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Lizoanca
at the age of eleven
by
Doina Ruşti,
TREI Publishing House
video
Author's
note
I
read this horrendous headline in a newspaper: Eleven-year-old
prostitute
infects entire village with syphilis. Then
I saw the same story in all the rest of the press.
The girl, who had parents and an average
standard of living, was held responsible for almost all the cases of
syphilis
in her village. The tone of the
newspaper articles, the unanimity of the accusations, and the
repetition of the
same headline from one newspaper to the next determined me to
investigate the
situation and to write this novel.
In
Romania around two hundred cases of child abuse are covered by the
media every
year. Apart from these cases there are,
of course, many others that go unreported. The
novel Lizoanca at the age of eleven is based
on this factual
situation.
The
subject
The
main character, Lizoanca, is a young girl (eleven years old) disgusted
at the
way her parents treat her. She takes
refuge at the edge of the village, together with another three
children, and
they begin to lead a libertine life, which, in fact, presupposes the
complicity
of adults. Once the girl is discovered
to have syphilis, public opinion treats her as a danger to society. At the same time, a number of events take
place at the foreground of which are the abused children that society
ignores. Also against this background a
number of characters
involved in Lizoanca's life recollect their experiences at the age of
eleven, a
taboo age which during the course of the novel becomes a threshold
difficult to
cross. It is beyond this age that adult
life begins.
“Lizoanca at 11 years” is the story of an
abused child, a
little girl’s drama that takes a wrong turn in life, because of
different
factors influence its existence. Lizoanca, a kid of 11 years, from a
certain
village in Romania, sells herself to anyone that has to offer something
to eat,
something to dress, a temporary roof or protection. She does so from
the age of
nine and it seems natural to her. Not the other, but her parents will
not / can
not provide these things, instead, her father administers a
„healthy”beating
and not just to her, all her family members get same treatment. So
Lizoanca is
always on the road and never at school or at home.Her mother is also
abused by
her husband, she can’t help the girl in any way, even in some moments
she
agrees with the latter, the only thing worth Lizoanca to return to the
right
track is a sound beating.The girl does what she does because she has no
other
alternative, because she got into an entourage of children as her, kids
that
ran away from home, which shows her the way out of this drama .
Although everyone knows the girl’s
situation, nobody is
trying to help, not even her tutor who seems to differentiate himself
from the
rest of the village. The school director seems to agree with the
punishment
imposed, even in an episode in which Lizoancas father comes to recover
the girl
from school, she is not shocked by the violent beating applied to the
girl, in
fact she suggests that her father would do better to punish the girl at
home.
Nobody supports the girl, no one tries to protect her from the abusive
father,
no one tries to pull her from that environment.
Everything goes crazy when a friend of
Lizoanca is diagnosed
as infected with syphilis. From here, the whole village is called to
have
analysis done and the vast majority of men in the village are tested,
the
result beeing positive. News reaches the media and many reports get
headlines:
“A prostitute for 11 years has filled a whole village of syphilis”.
Although the press publishes the case,
reporters are not
interested in why the girl is pushed to
do these things. On the other hand, it seems that almost all the
characters
that relate to the girl are corrupt, have had a miserable childhood,
have
encountered all sorts of hardships. In turn, all these
characters remember themselves at the age of
11 years, recalling important moments of that period, moments that have
marked
their life. These events brought major changes in the life of the
characters
that come into contact with Lizoanca, how they behave now is due to
trauma they
have lived in a very early age.
This book holds no place for wonderful
childhood. No one has
had one or has enjoyed it. Child prostitution, alcohol, beating are
things on
the agenda. Poverty, a full time span of the head, all these factors
affect
people in certain social categories, like the Lizoanca. Inspired by a
real
case, Doina Rusti’s book draws an alarm: people, these things.
LIZOANCA
at the age
of eleven
by
Doina Ruşti
Excerpt from
the book
1. The man’s hand
had grasped her by the ear and some
tufts of hair, and now he was dragging her through the pales of the
fence. But she was struggling with all her
might,
pressing herself against the concrete post and bawling:
“Fuck you, you ox! You
maggoty corpse! What do
you want with me? Fuck you and your ma and your pa and the whole lot of
you!”
The man smacked her across
her livid
tear-smeared face, which was jerking about in the hole in the fence,
and
clouted her with his fist over the top of her head.
