one final fragment of peace—we already knew that for us
there would be no celebration that night, nothing that could remind
us that we had once believed human beings capable of rising above
themselves and celebrating love.
For hours we crawled across the frozen surface of the Olt River.
The harsh cracking of the ice penetrated our bones like the muted
cries of our own fear, and the officers’ mocking commands, which
seemed to scrape the flesh behind our ears with shards of glass, cut
into us relentlessly: faster, faster, move it, you thick-headed fool…
And we understood—of course we understood—because there was
no other choice. The dark water flowing slowly beneath the ice resembled
the pulse of some underground organ silently watching us,
neither speaking nor helping, merely existing. The officers’ words,
their shouting and mockery, were like the frost itself: cold, unstoppable,
carving their way into us.
“Faster, seminarian! Faster still! Don’t you understand?”
We tried as best we could, because behind every word lurked a
threat that remained unspoken, yet trembled in the air so palpably
that every part of our bodies could feel it. The Hungarian soldiers
received their share of that indescribably sticky, filthy humiliation
which the authorities dispensed then with infinite naturalness, almost
mechanically: bozgor, come here, let the skylark sing, louder,
even louder, until the last spark of self-respect dies inside you.
“Louder,” he ordered. “LOUDER!” he screamed. And when at last
the sound of our own voices had begun to hurt us, he merely waved
his hand dismissively: “Get out of here.” And in that dismissive
gesture lay everything one needed to know about human existence
within such a system: that you yourself never mattered, only the
game whose rules others had written.
The officers’ mocking cries cracked above us like whips snapping
in some invisible dimension, and in every command there trembled
that peculiar, cruel pleasure known only to those who understand
that their power is not divine in origin, yet imagine that it is—and
within that delusion trample, with voluptuous delight…
