Compartment

Goettingen, May 5, 1990--about one week/ten days to write narrative about December 1989.


Last December, I left Hamburg for Bucharest after a short visit from Goettingen.  After buying my train ticket, I got on the train to Goettingen and took a few of my suitcases out of storage.  I took a later train to Vienna.  The train to Bucharest leaves Vienna in the afternoon, and I waited in the train station with my baggage.  I had not expected to depart from Germany so early in the month, and I'd made no housing arragements for my time in Bucharest; so I decided to call the secretary of the foreign student office at the University there, who would decide which Camin I would stay in, from the Viennese train station.

I returned to the waiting area after the phone call, and I boarded the train with my suitcases.  The train departed, the conductor checked tickets, and I sat for a few hours until I saw the sign at Budapest-Keleti, where I knew that the Express train would stop for an hour.  I disembarked to walk and see the Hungarian station.  I'd changed no money into forints on the train when I'd shown my visa, and I found nothing at the train station late at night.  After looking out into a Budapest street, I walked back to the train, reboarded, and returned to my compartment.  I stretched out under my coat into a half-sleep until I reached the Romanian border at one or two in the morning.

Arad is a long border stop, where Romanian and Hungarian customs officers check all baggage, look for stowaways, and ask passengers to fill out forms with their local addresses.  Romanians returning to visit relatives often bring as many Western goods as they can fit into suitcases or carry, often more than their legal allotment.  Romania taxes the returning emigrants for each article in excess of or addition to the country's limited list of allowables, and customs officers collect duties in Western currency, then they give receipts.

The customs people inspected the baggage of former nationals returning for Christmas, and I sat quietly and showed my foreign birth place and gave them a local university address.  I drifted off as the train started toward Bucharest again, and the Express, which is only a Rapid in Romania, stopped frequently at cities and towns while Romanians got off and on it all night to travel between Romanian cities.

By morning, the train was in the mountains, where some of the travelers disembarked to begin their workdays.  By Bucharest, the terrain had flattened.

The train arrived at the Gara de Nord in the early afternoon.  The tourist office has a currency exhange inside the Gara de Nord, where I could change money when I arrived.  After changing currency into lei, I went outside and found a taxi that would take me to the center of Bucharest, where I would receive my room assignment from the University administration building foreign students' office.  The taxi stoppped in the Splaiul Independent,ei, and the driver allowed me to take my baggage and put it at the side of the boulevard in front of the administration building.

I unloaded my baggage, paid the taxi, and walked across the street to the Administration Building.  There, I learned from the secretary of foreign students that I had not been assigned to the same room.  The spacious room in the Camin Central Loc, in a part of the building that is next to the administration building, was not going to be my assignment.  A group of professors occupied the wing for a colloquium.

The secretary told me I would have to go to the Camin for Graduate Students, further up the Dimbovit,a River.  The Camin is near the Gara de Nord, a Bucharest train station.  The Gara is three stops from the Camin by Metro, but only five minutes away by bus.  I was disappointed.  I went outside to the Splaiul Independent,ei to try to find another taxi.  I was overburdened with all the luggage that I’d been able to take out of storage in Goettingen, but my suitcases were filled with summer clothes.  I had last traveled from Romania in October 1989, after a few weeks of warm weather, and I had not unpacked my suitcases when I arrived in Goettingen.  Instead, I stored them at the train station while I waited for my term in Goettingen to begin.

After a short wait, I found an empty taxi and rode with it back to the Camin Central Loc to collect my baggage.  Then I rode back to the Splaiul Independent,ei and up the river to the Graduate Students' Camin.  The taxi pulled into an access road at the far end of the student housing complex, which includes a park and a laundry building.  The taxi drove by the laundry building and then pulled up to the Camin for Graduate Students, where it was blocked by a car.  The road had posts cemented into it to prevent easy access.

I looked out of the taxi to find two Romanian Milit,ia officers, the police, waiting by the door.  I got out of the taxi, and I paid the driver, who drove away, leaving my baggage by the walkway.  The policemen didn’t move.  Not toward me, not away from me, and I entered the Camin to register with the Portar, who monitors the door, to receive the key to my room.  I got the room key quickly; the personnel had been expecting my arrival.

Before finding my room, I had to bring in my luggage.  I walked back out of the Camin and carried the bags in one at a time.  Then I followed the Camin floor administrator up the stairs to the third floor.  Room 329 was too high.  After opening the door, the floor administrator stood aside so that I could enter, and I stood in a small white cubicle with a sink, mirror, two sets of shelves, a red table, a small straight-backed chair.  The room was tiny, but it housed two students during the academic term.  The floor administrator brought me sheets, blankets and a pillowcase.  The administrator promised to bring me curtains, but he had none that day.  I would have to wait a weekend, until Monday.  He asked me what time I’d be in my room on Monday, and I told him I’d receive the curtains on Monday afternoon. Then he left.

