On the brightest day of November 1947, Eva stepped out of the house her father had built with his own hands in the centre of their village in Western Transylvania. She crossed under the bare vine, hesitated at the gate, then looked up.
The sky was milky blue, as it often was on such winter days. It was the colour of her house, a hue people here in Transylvania called honey blue. She’d always wondered why: honey was not blue, was it? Yet this morning, she understood. The sky was so warm, it was nearly yellow. She would tell that to father, tătuţa Mitru, later, she thought, and the unease lifted.
Her eyes lingered on the sky. In a few hours, King Michael would fly above her village on his way to England to attend the wedding of the English Princess.
‘Eva!’ Doru called, waving a newspaper, ‘Did you know the King is piloting the plane himself?’
‘I know, Doru, I heard on the radio. The whole Party cheered for him this morning in Bucharest.’
Doru lowered his forehead: ‘The Communist Party?’
‘Yes, I heard on the radio.’
‘On the radio?’
Eva stepped in silence over the slush, and Doru followed, dragging his boots, too large for him, passed down from his brother Petru.
Doru and Petru’s father never returned from the war, so tătuţa Mitru had taken Petru in to help work the fields with his tractor. Tătuţa was so proud of his tractor – it was called a cultivator, he always explained. He’d saved money ever since Eva was born to buy it, so he could farm the crops of his village and bring a bit more money home. Nowadays, most families can only pay them in grains. But grains were enough to feed them and Petru’s family, tătuţa said. He asked Eva to treat the two boys as her brothers now.
On the road, Doru sighed.
‘What is it, Doru? The radio?’
Doru’s mother had sold their radio after the war.
‘No.’
Eva turned onto an alley that led to the graveyard.
‘It’s just… father used to say the communists are no good.’
Nobody in Eva’s house said such things. But she heard whispers in the village sometimes, at the bar below the shop, in the basement. She could always see from the counter the men there, mostly elderly men, under spires of cigarette smoke.
‘A huge prison, up North,’ one of them said once, after the communists won the elections, ‘And forced labour, at a canal wide enough to move the whole Danube.’
When she heard that, Eva stared at the shelf above, where four round chocolates waited, wrapped in paper. One of them was with Red Riding Hood. She tried to think of the tale and not listen. But ever since she’d heard the vote was stolen, her ears had grown larger. She knew the communists had doubled-up voting boxes with secret compartments, filled them with fake votes.
‘They’re taking men, hear me. Priests, teachers, whoever won’t speak their tongue.’
‘Shut your mouths down there!’ the shopkeeper lady shouted, and the talk ended. Eva heard only the puffs of cigarettes then, and left hurriedly, thinking how tătuţa had promised he’d get her the Red Riding Hood chocolate soon.
Tătuţa never went to the bar. He ploughed and harvested from dawn till dusk, then came home and sat with mama. They brushed dry corn off the cobs with spiky metal brushes. Eva loved the sound of dry corn falling into the bucket. Those evenings, Eva lay on the bench next to the wood stove and fell asleep while mother and father talked. She hoped mama would soak the corn overnight, rather than give it to the chicken or take it to the mill the next day. Boiled corn with a sprinkle of salt was the best winter food.
But these days, mama gave pots of corn to Petru, who came knocking on the door in the evenings. When Petru came, Eva pulled the woollen blanket over her head.
Now, as she walked with Doru towards the graveyard, Doru insisted:
‘That’s what father said, communists are no good. They want our King gone.’
But Eva had heard the Party cheer for the King on the radio this morning, while tătuţa put his boots on. She watched tătuţa tie his shoelaces, which were so long they snaked across the floor. But she didn’t go to hug him at the gate as usual. She didn’t want to face Petru, who was waiting outside.
‘Let’s not talk about it anymore!’ Eva said to Doru, pushing a branch aside.
They reached the graveyard. It was the closest open field to watch the sky from and spot the King’s plane when it flew past. On the horizon, she saw the hunched hills of the country’s border.
‘Let’s talk about London. Did you know King Michael will stay in London for two weeks? It’s a huge city, the tallest buildings you’ve ever seen!’
‘Two weeks?’
Ahead, there was a tower of dried-up wreaths for the lost soldiers. But Doru pointed above, to the horizon. An arrow was approaching, and the sound, a growing rattle, soon reached them.
Just then, a voice called:
‘Eva, where are you? Eva, Doru?’
It was Petru. He was stumbling towards them, his jacket covered in mud. Why wasn’t he with tătuţa? Petru stopped, unsteady.
‘Eva.’
He was breathless.
‘They took him. They took Mitru.’

