– Gentlemen, if you don’t mind, continued “Buia Toma”, “marching with a few houses along”, I wish to also relate the story of a young man that even so is grey. I don’t know if it is a story of warning, but the young man you see in the house yard and who has his head grey was for a long time my helpmate and I want to tell you he is a remarkable worker, but … The boy in an easier disposition, told me the following: “I never enjoyed going to sleep after ten o’clock at noon. Of course that sometimes I happened to be late also. In this case next day I would be sleepy, sour, and moody all day and with any appetite for working and about the effects there cannot be anything to say. But not everything is after our will, and if we think of a little, more of this is after others will and only sometimes after own. That’s how it happened with me, a few days earlier. It was already at night when “Marioara”, the girl I talk to, calls me at her place. It wasn’t long before I used to go to sleep. “I have something to tell you”, she stops me from folding my tooling. I hesitate: “Dear, we meet tomorrow and we talk at leisure”. No one to talk to: “What I have to tell you, I want to tell you now”. I am looking to turn aside: “Marioara”, if we start a fight now we won’t finish it until the shift. Please, leave it for tomorrow”. “You always tell me this. Don’t hide after words. I want to tell you now!” What was I to do? I listened to some of her doubts, normal things of a pair of lovers, reproduced, not exactly indifferent after how much passion she put in her words, usual stuff and also maybe Maria was right in her posted jealousy, based on my lack of affection exclusively caused by my physical over- call at the mining work. In short words, the phantasm of “betrayal” occurred from Maria’s point of view over our love, love in which my fiancé was somehow possessive, a normal thing in the rural places. All her “argument” was an interpretation of a monolog. I wasn’t saying anything because there was nothing to say, but I did not want to exasperate her over the night, he telling needed no answer and I did not wanted to sit all night at a discussion that tomorrow will have no importance. Even more, in what Maria was saying, not for few times I agreed, because it was true I had few time to spend together, both because of my work at the mine and the works from the household that never have a schedule of dispose. From here and from all these she thought she was being “sacrificed”, “I don’t even care”, and other like this. The situation as it was presented will hardly find a solution because my waking up at four o’clock and coming back after three and a half in the afternoon didn’t mean a lot of time for “arguments”. What time was thereto be called your own time, or Maria’s? Few time, a lot then few … I was aware of that, but I had no other choice. If by any chance I managed to finish my work earlier, or there were such kind of works to be finished, I run for an hour or two to stay with Maria.

The big sadness was that having insufficient time we couldn’t afford, couldn’t dear to touch any kind of important discussion being incapable, in the time we had, to end it in a proper way. This lack gets us automatically at an atmosphere of doubt, incompletion, getting to discuss only the complaisance things, that just like everyone believes, were stereotype, but this is how our love was. In a completely different way things used to happen on Sunday. Yes, that was when we used to wallow for a while. We could benefit to go at a ball, to meet other pairs, we would watch a movie and I believe the most important thing was that we could clear up the arguments that have drag on over the week or that haven’t found the answers during the week. All this in quiet and peace, with no pressure of time and no fear like other sorts of discussions, that won’t find answers, which will bring suspicions and sadness in the coming days, will take place. So, even the discussions from this night, “short” arguments, ended like all arguments during the week “in a fish tale”. My contribution at this argument was only the physical presence, looking if it was possible, to calm her down if I couldn’t avoid the argument. With all these I got home in the middle of the night. After two hours of sleep, the alarm blew up my dreams, although the clock was only doing its job. I was worried about the lack of perspective. I could not see any type of improvement from this cycle of stupefaction enforced by life: change-sleep-household-love. Maybe if I would get married … And I wouldn’t think about it if I were older, but at 19 years old … not many marriages are made … Maybe just in … “Maieru”, not in here. Too soon to shut all the “doors” for the entire life … Lets not forget about the army that takes you away from near your young wife, that you will miss. I woke up from my bed broken-hearted as if I put my bones for “tenderize” a day before. All my body was in pain and I was lightheaded. I dressed up slowly and got out the house. As I opened the door I had the filling I was thunder-stricken, that’s how frightened I was. There was a downfall. It was raining hard and blasts of wind were raising the water in incredible places, from where all the exposed and less exposed things were being washed up. It was like even the air we had to breathe was gone leaving me breathless, looking for my future opened gate of breathable air. All these have frightened me unspeakably. This kind of enmity from nature was unacceptable. With my soul bent I jumped outside. After less than two steps I went back home. I was soaked. I changed my wet clothes and took others, for rainy days. I got the calcium carbide lamp ready. I fire the lamp when my mother wakes up.

She tells me something about being “careful”, while I reopened the door to get again in that wrathful weather. With nauseous-ness, protecting the lamp’s flame, I try to swim in the heavy rain storm, to the place where the car will take us and drive us to the mine. The wind calmed down a little and it seemed that less water was falling. I got in front of the solitary poplars. Through the catchy weather’s, pluralism of noises, you could discern other more … different. My heart endeavored to take the size of a flea. Sometimes, in this place I saw how a horse flesh threw its master in the yawn together with the cart. I don’t doubt the stories that were flowing as folklore of that unfriendly place. The strange noise, the noise that had distortioned in the storm, was starting to become clearer, stronger. I compared it with the noise of a man that would climb down from a tree in the way he would step on a foot board of which was hitting strongly his feet. God forbid us, who would be at four o’clock in the morning in a poplar on a stormy weather?! My mind went at … Satan, crippling all my senses. The noise that was growing high was obvious it won’t stop going on clearly above my head. I could not see a thing as I lent my body over the lamp’s flame so that the rain and the wind won’t fade it. I was exactly under the poplar and the close descent of the Evil one accelerated and it was closer and closer. The storm, darkness and lack of any other person around, the fact that not even the dogs barked, generated a fear that brought me to the verge of insanity. All the stories with the Evil one, vampires, genii, grumps, ghosts and all that man cannot clarify in a life, went through my mind like a flash and in stead of running from that place, in a fatality, I go under the poplar. I was so cold and I realized that if I did not know what it was, what “that” was, I could never ever go back to that place. “Its” descent was loud, with branch ruptures and also fed with other types of noises that made you believe someone was specially making all this, ahead framed, to get you out of your mind. In that moment I was hit in the head, right on my back, then I could hear a plump. Yes, my lamp faded. The water was leaking on my hands. Restlessness I drop match after match. Finally, I managed to light one. It might have been from pity. I light the lamp with the agony of a man that has to do something that he never wished to, I turned to see the Evil one. My loping glance was looking for something at the eyes level. Nothing! God, I hope you haven’t taken my mind away! For ten minutes, although I wasn’t waiting for him, I am determined to encounter my self with Satan. I have heard him and I won’t be able to see him? Behind, there wasn’t anybody.