I looked out the window.  My room was much too high.  Beneath the window, a cement walkway covered with broken glass and other refuse that students had thrown out stood at the end of a drop of three tall stories.  The ground had scrub bushes and some trees.  The window only pulled inward a small space.

I was worried about the Milit,ia.  They had been waiting outside the door of the Camin, and I knew that when I crossed the Romanian frontier, I’d had to give my name, destination, the reason for my visit, and an address in Romania.  I knew that my passport had been noted, and that Nadia Comaneci had defected from Romania for the West the week before.  I had not been previously aware of followers in Romania, but I knew that they could always be there.

I decided not to leave the Camin, and for two days I stayed in my room.  I arrived in Bucharest on a Friday afternoon, and I stayed in my room until Sunday.  Then I went to church.  As I left the dorm, I discovered that the two Milit,ia officers had become four.  I walked to the Metro station nearest to the Graduate Student Camin and wondered whether I’d be followed.  I took the Metro to Eroilor, walked to the nearest church, stayed at the service for an hour and a half, then returned to the Metro station at Eroilor.  I walked down the stairs, got into a train and went to Politehnica.  I’d forgotten that two lines run through Eroilor, one that stays on the east side of the river and goes toward the Gara de Nord through Grozaves,ti, and one that goes under the river, crosses to the west side of it, and stops at a military base at Politehnica.  Politehnica is always filled with Romanian army officers in green.  I got out of the Metro and walked up the stairs.  I saw groups of people standing waiting for buses and streetcars, and I bought a ticket and joined them.  I took a bus to the Gara de Nord.  At the train station, I walked to the ticket windows and looked at departure times for the trains leaving Bucharest.  I was unsure whether the Romanian Milit,ia had followed me to the train station, even though I had not gone by a direct route.  The policemen carry radios and can talk to each other from the Metro stations and from their posts outside of the Camin for Graduate Students.  I decided to wait in line and pretend to buy a ticket; but I bought none.  I left the ticket line and returned to the Camin by Metro.

Four days had passed since I’d left Goettingen for Bucharest with my luggage.  I left for Romania on the sixth of December, in the evening, and arrived on the eighth in the afternoon.  Sunday was the tenth of December.  When I got off the Metro after three stations, I found four Romanian Milit,ia officers standing by the Camin.  Two stood by the entrance to the walkway at the Splaiul Independent,ei and two waited at the entrance to the building.  No one stopped me or questioned me, and I returned to my room.

I noticed the Romanian Milit,ia in groups of two for the first four days of my stay in Romania.  Then they became less vigilant, and finally disappeared.

On the fifteenth of December, I registered at the embassy.  I had to check footnotes for the modern poetry paper I’d written in September, and I spent a few days in the Philology library looking up authors and titles.  On Monday the eighteenth, I returned to the library to finish my footnotes, and I thought about trying to borrow a typewriter at the embassy to type it on.

A person working for the embassy game me permission to use a typewriter in an office of the building, and for a few days I typed my paper.  On the twenty-first of December, I walked to the Metro station and rode to the embassy to finish typing my paper.  I wrote the following notes in Goettingen:


Bucharest, December 21, 1989
2-5 p.m.

At embassy–completed typing text, no title page, footnotes.

Afternoon announcement:
Demonstration near embassy.  Large crowd around the hotel at the Piat,a waving  Romanian flags and chanting--"Ti-mi-s,oa-ra, Ti-mi-s,oa-ra.".

I was sitting in an office, looking at paper-thin walls in a house of a building in Bucharest, completely oblivious to social unrest, and diligently editing the paper into publishable form, when an announcement said that there were demonstrations around the building, and that we were to leave our rooms and remain in the building.  I did not leave the room immediately, because I had almost finished typing my paper.  A diplomat told me that I had to leave the room, and I left and waited in the reception area with a small group of Romanians and Western citizens.

The diplomats seemed very uneasy, and the person who had allowed me to borrow the typewriter told me that the Romanians were demonstrating against Ceauc,escu in the plaza in front of the Hotel at the Piat,a.  The diplomat said that Ceac,escu had held a rally of his own, and that the Romanians had assembled  to counter-demonstrate that afternoon.  I could not see or hear the demonstration, but the embassy employee thought the Milit,ia were shooting, and that "Romanians were getting killed out there.”  I didn’t hear any shots.  But after I was free to walk around inside the building, I found a window from which I could look out into a side street and see demonstrators running through the street in small groups being chased by policemen with riot shields.  The Milit,ia were encircling and containing the demonstrators.  They arrested some of the groups of demonstrators that had broken away from the large group, but I saw and heard no shooting.

The embassy was locked.  The embassy was an insecurable building.  The walls were thin, the windows could be shot through, the building was wooden, it could be bombed, and all the military officers on duty had was an electric gate and a few soldiers at the doors 

I knew that I did not want to be locked into the embassy.  I thought that I could give myself a better chance outside, where I could move without being trapped.  If the crowd were to riot, Milit,ia and protesters might spill into the embassy from the side streets looking for Western protection.  The crowd of demonstrators had no weapons, but the Milit,ia were armed with rifles, some pistols, some semi-automatic weapons; but mostly single-shot weapons.

