Where time runs slower

by Christian Rabl (Indonesia)

Making a local connection Moldova

Svetlana’s promise, advertised on her website, that the North of Moldova kept “the most beautiful places in nature far from civilization and the reach of industry” seemed perfectly plausible. We were passing fenced gardens along dimly lit, empty roads, and through the open window of Boris’ red Lada wafted in the scent of cherries and raspberries. Boris, Svetlana’s husband, had picked me up from the train station in Valcinet, the last stop on Moldovan territory before Ukraine. He was a retired railway worker in his early sixties and took care of the car and the garden, as he explained to me in his kitchen while the windows were steaming up. “My wife cooks”, he said as if to apologize for the two kilos of noodles without sauce which, in the absence of his wife, he had cooked for dinner. He was Russian-speaking – a language I hadn’t learned although living in Moldova for two years had taught me some words and phrases. In Romanian, Boris knew only numbers. He counted down from ten, and I translated into Russian. “Nine.” – “Nine.” – “Yes.” “Eight.” – “Eight.” – “Yes.” “Seven.” – “Seven?” – “Yes, very good. You want wine?” Although only 280 kilometers to the South, the capital of Moldova, Chisinau, felt far away. 8 hours by train to Kyiv, 11.5 hours to Chisinau. “Here the time runs slower”, Svetlana had written. The coming and going of empires, Ottoman, Russian, Romanian, Soviet, most of all had cultivated a strong sense of pragmatism and local identity in this border region. In every census since 1991, when the Republic of Moldova broke away from the Soviet Union, only a small percentage of the local population had declared themselves to be Moldovans. About half of them, Ukrainian. For those who didn’t speak Romanian, there was little need to learn it during Soviet times as Russian was the privileged language anyhow. After we had finished dinner, Boris gave me a guided tour of their house. He showed me to a barely furnished living room, laid out with wooden panels. Some chairs, a bookcase, and a sofa were arranged along the walls. The last time the room had been used, Boris told me, was for the wedding of his oldest son who had long moved out to find work in the capital. Here the wedding banquet had taken place. “50 guests!” His voice got animated. It was probably the last time his home had seen so many people. We stood in front of a bookcase with a moderate collection of Russian books, most of which from the Seventies. Boris took out a random book and said I could take as many as I wish. “We don’t need the books anymore.” At last we went down the stairs to the basement. Along the walls stood several shelves filled with what must have been a hundred jars of fruit and pickled vegetables. Boris named their contents in Russian: “raspberries,” “cherries,” “apricots”. I repeated after him, like a first-grader learning how to write. We looked at the jars filled with delicious fruits, and I found them to be a perfect metaphor for a place where “the time runs slower”. In a country where it is hard for many to believe in a better future, it seemed an almost natural thing to do to conserve the past. Yet the lost glories, dreams, and frustrations of a bygone empire mattered little in this house. Books, ideology could be given away. It was food and family that mattered and had to be preserved. The next morning, I woke up early. The sun was still low and the morning light misty. Boris drove ahead in his car to guide me out of town, and I followed on my bicycle. We passed the town of Otaci – the town-hall, a splendid gypsy villa – when suddenly Boris sped up, and I lost sight of him. I continued on the same road and after some minutes, saw his car parked in front of a convenience store. Boris was just coming out of the store, walking slowly so he wouldn’t spill what he was holding in his palms. It was fruit candy. “For your journey”, he said. “Long way.”