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.

I may not feel, but my poor wife …The wife …yes, my poor female, she never thought she would ever get married. She married while she was still young. When my time came to get married she already had all these four kids. Her husband, may he rest in peace, was working at the tumbler. One night wanting to unbind two cars to get it by turns to dump his helpmate having no idea what he wanted to do, he thought he was straining to push the car in the tumbler and he doesn’t manage. Then with all his force he holds on to a beam and pushed as hard as he could the car. He hears a long scream and when he went to see from where it came, the head of his helpmate was hanging crushed between those two cars. The husband of my wife died leaving four kids behind, and his helpmate went crazy, leaving other two children with no father.
You may observe that if a woman remains widow or divorced the family doesn’t recover, can’t get married again because of the children. For many reasons lovers don’t want other’s children. Well being, I took Marie especially because she had the children. Why did I do this thing? Maybe some thought I did it from madness, maybe from closeness (my parents had land and they told me and my brother they’ll give us the ownership counting the number of children we have), but it wasn’t about any of these. Like any other man I myself had some experiences with some “girls”. One even told me she was pregnant only that she never gave birth. Down the village a young doctor came, that build a home wishing to settle down here. I was his main master for the construction of the house. From talk to talk I told him my suspicion. He made me all my tests and confirmed I’m sterile and I could not have children. I might have liked children till then, but since then, it seemed I was crazy after them. I was following them all the time, buying them sweets, toys, what else, I was becoming one of them. After the sorrow Marie went through with her husband, I did not think twice, I took her when she thought no one else would ask her to be his wife. I took her with no suspicions. I had a happy marriage. In the latest time this boy of mine, Relu, worries me. The boy I told you so many things about till now is 35 years old now and already has three children. They put me in retirement from the mine, I was already encouraging them, and him, a man with many jobs sent into retirement.