There was an announcement: All foreign employees could leave and go home.  The building was still locked.  I decided that I did not work for the embassy, and I took my completed paper from the office in which I’d worked, and walked down the stairs to the front door.  I told the staff that I temporarily lived in Bucharest and wanted to leave to go back to the Camin.  The embassy staff allowed me to leave.

I walked out into the street and headed for the demonstration by the Hotel at the Piat,a.  As I approached the hotel  from a street parallel to the Blvdl.  Ballcescu/Magheru on the side away from the University, I could see a ring of Milit,ia encircling a large group of unarmed, non-riotous demonstrators.  The crowd was standing, chanting slogans, and waving flags.  They sounded like soccer fans at a game.

I saw no violence, and I walked in the opposite direction up a parallel street to the main boulevard past the embassy and towards the Piat,a Romana.  After a block or two, at an intersection, I crossed to the Blvdl. Balcescu/Maheru.  I walked to the boulevard, and as I stepped into it to cross it, I looked up and saw the army advancing in a line from the Piat,a Romana.  They were marching toward the Hotel at the Piat,a.  The line was a formation sweeping the street ready to shoot, but it had not reached the demonstrators to mobilize into position around them.  I was startled; then uneasy.  I had not expected the Romanian army to reinforce the Milit,ia at the demonstration.  I hurried across the street, in front of a line that looked ready to become a firing squad.

I crossed to a side street leading to the government compound near the Presidential Palace.  Armed guards patrol this area full time.  The Romanian army keeps a sentry post in front of the Presidential Palace.  The Romanian Milit,ia police the street.

In front of the Presidential Palace lay painted signs of Nicolai and Elena Ceauc,escu.  Beside the signs, I saw party slogans and banners.

In front of me, in front of the Hotel at the Palace, Romanian tanks had begun to arrive.  Three stood in place.  Soldiers with machine guns and rifles stood four to the top of a vehicle.  They were standing at ready.  Their faces were taut.  Their eyes swept the street.  These soldiers were ready to shoot.  A fourth tank arrived.  I stood on the street in front of machines that could pepper the street with gunfire on command.  The tanks could roll forward and crush pedestrians.  Everyone in the street was in the line of fire.

My unease deepened.  I half-smiled, but I knew I was an easy target.  I became more alert.

The tanks were not conventional tank cannons, with long gun barrels permanently exposed.  These tanks had open gun barrels with retractable weapons.  When the gun barrels are closed, the tanks have a smooth front, the gun-covered barrels look like closed headlights.  When the barrels are opened, the front of the armored car becomes a line of powerful guns.

Central Bucharest was being sealed by the army.  Every street was filled with soldiers and policemen.  Tanks followed.  The demonstration was contained within two or three collapsible rings that encircled the city.  The Romanian Milit,ia augmented the army.  Side streets held rows of soldiers at ready.  They held rifles with bayonets and stood in a Cossack stance in green uniforms.  The police wore blue uniforms and stood behind riot shields wearing helmets.  The soldiers were arriving and mobilizing between two and three o’clock that afternoon.

All of the escape routes were sealed.  I walked into a street away from the mobilizing tanks and met a small group of Milit,ia and soldiers marching toward the open government area.

I turned into some winding streets that run parallel to the Blvdl. Balcescu/Magheru, and walked toward the Piat,a Romana.  My route took me into several blocades of Romanian soldiers and milit,ia, who stationed themselves across the side streets and  along possible escape routes for fleeing demonstrators.  The soldiers held rifles, mostly single-shot with bayonets, and the Milt,ia filled out their  ranks.  Some of the police wore riot-protection and carried shields, while others wore their standard uniforms and carried single-shot rifles and pistols.  The rifles of the soldiers, which remain slung across backs when they march or carry out routine duties, were off of their backs and held in front, pointing hip to shoulder.  The policemen kept their rifles across their backs while the army finished mobilizing.

A line of Romanian Milit,ia merged with an army detail.  I asked the officer in charge of stationing the troops how I could get home.  I didn’t know the way to the nearest Metro station or bus or tramvaiul stop.

The officer held a radio that looked similar to a walkie-talkie.  He gave me directions to the Metro station at the Piat,a Romana; several blocks to my right, and seemed to urge me to find a way home.  I looked at the concrete buildings.  I looked up to the second floor, the third floor, and the rooftops.

I began to walk more quickly.  The Romanians seemed undisturbed by the mobilizing forces as they walked through the streets.  They were not in the demonstration.

I returned to the Blvdl. Balcescu/Magheru and looked down the street at the backs of the advancing line of soldiers.  The single file had not arrived at the demonstration, but it was near the Hotel at the Piat,a.  The street was blocked.