***

Tătuţa’s linen blouses hung over the stove. It had been nearly two weeks since he’d been taken, but neither mama nor Eva had the heart to put his clothes away. Mama only told Eva to roll up his woollen socks, they shouldn’t be in heat for so long. With these socks, they used to play puppets at night: the wolf chased the rabbit; the wolf never caught the rabbit.
Mama and Eva sewed together every day after school, elbow by elbow at the table by the stove. Mama said they shouldn’t talk about tătuţa in the house, but since they couldn’t talk about anything else, they gradually stopped talking altogether. Only the radio spoke.
‘At a royal dinner in London,’ the radio said, ‘King Michael has met Anne of Bourbon-Parma, a Parisian-born Princess related to all royal houses of Europe. When they met, Anne forgot she was supposed to curtsy and clicked her heels instead. The King was charmed.’
Eva stopped with her needle half in, ‘If there’s a wedding in Romania, the communists will release tătuţa, won’t they?’
Mama took her needle to cross her mouth. Don’t speak of it.
The same afternoon, Petru knocked at their window. Mama said Eva should not open the window. Instead, she should go by herself and talk at the gate. Eva went reluctantly, wishing it were Doru instead. When the gate screeched open, a blade of wind pushed through.
‘Stay there,’ Petru gently pinned Eva’s shoulder. Right there, in the tunnel made by the gate and the vine, their words would be blown by the wind away from the ears of the street, or the ears planted in the house walls. Petru was holding a sack under his armpit.
‘Pad a blouse for cold days by the water. They don’t allow jackets,’ he whispered and handed her the sack, ‘Bring it next Saturday, before noon.’
When Eva returned, mama was waiting with the needle against her heart-shaped lips.
‘How is Petru?’ mama asked.
‘He’s well,’ Eva trembled.
They opened the sack together slowly, to make the unsewing sound like sewing. It was filled with newspapers. Eva could feel her chest pounding and pressed her palm against it. Then she spoke to mama without words: she tapped her palms against her chest, her back, her arms, a padding of meaning.
She gestured to the blouses.
‘Let’s put these away before they catch fire,’ mama said and climbed up on a sturdy stool.

***

On Saturday morning mama, who was a history teacher, was called up to school. Today begins the re-education of teachers and pupils, Eva heard the messenger read at the gate. Teaching history is about national pride in our peasants and workers, not about the bourgeois individual.
One of tătuţa’s linen blouses, doubled and padded with newspapers and thin wool strips, all done against the hum of the radio and the rage of the fire, was now folded at the bottom of the largest pot mama found in the house. A thick layer of corn covered it.
Eva had to take the pot over before noon, but the sun was nearly at the top of the sky already, and mama wasn’t back. Outside, a man in uniform had paced the street the whole morning.
Eva put the radio on to disguise her steps circling the room.
‘Princess Elizabeth walks to the altar in Westminster Abbey,’ the radio announced, ‘Wearing a tiara…’
Tiara was the name for a little crown.
‘And two layers of pearls around her neck, paired with pearl earrings.’
Eva traced her neck with her fingertips, imagining pearls like white, lustrous kernels.
‘We pause the transmission from England to announce that the Government in Bucharest has denied King Michael permission to marry Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma. The alternatives discussed include the King leaving Romania for voluntary exile.’
Eva pictured a large hand pulling at her necklace, kernels spreading on the old floorboards. She had to take the pot now, there was no more postponing. The man on the street had stopped with his back to Eva’s house. She opened the side room, locked since tătuţa was taken, and searched for something in the drawers.
Then, she could only look at her own feet crossing the gate bar, spreading dust, pulling her own shadow ahead. The man in uniform must have heard, but his shadow loomed with the wide back to her, until the girl reached his side:
‘What is a young girl like you doing alone on the street?’
Eva didn’t look up. She clutched the pot.
‘Where are your mother… and father?’
‘Mama sent me to the boys next door,’ she pointed up the street.
‘Mama sent you to the boys, already?’ the man laughed.
‘Their father died in the war, so…’
‘So they’ve been helping your bourgeois father in his business, haven’t they? Working other peasants’ fields with his shiny tractor?’
The pot lid shimmered as Eva’s hands shook.
‘What have you got there?’
She shouldn’t hesitate now, she told herself and opened with a clink.
‘Corn, corn,’ the man stabbed his fingers in, ‘A very large pot for just corn.’ He knocked on the side.
Eva cupped her palm, near the margin, then gave the man a handful of kernels. Two of them shone like the winter noon.
‘Corn for our communist future,’ the man nodded, and deposited the kernels in his pocket, ‘For the boys to work our fields tirelessly.’
He paced the other way, and Eva walked the remaining few meters to Petru’s house with tears running down her face. Because when she gave the man those two shiny kernels, she gave mama’s only jewellery, mama’s wedding earrings. Only their memory remained, in a black-and-white photograph inside the same drawer.
Both brothers opened. Inside, the air was wet and colder than outside, as if the stove hadn’t run for days. Yet the boys’ faces lit Eva’s heavy forehead.
‘Eva! When is the King coming back? Have they said on the radio?’
Eva touched Doru’s oversized sheepskin vest: ‘Soon. Now I’ve brought you corn to boil.’
Petru squeezed her hand over the pot handle: ‘Thank you.’
She wanted to linger with Petru’s hand over hers. She wanted to think of brides, of jewellery, even made of kernels. But she knew she shouldn’t linger. Already, reaching tătuţa and handing over the blouse would cost Petru more than a pair of earrings, more than a radio.
When she made her way back, the man was gone. The sky was honey blue again today. Eva hoped tătuţa saw it, wherever he was.