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The story that cannot be told
2020
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Some Poetry About Socialism Some Poetry About Socialism When my father arrived home from the university, his face sallow and sagging as if he were sick, he dropped his briefcase on the kitchen floor and braced himself at the sink. "He's gone. They've killed him," he said. At the table, my mother set down her copy of Femeia magazine. She glanced at me before she stood, took Tata's hat from his head, pulled him toward their bedroom door, and shut it quietly behind them. It was mid-July in 1989, and the electricity in Bucharest was off more often than on. Our tower-block concrete apartment building baked us like cabbage rolls in a clay pot, so we always let in the breeze through the balcony doors. I had been sprawled out on the living-room floor beside my Great Tome, the warm air tugging at the pages of my stories. Now I laid my coloring pencil aside and stared, my heart thudding faster with each sound that came through the wall. The apartment was so small you could see it all at once: the balcony where we dried our clothes, the living room and kitchen stuffed together, the tiny bathroom, my parents' bedroom, my bedroom. My mother liked to say--when my father wasn't there to stop her--that if we were again forced to move, they would squeeze our whole family into a closet. She missed the apartment we'd had before, with the dining room and the pantry and the corner office that held her piano. I didn't remember it, since we'd had to leave when I was a baby, but I knew my parents had only been able to keep what could be carried. I knew they'd only been given a day. As I sat there, tense and listening, I couldn't stop thinking it would happen again--that whatever had frightened my father would force us to pack up without warning and leave. I wondered how much worse things would get if we moved. When the Leader had torn down our first home to make room for the wide, gaping boulevard and the palace, he'd stuck us, like everyone else, into horrible gray concrete buildings, stacked one after another, all the same. Sometimes I would imagine my family's life before then: our pantry stocked full of bread and jam, my father's books lining the walls from ceiling to floor. In my memory of a place that I didn't remember, we always had enough food, and the hot water worked on more than just Saturday nights. We could bathe whenever we wanted, even in winter when the central heating went out. But I collected stories, both made-up and true. And I was usually good at spotting the difference. My family had never had enough food. We'd never had enough hot water, enough space, enough light. At ten years old, I could already see how everyone, even me, talked about before in a special kind of voice and with special kinds of words. If we believed that before , things were better, we could imagine they'd be better again. This was the way we survived. There was a loud thump behind my parents' bedroom door, something striking their dresser. I jumped when it happened again. Muffled sounds came in great, rolling waves: my father's words rising, my mother suppressing the swell. I knew she didn't quiet him because of me, not really. She did it for the neighbor whose ear might be pressed to the wall, for the passerby in the corridor who might pause, fingers feeling in pockets for a pen. It was always best to assume someone was listening. When the door finally opened, I knew I must have looked frightened, so I pretended to be busy writing in my Great Tome. I was working on "The Baker's Boy," a retelling of a parable from school, but my eyes couldn't focus on the words. I kept glancing up at my parents, who had settled into silent preparation for dinner. I tried not to think about who might have been killed, distracting myself by drawing loaves of tan-colored bread around the edge of my title page. But when the sun dipped low, its fading light turned all the Great Tome's colors to ugly shades of gray, so I tucked the book under my arm and carried it to the couch. With the power still out, the TV screen was just a dark reflection of me holding my stories, but I sat down and stared at it anyway. Thinking about the movies I loved made me feel a bit better, even if I knew there was no chance I'd see them. We used to get two channels that had shows all day long. My mother still talked about when they'd aired the one from America with the man in the cowboy hat, which always ended with somebody shot or in a car that exploded. But now we only had one channel, just two hours a day during the week, and it didn't air shows like that anymore. The programming was usually boring: speeches given from inside the grand palace; televised sessions of the Communist Party, the little men on the screen all cheering together, booing together, raising their fists; broadcasts that reviewed the state guidelines on "rational eating" or politely reminded viewers of local curfews. On Sundays, though, Gala