The sign for the Metro station stood directly in front of me across the Boulevard.  I crossed behind the first advancing line of the Romanian army.  A small crowd had massed at the top of the stairs to the station.  They watched the army walk down the boulevard.

I thought, “Ceac,escu has sent the army as a show of force.  Eastern Europe.”

Then I walked down the stairs to the station.  I could not take the Metro back to the Camin, because the train would stop directly under the demonstration at Universitat,ii, one stop away.  At Universitat,ii, I would have had to change trains and travel three more stops under the University, the demonstrators, the Milit,ia, and the Romanian army.

There was an army base at Eroilor, near the University administration building.  There was an army base at Politehnica, across the river from my Camin.  Bucharest was sealed.

I took the train going in the opposite direction.  I took it to the last station, at the outskirts of Bucharest, Pipera.  When I ascended the stairs at Pipera, the day brightened.  I saw rows of Romanian concrete apartment buildings and a streetcar stop.  People carried groceries.  They walked freely.  They knew nothing about the demonstration.

I decided to try to find another way back to my Camin.  On the other side of the street, I noticed a kiosk selling newspapers.  I asked the newspaper vendors where I could find a bus or streetcar to the Gara de Nord.  I could return to the Camin from the train station. 

They gave me directions, but they told me I’d have to wait for a long time.  The only short way back was by Metro.  They asked me why I didn’t want to take the Metro.  I told them that there was a demonstration in central Bucharest, and that I’d rather travel around it.  I started up the street to look for the bus stop.

As I passed the apartment buildings, I saw a wide green area along the road to my left.  The green area was in front of me.  I continued.  The buildings on my left were no longer apartments.  Then I noticed a sentry tower.  The tower was in front of me, on the left, and I saw the shadow of a soldier inside.

I stayed on the right side of the street.  As I got closer, I looked across the green field on my left.  I saw the Romanian army.  A large battalion, in green, stood next to large transport and munitions trucks.  A few hundred soldiers on foot filled the area.  I kept walking, and between three and three-thirty or four in the afternoon, I looked for the bus stop that would take me back to the Gara and to the Camin.

After walking for ten minutes, I hadn’t found the bus stop, and I asked for directions again.

I’d walked too far.  I turned and went back.  Before looking for the bus stop, I returned to the sentry post to see the army.  The army was gone.  Ceac,escu had sent reinforcements for the first batallion at the center of Bucharest. 

I returned to the area where I should have found my bus stop, and I asked for directions again.  Then I followed a road to an intersection, turned right, walked up a street with buildings on one side and a large field on my left, and saw the sign for the bus I wanted to take.  I went over to the stop and stood.  The field was clearly a training field for the Romanian army.  I could hear shooting in the distance for target practice.

The buildings across from the field were industrial.  They looked like factories.  A train passed by on the far side of the training field.  The train traveled east, away from Bucharest, and I thought about leaving the city.

I stood and waited for the bus for a long time.  An hour seemed to pass.  The bus was empty when it arrived some time between four-thirty and five o’clock, but three other passengers, Romanians, got on with me.  I had an unused ticket with me that I’d bought near the Piat,a Kogalniceanu.  At least one of two rides was unpunched.

The bus was going to take a long winding route to the Gara de Nord.  It started for north Bucharest, and I saw no army.  The bus route stayed north of the center of the city.  As the bus passed the Televisiunea Romania building, I saw a line of Romanian soldiers guarding the street.  After the bus passed the television station, I could see the tops of the buildings in Bucharest’s center, south of the bus route.  As I looked at the top of the Hotel at the Piat,a, the site of the demonstration, I saw a green military helicopter rise above the building.  The bus must have passed by at about four forty-five p.m.  I could see no more of the demonstration, and I sat further back in my seat to await the bus’s arrival at the Gara de Nord.

When the bus arrived outside of the Gara, a passenger told me that I’d reached my stop.  I got off of the bus, and I went into the station.  As I walked towards the trains, I saw a detail of Romanian soldiers, a group of six or seven, with their rifles slung across their backs, walking past the magazine stands toward the Information booth at the center of the arrival/departure platform.  The soldiers walked to the train leaving for Timis,oara.  They were watching the crowds to try to find demonstrators entering or leaving Bucharest.  I passed through the Gara between five and five-fifteen p.m.  I walked out of the Gara.

I walked down the stairs to the Metro station at the Gara de Nord, waited for a train, and took the Metro back to the Graduate Students' Camin, and my room.  I arrived in my room at about five-thirty p.m., and I stayed in my room all evening.

That afternoon, I’d finished typing all but the title page and footnotes of my paper.  I knew that I could hand print the footnotes and title page if I had to, but maybe I’d be able to type them the next morning if the demonstration dispersed after the army broke it up.  I thought about the demonstration.  I had not expected to see the army; the crowds had seemed mild.

