Paul
His hands are shaped like wedges. His granddaughter called them 'cazma,' or trowels, as she tugged on them, saying "si si," 'and and,' when he pretended to drift off during her bedtime story. He can no longer carry the sacks of potatoes home from the market to prepare for winter. He threatens to enlist a neighbor, saying he'll bring a wagon, which would do wonders for the new stitches in his side from the first in the long line of hernia surgeries he'll need. His eyes sparkle when they tell the old stories, barely able to wait while his granddaughter translates, before running on again. But he tires easily, and still dreams of running to hide in the vineyards when the Americans dropped their bombs.
His name is Paul Negru, pronounced Pow-woool. He married two Marias by accident. The papers listed the woman his father forced him to marry at gunpoint, but he took that same paper to the priest and married his Maria before God.
Paul lives on the outskirts of Bucharest, his son in law put it modern plumbing, but Maria uses the bathtub as a table. The plank holds lines of fading ţuică bottles and tomatoes. There is an outhouse in the shed with the chicken coop, piles of pipes, stacks of shingles, the lumber he had been meaning to use to fix the fence at the countryside house. That wood has been sitting there for decades now, bleached by sun and storm. There's no ventilation in the barn. Maria directs guests to use the indoor toilet, but she never does.
He looked for a long time at the test his teachers gave him to get his diploma from trade school. His test consisted of a piece of metal. He made a lock, and two keys. He passed the test, then he joined the war effort making bombs.
Paul's father beat his children with the wagon chains; if pressed, he took off his belt. The few moments of defiance Paul manifested changed the course of his life. The one time he hit his own wife, Maria, he still regrets. This story is told with a lump in his throat, and he presses the translator to say that he apologized that same day. His daughter had fallen against the stove and split her lip open up to her nose. Paul walked into the kitchen to screaming and so much blood. He slapped his Maria for not taking care of their children. His oldest daughter still bears the scar that twists her lip. Reli is older than Tania by a year. She married well and then divorced well, keeping the house while her ex married a woman only two decades old; she slurps her soup and considers the world unkind. Her own daughter is a snob. She refuses to bring Paul's first great grandchild to visit. She sneered over the phone that they live in squalor and that their home is dirty and that the smells offend her. She told her grandmother that she cannot stand her stink. It is a great disappointment to them because they cannot travel and had hoped that she would drive over often in one of their fancy cars.
In the wedding pictures on their wall, Paul's lips are painted and Maria's hair is the black of pitch. His eyes mist when asked what her dress looked like when he took her before the priest. It was white, that is all he says. He can see her through the curtain picking grapes from their vines. She seems aware of this, and raises a hand to wave. They grow two varieties, the small sweet purple grapes, and the sour green ones his granddaughter loves. Hanging in clusters throughout their yard, the grapevines crowd the rows of tomatoes, more haphazardly than they used to. It grows harder to prune the vines webbed through the trellis as they both grow more stooped with age. Paul was too short to reach the vise and stood on bricks to fit his pieces when he took that test, he was just the right height to stamp the bombs at his table, and is now, again, too short to reach the top shelves. But he has a step stool now; he doesn't need bricks.
Paul came from wealth, wealth as a village knows it. The family says that he would never drink milk from a black cow, that's how well off his family was. They had many cows in the yard, so he could choose. Maria could not. When his stepmother was making gogosa, Paul always snuck some to her in the schoolyard. They've known each other since grade school, only completing the fifth grade. Paul was going to be pressed into the fields, but after his mother died and his father quickly remarried that witch, he stood up and said that he would take the lands he inherited from his mother and his father could not touch them. He left for trade school soon after. And a metalworker he remained for the next sixty years.
After graduating at sixteen in 1937, Paul saw war, he saw famine, he saw the pyrotechnic girls in their blue overalls blown to pieces in the trees. Each story comes back to running toward the grapevines, afraid to look up at the American planes flying like so many crows in formation. If not for the vines one can smell hanging down every street in Romania, one might say he hung them all around his house for protection, like small clusters of rabbit feet, only ones that are eaten by winter and return in the spring.
His name is Paul Negru, pronounced Pow-woool. He married two Marias by accident. The papers listed the woman his father forced him to marry at gunpoint, but he took that same paper to the priest and married his Maria before God.
Paul lives on the outskirts of Bucharest, his son in law put it modern plumbing, but Maria uses the bathtub as a table. The plank holds lines of fading ţuică bottles and tomatoes. There is an outhouse in the shed with the chicken coop, piles of pipes, stacks of shingles, the lumber he had been meaning to use to fix the fence at the countryside house. That wood has been sitting there for decades now, bleached by sun and storm. There's no ventilation in the barn. Maria directs guests to use the indoor toilet, but she never does.
He looked for a long time at the test his teachers gave him to get his diploma from trade school. His test consisted of a piece of metal. He made a lock, and two keys. He passed the test, then he joined the war effort making bombs.
Paul's father beat his children with the wagon chains; if pressed, he took off his belt. The few moments of defiance Paul manifested changed the course of his life. The one time he hit his own wife, Maria, he still regrets. This story is told with a lump in his throat, and he presses the translator to say that he apologized that same day. His daughter had fallen against the stove and split her lip open up to her nose. Paul walked into the kitchen to screaming and so much blood. He slapped his Maria for not taking care of their children. His oldest daughter still bears the scar that twists her lip. Reli is older than Tania by a year. She married well and then divorced well, keeping the house while her ex married a woman only two decades old; she slurps her soup and considers the world unkind. Her own daughter is a snob. She refuses to bring Paul's first great grandchild to visit. She sneered over the phone that they live in squalor and that their home is dirty and that the smells offend her. She told her grandmother that she cannot stand her stink. It is a great disappointment to them because they cannot travel and had hoped that she would drive over often in one of their fancy cars.
In the wedding pictures on their wall, Paul's lips are painted and Maria's hair is the black of pitch. His eyes mist when asked what her dress looked like when he took her before the priest. It was white, that is all he says. He can see her through the curtain picking grapes from their vines. She seems aware of this, and raises a hand to wave. They grow two varieties, the small sweet purple grapes, and the sour green ones his granddaughter loves. Hanging in clusters throughout their yard, the grapevines crowd the rows of tomatoes, more haphazardly than they used to. It grows harder to prune the vines webbed through the trellis as they both grow more stooped with age. Paul was too short to reach the vise and stood on bricks to fit his pieces when he took that test, he was just the right height to stamp the bombs at his table, and is now, again, too short to reach the top shelves. But he has a step stool now; he doesn't need bricks.
Paul came from wealth, wealth as a village knows it. The family says that he would never drink milk from a black cow, that's how well off his family was. They had many cows in the yard, so he could choose. Maria could not. When his stepmother was making gogosa, Paul always snuck some to her in the schoolyard. They've known each other since grade school, only completing the fifth grade. Paul was going to be pressed into the fields, but after his mother died and his father quickly remarried that witch, he stood up and said that he would take the lands he inherited from his mother and his father could not touch them. He left for trade school soon after. And a metalworker he remained for the next sixty years.
After graduating at sixteen in 1937, Paul saw war, he saw famine, he saw the pyrotechnic girls in their blue overalls blown to pieces in the trees. Each story comes back to running toward the grapevines, afraid to look up at the American planes flying like so many crows in formation. If not for the vines one can smell hanging down every street in Romania, one might say he hung them all around his house for protection, like small clusters of rabbit feet, only ones that are eaten by winter and return in the spring.