The village is shaking

There’s an earthquake on command! On commaaaaand! Wait, don’t shut me up… ON COMMAAAAND! THE EARTHQUAKE IS ON COMMAAAAND!

A woman jumps to cover the mouth of the screaming man. He’s an old man put together by some white locks of hair, some teeth and a suit from when he was young. If you undo his tie he will disintegrate. Two villagers grab him and drag him to the exit of the communal culture house, overcrowded with parliament members, seismologists and all the tv stations to explain to the citizens – where the earthquakes come from?

Exhausted, the old man can only squeak from the entrance: Why are you afraid to speak?.

The mayor intervenes from the stage. It has been decided… has been deciiided… HAS

BEEN DECIIIIDED…  

It has been decided that within a reasonable timeframe a meeting will take place with the oil company management, in order to have a talk and deliver your message. Agreed?

The cameras are turning from the officials to the villagers and back… depending on who screams louder. A woman with a black scarf answers:

Why don’t they come here?! Here we have many riches, many of our country’s riches. Here we have gas, oil, here lie all the interests! Let it be known, let it be heard. We either die or we leave. But we won’t leave this place, we have a … sentimental connection. We have sentimental values. All my life is here. I’m not leaving.

Participative democracy is working! The people appoint two villagers to go with the mayor for a meeting with a big director, not just some welder. Lots of noise, the members of the parliament don’t like it, they want order and discipline.

The officials gather up like dust and leave indisposed through the back door.

Izvoarele is a village without watchdogs somewhere in the southeast of Romania (the moldavian part of the Baragan plain). No townhouse, no police department. Only a school, a church, a communal culture house and three ministore­pubs. A main street, a secondary street, cut by about 10 small roads.

They had been free of calamities so far, but for a month now the world is beginning and ending. There were floods like never before, then the earth shook that you could see it live live on tv. Ahundredidkhowmany earthquakes in two weeks.

It’s sunday, people have gathered in the church, it’s like in american movies when the community gathers to debate before the storm of the century hits.

Because God wants to see if we are faithful. We were many of us these days on tv shouting left, right and centre. But how many of those who shouted came today to pray?

The priest recites his speech calmly: We are not even 1 percent. It is serious because God is giving us signs. God has shown us what i was saying some time ago in my preachings. God has saved this world from danger. That is, until this year. There were floods all over the country and all over the world, but not here. Yet now God is showing us that if it is his will, he can give that unto us.

Oh my god!, a woman sighs. The pastor blesses his sheep and reminds them Saint Parascheva is up on the next fixture (well, her mortal remains are) and whoever wants to see her should bring 50 lei for transportation to the city.

In front of the church, some kids are fooling around the television crews. 3,2,1, a boy with more nerve is trolling a live transmission, then springs like a buck over the unfinished concrete wall so he can see miss reporter transmitting live on the digital display.

An industrial­horror whining sound comes through the speakers mounted under the roof of the church. The sermon is over, but the priest forgot to turn off the microphone. A mix of hissing lips kissing crosses, donations in the name of the lord, for the living or the dead. Rural psy, rare event, live transmission all throughout the country, hourly.

I have been in Izvoarele for a day, in a remote corner of Romania, but it is as if I was at the People’s Palace, everybody in my family must have seen me on tv by now.

When i arrived there was no one in the streets. Browned off roads, parallel, perpendicular, sprinkled with scenes ­ a phaeton and some hacks, a kid on a bicycle, arrowed by errands for some relatives, and television crews, going from door to door.

Are you scared, ma’am? We are, ma’am.

What is they sayin’ now?, asks Neculai, a drunken unemployed man, reviewing the press from a lane corner.

Neculai watches tv only at night, when he sleeps. During the day he checks out live on the women reporting the story. He doesn’t really have any teeth left. Sucks on the cheapest cigarettes because eh, tough luck, who has money to buy fine cigarettes? He smoked all you can smoke. He has a gathering of white foam from saliva in the corner of his mouth.

Even though the cold weather hit the country, Neculai tramples around in flip-­flops. He warms the tips of his fingers with traditional spirit tastings and recently picked vines, you can’t even tell of no earthquake.

There was last night too, there were two. I jumped out of bed, even the tv was on. I just pulled it out of the plug, directly, didn’t press on the remote, you know? Who knows, it could have caught on fire, god forbid.

He says he’s been a securitate sergeant in the army. As a civilian, he screwed around as a mechanic. Sixteen years he busted his hands for Petrom, now he is retiring from unemployment, after 36 years on the job. He knows his deal.

There was nothing like this around here. Since this austrian came. They say it’s one of those uglies, how you call them, muslim, alright? And together with… so there is also an american with this muslim, alright? They put some chemical solution, they are to this day trying to break that tectonic plate. To see what’s under it. It’s a stone they cannot break. They’d put anything to break it!

People are stupid, people are stupid, look at those tv people, keep transmitting, why are they transmitting so much?!

Neculai says he keeps hearing bangs, but the company doesn’t admit to it. He’s well tipsy, he has checked on some rachiu in the barrel, that it hadn’t gone bad. I can hardly understand what he says, he’s conspiracy­mumbling, so that no one can hear him.