From my room, I looked at my closed door.  The door had a lock that would break if someone tried to force it open.  I felt uneasy about remaining close to a mobilized city.  Erolilor, and the front line of the army and Milit,ia seemed too close.  The army was moving into centeral Bucharest from a base one Metro stop down the river from the Camin.  Several times during the night, I woke and looked at the door.



Bucharest, December 22, 1989
5-6 a.m.


I woke early to hear a radio broadcast from a Greek neighbor’s room.  The news announcers’ voice sounded faint; the words were unintelligible.  I could not hear well enough through the wall to know what the announcers said.  I left my room and stood in the hallway to try to hear the broadcast.  I couldn’t hear any of it; then it ended.

I still had not typed the footnotes or title page to my paper, and I did not want to stay at the Camin; so I got ready to leave for the embassy.  I wouldn’t take the Metro all the way to the Piat,a Universitat,ii; I would only travel as far as Eroilor, where I knew of a military base, and then I’d walk along the Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej toward the University and the embassy.  By walking, I’d be able to stay behind the military circle around the center of the city, and I’d see it ahead of me if the army had not dispersed the demonstration.

I knew that the front lines of the army were too close.  The Camin was behind the lines of the Romanian troops and behind the Eroilor base.  Politehnica has a military station just across the river.  The Camin was in front of the troops stationed at the Gara de Nord; and it would become easily containable if the lines expanded either or both ways.

After washing, dressing in a summer short-sleeved blue dress, over which I wore a black Austrian boiled-wool jacket, because I had only summer clothes in my suitcases from not having unpacked in October; I pulled on my boots and decided to see whether I could walk through the lines of soldiers and demonstrators to reach the embassy.

At the stairway, I asked a Chinese neighbor what the news had said.  He told me that there were demonstrations in Bucharest.  He knew nothing more.

I walked from the Camin for Graduate Students, where I noticed no Securitate or Milit,ia officers, to the Metro station.  I lived up the river from the troops and demonstrators, and I saw and heard no one.  I rode the Metro to Eroilor, where I knew of a large military academy and base.  The headquarters of the Armata Poporului were a few blocks from the station.  Politehnica has a base directly across the river from the Camin.  The army stays on the side of the river away from the university administration building, the national opera, the Camin Central Loc, and several other student residences.  The first lines surrounding central Bucharest probably moved in from Eroilor and the large military base at Politehnica.  Pipera sent a battalion from its training grounds.

On the twenty-second, at nine a.m., I saw no army at Eroilor.  I did not know that the army had stayed in the central Bucharest the previous night.  The demonstration might be over.  I walked into the city center to see whether the demonstration had dispersed or not.  The stretch of Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej between the university administration building and the Gradina Cis,migiu looked the same as it did every day.  I saw no army or police batallions.  At the garden, which is a park, near the central entrance on Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej, I looked across the street to the Consoiliul Populara.  An army guard lined the street in front of the building and extended itself into the side streets.

The Romanian army lined Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej barring entry to the Consiliul Populara and the access roads to the Dimbrovit,a.  The side streets around the Consiliul were barricaded by lines of Romanian soldiers standing ready to shoot, Cossack-style with rifles and bayonets sweeping their left shoulders.  Beyond the troops, towards the center of the city, beside the Consiliul building, an artillery truck stood empty.

Tanks patrolled the river.  I could see them rolling along the road on the University bank.  Before the intersection of Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej and the Calea Victoriei, in front of the Gradina Cis,migiu; a bus filled with Milit,ia dressed for a riot, with helmets, rifles, and shields, blocked the sidewalk, unmoving.  Across the Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej, in front of a grocery store, an artillery truck filled with armed Romanian soldiers stood parked at the side of the street.  The soldiers stood inside the truck along both inner sides.  They held rifles.

I continued to walk toward the Faculty of Philology, the Hotel at the Piat,a, and the embassy.  I crossed in front of the army and Milit,ia transport.  I walked past the children's clothing store, with its concrete pillars; and I heard shooting:  rifle fire, single-shot.  I smelled acrid smoke.  A yellowish haze was forming over central Bucharest.

In front of the children's clothing store, before the University buildings at the end of the Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej, is a cake shop, with large glassed windows and some metal chairs, and beyond it I saw no cover.  I passed the store, and a few more buildings, and then I saw the demonstrators.  They stood in a crowd along the Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej near the trade bank, in front of the statue of Mihai the Brave, and in an enclosed group around the Hotel at the Piat,a.

I could see that I could not walk through the crowd to reach the embassy.  Riot policemen encircled the demonstrators with their shields facing me and their backs to the demonstrators.  Armed, and helmeted, they stood back-to-back with soldiers in green uniforms.  The soldiers of the Romanian army were shooting into the crowd in front of the Milit,ia.

I saw no cover along Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej, but I heard shooting and explosions.  The explosions could have been from explosives, or they could have been tank fire, but I think that mostly explosives were being set off in front of the Presidential Palace on Calea Victoriei.

