Category: Experiences
Meet our neighbours
Posted by Alina on July 22, 2009
By Alina Wolfe Murray
In the morning, I meet Mrs Cosmovici going down the stairs in her light blue home robe. She holds a tray of mincemeat in one hand, a Kent hanging in the other. She steps slowly, always telling me to pass first. You are young, she says. I cannot walk too fast. During one winter, many years ago, when she was a young and undoubtedly a very beautiful woman, she was pushed off the steps of a moving tram and her leg was broken. It was a really hard winter, the snow was thick and people had to cut tunnels to get out of their houses. On the day of the accident the trams had started working again. She was lucky her leg was not chopped off.
The tray of meat is for the cats around the block. She feeds them every day. They weave around her legs, all happy and cuddly. That is her joy. She loves cats and cats love her. Cats climb up to her balcony, to give birth. She tends them and plays with the kittens, feeds them and indulges them. She has no children of her own. But she has two doting nephews who take her to the supermarket by car so she can buy cat food and cat litter in large quantities.
She looks a bit dizzy in the light, as if the sun is confusing her. Her Roman nose is very dignified, and even in her bathrobe she looks like a lady. She makes the most wonderful mucenici, honey-dipped 8-shaped pastry cakes, sprinkled with grated walnuts. They are cakes for special Orthodox holidays, to do with honouring the dead and the saints. They remind me of my home, my granny, my childhood. There is a special bond between me and Mrs Cosmovici, a bond that has a lot to do with where we both come from – Moldova, the Neamt County.
My dear, she says, people there are different. They are good and they don’t fight and argue like here. She is 83. She’s been in Bucharest for over 60 years, yet she will always be a Moldavian by heart. It’s the same with me. I know that what she means about people being good is more to do with how they seemed when she was a child. And all childhood memories are wrapped in idyll and slightly golden at the edges.
Mrs Cosmovici was married to a pianist who was a cousin of George Enescu, Romania’s best known composer. Her house is still full of music books which she kindly started donating to our children’s piano teacher, who works at the music high school. There was a tale about each one, a trip taken abroad by her and her husband, when the books were bought.
Then Mrs Virgi comes out, with her dog Labus. She is in her seventies but her round face and vivid eyes make her look as innocent as a teenager. Her white hair is like a silver aura around her face. She takes care of her 94 year old mother who – in spite of being only skin and bone – shares the same youthful eyes and is very happy when she sees the children. Labus goes around the block and shits everywhere, but nobody minds it, because he belongs to us all, and Mrs Virgi is so delicate and sweet and looks like a fizzled good fairy that nobody would like to upset, as if she would disappear if shouted at.
On the ground floor there is a childless couple, Mrs Jeni and her husband, Doru. They are in their late seventies too. Last year, they were tricked by some thieves who knocked on their door, pretending they knew their niece in the U.S. Our neighbours invited them in. The thieves claimed they needed some help: they wanted to see the new Romanian money, because – they said – they just returned from the United States and did not want to be tricked when exchanging money. So our neighbours obligingly showed them the new notes and as soon as they turned their back to make the guests some coffee, the thieves disappeared with their savings, without even touching the coffee cups. We all felt rather enraged by this event.
Now Doru – who has had head aches since he was hit by a car earlier this year – walks around like a sleepwalker, holding onto the walls when he goes to the basement to fetch some tools. We are doing major works – changing the sewage pipes behind the block. It’s about 60 years old and in recent years it blocked frequently and waste infiltrated into the basements, stinking out the whole building. I feel relieved we are doing this, since it was my duty to call in the water and sewage company to unblock the pipes.
Mrs Cosmovici comes down to bring us all coffee. Suddenly, it feels like a picnic. There is a good feeling in the atmosphere, in spite of the horrendous smell let out by the dissected sewage pipe.
It is a pity about the back garden, which suffered last year too, when we built the new attic, because it was used as dumping ground. This spring it started recovering and our most tenacious neighbour, a lady whom the children call Babi, did a lot of work planting shrubs and grass and watering the garden. For the first time in years we had a grassy garden and now this is turning into mud. But there is hope for next year and even Babi who slaved away so hard feels good that we are changing the sewage system. It is by far the biggest accomplishment of this block in 2009.
There is something really interesting, but also sad about our block. There is an acute lack of men and – as a result – of men’s involvement. Doru can barely move and when his dizziness and headaches are not too strong he gives himself fresh ones by having a wee drink. The only other male, apart from Rupert, is an 80-year old gentleman who came to our block a few years ago, because he and his wife could not cope anymore with their big house. His wife died last year and ever since he’s been saying he wants to die too. He has bone problems, which are made worse by the dampness seeping from the basement to the ground floor. He says his flat feels like a tomb. He is tremendously well read, quotes Baudelaire and Verlaine in French, can tell you about Plato and Milton and is a delight to meet as you get this glimpse into another world, one that has to do with old-type good manners and the refined education that shaped some Romanians before communism.
Underneath us is Babi, a former sports teacher who takes no nonsense and does a lot of work around the block. She is in her sixties and until last year she still taught part time. Schools need sports teachers really badly and Babi would have been called back from retirement anyway, but the sweetest thing was that children Lara’s age made a petition to the director requesting her back. She is not exactly the mummy type. She is rather tough and very straightforward. But she does give a damn. She is the type of sports teacher who does things with the children thinking what they might like, instead of just shouting orders from the bench between taking mobile calls from friends. Some young teachers simply don’t seem to care, are bored, uninterested and lack method when working with younger children.
Babi helps us a lot too and our children have grown to love her. She is particularly attached to Luca, whom she’s known from birth. Babi had a son who died aged seven, when he was run over by a truck. She is one of the most energetic women I have seen; she does not sit idle for a minute. She is always doing something. When she does not water the garden or trim the hedges, or move the snow, she clears out things from the basement or helps out neighbours who cannot do that much themselves. Sometimes I think that Babi is the closest we have to a handy man around the block.
Opposite her is another lady in her late fifties. She is sweet in a helpless kind of way; one feels she is the youngest kid in the block. She lives on her own now; her dad died last year aged 93. Until two weeks before he died he did all the shopping and refused vehemently help up the stairs, when he came from the market with bags of food. He also timed her cigarettes intake, because she tends to smoke a lot if left to her own devices. In less than a year after his death, like a kid discovering freedom, she managed to spend all the savings he put aside for her. Even Babi, whom she respects, cannot do much to put her into shape, although she does order her around sometimes, to clean or provide help with the garden. Because we worry she might set the block on fire by accident, we installed a smoke detector on the staircase, after Babi discovered cigarette butts in a drawer.
In short – but by the look of the three pages I filled in not so short – these are our neighbours. I grew to love them all and it pained me to witness three of them die already. They have given a sense of community, of belonging to this place. Even when I get frustrated with the block, with the endless work that needs to be done and the various problems that appear, their kindness keeps me from considering moving elsewhere. But I know that time might come at some point. And I am very grateful I have met them and they have taken us in, almost like a very large family.
July 22nd, 2009
Hey Alina
I didn’t get to meet all these people on our visit but I can see, hear, sense their character and even smell them from your writing.
A fascinating glimpse into the passing of time in your bloc. Thankyou
Peter
July 24th, 2009
Alina, what a wonderful piece about your neighbours. I just loved it. I too have really nice neighbours but I’m not in a city and they are spread out over a radius of three miles or so but how important it is, this sense of community.