Marianna Cadea was born in Bucharest in 1961. She lived with her mother on Strada Eminescu 252, apartment 17. In the summer of 1978 she was kidnapped by the Securitate, the Rumanian secret police.Marianna Cadea was born in Bucharest in 1961. She lived with her mother on Strada Eminescu 252, apartment 17. In the summer of 1978 she was kidnapped by the Securitate, the Rumanian secret police. Her mother never heard from her again until 1985. Marianna resurfaced in Germany where she had been sold to a prostitution ring by her captors. In 1990, 3 months after the revolution, she came back to Rumania to see her mother. They lived together in the apartment 17 for 4 days until March 27. That morning, Marianna Cadea committed suicide after a heavy dose of heroin.

We had just arrived in Bucharest. Our friends picked us up at the airport in a borrowed Dacia. “Ceaucescu did a good job redesigning this car”, my friend Alexandru says. “His engineers copied a French Renault 12 and made it uncomfortable, inefficient and uglier. One more form of torture”, he laughs. We’ve been riding for about 30 minutes. It is dark and cold. Being here with Alexandru was a long time project since we met in New York 7 years ago. I was fascinated by our encounter. His name is the Rumanian version of my name in Spanish. His parents came from the same region of Northern Transylvania where my father was born. They escaped the horrors of the Holocaust and settled in Bucharest, while my father made his way down to Argentina. I was named after my maternal grandfather, Avrum. Alexandru, too, was named after his grandfather, Abraham. We used to joke in New York about being "The Other" like in the Borges' story, about Mircea Eliade's Eternal Return, about living next to the Rumanian embassy in Buenos Aires and next to the Argentinean embassy in Bucharest.

Alexandru is so happy we are here. For him, Bucharest is also a foreign city after many years of living in the States. He stops the car on Strada Eminescu, just around the corner from the Argentinean embassy. We are getting off of his blue Dacia and I notice that all the cars parked on that block were blue Dacias but one. Alexandru notices the same thing. “A traitor” he says. He is trying to carry all the bags, but I am able to convince him that it wouldn't be good for his back. The apartment house is a gray building built probably in the late 50's. We put our bags in the elevator and go up to the fourth floor, apartment number 17.

The first lock took eight turns to open. The second lock only three. What became for me the characteristic smell of the place later on, was assaulting me for the first time. Still now while I am writing this sentence I can smell my hand and recover part of that powerful, nauseating, unidentifiable smell. Then, at that particular moment, standing on the hall in the dark, I regretted coming to Rumania. I saw or felt the hate. It was a confusing feeling of my family being sent to Auschwitz and Nicolae Ceaucescu's eyes.

Alexandru apologizes. “This is all I could find with heat all day long. We are lucky because this is the embassy neighborhood and they have special gas pipelines”. “You don’t need to apologize”, I say. “We'll be fine. We need to clean the place and I am sure at daylight it will look much better”. The light was dim. Shelley looks at me and tries to smile. What is wrong? Where are we? “I rented the place from a woman who needed the money. She went to live with friends.”, Alexandru says. It is a common practice today in Rumania. Pensions are as low as 30 dollars a month, sending thousands of retiree begging in the streets. Alexandru left. Shelley and I sat for a while on a sticky sofa.

There is a small bronze plaque on a bare wall on Boulevardul Dacia. Mircea Eliade once lived here. It is a small house with a small dead garden. The sole idea of Mircea Eliade living here made me think about Alexandru and me. Our strange relationship through time, our Transylvanian blood, sometimes Rumanian, sometimes Hungarian. It is snowing. People are coming out with pots and jars full of stew from a small kiosk where a charity institution is running a soup kitchen. Gypsy girls are burning garbage on a corner to keep warm. I am standing by Mircea Eliade's dead garden thinking now about Bioy Casares and his Morel's Invention. The "eternalretornographer". What am I doing here? Where am I? I should ask Alexandru.

There are no shutters on the windows, just a very thin curtain. I can't sleep. The moon came out from behind one of the buildings across the street. The smell of the apartment, like an antiseptic trying to cover up decay, is gradually becoming a familiar presence. The garish red rugs that cover the furniture are finally dark. Shelley fell asleep and I did soon after. The telephone is ringing. Alexandru wants to have breakfast with us.

We are in Casablanca, a small cafe downtown. Alexandru is upset. He couldn't sleep. It is his first time in Bucharest in many years, the first time after his parents committed suicide in the very same room he is sleeping now. His father had been very ill with Parkinson's disease. In Ceausescu's Rumania it was impossible to find medicines if you weren't part of the official circle. Alexandru tried to mail him the medicines from New York but they disappeared in customs every time. His parents' apartment didn't have heat and the electricity was restricted to just a few hours a day. They barely had food to eat. They poisoned themselves on the cold morning of November 16th, 1987. It is the first time Alexandru told us his parent's story. When he had spoken about Rumania in the past, he talked about the suffocating atmosphere and the Securitate taking control of everything and spying on everyone. He told us the story about Ceausescu and his wife Elena being decorated and getting honorary doctorates in the United States and Europe because of their supposed stand against the Soviet Union, while at home they were torturing and starving their whole country. He talked about Ceaucescu's 54 palaces and his government building complex, larger than any other in the world, and about the systematic destruction of ancient villages all over the country, the demolition of medieval churches, the disappearance of thousands of people... This time at the Casablanca it was about his parents. We were in silence for a few minutes and decided to leave. There is a synagogue across the street. It is a large building with a stone facade. It is empty and cold. The caretaker is lighting candles.

“Bucharest doesn't look like Buenos Aires”, I tell Alexandru. He wants to go to Buenos Aires with me “to close the circle”. He feels better. It is snowing and the cold air woke him up from his pain. We are moving on. “To Mircea Eliade's dead garden?”, I ask Alexandru. 'Where else would we go?”, he replies.

We lived in apartment 17 for a week.

(continues)