Suddenly, the artillery truck filed with soldiers was beside me.  The truck tore down the street behind, beside, and beyond me.  The soldiers shot out of the sides of the truck into the crowd standing on the right hand side of the intersection of Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej facing Blvdl. Balcescu/Magheru.  The crowd stood along the Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej in front of the trade bank.  People screamed and ran.  They ran in circles trying to escape.  The moving circle curved towards the Hotel at the Piat,a.  I could not be sure whether the soldiers shot into or over the heads of the demonstrators.

I hurried back to the cofetarie and ducked behind a metal partition behind the glassed front of the store.  The shooting was just in front of me, only a little further down Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej.  Artillery trucks rode up and down the boulevard all morning, spraying the sides of the streets and the crowds with bullets.

I later discovered that if the soldiers had shot into the cofetarie, the metal partition would have been far too flimsy to protect me from the bullets.  The bullets left clean holes in concrete walls.

When the crowd stopped screaming, I returned to the street and walked to the Calea Victoriei.  The bus of riot police officers had not moved.  I quickly turned out of the Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej, where the shooting continued, into the Calea Victoriei.  I faced the telecommunications building, the post office, and the Hotel at the Piat,a; all of which were a block away from me.  The Calea Victoriei was blocked by riot Milit,ia officers, whose shields faced me.  Behind them, and back-to-back with them, stood more Romanian soldiers, in green.  A barricade behind the human road block obstructed my view of the Piat,a Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej.  I heard shooting and explosions within the enclosed area.

I returned to the Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej and walked by the bus filled with riot Milit,ia.  The standing detail of soldiers remained in front of the Consiliul Populara.  I turned right into the Gradina Cis,migiu at the central entrance on Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej.  Several paths crossed the park.  The Gradina would have a lake, trees, and benches as natural obstructions.

In the park, I walked along the path closest to the government buildings and parallel to the Calea Victoriei.  I tried to walk up the hill by the street that ends beside the telecommunications building and the post office at the Calea Victoriei, but I found it filled with Milit,ia and soldiers.  They blocked the Calea Victoriei and lined the sides of the street.

I looked at a square concrete building.  The compound was next to a branch of the university library, a small departmental office with flowers growing outside. Soldiers in green and the Milit,ia in standard blue uniforms guarded the street and the concrete enclosure.  I could clearly hear shooting from inside the compound.

Alert gunmen filled the street.  I turned and walked back to the park.  I continued to walk in the direction of the Presidential Palace on a path parallel to the Calea Victoriei.  I arrived at a corner of the park close behind the Piat,a Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej some time between nine and eleven a.m.

When I reached the park exit, I saw beyond the human and structural barricade.  A soldier with the Armata Populara din Romania shot into the open but sealed government area.  He wore a green uniform and shot a single-shot rifle.  Two members of the Romanian Milit,ia flanked his right.  They stood on the side closest to the park, away from the government square.  They wore blue uniforms.  I could  not see what the soldier shot at.  Riot police and the army obscured my view.  The soldier shot about fifty rounds in three to five minutes.  Possibly other soldiers or policemen were simultaneously shooting, but I could not see into the Piat,a Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej beyond the barricades.

I didn’t hear any screams.  Before the coup, I saw and heard shooting and heard explosions from within the government compound.  The open area was ringed by back-to-back formations of soldiers and Milit,ia.  No stray civilian could enter or see into the area.  I suspect that firing squads were shooting prisoners taken from the demonstration in Bucharest on the 21 and 22 of December between 9:30 and 10:30 or 11 a.m. on the twenty-second of December.  The firing squads would have been in front of the government administration buildings and shooting into the walls of the concrete compound.

I suspect that concrete firing walls were erected, and that "traitors," demonstrators taken from the crowd or from prisons, were being shot before the government buildings and possibly in other areas of Bucharest.
The Romanian army followed its orders in Bucharest until the coup at 11:50 a.m. and they were assisted by the Romanian Milit,ia.
The shooting has been concealed because the coup was successful, and the army joined the unarmed demonstrators that they'd first massacred. 
The Romanian soldiers became the liberators of the people.

I walked away from the government complex, and to the central entrance and exit to the Gradina Cis,migiu on the far side from Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej, but parallel to it.  A group of policemen guarded the exit.  I left the park and headed toward the publishing house that publishes literature and criticism in the Strada Nuferilor.  A translator, who was working on a Romanian translation of my literary criticism article worked at the publishing house.  A police detail met me as I arrived.  They asked me where I was going, and allowed me to pass.  The Milit,ia was armed with rifles, which they had taken from their backs and held in front of them; but they were not preparing to shoot.  They blocked the street.  After I walked by the Milit,ia and to the publishing house, I tried to open the gate.  It was locked.  No one was there.  Workers had deserted it.

