Silvia Hildebrandt’s 2018 novel Dear Comrade Novák follows the careers
during the 1980s of two young men (and to a much lesser an extent a young
woman) who grow up in the same village in western Romania. In 1979, teenagers Attila and Tiberius are
best friends. Novák Attila, brought up
in a warm family, is an ethnic Hungarian, which makes him a second-class
citizen; worse, he is gay in a country where homosexuality is a criminal act
severely punished. Romanian Tiberius
Nicolescu is the son of a Securitate officer, and his family is as rigid as
that suggests. Gypsy Viorica is a member
of a caste despised by everybody else, and despite being secretly in love with
Tiberius has been promised in an arranged marriage since the age of 4.
The novel opens on the 1 December
1989 with Attila interrogating Tiberius to the strains of Ravel’s Bolero and Tiberius mocking Attila. We know something they do not: that the
Socialist Republic of Romania has less than a month left; and we wonder quite
how these characters came to this situation.
The answer lies both in the complexities of their relationship and the
complexities of life under Nicolae Ceaușescu’s rule.
At school, Attila has an affair
with his teacher, who is a member of an underground anti-government movement
called White Winter. When the teacher is
murdered by the Securitate, Attila is terrified he will be arrested, and
Tiberius suggests he joins the Securitate himself as the best cover. Tiberius joins the army, and while Attila
reaches the rank of general – a significant feat for a Hungarian – by dint of
his ruthlessness, Tiberius has a middling career and only achieves the rank of
captain. Tiberius harbours a sense of
injustice that Attila has done so much better than he has, in a job Attila fell
into by accident.
Viorica has a miserable marriage
to a violent drunken bully, her life one of lost teeth and miscarriages, until
she runs away to Timișoara and meets up with Tiberius and Attila again, and
Attila’s sister Ánná who is in a relationship with Tiberius. But their ways part, with Tiberius marrying a
relative of Ceaușescu, until the tide of revolution brings them all together
once more, though not in a way they would have predicted. At the end they find themselves on the right
side of history, but that does not guarantee a happy ending.
This is a novel full of secrets,
individuals not knowing who to trust, and having to live a hidden life
politically and sexually. We see
Tiberius and Attila become cynical, and Attila’s shocking indifference to life
as he becomes the regime’s executioner with the fearsome nickname Attila the
Hun, hypocritically hunting homosexuals (supposedly a decadent western vice
unknown in Romania) while he cruises gay bars and has casual sex.
There are conflicts between
political, ethnic, sexual identities, with the state denying that there is any
such thing as a private life. Family is
no defence: Tiberius’s father does not care whether he sacrifices Attila or his
son in order to curry favour with Ceaușescu.
Attila even finds his lover, for whom he has a deep passion, is a plant
spying on him. When saying or doing the
wrong thing can get you into trouble, people keep their heads down to survive
in a country characterised by shortages, repression and a dearth of civic
virtue.
Just as individuals have to hide
their authentic selves, the regime is good at concealing inconvenient truths, a
failure to confront reality which can only hasten its downfall. When the accident at Chernobyl occurs it is
considered unimportant. When instances
of AIDS begin to show up among Romanian men it is treated as a dirty secret,
and Attila shows just how efficient he can be in keeping the problem hidden.
Unfortunately ignorance is the
worst possible way to deal with problems, and unsurprisingly Attila finds his
lifestyle has left him infected too.
Eventually the political situation cannot be kept from the people, and
the fall of the Berlin Wall in early November 1989 is a clear sign that massive
change in the Eastern Bloc is possible.
The novel races to a climax,
showing the buildup of opposition in Timișoara and the final days of the regime. These are gripping events vividly
described. Hildebrandt indicates that
the uprising in Bucharest, far from being spontaneous, was to a large extent
orchestrated by the army. Rather than a
popular revolution, it was a coup, though the spontaneous protests in Timișoara
take Tiberius by surprise because they are not part of the White Winter plan.
And what of Attila and Tiberius,
sparring over the interrogation table at the opening of the novel a few weeks
before? In the end friendship wins
despite the different paths their lives have taken, as they are reconciled and
drive to Bucharest to participate in the overthrow of the dictator. They go to Palace Square on 21 December for
Ceaușescu’s final speech, but Attila has little time left as disease wastes his
body.
Unfortunately, as the crowed
surges forward in excitement and Ceaușescu flees, Attila, bleeding from the
mouth, is mistaken for a strigoi by
the crowd and shot, dying in Tiberius’s arms.
Tiberius participates in the execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu on
Christmas Day (despite being related by marriage which fortunately nobody seems
to remember) and is pallbearer to Attila back in the village.
The strigoi reference jars (as occasionally does the novel’s awkward
translation) but, being part of the political apparatus, Attila in a sense is a
vampire battening on the Romanian people, his privileges bought at their
expense. As a member of the Securitate the
transition was never likely to end well for him. Pregnant Viorica, dead in the massacre at
Timișoara, becomes a symbol of the sacrifice made by ordinary people in
1989. Only Tiberius is left to confront
the new world made possible once Ceaușescu has left the stage.
