Ilie

Ilie's eyes remain glued to the ground, to the cavernous cigarette butt his foot has squashed against the cobblestone. Or maybe he's looking at his old shoes, thin and hollowed out, like himself. He’s been making do with these sneakers for the past five years, regardless of the season, even though the leather shows cracks the size of his shoelaces. No matter, the soles are still fine.

A few weeks until Christmas, and the first frost has descended upon the damp country, making the cobblestone glisten. Nothing magical about it. The cold air stings and Ilie is rubbing his thick palms together. He's got stubby black fingers, and his rough skin is scuffed and torn around his fingernails from all the hard work. He's got big strong hands; too big, disproportionately big. Vigorous and thick arms. Other than that, he is gaunt and tired, nothing but bones and muscles with which he hauls, pushes, shoves, lifts, and slams down construction materials twelve hours a day. He is wearing a reddish suede jacket with a thin dirty stretch border for a collar the back of its sleeves all shiny from wear, and underneath, a checkered flannel shirt, black and white, made in China. He pulls the zipper all the way up and trots around a lot to keep himself warm.

I could use another cigarette, he thinks.

If he had it, he'd spit some more tobacco on the pavement, with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, and it would help pass the time before it gets light out and the others show up. 

Ilie is always the first to arrive, He's awake at half past five every morning, even if he sleeps poorly. It's in his blood, just like the soil from the few acres of land he owns back home, and he can’t squeeze it outta there. Anyone who has farmed the land for twenty-some years is going to wake up at the crack of dawn, five-thirty tops, for the rest of his life, even if he's staying at the Ritz.

Shortly after six-thirty, a few tall pale-faced Poles appear and join him They meet his gaze without saying a word; they nod; they know each other. Pretty soon, the street corner is crawling with illegal workers trying their luck and testing their chances – what will it be today: an employer's truck or a police van? The building doesn't protect them from the wind or the rain, and the early December whipping is scalding their faces. It’s that time of the year that hurst the most.

Thank God I am not like these people, Ilie comforts himself. Ilie has papers. But he still ain’t home.

Ilie is feeling distracted, his face immobile and scowling, struggling every day to come to terms with himself. Memories. Not an idle moment goes by that he is not haunted by memories. His past is always there, and his mind drifts off to meet it.

Two winters ago, after he was done farming at home, in his Transylvanian village, and he’d stored enough food to see his family through spring, he set off for Portugal. He boarded the Azores flight and flew halfway across the Atlantic in pursuit of a madman’s dream. He found work on a construction site among sun-tanned locals, whose skin was just as dark as his, and the very next day he slipped off the scaffold. He fell and broke his leg. In two places. He did not have a single euro in his pocket; he'd spent all his savings on the bloody plane ticket. A fortune it had cost him. He didn't have a contract, either. No insurance. Naturally. People don’t drag an Eastern European out to the middle of the Atlantic to give him a regular contract and decent pay. Nor did he speak an ounce of Portuguese. His employer couldn't care less. Ilie couldn't earn his keep anymore, so he was baggage. A couple of his kinder-hearted co-workers drove him to the hospital and put some money together to pay for his cast. But even so, what was he going to do? How was he going to get out of there, now that he was no longer fit for heavy labor? He was in the middle of the fucking Atlantic ocean, on an island you can leave only by water or air, and even that only twice a week, when there happens to be a connection to the mainland, which costs an arm and a leg. He did not have an arm and a leg to spare. He was hungry and tired and scared. He cried. A grown man, and he wept like a baby. For fear he’d never set foot in Europe again – not on his land, not in his home in the village where all his folks lived. He called up his brother to murmur his goodbyes and ask about the family, about the cattle and the house. His brother, a priest, said to him: “Man, take heart now, and keep your wits about you. We’ll take up a collection in church if we have to, and we’ll get you repatriated. God willing.” And God willed it. He didn’t starve. He healed and left the tiny island that one could only escape via water or air. He had to work without pay four whole months after that to get back the money he’d wasted on the misfortune in the Azores, but he was home. 

