I was sitting aside with my back at a tilting cart looking to do the same thing, to eat, but more undercover. I was constrained to “perform myself” in front of so many people that I haven’t known yet and that I was sure that were waiting for me to fail to be the next taken against the grain. From this point of view I did not liked them. I was alone and they were a shift. I was the one that did not know anyone, they all knew each other. They pretend they cannot see me. They left me alone, but I knew it wasn’t long till “they would baptize me”. This circular meeting with the meal service before entering the shift was as a new religion, as a state of being. Although most of the talking was “in shifts” there were issued, more concise than the origin of that ancient province, all the life and work problems of that specific “round”. From the way that the problems were “charged” you could guess the place or state of each individual in that society. This moment was more than a “good evening” or “enjoy your work” often used in other working man societies. Watching them, studying their acting I was questioning myself too. Was my place among them a mistake? Did I force my destiny, I thought I would live better, with less headaches? What would I become after some years among these men, knowing that in Romania only 5% of the working men “have chosen” this “profile”? Waking up from this stack of questions I notice that “the wheel” gets ready to enter the gallery. The meal was over, the bags with food were hanged on a carver and everyone was checking his lamp. At this level electrical lamps haven’t showed up yet, not even for the bosses. I was looking with interest how everyone was checking the lamps and I could say the each one “was making” this in his own way, but “that way” had a purpose. Later I realized that “making the lamp” means the way of using those 300 gr. of carbide. Some were basing on a big flame but for a short time, these were the trimmers from the transportation. For those that were working in the line the lamp was made by placing powder over the carbide to cover it well, this powder was soaked and the lamp was having a permanent flame for four hours, after which the lamp was made again and for most of the times it was interrupting. With the same method, the same time, and the same source of light. The engineers and locksmiths were infiltrating the carbide in oil or gas and it lasted for a longer time. As for the flame they were using the same method as the trimmers, the lamp with big flame, most of all because they and the master workmen had also spotlights that were “pushing” the spot light over 15-20 meters ahead.

After ending this ritual, of the lamp making, we were entering the Nepomuc Gallery. The entering was made according to our gradations and age. First was the horizon master. I was the last. The spotlights that the lamp was giving chase at the darkness figures of the gallery walls. In the boots settle while walking you could not hear a lot. Who had something to say had to holler to be heard. Even walking, the head posture while walking was agonizing. The head cover with the helmet had to be “recessed” between the shoulders. The back had to be “brought down” so it won’t catch the subsidence from the top, the reinforcement, the cables or anything else it was in there. A hit in the head if it wasn’t “pulled out”, could have broken your neck. If you regarded this, at how fast you were walking, a hit on the head could have out you down but could not break your neck.
Feeling my way through the gallery behind the shift from it I felt alone in an atmosphere with a taste and smell of decayed carrots. The moonshine figures caught to the faded light of the carbide lamp as the faded chromatic of the walls disillusioned a young man that loves blazing colors, clear colors. We might have walked for about hundred meters and my mind “getting away” outside not only for the sun I left behind but most of all for the disappointment that I was able to accept “the entrance in the mine”, which I feel as a big punch. I resign to it, a shift will pass, then I would go with other teams with less entrances in the mine, if it’s possible none.
These were my thoughts at the first entrance in the mine. Now after so many years, what then seemed a mission (moving up the discussions to my own person) was a typical “teacher’s” from the underground protection. The fact that I was not “taken in the middle”, and for lots of days I was receiving immediately the answers at my questions (and no glimpse of blame) a tacit sense in their world started to create, in the world of the mine diggers. Maybe, even if I haven’t expressed myself by no means in front of them, they accepted me knowing how hard it is for a man to accept to work “under ground” and maybe they saw something in me that I didn’t know yet. Their way of being friendly, with no words, helping you “through hand grabbing” and not by advising, and that atmosphere in which you could feel protected by seeing and feeling anything different but feeling their attachment all the time, vanished the work’s tidiness and of the place where I had to work and I started to feel that actually life is beautiful.

This was the first stage in which they seemed to start “colorizing” my working place, by the colors I knew and I wanted and I was receiving it. In the second phase, with any exaggerations, I simply got so close to these people that I myself looked to give them back the same proof of affection, liking them, trying to build them a place in my heart. An inner place through which we could communicate with no words but by the fruitage of our fraternal and helpmate trust.
– Listen, Thomas took hold of the teacher, so you won’t be the only grey and old man, look, a grey woman shows up on the road.
– Good evening, the old lady greets us.
– Good evening to you too, we hurry to greet her back, in chorus.
Buia Thomas, our host says:
– Being a part of my suffering, you may have noticed I am dealing harder and harder with my walk, although I’m not 50 years old yet.
I had the guts to work in that gallery, Purcaret, most of all because it was above my house and I didn’t have to go by car, to wake up with two hours earlier to get at the “entrance in the mine”, but the work terms were very hard.
We started the gallery in an autumn. All winter we were so cold, because we were really 10-20 meters far from the outside. Then these underground water that were daily filling our boots, frizzing our feet, it wasn’t any help. Still because of this water, from infiltrations, our wells compromised. That’s why now my feet aren’t listening to me anymore, nor my knees, in fact nothing else listens to me. From a head mine digger I became a “patch” at the age you see me.
– Mister Buia, you are “green” enough, cheered him the professor to whom was not suitable to contemplate the atmosphere of pity that lasted from the early morning till now when they got out from the grave yard.
– Well Mister Iorgu, Buia addressed him, it will be my pleasure not to talk about this subject but actually not only my feet hurt, nor all my wrists and then they said I have a “syndrome” that would affect my heart a lot, with the silicosis “I’m not bad”, second degree, and they decided to give take me in retirement. Honestly I’m telling you that this pain is so big sometimes that I don’t know what to do anymore. Then I give up my medicines and I start drinking until I go to sleep and I don’t feel anything anymore.