The Pigs' Slaughter by Grancea Florin

Author:Grancea, Florin [Grancea, Florin]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-11-24T05:00:00+00:00

4. DECEMBER 24TH

When I worked as a journalist I sometimes saw raw footage from war-torn African countries and I always felt sick after seeing people set ablaze alive, or people throwing enemies alive on bonfires and part of me believed that such acts of cruelty could never happen in a country like Romania.

Why are people so cruel to each other? I couldn’t understand it. But the truth is that people can stoop lower than animals. We are the scum of the earth.

The story, the real story, of course, is that when people living close to the Ministry of Defense woke up on the morning of the 24th they took from their fruitcakes and from their sweets and food and went to give it to the soldiers defending the Revolution.

"Merry Christmas!”

"Merry Christmas, to you too!”

The fruitcakes changed hands, food changed hands, some

soldiers got handmade woollen sweaters to wear under their military jackets and coats. But this Merry Christmas wishing crowd looked down the street and saw it paved with bullets and used cases. All kinds of calibers. Seven bodies were lying in and around two ARO looking military cars.

A man started to run and used his foot to hit a body in the head. The head, like a real football, detached and rolled over to the joy of those watching. That head had belonged until less than 8 hours before to a hero, Colonel Trosca, the very man that took the Second Army from General Militaru back in 1978.

A football game to play on Christmas Eve! And what a funny football game it was. That head that rolled from one to another only to be hit again symbolized Ceauşescu and their hardship and they took revenge for the days without meat and heat, for the cheap beer and fake coffee.

They would have played that game all day long but someone had the idea of torching the bodies, and they did it with some gas they took from one of the ABI tanks.

Torched, Trosca’s head was placed on the spare wheel mounted on an ABI’s hood. Someone put a cigarette in its charred lips and almost everybody, before returning to their peaceful homes for their peaceful Christmas Eve, for carols and fruitcake and all those little things that turn a normal day into the most perfect Christmas Eve, spat on that head.

"Merry Christmas!” they shouted to the soldiers defending the Ministry building, before leaving, and, they said "Merry Christmas” again on December 25th in the morning, when they came to give the soldiers more fruitcake and food, and the bodies were still scattered on the ground, and Colonel Trosca’s head was still there with that cigarette in its charred lips mounted on the car, and we were the people that I didn’t believe capable of the cruelties that I was seeing in raw footage from places like Africa.

I woke up happy.

Christmas Eve was by far, the best day of the year. As usual, I was already alone in my room. My sister was

already up and her bed was made up neatly.

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