HARLEQUINADE
When the young student Victoria Darian is invited for questioning to the secret police headquarters she decides to kill herself rather than face the ordeal of the interrogation. It is 1984, the peak of terror in Ceausescu’s communist Romania and everyone lives in fear of Securitate, the dictator’s ruthless henchmen. Victoria’s parents were destroyed in the interrogation dungeons of the feared institution. Her mother, Lia Darian, was a theatre actress and her father, George Darian, a cabinetmaker and a dissident against the dictatorship.
This is how the story begins, a story about people without dreams or hopes, struggling to survive in a world where they are not humans but numbers on files in the vast library of Securitate. It is a story about the inherent evil in man which prevails and strives in an environment where human values are neglected and degraded. But it is also a story about the glimmer of light in every one of us and the power of love and friendship. Harlequinade tells a tale about a forgotten world - tragic and cruel - and the people who were caught in its toxic whirlwind - some were reduced to ashes and some were reborn.
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I am a Romanian living in Spain and about the same age as yourself, Mrs. Shumilov. I have travelled to the US with my parents during the time of Ceausescu's dictatorship. My parents still live there but I left my family when I found out that they had been secret police informers and my uncle went to a communist prison where he subsequently died, following a report from my mother, his own sister. I no longer keep in contact with them and I have no children. I do not wish to pass on the legacy of betrayal and abuse. I still have some Romanian friends and this is how I got your book as a present on my birthday. I must confess I read it several times, not being able to believe my eyes that someone had the courage to draw such a shocking picture of Romania during those years. And this without pathetic description of the physical misery of the people but on the contrary, insisting on the glamourous life a few selected corrupt officials lived. The story is full of pain and anguish but very well written and it went straight to my heart. I feel you should write a sequel to the book and not just abandon one of the most fascinating characters I have ever encountered in a work of fiction: Paul Roman. Thanks, Mrs. Shumilov, for a special book.
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