I headed back to the park.  I headed toward a side entrance at the North east corner.  There I found a small stone fortification.  I still heard shooting.  Rifle shots from Bucharest's center.  I moved into the rock formation and looked for more natural obstacles to protect me as I returned to the entrance near the Consiliul Populara.  But first I went back to the corner near the Telecommunications Building.  I walked past the concrete compound once again.  Then back to Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej.  I’d finished typing my paper, and I wanted to buy stamps and an envelope so that I could mail it.  I still had to type the footnotes and title page.

I crossed Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej a few blocks north of the shooting and south of the Consiliul Populara.  I entered the closest book store, across from the movie theater and near the Hotel Oras,ului.  It’s down the hill from the Hotel pe Strazi.  I bought supplies--envelopes, stamps.

I was much too near the firing.  I started back to the Camin.  I crossed Blvdl. Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej after running into a line of Cossack-style Romanian soldiers in a side street.  I stayed on the park side and walked toward Eroilor.  After I passed the circle at Piat,a Kogalniceanu, the tramvaiul ticket-stand, and the stamp and magazine kiosks; I reached a line of locked stores.  The doors were chained and bolted shut.  I was a block from the university administration buildings and the Camin Central Loc.

I walked on the sidewalk, and half turned to find a Romanian tank bearing down on me at full speed.  A Romanian rifleman stood on top.  I instinctively hit the nearest set of doors as hard as I could trying to get away from him.  I was wearing boots, and I wanted to kick in the window of the store and dive inside.  Two pedestrians in front of me ran to cheer on the soldier.  They were clearly not demonstrators.  The soldier didn’t shoot.  He had a gleeful grin.  He was returning from the demonstration near the center of the city.  The tank gun-barrels were closed, and the rifleman and vehicle powered by.  They went toward the base at Eroilor. 

The tank disappeared in front of me.  I got to the national opera and crossed the bridge near the Eroilor statue.  At the center of the bridge, I stood and announced, “they’re shooting at them.  He’s going home (the tank), but they’re shooting at them.”  It was between ten and eleven a.m.

Behind me, north on the Eroilor side of the Dimbrovit,a, crossing the next bridge, was a group of conventional tank cannons and artillery trucks; troops arriving to subdue a pocket group of demonstrators that had erupted north of the statue and the subway station.  The demonstrators began to flee toward the Metro station; trailed by the tank and his comrades in trucks.  They came down the street towards me.  I hurried down the stairs into the Metro station and got on a subway to the Graduate Students' Camin.  After I returned to my room, I wrote footnotes and a title page for my paper until two p.m.  I could hear the screams and chanting of the demonstrators, heavy rolling traffic in the streets, and shooting all day.  Yellow smoke hung over the streets, and artillery trucks and groups of demonstrators chased each other around Bucharest.

At 2:00 p.m., I went to the Gara de Nord, where I could buy coffee at a nearby hotel.  I crossed to the Metro station without incident, and then I continued north.  As I left the Metro station, I walked up the stairs to the Gara de Nord, and I looked through the holes cut into the concrete at the top of the stairs.

The concrete sheltered my eyeline.  A group of demonstrators cheered to my left, to be shot by Romanian soldiers.  The army, again, in green uniforms.  More soldiers arrived in trucks.

I went into the Gara, and joined the crowds of people milling around waiting for trains.  I saw the exit that I was looking for, and went out the other side of the train station past the train lines into a side street.

I was near Romanian houses, stores, and hotels.  I crossed the street and moved in near the buildings.  This street was too exposed to fighting.

As I walked by the entrance Piat,a to the Gara, I watched the army massacring demonstrators, alert and anxious to see stray soldiers and stray bullets.  I bought a packet of Latin American instant coffee for $3.50; then I returned to the street.  Dust and smoke from the army trucks and the shooting drifted through the air.  The door to the Gara de Nord looked like cover.  Once I was inside the train station, I decided that I didn’t have enough Romanian lei; and I stopped at the tourist office and changed $20 into lei.  I had to sign my receipt.

After leaving the Gara near the group of demonstrators in front; I returned to the Camin by Metro, went up to my room, and put the coffee in a jar emptied by the earlier weeks of my stay.  By then, it was near 3:00 p.m.  I heard horns and sirens and screaming along the Splaiul Independent,ei as trucks shot into streets--by now, street fighting and gunshots had progressed beyond the original battle lines in the city center to encompass a wider radius, as far as the Gara de Nord.

When I walked to the glass-enclosed stairway; I looked out over a mulberry tree into a street lined with dust and vehicles; across the river military traffic was coming back the other way.

Shooting and screeching continued through the afternoon and evening.  I looked at the flimsy door to my room; a one-bolt lock.  Across the way; a Greek student had sketched the Parthenon with a bird on a pillar on his door.  Outside the window, I knew the drop to the concrete below was long.  The room was too high.

At eight o’clock p.m., I washed and made-up; at nine, I left the Camin with my paper.  The Portar stopped me at the door to ask me where I was going.  Outside the Camin for Graduate Studentsi, shooting continued in the streets from cars and trucks in the Splaiul Indepent,ei, intersections and side streets.  In the dark, the passing vehicles were shooting at pedestrians and cross-traffic.

