Feathers on Egg Shells and Smoky School Hallways

Otilia Bulescu called me Friday and asked if I wanted to come out and see a local death metal band rehearse. The band, Avatar (http://www.myspace.com/avataromania), was prepping for a show in Bucharest, and were rehearsing in the dank dark basement of the student building near campus. On the way there, as I was walking across the courtyard of my apartment building, five or six dogs sprang up out of the leaves and lunged snarling and barking. Fear shot through me and turned quickly into anger, the same feeling I used to get in San Francisco when psychotic homeless people demanded money. As I backed away slowly, I wondered where I might find a baseball bat.

The nights are cold and wet now, and as I hurried across the town center, collar turned up and hands deep in my jacket pockets, I almost didn’t notice the new strings of Christmas lights that keep multiplying all over town... I’d expected a crowd of people at the Avatar rehearsal. Instead, there were seven of us: Otilia and three of her friends, and an earnest looking couple who sat glumly behind the band, nodding to the noise. The band’s been together since 1996, they’re great musicians, tight, and the lead singer has an excellent demonic roar. Later, while talking with the guitarist Cata Diaconu at the local pub “Play,” I wondered how a Romanian death metal band might find an opportunity to tour The States. I’m not a really huge metal fan, but I really liked how darkness sounds sung in Romanian. Are there metal bands that sing in Latin? Creepy-crawly!

Cata told me there used to be an underground venue in Craiova but that it closed last year. I told him my idea of directing a play with gypsy actors in the spring and that I’d like to find a decrepit, boarded up venue that we might take over for a couple of weeks. He told me about an ancient haunted house with a tree growing up through the middle of it, and said that he’ll show it to me soon. An ideal spot for death metal and theatre?

The dogs were gone by the time I came home. Other than burying themselves in leaves and crawling under cars at night, I’ve no idea where they go to escape the cold. I thought about how it would be to wander around Craiova with no place to sleep, hungry, a red tag in my ear, a skin disease, a broken leg, rotten teeth. And so rather than a baseball bat, yesterday I went to the grocery store and bought two boxes of doggie treats. I’ve filled one jacket pocket, and will carry them with me from now on, so that the next time the dogs come lunging out of the darkness, pissed off by cold and neglect, they’ll discover a little treat and kind words instead of the fear and anger. Soon, perhaps, I’ll be strolling Craiova, surrounded by sword-toting gypsies and trailed by dozens of wild dogs.

A few stray observations: students smoke in the hallways at the university. There are no overhead lights in most of the halls, and so it’s often through a dim dreamy haze I walk. Yesterday, someone told me that the reason the woman would not kill the duck (see earlier post), is that by custom it is only men who do the killing. Women here are gorgeous, though sometimes a bit too heavy with the makeup. Most men have no fashion sense at all. It’s rare to see an indie kid in Craiova; like Tampa, it’s a working-class city with a university, rather than a university city. There are almost no trash receptacles anywhere on campus, and so cigarette butts and coffee cups lie scattered everywhere. Construction goes on endlessly. Outside, gypsies beg on the street; one guy, a mentally damaged kid around 17 years-old outside the Premiere Market, can’t keep still; he copies kung fu moves, awkwardly spinning and kicking at the air. At cross-walks, people wait for the light to change. I asked a student if there were heavy fines for jaywalkers, and she told me that it’s not the fines that people are afraid of, it’s the cars that will hit you if you do not wait for a signal. There are no parking garages in Romania, and so cars fill the sidewalks and it’s like an obstacle course getting anywhere, especially in Bucharest. Theatre is still very important here, but it’s rare to meet anyone familiar with any underground music or independent film. There are only two movie theatres in all of Craiova, and, like most other cinemas in Romania, they mostly show the worst mainstream flicks America has to offer. Because Ceausescu banned Western music, until 1989 it was only the biggest names that got through. Rare to meet fans of The Velvet Underground, T.Rex or Joy Division, rarer still to find anyone familiar with today’s indie bands like Cocorosie or The Arcade Fire. Restaurants are pretty limited to traditional Romanian, Italian, and the occasional Middle-Eastern influence. I’ve heard there’s a not-so-good Chinese restaurant here, but nowhere since arriving in Romania have I seen any Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, or seafood restaurants. Quite often my dinner is rice with a side of tomatoes. The other day, while fixing eggs for breakfast, I noticed that one of the eggs still had feathers on it. I’ve also not seen an English-language newspaper in two months, and so I read my news online…

Cata Diaconu told me that for some reason, Romanians try hard to be like everyone else, that there’s shame in being Romanian. I’m not sure I get a sense of that here. And though I hear stories of the best-educated and most-talented people emmigrating, nearly everyone I’ve met in Craiova wants to stay, even those getting their PhDs. Things seem to be changing quickly. As Avatar sings on Hymn to the Ancient Ones: “Dog-faced demons will live between the fog of eternity/ The time of the entering of the Gods has begun!/ The time of breaking through the gates has begun!” As long as it comes with seaweed salad, a dragon roll and wasabi.