5. Protestants

In the living room stood an enormous double bed. The monstrosity filled the entire room, leaving only a narrow path at the foot end. Opposite the bed, on the other side of the path, was a table with a television on it. Next to it was a rickety chair. An armchair in the corner of the room and a wall cabinet next to the bed formed the rest of the cluttered decor. Silhouetted against an orange bedspread lay a child; a boy of about eight years old who looked up with sleep-drunk eyes, more scared than shy. He appeared pale and coughed with a deep, raspy sound.

Petru apologised for everything he could think of: the small house, the mess, the lack of luxury. He courteously took my coat and hung it on an overcrowded coat rack next to the front door, all the while chattering animatedly with a resolute woman whose weary features were etched against her will. She introduced herself as Ileana.

Excitedly, Petru told his story. Ileana listened, busy tidying up scattered clothes and wiping away invisible dust. She plopped onto the bed when Petru apparently mentioned “Netherlands,” and covered her mouth in astonishment. The boy had slowly sat up and was now sitting upright.

A door opened on the other side of the bed. A second woman entered, slender like Petru and the child. She dropped into the chair at the foot of the bed and listened to the conversation between Elena and Petru. She studied me with penetrating eyes. Petru gestured fervently from the newcomer to me and back: “You talk to him!”

The woman subjected me to a brief interrogation in nearly accent-less Dutch. “Are you really from the Netherlands? Where exactly? What do you do there? Why are you here? Where are you going? What will you do there? Why?”

As my surprise faded, I tried to answer as best as I could. Petru frequently interrupted the question-and-answer game, attempting to explain that the woman had lived in the Netherlands for years. He exchanged meaningful glances with Ileana, who suddenly intervened and interrupted the conversation with a few loud sentences. The other woman retreated to the kitchen, muttering to herself.

A nervous atmosphere hung in the air. The boy on the bed turned onto his side. He didn’t seem accustomed to a crisis like this, even though he had lived and slept among adults since birth. Ileana gestured to Petru to explain to me in English who the second woman was. “She’s Ileana’s cousin, Puka,” he whispered, casting a half-eye towards the kitchen. “She’s crazy. Very, very crazy. She fled to Holland years ago. She had a house, a job. Everything. Now she’s suddenly come back and left her husband and two children in Holland.” He shook his head with pity. “She’s really very crazy.”

In the kitchen, a match was struck and deeply inhaled.

The room fell momentarily silent. Petru tried to salvage the atmosphere. “Are you hungry, my friend? Maybe you want to sleep a little, yes? You can sleep in Puka’s bed. We clean for you.”

I wasn’t sleepy. But I gladly made use of the bathroom. I washed up as best I could in front of a cracked sink from which a thin stream of lukewarm water trickled. Rusty pipes along a peeling wall seemed to each have a life and destination of their own.

I still didn’t know why I was such a heaven-sent gift and what the “small problem” meant. Refreshed, I returned to the room. Petru had been busy organising a meal. “You must eat, yes?” was a rhetorical question, an invitation I couldn’t refuse without offending. 

While Petru bustled around, pretending he was contributing significantly to the meal, Ileana did the actual work in the kitchen. Puka had returned to the living room and silently observed me. Nervously, she took out a fresh cigarette, rolled it between her thumb and forefinger, hesitated, and then lit it. “I’ve had a lot of problems in the Netherlands. Very bad things happened to me. Do you know by whom?” She paused. Her dark eyes flared intensely one moment and then quickly dimmed the next. “By men. And by the Protestants. Are you a Protestant?”

Nervously, she pushed her long hair out of her face.

Before I could answer or make sense of her comments, Petru emerged from the kitchen. He seemed to sense trouble. Puka retreated into her shell. She murmured softly to herself, still speaking in Dutch: “Yes… yes… Protestants.” Then she giggled, taking a drag from her cigarette. All the while, she looked around the room, her eyes focusing on invisible points before suddenly locking onto me with an intense gaze. There was nothing to deduce from her actions about her next move.

Petru, on the other hand, was clear in his intentions. He tried to put me at ease. He was empathetic—did I really not want to rest?—no matter how much I assured him it wasn’t necessary. He seemed to struggle with the impression he wanted to make; the environment, the interior, family members, perhaps just the fact that he was Romanian, all played in his eyes as he interacted with the foreign stranger he needed so badly.

I could only speculate about the underlying personality structure dealing with the storm of deficiencies he felt and the possibilities he saw, without knowing immediately how to capitalise on this advantage. His apologies for the ‘small meal’ that appeared on the table were truly uncomfortable. I had been given the most comfortable chair from the moment I arrived. Now, a separate table was set up just for me. I started to feel embarrassed by all the hospitality, especially when I saw the generous portions of fried potatoes and meat on my plate.

Petru kept apologising.