Then he caught her mouth between his fingers,
like in a vice, and at last dragged her half onto the grass in the yard.
“Fuck you and fuck the day
you were born! It
was I that made you and it’ll be I that kills you, you fucking slut!”
Lizoanca raised her eyes
from the grass and
glimpsed the sole of his boot, the toecap of which had just punted her,
leaving
her winded. She couldn’t feel her left
jaw, but she knew she was drooling into the blades of couch grass. After that there followed five or six more
kicks, and if she played dead she might survive. She
shielded her head with her free hand,
while trying to free her other from underneath her, and began to count
the
blows, one-two-three, then the iron hand of her father grabbed her by
the
scruff of the neck and hauled her up. She
opened her eyes and saw the worm-like vein throbbing
on his
temple. He was unshaven and his eyebrows
loured over his gaze:
“Where’ve you been, you
damned tart?!” He
glanced at her savagely, and Lizoanca cast poisoned darts back at him,
which
enraged him all the more: two stares born of the most ferocious scorn.
“That’s right, look at me
like the
good-for-nothing you are! Is that why I fathered you and fed you! Is
that why I
made you, girl, so that you’d defy me and shit on my word?”
Lizoanca knew that it would be best just to bawl with
her head lowered, but she couldn’t – at the back of her throat a
dragon’s head
had already sprouted, which could hardly wait to dart at her deadly foe
and
grind him in its molars.
“Leave her be, Cristele!
Leave her be! You’re
killing her!”
The voice of her mother ran like a red-hot wire
through one ear and out of the other, and she could refrain no longer. She clenched the man’s thumb in her teeth and
bit with all her might. The man howled,
nursing his bitten thumb in his other hand, while Lizoanca sprang up
and darted
past him and then past her mother, hurtling towards the gate, and she
went on
running along the fences.
At school, she stopped to size up her losses. The pink pumps she had been given but two
hours ago were now filthy. Apart from
that, nothing too serious. Her jaw was
still numb and her body ached, and a little blood was oozing from her
left
earlobe. That ox had dug his fingernail
in.
Barely had she caught her
breath when from the
school gate a voice like a slap in the face stopped her in her tracks”
“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in class?”
Lizoanca looked at the angry woman sidelong, her face
rumpled like a pair of dirty underpants.
“Don’t you know how to say ‘good day’?
What’s your name and what class are you in?”
“In the fourth form,” mumbled Lizoanca, determined not
to waste time with this monkey, who was the second form tutor. But this was a woman
who was adamant.
“Aren’t you Niţă Eliza, from Mr Preduică’s class? You
think I don’t know who you are! Because you haven’t shown your face at
school
for weeks! The word’s out, you’re a bad one, not even your parents can
do
anything with you!”
She was about to grab her,
she was looking at
her close to, stooping, and then she clapped her hand on her shoulder,
threatening her straight out:
“You’re coming to the
school office with me,
and then we’ll see just where you’ve been and what it is you’ve been
getting up
to…”
She couldn’t let her
finish her sentence. The hot hand of the
teacher terrorized
her. And when she heard the words
“school office” she lost patience, puckered up her lips and without
thinking
spat right between her eyes. The woman
jerked backwards, and Lizoanca made a run for it.
At the first lane she felt
she was saved. From there she went without
haste down to the
gully at the edge of the village, from where you could see the turbid
waters of
the Neajlov River. New Village was
divided in two: the houses among which folk swarmed, and the empty
space by the
riverbank.
Lizoanca came to a stop,
shivering in the cool
air that rose from the riverbank, and ran both her hands through her
short and
dirty hair, which was like a brush for scrubbing the floors.
This was the place where
her heaven began. She felt eased of all
burdens. Especially when she gazed over
the gleaming
water: her gaze encompassed the whole way, from the shingly bank to the
willow
that guarded their secret hollow.
She crouched down on all
fours and looked at
her diesel-stained trousers, from beneath which poked the pink pumps
like two
candies that had been rolled in the dust.
Under the swaying boughs
of the willow tree
there was a den in the bank, a hollow scooped out of the belly of a
knoll. It was there that Goarna and Nutza
were sleeping
curled up. For Lizoanca’s shout had not
punctured their deep sleep. And so the
girl decided to descend the gulley, taking care not to muddy her new
training
shoes even more. She would have to wade
through the water to the other bank, but she couldn’t be bothered. She was standing hunched on the shingly bank,
undecided as to whether she should take off her shoes, when she heard
approaching footsteps.
