Notes from the other side of night

by Juliana Geran Pilon

Book by Pilon, Juliana Geran

Genres: Memoir, Romania

146 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Daisy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I found this book mentioned in the acknowledgements of the book Smuggled. I might have missed it but I am so glad I didn't. This is extremely personal without being too sentimental, and still objective and fair. With reminiscences in italics and the current time in regular typeface, the author goes back and forth between her first trip back to Romania in 1975 (the book was published in 1979) and remembering her past there and how she and her family emigrated ("legally" in the early '60s) to the West. There are a few photographs of her and her family every so often among the entries, almost like a scrapbook or a diary. She writes portraits of her family members and many of the memories are spurred by a detail from the present (1975), like a cup of coffee or a television or raspberries or a piano. It's especially interesting to me that this memoir was published long before the fall of the Iron Curtain, when no one had a hint that in a few decades, things would change again.

"... to have returned, after adulthood, to that familiar language--the grammar of fear..." p. 1

"Do I really wish to leave all this? My familiar train stations; people whose gestures I understand and whose habits speak of regional idiosyncrasies I love to recognize, many of which I share." p. 6 -- what she imagines her mother thinking as they leave Romania in about 1962

I remember only my concern that I not lose sight of my father, as I had done once in Bucharest when a mere toddler. (Fortunately, at that time I was able to tell a policeman what my address was; now, of course, I had no address.) p. 12 -- at a stopover in Vienna on their way to the west by train

Small houses everywhere displayed their fresh laundry innocently, invitingly, drying in the breeze. Just think, an individual family could have a lovely house like that all to itself! The serenity of these immaculate dwellings contrasted sharply with the lurking anxiety ticking like a persistent bomb inside each of us. Why didn't we just stop right here, at the next small village? After all, Austria looked like a free enough country. And then we couldn't have to go so far, so very far! p. 13

"The high 'childlessness' tax (to be paid, incidentally, by the unmarried and infertile as well) has a paradoxically contraceptive effect, making it harder for a couple to save any money for a future family." p. 39

More stuff I want to remember:

the description of her own building and its inhabitants; the old women neighbors on her floor; how her mother would plug the drain of their balcony in the summer and flood it a few inches so she'd have a mini swimming pool

Moş Gerilă: Old Man Frost (Santa Claus to us); Romanian Winter Tree for the New Year; the sweet story of her little sister, already nine years old and in America, learning the truth about Santa Claus from a six-year-old: My sister said nothing for a while and then, her eyes lowered, she whispered "Oh... that's too bad..." p. 63 This is on the same page as a photograph of the sister who resembles her maternal grandfather, while the author, pictured earlier in the book at 4 years old (very pretty), looks like her paternal grandfather.

the elegant Boulevard Jdanov; a staircase in a building meticulously sculpted in dark wood, bewitched me like a rare jewel.

"In Romania even children have to applaud on demand." p. 79

And what about all this talk of equality, if some become pioneers before others? ... With this conviction firmly in mind, our whole class went prepared to vote in the election of the most equal of all pioneers in the school, our president. p. 80 -- most equal

Bandi and Mariana -- two creatures society had shunned for being unsightly and slower, they kept a reservoir of affection and need augmented by the constant rejection they had come to expect. p. 108

America, from a Romanian high school history book of the '50s: First we learned that the Indians had been killed off; then little happened till the Civil War broke out over the issue of slavery. That issue, we were told, was never resolved and blacks are still starving, jobless, deprived of all civil rights. Monopoly is the rule in the American economy; a few producers get together and fix prices, which are prohibitive. The "little guy" has no chance: the poor get poorer while the rich get richer. And in America, money rules--there is no compassion. p. 110 (Aha! They're right!)

" 'We'll be back Mrs. Blau, we'll be back!' As I run out I'm angry with myself for the parting lie, and for bothering her difficult death with our futile search for the past." p. 113

"Tenants"--a short story by Andrei Sinyavsky

I wish I could keep this book. It's from the library.

[KayG · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding, thoughtful, informative.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a gift to me from the author herself, Dr. Juliana G. Pilon. A very good translation in Romanian, and very powerful memories shared in "Notes from the Other Side of Night."

[Debby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Juliana's stories of Romania were very familiar to me as they paralleled those of my husband, who also grew up in Romania - although their fathers situations were different and my husband came here on his own. After reading about life in Romania under the communists, one can better understand how important our freedoms are in America and how we should be more vigilant to conserve therm. Coincidentally, Juliana and her husband Roger lived in the apartment we lived in just prior to our tenancy.
Although most of the book is well written - and works well going back and forth in time from her life in Romania and her impressions when her family went back for a visit in 1975, she sometimes 'waxes poetic' with fairly nebulous thoughts.