Our grandfather
by Adi and Ovi Catanescu
When my brother Adi and I were young children living in Brăila, our grandfather worked as a bus driver. He transported workers from Brăila to a large chemical complex about fifty kilometers away.
Every once in a while, Grandfather would come to our house, choose one of us, and take us along on the trip. We would ride with him and the workers all the way to the chemical plant. When we returned to Brăila, the passengers were gone, and we had the entire bus—and our grandfather—all to ourselves.
We loved those trips. Riding beside Grandfather in that big, empty bus was a special treat.
Perhaps this was also his way of rewarding us for helping him build two additional bedrooms and a summer kitchen at his home in the Hipodrom neighborhood, where he lived with our grandmother, Ica, and several other members of the family.
The bricks he used were made of chirpici (mud-brick), a traditional building material for poor people. Grandfather mixed clay soil, straw, water, and horse manure. He poured the mixture into wooden molds and left the bricks to dry and harden in the heat of the sun.
Adi and I were given an important responsibility: we had to walk through the neighborhood collecting horse manure from the streets.
At that time, there were very few passenger cars in Brăila, but there were many horse-drawn carts and carriages. There was never a shortage of the material Grandfather needed for his bricks.
We were very proud that he had entrusted us with such an important job. We diligently cleaned the streets and carried home what was needed to make the chirpici. We felt that we, too, were helping Grandfather build the addition to his house.
Perhaps those wonderful rides in his bus were our reward.
Adi remembers one particular trip with Grandfather. As they were returning from the chemical plant, Grandfather asked him:
“Would you like some watermelon?”
Of course, Adi said yes.
Grandfather parked the bus beside the road, and together they ate the delicious, sweet watermelon. At some point, Adi climbed back into the bus and slammed the driver’s door shut, unaware that Grandfather’s hand was still in the doorway.
The heavy door crushed his hand.
Grandfather calmly opened the door. He did not cry out, scold Adi, or show any anger. Although his hand was bleeding and his injured fingers were trembling, his face revealed no sign of the terrible pain he must have felt.
He simply told Adi to get into the bus, and they continued home.
When they arrived, Grandfather did not tell anyone what had happened to his hand.
Adi never forgot that moment. Even as a child, he was astonished by the way Grandfather endured the injury—as though almost nothing had happened. He knew how badly he had hurt him, yet Grandfather never blamed him or made him feel guilty.
Many years later, Adi and I read our aunt Adina’s book, Destine. There we learned more about Grandfather’s imprisonment and the torture he had suffered at the hands of the communist authorities.
Only then did we begin to understand his extraordinary reaction that day.
Perhaps Grandfather endured the crushed hand so calmly because he had already survived suffering far more terrible. The pain accidentally caused by a frightened little grandson could never compare with the deliberate and excruciating pain inflicted upon him by his communist torturers.
But perhaps there was something more.
Grandfather knew that Adi had not meant to hurt him. He saw a small boy who had made an innocent mistake, and instead of adding fear and guilt to the child’s heart, he silently carried the pain himself.
That was the kind of man our grandfather was.
And perhaps that is where the owl spit was hiding all along.
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