“Lizoanca, cross to the
other side quick and
wake them up, there’s a huge commotion at Dudu’s place!”
The girl frowned at him,
without budging.
“Go on, the people from
the telly are at
Dudu’s!”
Now he was next to her,
lowering himself over
the lip of the riverbank. Lizoanca got
up at last, but she continued to look at him without enthusiasm. He was a boy who had finished two years of
middle school, his name was Titus, but everyone called him Titoaşcă. This boy was always bossing her around, as
soon as he would set eyes on her, he would raise his voice, as though
she were
at his beck and call, and Lizoanca couldn’t stand anyone telling her
what to
do. And so she cast a scornful glance at
his trousers, which hung in tatters as far as his knees.
A huge boil had erupted on his calf.
“Why don’t you get a move
on?” he asked and
pinched the little nub that barely protruded from her ribs. He had a grip of iron, and he would always
clamp onto the most painful spot, right in the centre of her breast.
“Fuck you! Leave me alone,
you ox!”
“Like it, don’t you?”
Lizoanca lifted her leg,
wanting to kick him in the guts, but he caught it with his free hand. He was about to say something else, but the
lock of yellow hair on his forehead twitched and Titoaşcă looked down
at the
little foot clasped in his hand.
“Look at this, new
trainers!” Almost impressed, he released
her. “Rake gave you them, didn’t he”
The girl grinned, flattered that he
had noticed her footwear, and fleetingly remembered Rake’s hands, like
two
rachitic wintry branches, dark and knobbly, his fingers holding the
pink cloth
shoes.
“I saw him yesterday when
he brought the goods
from Bucharest, two sacks of dolls and Chinese trainers! You were at
his place
last night, weren’t you?”
“Aha.”
Lizoanca had been mollified by the memory of the shoes,
and her eyes
quickly moved from Titoaşcă to her refurbished feet, which shone next
to his,
bandaged in a pair of knackered trainers.
The boy seized the moment
to make peace. He pulled out a cigarette
and urged her in a
gentler voice:
“Go and tell that lot to
wake up ’cause there’s
a big to-do at Dudu’s, at Hammer’s palace. They’re
saying the folk from the telly are coming. Serious.” He looked at her and smiled, as a token that
they were
good friends, and
at last Lizoanca took off her pink pumps and crossed over the water to
the
willow tree.
2. All four of them were peering from
the roof of the building materials warehouse, the tallest structure in
the
area. They had dashed there with their
hearts in their mouths and clambered up to the spot where they could
get the
best view.
Lizoanca was sitting by
the edge, her face
almost pressing up against Nuţa’s shoulder. On
the other side sat Bugle, whom she could hear making
car-horn sounds
with her booming voice, which resounded all over village even when she
was
speaking normally. Bugle, whose name was
in fact Cornica, was the same age as Titoaşcă, but she looked older
than
him. She was tall and her hands were as
broad as the paddle of a carpet-beater; she instilled respect in
everyone, not
only in Titoaşcă. Lizoanca looked upon
her as though she were the Salvation Army. For
it was Bugle who had led her from her front yard and
showed her the
highroad. She would even have laid down
her life for her.
Three years ago, Lizoanca
was completely
without hope. At a speed that had
shattered her dreams she had started the third grade, without having to
repeat
the year. She used to go to school in
the morning and sit at her desk, which was by the door.
She liked to keep one hand in the pocket of
her white sweater and with her fingertips rub the ridge of the stitched
seam tucked
away there like a little fence. Mr
Preduică would pace past and raise an eyebrow, a signal for her to take
her
hand out of her pocket. And although it
was hard for her to be obedient, she nevertheless did not rebel, did
not
protest, she would say nothing, sometimes even smiling as her limp hand
dangled
at the lip of the white pocket. School
was a respite. She would sit at her desk
and mumble an answer when required. She
would doodle in the margins of her exercise book and scrawl Mr
Preduică’s words
in crooked, heavy letters. He would come
up to her, lean over her, and exhort: Come
on, Eliza, do your writing! Everybody write from the margin in big
letters!