The Gara de Nord has a long schedule of arrivals and departures posted on the wall, and I wanted to read it. 

That evening, the Metro was deserted; only a few anxious passengers sat silent.  In the subway to the Gara, an old man, a Romanian, clutched a newspaper.  On the back I could see photographs of demonstrators dancing the hora in large rings.  Large crowds of people.  I moved over to his side of the train, to sit next to him; and I asked to see the paper.  The train was between Cringas,i and Semnatoarea.  The headline, ”Frat,ii Romanii,” and the words “Asasinat,” filled the right margin.

I asked the man, are people dying, he said, yes, the Romanian army was shooting them dead.
“Many?”
“Yes.”

That was when I decided to leave Bucharest.  The man gave me his paper; he pretended to an interest--drunk--but he disappeared into the crowd at the Gara to return home.

I could hear shooting as I ascended the stairs from the Metro, but it was too dark for me to use the eyeholes in the concrete retaining wall.  The demonstrators grouped together outside in two or three chanting groups; by now they were singing; “Ole. Ole, Ole, Ole.  Ceauc,escu nu mai e."  The army still shot them.

Through the Gara again; this time I hurried through the crowd to the large placard with sos,iri and plecare.  The Romanian army and Milit,ia surveyed the crowd.  I glanced at the sign and searched for the time of a train leaving to go north; then I decided to risk a return to my room to pack a  few clothes before I left.
As I stood on the platform at the Gara and waited for ten minutes under the surveillance of the Romanian army and Milit,ia and their television monitors; I felt uneasy.  I looked up at the closed circuit sets by the Metro tracks.  Military officers and policemen openly watched the station.

The train arrived, and I carried my paper back to my room.  As I left the Metro station at the Camin for Graduate Students; I walked into an area where army vehicles filled with soldiers and other vehicles filled with revolutionary soldiers were shooting each other and into the streets.  I stepped towards the darkness away from the streetlights.  I tried to avoid the lights; and I knew I’d leave a clear profile if I stood too near.  I had to walk through a well-lit open intersection and along the Splaiul Independent,ei; an important north-south route along the Dimbrovit,a River.  I continued through an open field towards my Camin.  Hearing shooting makes me anxious--it’s hard to see where the soldiers are, where they’re going to be, and where they’re coming from.  Civilians had been murdered for thirty hours now in Bucharest; and trying to move and stay out of the line of fire of approaching armed vehicles takes too much time.

I saw some mud-encrusted wheel-ruts and a set of train tracks in the darkness next to an open sidewalk flanking a street with shooting vehicles.

I walked into the hardened mud; long-dried and frozen; and stayed away from the street.  Eventually, I re-entered the Camin.  The Portar, who had watched me leave; remained by the door to watch me return.  I went upstairs and walked down the hall to my room.  I had one hour in which to pack.

I still wore the blue summer dress that I had put on in the morning; and because I could only take my brown overnight bag with me; I packed one blue summer skirt, a blouse, and a dark skirt and dress blouse.  I could not fit my makeup into such an overstuffed small bag; and I put it into another bag I hoped to carry.

I began to throw every identifiable possession that I could not carry with me out of all the windows on the third floor.  Groceries, Christmas gifts, papers, books; everything other than the clothes that I couldn’t take with me.  I hoped to retrieve the suitcase of summer clothes when I returned to Bucharest.  Then, I thought I’d be back in a few days.

I had twenty minutes to reach the train station.  And it’s a fifteen minute Metro journey from my Camin.  The Metro takes ten minutes longer than the bus, because it circles down the river beyond the Gara; then backtracks to the train station.  I had to leave very quickly.

I tried to pick up my bag and two other plastic bags with necessities; but I had too much.  I couldn’t carry everything out.

I left my room; locked it; and tried to carry four bags, including my suitcase, to the stairway.  The bags were impossible to manage, and I would have dropped them or been hit in the shooting now audible from outside the Camin.  A group of students offered to carry some out; they took two bags and disappeared, and I found myself outside with my small suitcase and one plastic bag.

I was overburdened, and I thought I’d never get to the Gara de Nord before the train I hoped to board departed.

I had no ticket for the destination, but I had an unused ticket for a different destination, and I could always pay the difference in price on board.  If I missed the train, I’d take the next train going north.  It would only be a longer journey.

I crossed the Splaiul Independent,ei to the side near the Dimbrovit,a and the  bridge crossing the river.  As I walked, an artillery truck approached the Camin and began to fire.  I ducked for cover under the bridge and hurried across, hoping that the truck would not turn from the Splaiul Independent,ei.  As I reached the end of the bridge, still down, and struggling with my suitcases; a modified truck-trailer trailing a Romanian flag with the center torn out arrived in front of the Metro station at the Graduate Students' Camin.          .