The following winter he went to Austria. Some rich Austrian guy who owned a construction company hired a bunch of them. Somewhere near Graz. Still no papers, of course. Informal work, they called it. At first, they slept hidden in an old lady’s attic, who was in cahoots with the employer. Little by little, the rich Austrian noticed Ilie's good work and moved him into a hostel, along with his best craftsmen. There, he even got two meals a day for free. He'd save up the leftovers and bring them to the remaining lot in the old lady's attic. And on Sundays he’d shave, put on fresh clothes, and go to the Romanian church in the city for Mass. He met a lot of people there, both from the countryside and people with an education. He met some tricksters too – oh yeah, quite a few – during his peregrinations, but if you ask him he’ll tell you most of the Romanians he came across were good people. Generous, giving folks, helping each other like brothers. Thinking about that makes him well up and he’s trying hard to swallow the lump in his throat. Hard-working Romanians, silent, somber, and sad like him. Ilie is trying to forget how, many years ago, in Italy, he shared a room with a gang of Romanian thieves – mostly shoplifters and pickpockets – and had to eat stolen food to keep from starving, until his mates stopped sharing and told him he'd have to steal to eat. So, he stole. And then he wolfed it down. Him, a priest’s brother… They didn't even have to threaten him. He simply learned, and eagerly. Hunger is a good teacher. He hasn’t enjoyed a meal since.

His mind circles back to last winter again. One night, the fiscal police barged in on them, over there in Austria, near Graz. Their little hostel got raided. The workers had no visas and no permits. Whoever the officers caught, got instantly deported. No way they gonna catch me, Ilie promised himself, I ain’t waiting around to be caught! He was clever and deft. Nimble, too. He clambered onto the roof, leapt from house to house, then crept into the cornfields, where the police lost track of him. Boy, was his employer thankful! So glad was he that they did not catch Ilie, his right-hand man, his jack-of-all-trades who never grumbled and always did even the hardest work with joy, that for the following winter – this winter – he coughed up a contract and all the necessary papers too.

This winter, Ilie feels a cut above the crowd of grey, huddled-up people gathering every morning on that street corner, translucent like shadows, tragic like Greek characters. He no longer hunches his back. He's getting 1200 a month. Euros! Hard currency. He’s 48 and does construction work three to six months a year, in winter. Only in winter. During the summers, he is always at home, in his potato fields, peeling the husk off corn, or distilling brandy (and raising his glass, too!) under the apple tree in his yard. 

Still, during these winter months, Ilie misses his wife, his children, his friends.

The wind keeps whipping his face, the workers keep gathering, shaking hands, rubbing arms, making fun of their troubles, making fun of the cold. Now Ilie is thinking about the Kurdish family he’s met in the refugee camp next to the hostel where he’s staying. The Kurds invite him over for tea every evening until midnight, and Ilie wonders why he can’t sleep afterward: is it the ruminating, is it the fatigue? Maybe it’s just the black tea. Or the stories. The Kurds tell him their stories and he tells them his: stories of dearth and poverty and lack of prospects; stories about his boy who’s in college and needs lots of money to make a future for himself. Every night, the Kurds listen patiently and commiserate with a sigh: ‘Oh, I see. Back home, we lacked nothing,’ they tell him. ‘We really had it all. We only left because of the bombs. My father died and my brother was killed. We left to keep from dying, we left to save our children. Look.’

And then the Kurds take out a photograph of their house, an adobe cottage with five people crammed into it, sleeping on rugs on the floor, and a rickety electricity pole outside, with the family wealth tied to it: a goat. And then, again, they whisper with longing: ‘Back home we lacked nothing…’

And then Ilie feels ashamed, and that’s how he goes to bed: feeling ashamed and ruminating and wondering about people. No wonder he can’t sleep.

The Kurds are Christian Orthodox, just like him. They attend services at the Romanian church every Holy Sunday, without fail, although they can’t make out a word of the sermon. But church service is holy in any language. Because it’s song, not speech; its incantations stream right through you with their sacred peace. So they go over it in their minds. They know the service by heart and sit there quietly, shutting themselves off and dreaming of home, muttering prayers in their language. They never complain about Orthodox Mass. For them, it is never too long, never too weary. ‘Two hours is an afterthought, you barely have time to catch your breath. It takes time to meet God. You know, where we come from, the service lasts way into the afternoon, until 2 or 3 pm,’ Ilie remembers them saying in that strange combination of German and English.

Life sure is strange, Ilie sighs and stares at his watch. He winces. It's already seven. He bobs his head, looks up, gives a short nod and points: you, you, you and you. He beckons people over and they climb in the back of an open-platform truck. Ilie gets behind the wheel, slams the door and presses the accelerator.

The wet street corner is behind them now, draped in fog. People for which no work, no purpose has been found are still swarming around, squashing cigarette butts on the ground, and wondering what they will eat today. Maybe they’ll share a can of dog food again. It's cheaper. The truck that’s carrying Ilie and his hand-picked workers is now jolting his thoughts and, in the distance, he can see the construction site. They're lucky today, they will be working on the interiors.