Under a Red Sky Read Online Free PDF Page B

will never return. You will disappear from the face of this earth just as if you had never been born.”
    We live in fear of the Securitate knocking at our door, day or night, and I am so tired of it that sometimes I wish I had never been born. Of course, I don’t let any of them know just how exhausted I feel, since I am the only one in the house who can make every one of them smile.
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    MY GRANDPARENTS share the largest bedroom. The other adults hardly ever enter this room, which is one of the reasons why I love it so much. It is my sanctuary and also the only place in the house where I feel that my voice is fully heard. It is a dark, quiet room that faces the back alley. Despite its location, this room is proof of lovelier times. Unlike the bedroom that I share with my parents, which contains makeshift furniture, my grandparents’ room has a bedroom set made of beautiful blond fruitwood. There is a queen-size bed with a graceful curved headboard. A stack of books and a glass of fresh water are always on Grandma’s night table. The full-length mirrors on her armoire gleam, reflecting little rainbows off the bevels. Inside, she stores her precious monogrammed linens, always ironed and folded. She tucks dried lavender in the drawers, and everything smells like spring.
    Grandma has trouble sleeping. She often reads through the night, every novel she can get her hands on. After breakfast, I find
her rubbing her red, teary eyes, which have swollen from straining to read by the light of the bedside lamp. Grandma is fluent enough in German and French to read books in these languages as well as in Romanian. She also speaks Yiddish, but only with Grandpa, when they’re trying to keep a secret from me. Grandpa Yosef doesn’t read anything except the papers, but he loves the movies and knows the names of all the stars: who played in what movie, what role, in what year.
    The two of them seldom argue except about the past, and then it is mostly Grandma arguing with the past.
    â€œI hope you’re happy now, Yosef,” she starts in on him. “If you had listened to me before these Communist snakes nationalized everything including the skins on our backs, you would still be wealthy.” She sighs.
    Grandpa replies, “And if my grandmother had wheels, Iulia, I too would be a bicycle.” This comment doesn’t make Grandma smile.
    â€œRemember the day,” she goes on, ignoring his remark, “right after the war when you came home with a briefcase full of money?” Grandpa Yosef sits on the edge of their bed, waiting for her words to spill out. Grandma hardly catches her breath. “Didn’t I tell you, now’s the time to get out? If you had listened, we would all be landowners in the land of milk and honey. Instead, thanks to Lazr, your genius of a brother, you took all of our money and sank it in this country that’s overrun by Communist parasites who have nationalized everything. Nationalized! It’s highway robbery and now we’re stuck forever. I hope you’re happy, Yosef. It serves you right, and if you’re miserable you have only yourself to blame.” At
this point Grandma’s finger is shaking in the air, her face flushed. “Too bad that I was stupid enough to come along for this lousy ride! I should have left that day, just as I threatened.” Grandma pulls out a handkerchief that’s tucked under her cardigan sleeve and blows her nose gently. She takes stock of Grandpa as he waits for her tirade to subside. “I’m sure you would have followed me, Yosef. Perhaps on a bicycle.”
    Grandpa never argues with Grandma when she gets going like this. Instead, he lets her unwind until she falls into a hard silence. On one such occasion, I saw him sitting on the edge of their bed, stroking her head. “You’re right, Iulia,” he said, trying to calm her and tucking in a stray strand of her silver hair. “You’re