Chapter 17.
At the age of fourteen, towards the end of eighth grade, my friend Lola and myself engaged a math teacher, to help us with algebra for six weeks before the end of the school year and to make sure we were well prepared for the "Kleine Matura." This was a comprehensive exam in Romanian, French and Algebra. Success in that exam made it possible to continue high school.
We were both good students and the tutor had a very easy time with us. Being used to try hard to make a student understand the subject, we were "a piece of cake." The tutor was a graduate of mathematics of the University of Czernovitz, a top mathematician. However, his appearance put him at a great disadvantage. He was short, thin, prematurely graying and - he had a voice - no broken record could outdo his harsh, screeching tones. Being so short, he wore a higher heeled type of shoe. A fine tutor with a miserable appearance.
We passed the exam well. I almost forgot him until the second half of the following school year. Being sick and missing a lot of my classes, I had to make up everything on my own. My older sister Sali suggested calling Mr. Kugler again. She contacted him. He pleaded to be too busy to teach me but offered to send his younger brother, a math student at the university.
Well, the brother came. A shock. He was good-looking, with a dandy-like appearance: blond, wavy-haired, smooth, slightly oily-voiced, wearing well tailored clothes and a pinky ring. This type of bourgeois get-up looked ridiculous to me. The lessons went well. He, too, enjoyed teaching somebody who grasped the concepts with ease. By the end of the school year, he let me understand that he liked me.
The following school year, in the fall, he came one day to our house and told me that he had been called up for two months of military service. He had to divide up his students among other teachers for the duration of his absence.
So what? Well, he thought that I could tutor one of his students, Carmen, for those two months. She was an eighth grader. I was a tenth grader at the time. I could hardly believe his suggestion. Was I good enough in math to teach the girl, to prepare her three times weekly for school? Well, he thought so. Besides, she lived close by and, besides, they paid very well. He had dragged it out and told me all about the good pay and the proximity of the location and just waited for me to accept it. Finally, I accepted the two months fill-in and asked who the girl was and where exactly did she live.
Carmen was the youngest daughter of the chief commissar of the secret police, Commissar Grossariu. He didn’t have to tell me where she lived because it was near, about five minutes walk from me and I was always afraid to pass by that corner villa. He was the one, who had arrested my best friend for political activities, the year before.
I was dumbfounded. He assured me that whenever I would come there, the father would never be home. The mother was a fine woman and would be very friendly to her little Carmen’s teacher. To me, it felt like stepping into the lion’s den.
The Grossarius lived beautifully, elegantly, in a spacious home with a garden.
When I came to instruct her, do with her the assignment for the next day (she had math three times a week), we sat in a pleasant, well-heated room and her mother would invariably treat me with cookies or cake and coffee.
The girl was good-looking, slim, with dark eyes and olive skin, a pert, up turned nose, charming, but slow to comprehend math. She was willing and
attentive and we got along fine. She respected me as she did all her teachers, yet I was just two years older than herself. She was a student at the Christian-Orthodox High School for Girls. It was the first time that I ever came into a Christian, Romanian home. I may have been the first Jewish girl that she had ever met.
There were two older daughters at home, both much older than Carmen or myself:
one was the head librarian of the City Library, the other, a high official at the police. The librarian, seeing me in the school uniform, told me that I could get any book in the Iorga library; the other, I hoped, never to meet in her professional activity.
Early in December, that house became a beehive of activity. In the yard, they had a pig slaughtered for the holidays. The butcher and a helper were smoking meats, making sausages and everything smelled of pork. To me, that smell felt unpleasant, but I came there to do a job. Mrs. Grossariu became friendlier as Carmen continued to receive passing grades and could keep going, even with a young girl teacher. They were trimming the tree, the piano teacher came after me to teach Carmen to play carols. Everything switched into high gear, approaching a crescendo. The oldest daughter was going to get engaged at Christmas time. Carmen was impatient for the coming holidays. I came out of their house smelling of brandy and candy and of all the goodies that were being cooked and baked before Noel. A few days before Christmas vacation, Carmen received her report card, with a good grade in math. When I came, everybody was friendly. Mr. Grossariu was at home and his wife introduced me to him, saying: "This is the lovely young girl I told you about. She taught Carmen so well in Mr. Kugler’s absence." My knees almost buckled.
Mrs. Grossariu brought in a nicely packaged, big sausage, home-made and offered it to me as a Christmas present. I thanked her but refused to take it - because we eat only "kosher." "Oh, yes" she said "How could I forget? I liked you so much, I thought you were one of our own."
In my mind’s eye, I can see Carmen to-day. She must be a mother and grandmother, in her sixties, living in Romania. In that country, food is scarce, meat a rarity. She may be telling the story of her one-time Jewish algebra teacher, just a little older than herself. It was in the good, old times, in her parent’s house, in Czernovitz. She won’t mention her father’s profession to her grandchildren, in communist Romania. Yet, she will tell them that times were so good, that food was so plentiful that, in her parents’ house, they used to slaughter a pig for Christmas. There was so much meat and sausage and ham that they even offered the tutor a sausage as a Christmas present and, imagine, the tutor refused to accept it - she ate only kosher.