Host Aunts' Travails

Maria is in a funk today. She's been increasingly grumpy lately, and I try to alleviate it, but I'm a little worried. The biggest contributing factor is it being Soviet veterans day:

"It's Soviet Veterans Day" she tells me while mashing potatoes.

"yea?"

"it used to be "men's" day, like we have for women on March 8th, but now it's for the veterans. But only veterans of the Soviet Union"

"I didn't know! cool." I actually say "cool," interjecting it into full Romanian. I just don't like the equivalents. None have the same nuance. But that rant is for another day, also the confusion I have about the Soviet Veterans -- is this a day for veterans of the organization, or for veterans who fought for the organization. I don't ask. "So, what do we do for Soviet Veterans Day? Should I not wash laundry?"

"No! no, no, no. Laurentiu only will be drunk. Everyday he is drunk... but today..."

"Super drunk"

"da" more mashing, "foarte frumos."

So, over the year and a half I've been here, Maria and I have witnessed the severe decline of Laurentiu from upstanding man about town, with big jobs and big incomes to normal patsan, which is to say I can't remember the last time I saw him sober.

The positive of this, though, is that Maria and I talk more... which is to say she goes into Story Mode a lot more.

Today I learned about her sisters' hard lives. It linked like this:

"My sisters My sisters don't have husbands."

"No?"

"No, they died. When my older sister was 32, her husband died. She has two sons. They were 6 and 2. My littler sister lost her husband the next year."

"Wow, that is terrible. Were they accidents? So young!"

"No, it was their liver. The older one, and the younger one. The liver."

So, the older sister moved to Moscow to make her fortune. She started as one of those hunched over women with handfuls of twigs you see in movies, sweeping the streets. This is hard work, always, especially in Moscow. The government refused to pay her (this was 3 or 4 years before the official collapse of the Union) for two months work. She looked elsewhere. Private work. Eventually she got a job cleaning indoors for some business men who lived in the country, but worked in the city and held apartments, but were there rarely. This is very good work. It pays steadily because the men are rich. They can afford to pay, so they do.

The younger worked in a cheese factory. All she did everyday for several years was cut cheese with something like a paper guillotine (Maria is an excellent mime) into the little chunks we buy. With her right arm always and only. Now, 15 years later, she has problems with this arm.

Phew. It's like listening to tenement tales by Stephen Crane.