Ultimately, mornings at school were a kind of recreation period in her
tumultuous life, a life that would only just be beginning when she got
back
home. She never managed to collect
herself, because as soon as she walked though the door her father would
be
waiting for her. Him above all, although
her mother was almost as bad. Both of
them would be bellowing like they were demented: Go and
fetch a bottle of brandy from Rake! Go on, girl, move your
fucking arse! It wasn’t just because they sent her on errands that
Lizoanca
hated them. It was even worse than
that. The blood would rise to her head,
and she felt like cutting up both her parents into tiny pieces. Not that she did anything.
It was enough for her to mutter and cast her
father a sharp look for him to lose his rag. He
would leap up from the bed or the chair and clout her
so hard that
she would be flung up against the wall, against the door, and the
harder he hit
her the more she felt like killing that scoundrel for whom she had long
harboured no filial feeling whatsoever. He
used to beat her even when she hadn’t done anything.
If he saw her with her nose in her arithmetic
book or sitting on the porch leaning her chin on her hand, he flared up
– what
the fuck are you doing, sitting around, get up or you’ll not know
what’s
fucking hit you! It was
at moments like this, when it had not
yet come to a beating, that her mother would appear, who would annoy
even more,
with her wheedling voice, as if she wished her nothing but well: Get
up,
lass, listen to your father, get up and go into the yard to see what
that pig
is up to and put them ducks back in the coop. Her
dissembling voice, allying with him,
would annoy her even more, as if her mother was on his side, even
though he
beat her just the same, out of the blue, banging her head against all
the walls
in the house, so that folk could hear her howling down in the valley or
even
from as far away as Dudu’s. Even so,
after a beating, she would pick herself up from the threshold, dust
herself
down, and start wheedling again, as though nothing had happened: Come
on,
lass, go and fetch your father a plate of soup.
After one typical beating,
Bugle had shown
up. Lizoanca knew her to look at and was
slightly afraid of her, and of her huge ruddy hands in particular,
which Bugle
would wave around as her voice boomed out loud enough to scare snakes
out of
their holes.
“What’s up, girl, smacked
you in the gob again,
has he?” And because Lizoanca went on crying and sobbing, Bugle sat
down next
to her, at the edge of the flowerbed laid out by the town hall, and
said:
“Think anyone’s going to
come and get rid of
that ogre for you? No one’s going to come! You have to leave and make
your own
way in the world. To hell with him! Just
leave! What do you mean where? Have you any idea how big this world is?”
She talked and flapped her
heavy hands, as
though she were the ventilator fan in Rake’s shop.
Her voice seeped into her through a hundred
channels at once, down all the narrow conduits, known only to her,
which
irrigated her soul.
That very night she slept
in her bower under
the willow tree, amid the warm scent of the loam. The
next day she went to school, where no one
asked her anything, even though she didn’t have her textbooks, exercise
books,
or even a pencil. And as soon as she
finished her lessons, she set off home like a shot.
Cristel was standing in the yard, and to her
amazement he was quite calm.
“Go and get me a packet of
cigarettes from
Rake’s, will you?”
Normally, she would have
gone. He hadn’t sworn at her, he hadn’t
shoved her,
he didn’t seem as though he was spoiling for a fight.
But just then her mother appeared at the
bottom of the yard.
“What’s all this, you
slept over at your
granny’s and you didn’t say anything!? Next time you go, make sure you
tell us
first! Don’t we have a right to know where you are?”
For about a month they had
assumed that she was
going to the other end of the village, to her grandmother’s, who was
the mother
of the ogre, no less fearsome than him, where her mother never set foot
in a
month of Sundays. Then the cold came. Bugle took her with her to various friends of
hers around the village, and all four of them would spend the night
there
together – Titoaşcă, Bugle and Nuţa – or singly, depending on the case. But best of all was when there were all four
of them, like now, as they gazed from the roof of the storehouse at the
spectacle outside the gypsy palace.
In front of Hammer’s house
there was a crowd of
folk like at the circus, and some young women were scurrying about with
microphones in their hands. On the other
side of the road, Rake too had climbed up onto the fence of his house
and was
gawping like everyone else. Pădureanu
was perched on top of a concrete post, letting out whistles and whoops,
like at
a wedding.
“Where have you hidden the
children, Mr
Hammer,” asked the policemen, his cap rakishly set at an angle, and
pretending
not to notice the cameras.
“I ain’t hidden them, Mr
Vică! The children
they’s in Bucharest, at their relatives’.”
The gypsy chief was
standing in his gateway,
dressed in a new suit and a black hat, the brim one and a half feet
wide.