A dried up woman passes us and lets out a complaint about how this madness is not ending. I don’t need no giveaway from the state, i want to know if it’s a matter of leaving or of staying. Her hands are ghost white, but not out of fear. She’s coming from the mill…

Bam!My knees bend, as if i was on the bus. The electric cables are dangling on the poles, while a wave of whines, yelps, godhelpus and godforbids crashes into the streets. Did you see? That’s what it is like,, Neculai takes note of the onehundredsomethingplus earthquake. This is no earthquake, not even animals get upset. It’s not like in ’77, now, that was a real earthquake.

The seismic wave takes me to the yard of the woman coming from the mill. She’s Neculai’s cousin. Of course i will accommodate mr. reporter, I would even help out a homeless man. If you like the room, by all means! We don’t have too much. I will tell the boy not to come home, he’s gone wood chopping.

Madam Popescu is quite a woman. She worked in the city, in the industry. When she retired she came to live in the country side and is ruling the land with a fist of iron. She’s got vines, makes pickles, feeds the dogs and the other animals, carries wood, takes care of the greenhouse. What a household. The Mrs. is the boss. Mr. Nicusor, the husband, would like it too, but he can’t. He’s only got one leg and carries a quarter of his paralysed body in a metallic frame. He’s got a bad mouth, but can’t really speak.

What shall i do now? I have an apartment in Galati, the children live in it. Should I go and kick them out? the matron is telling me in fast­-forward, while she is preparing food and what else she has going on.

I find my nose hovering over a plate of bean soup. Neculai, barely able to sit down drunk, speaks his own language, but it is not Romanian. Sorry, Mr. journalist, don’t get upset with me, securitate so and so, commander so and so, we got drunk for three days, beg your pardon, beg your pardon, you’re a schooled man, mechanic, petrom, people are stupid, I know what I’m saying, I’ve been there.

In the countryside, night falls fast. Before you know it, you’ve had three sour cherry liqueurs, fresh and sharp as horincă. Mrs. Popescu makes the bed and, instead of good night, throws out a frowning: Nothing’s going to happen tonight, right?

Hope not, I say. But you can lock the door if you don’t trust me.

Deep into the night, glasses clink, Jesus rattles uncontrollably, everyone’s drunk, the dogs are barking like it’s New Year’s Eve. I shouldn’t have thrown a party in strangers’ house. But wait, wasn’t it October? If she’d locked the door, like I told her… I’m dreaming, I realize. But trains don’t shake you like this either. Maybe I’m not dreaming after all. I open my eyes, then my notebook, and write down 4:38. Jesus really is rattling inside the picture frame. At 5:35 the blanket jumps off me one more time.

Did you feel the earthquake? I read on my phone in the morning. Which one, brother?

Mrs. Popescu hadn’t slept at all. She’d even brought over Auntie Vasilica, so the house wouldn’t collapse on her head after all that trouble of securing a plot in the cemetery.

As soon as I’m done with work, I’m going to church, and after that there’s a meeting at the community hall. Some specialists are coming to explain to us what the hell is going on.

In church, the men sit on the right and the women on the left, next to a table covered with memorial offerings. Baskets of grapes, wine, chocolate and bananas. Some kind of funeral service, but before that the priest scolds the villagers for losing their faith, says that’s why God is punishing them with earthquakes and floods:

And then we wonder why the Holy Spirit no longer descends upon us, why God does not listen to our prayers? Because we have become secularized. We have removed God from creation, and we continue to remove Him through our deeds. It is not enough to say “yes!”, to acknowledge Him. Not everyone who says “Lord, help me!” shall enter the kingdom of heaven.

I follow the trail of television cables stretched through the church and across the whole village. It leads me to the cultural hall, where the villagers have been summoned by the authorities to receive explanations about the calamity that struck them.

Culture in Izvoarele looks ready to collapse. Wooden and iron chairs are lined up in geometric rows. The floor is made of concrete paving slabs, and at the far end of the room there’s a tall stage with parliamentary-style wooden chairs and faded floral wallpaper, tinted blue by the window blinds.

The villagers flood into the hall in a swarm, but nobody sits down. If they sit, they can’t hear a thing. In front of them stands a journalistic barricade, all gear and tripods and cameras pointed at the county’s local big shots: a parliamentary commission, the prefect, the mayor, and a seismologist.

The seismologist gets pushed to the front. Somebody has to pull the chestnuts out of the fire.

We are monitoring the situation. For us, surface earthquakes like these are not unusual.

People lose patience before he even finishes the first sentence.

There were similar ones in Banat in the ’90s. A fault line has reactivated here. You should know there have been earthquakes before too.

The angry villagers cut in. Enough with the explanations already.

“And what if the whole hillside comes crashing down?!”

“The earthquakes should start becoming less frequent…”

“They’re drilling with those giant bits, brought equipment from all over the world. The drill heads snapped underground. Plenty of us worked there, we know!”

“There is no evidence suggesting the oil exploitations are responsible. The fault line…”

“What fault line, sir? What are you even talking about? We don’t understand a thing!”

The villagers are furious.

“THE EARTHQUAKES ARE MAN-MADE! MAN-MAAADE!”

“My whole life is here. I’m not leaving,” one woman says, and that settles it.

The meeting ends without any resolution. The officials huff and gather themselves into a tight little cluster before slipping out through the back door, offended that the villagers wouldn’t listen.

Truth be told, they hadn’t really said anything either.

Reporter: Ștefan Mako
Desen: Giorge Roman