My grandmother’s eyes are smiling. Her round face is a big smile and bursts of contentment. Today is another Saturday when all her grandchildren are home, with her. She loves seeing all nine of her grandchildren together. Grandma’s running around trying to please us and keep us happy.

She bakes goodies for us and she tells us stories every time when we get together. Grandma tries to help us grow up to be strong and wise women and men. We are in all her prayers. She says that it’s her duty to try to shape us for the road of life ahead.     

Many of the stories she tells us are sad. This story, part of her childhood, is a sad one.

It seemed to me that most of the time she would tell this story for me; “Mamma’s girl”, she calls me. My parents named me after her. I am the oldest one of her grandchildren and she always says I have to set an example for my brothers and all my younger cousins. So, she tries to shape me and teach me, first of all, the right things to do in life.

“It was hard, mamma’s girl! We were kids! What did we know? My dad’s mother brought us water, in an earthen jar, and bread for the whole time we hid in the woods. It was hard for her mamma’s girl; old women, walking in the woods at night, in times of war. But what did we know? We were just kids. We were hungry and crying for food.”

As we sit at the kitchen table, I see the headstones, through the window, the crooked old wooden crosses showing through the tall carpet of grass in the cemetery. The pine trees stand tall and silent looking over the land of death. It’s not hard to imagine the haunted shadows of children, women and old men with worn out shoes, or barefoot. Their torn clothes are no longer protecting them from the penetrating cold and the heavy rain. They are missing their old, small, warm houses and the grayish smoke rising up through the chimneys in the evenings.  

Grandma started to tell me stories from her childhood when I was about five. She said, “I had a hard life when I was your age, mamma’s girl! I didn’t have a warm bed and a soft pillow to rest my head on at night. God knows why. But you be thankful, mamma’s girl. Don’t forget to say thank you Lord, every day for everything you have. Yes, God knows why things are the way they are. But there are good people all over the Earth, even in times of war.”

Her words were sad fifteen years ago, her words are sad now, but I feel and I know that she is happy because we don’t have to go through the kind of experiences she had to go through. My grandmother’s voice is breaking in a sigh. “I remember we were hiding now in the cellar of Niculici’s house,” she says. “The Russians were bad; like in times of war. They were doing bad things; you know, mamma’s girl…we were all afraid of them.”

The Niculici’s house is up on the hill. I wonder why they would hide in a house on a hill. “The house is very close to the woods. In case of something we could get very fast in the woods,” she explains to me. “It was very cold outside. It was much too cold to stay with the children in the woods. The cellar was dark and small, but we were not cold. The earthen floor kept us warm and the walls of this dark room made us feel safe. We didn’t care that it smelled in there, mamma’s girl. There were many people in there – children, old men and women – all of us on the earthen floor. I don’t know how many, but there were many, mamma’s girl.”

 When I was younger I kept asking how the earthen walls stood up for so many years. And why the soldiers did not set on fire the roof made out of straw. I guess my grandmother is right. There are good people all over the Earth, even in times of war. The walls painted a pale blue are still in place. The straws on the roof, once golden, eaten by time became black and some of them are putrefied.

After a short pause, my grandmother continues: “It was really dark in the cellar. But I think streaks of light were coming from somewhere. I remember the soldier was tall. I don’t remember his face, but I remember his eyes. He had meek eyes. He took me in his arms and lifted me up. I wasn’t afraid of him, mamma’s girl. He asked me what my name was. He was a good man. After he put me down he went outside to his tank. I’ll never forget the half-moon shaped sweet biscuits he gave me. The soldier took me on his lap, gave me the sweets and started to cry. He told me that back home he has a little girl. She was my age and we were both named the same. He missed her very much. And he cried.

Oh, mamma’s girl! Who knows if he ever would have seen his girl again? Poor man! He was a good man. His name was Stefan. An old woman asked him. She knew a little bit of Russian. He was a good man, mamma’s girl!”

And my grandmother’s voice is breaking. She doesn’t want to talk about those times right now. Even this story makes her sad and brings tears in her eyes; a story about a good man in bad times.

                                                            * * *

The sun had dipped beneath the hills, flaming the sky with its afterglow, and converting bruised clouds to shades of rust and blood red. The storm brewed luminous bands of colored flares that soon waltzed an aurora borealis over the mountains.

Through the night, distant thunders thumped a rhythmic heartbeat in the earth.

As I sit here listening to the rain my mind wanders back to Transylvania and the rains that came to that place. The rains were heavy and almost thick; the drops would hurt your head if you stayed out in it very long with your head uncovered. It was there that I became a killer of my fellow man. The dark and the rain were my friend. I was one of the unpeople, the killer from the mist and shadows, I was feared. I am older now and regret those times. And when I think of my fellow soldiers, who died so young, I grow cold again, evil, just for a moment and it all goes.

I remember the rain that refreshes the earth and sounds so peaceful.

I remember Elena, the little girl with beautiful, brown eyes, and her bewitched smile. Her innocent look, her warm and tender embrace, reminded me of my Elena, my oldest daughter. This dirty yet gracious Romanian girl made me feel like more of a father and less of a murderer. She had no fear of me; she looked deep into my eyes, she smiled at me and she loved me – she hugged with her tiny arms one of the unpeople, with blood stains on his soul and his mind and she made him feel like more of a human being. I had lost almost my entire team in that hell hole and the horror of the battles and I grew cold and evil beneath the coldness of the rain. But she pierced my heart with her childish smile and naive joy. For the first time since the war had started, I cried. She made me think of angels and the enduring myth of heaven. I used to think that I had it all figured out. That the scientists were right and we are just cells and all the space in between those cells, and when we die it all comes to an end. But something happened in my heart and I got this jolt, I got this feeling that there is something bigger out there; bigger than me, bigger than everybody. She made me feel that deeply and I couldn’t help but weep.

Why do people cry? Maybe emotions become so intense that the body just can’t contain them anymore. The mind and the feelings became too powerful and the body weeps.

With each step I took back towards the border of Transylvania, maybe I walked away from some special part of myself, some part that died there, some part that awaits for my return. I sometimes feel that part calling me back, back to the rain and the blood. Sometimes that part of me returns in the rain, in the dark to shake my memory. And I remember little Elena, and I get again this jolt that I’m more than breath, more than haze.

As the dawn gets closer, rippled clouds of pink fled the sunrise as its sunburst fans upwards from the horizon, tinting then torching the scattered clouds a burnt orange to scarlet red. Soon, the valley will be alive with yellow-wing butterflies, on blossomed fields of dew.

* * *

My grandmother was right. There are good men all over the Earth, even in times of war. And we get to know one heart’s kindness especially in the bad and dark times of life.