“But you’re getting ready
for a wedding, aren’t
you?” The reedy voice of the woman reporter rose even as far as the
roof of the
storehouse, and Titoaşă burst out laughing:
“That bint’s really
hungry!”
Bugle was sitting next to
him. She had only just woken up, and her
eyes were
puffy, her throat parched:
“Shut your gob, you! You’d
give her one!”
Titoaşcă was about to
answer, but from the
depths of the gypsy palace, with its turrets, there came a howl, like
that of a
crippled dog. Everyone looked up. On the white balcony, adorned with plaster
garlands, the eldest woman of the gypsy clan had emerged.
The village knew her only by her voice.
She was called Arţuria, and from time to time
she would appear at one of the windows or on one of the balconies,
screaming
and cursing in a tongue that not even the gypsies understood. And so she did now, her voice piercing the
ears of the crowd. As though on cue,
from the neighbouring yards other voices could now be heard, and a
handful of
women came out, keening and lifting their billowing multicoloured
skirts. The cameras rapidly moved from the
policeman
to the gypsy women, who were all howling at the top of their lungs, so
that it
was impossible to understand what it was all about.
“Let’s go down!” Lizoanca
got up, because she
was too far away from the all the hubbub, and she slid down the slope
of the
roof to the stout post that propped up the roof timbers, which
otherwise would
have fallen down long ago.
The chief of the gypsy
clan was speaking into a
microphone, saying in an injured voice: You
can’t just burst in on us like this, lady, we ain’t killed no one, we
ain’t
done no one any harm, we’re just abiding by our laws and that’s all.
Lizoanca was now at the
reporter’s elbow,
gawping at her yellow bracelet, on which was encrusted the word love.
“Is it true that the two
children you’ve
married off are not even eleven years old?”
The chief looked at her
with hatred, and then
answered as calmly as he could:
“My mother made me when
she weren’t no more
than ten years old. So what? Am I dafter
than you? Look at me: I’m the chief of this clan, and I ain’t been in
prison or
anything like that, not even a single day in my entire life. Not even in hospital.”
The reporter looked down
at last and noticed
Lizoanca. She let slip a little smile on
seeing the girl whose hair was matted as though after countless
battles, then
she gathered herself together and asked the angry gypsy once more:
“Are you aware that you’re
infringing the
rights of the child?”
“What rights would they
be, missy?”
“For example, the right to
go to school!”
The chief lit up:
“But
we let them go to school! Of course we do! One of my sons has been to
university! Of course we let them go to school!”
“But if you force them to
get married at
eleven, how can they go to school?!”
“They go to school, lady,
of course they go to
school. What do you think we are?
They’ve got their whole lives ahead of them, all we want is for them to
have
some discipline, there ain’t no one forcing them to do anything. All we’re doing is following our customs, and
that’s all.”
The reporter swung around
suddenly, her facial
expression changed, and she began clucking like a hen:
“It doesn’t look as if
things are going to calm
down very soon. The Police and social
services have not been able to intervene, because it seems that the two
minors
have not been seen in Dudu village for quite some time.”
A few feet away, Rake was
also giving an interview
to another television channel, and Lizoanca tiptoed up to him, to hear
what he
was saying.
“Because they’re gypsies,
miss…” Then, quickly correcting himself,
he added:
“I mean they’re Roma, as they call them nowadays.”
“Do you know of any cases
of Romanians getting
married at such a tender age?”
“No, not at all!”
Rake puckered up his lips
and was about to
carry on with his explanation, when he set eyes on Lizoanca. She was laughing her head off.
The man fixed his eyes on her, quickly detecting
all the alterations on her little face: he immediately saw the bloodied
ear and
the bruised jaw and realised her father had beaten her again. A guilty thought briefly darkened his brow. Then he remembered that he was in the middle
of an interview.
“I don’t know, miss! How
should I know! I’m
just a village shopkeeper! All day long I’m away collecting goods and
one thing
and another. I don’t know.
Ask other folk who know.”
The reporter, used to such
answers, turned
away, looking for another source, ignoring Rake, who had flushed as red
as a
poppy.
Lizoanca went on
laughing,
watching the man, who was now heading back
into his shop. Above the crowd she heard
a cry like a trumpet and she straight away knew that it was time to
make
tracks. At the top of the road she saw
the outline of her father, wearing the green Golden Brau
baseball cap he’d got from saving up the coupons on his
beer bottles. (trans: Alistair Ian Blyth)
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