Animation would come on, and we'd get five whole minutes of a cartoon. Everyone I knew who had a television made sure not to miss it. Last summer, over the course of several weeks, I'd caught all of 101 Dalmatians and bragged to the other children when we went back to school. This summer they were showing The Aristocats , and the last episode had left the poor kitties scared and alone out in the country. I wouldn't get to see the next five minutes till the weekend, but if the power came back tonight, our handmade antenna might pick up something good from Bulgaria, and my whole family might sit down to watch. Then, just like always, we could leave behind whatever horrible thing had happened. Luck seemed to be on my side, at least for the moment, because as we were setting the table, the electricity flickered to life. I asked my father, "Can I turn on the fan?" Sometimes he said no. The taxes were very high if we went over our energy allotment. But tonight he didn't even look at me. He just gave a little gesture with his hand, which I took for a yes, then sat down in his place. The lines around his eyes and behind his big glasses looked deeper than usual, and I began to worry he might really be sick. At the table, the wind blowing through my choppy brown hair, I turned my gaze down and picked at my food. Pie with eggplant and potato but no meat. The queue had been too long at the butcher's. When the line manager had told me and my mother that it would take five hours, maybe six, to get our rations, I thought she'd make us take turns waiting, but instead we'd simply gone home. Nibbling a stale piece of bread and avoiding as much eggplant as possible, I did my best not to complain. My father was still quiet. The sickly look had not left his face, and I kept glancing up, wanting someone to speak. I knew they wouldn't tell me who was killed or why, because they'd never told me before, but the longer everyone went without talking, the more anxious I grew, thinking that this time it had been someone important. When I could no longer take it, I did what I always did with silence. I tried to fill it with a story. "Do you want to hear the new one?" "Maybe another night," my mother replied. My stomach fluttered. My cheeks flushed. They never said no. I returned to poking at my dinner, suddenly frightened as I tried to guess who was dead, because it had never been this bad. It had never meant this much. My father put down his fork. "Is that what you did today? Work on your stories?" I thought he was mad about me not doing my summer homework, so I said quickly, "It's a school story. Mrs. Dumitru told it to us before vacation." "Another night," my mother repeated, and this time I took her words for what they were--a warning. "No, I want to hear it. I want to hear what they're telling my daughter. I want to hear what she's writing." I looked between them, shrinking into my chair. A chime from the clock let me ask, "Can I be done?" My mother glanced at my plate with a frown but nodded. "Bring in your dishes. And turn off that fan. You'll catch cold." "What about your story?" my father asked. "I forgot it's not ready," I lied. After filling the sink with soapy water, I switched on the TV and sank down into the worn couch. My parents began to clean up. When the dark screen filled with static, I peeked out onto the balcony, worried that someone had climbed up and stolen our wires, but everything seemed okay. I looked at Mama. I hesitated. She was elbow deep in dirty dishes, my father helping dry. They were both still silent--a bad sign. Usually, after supper, I had to turn up the TV extra loud because my mother loved to sing and my father loved to join in and bellow off-key. If it wasn't that cacophony, they would at least be chattering away about work. Back in the old apartment, my mother had given music lessons from home. But once she'd lost her piano, she'd had to take a job as a secretary. Now she filed stacks of papers and made calls and typed up copies of documents, since copy machines were illegal. Sometimes there was so much work, she had to get special permission to take a typewriter home. "I have the worst job in the world," she would say. "At least it's safe," my father would answer. Tata was a professor at the University of Bucharest, where he lectured in literature and composition. He'd never been a very good writer, but he loved stories almost as much as I did, so he'd spent his whole life learning how to listen to them. He could hear what was inside a story's heart--what made it beat or let it die--and he'd shared that gift with me. Most nights after supper, if he wasn't singing with Mama or talking away, he'd patiently critique all my new ideas. And if we couldn't watch television because the power was out, he'd get a candle and I'd go find his reading glasses and we'd snuggle up on the couch with our books. Usually, after supper, our family found something to be happy about, even in the hardest of times. But tonight my father was silent and slouched like an old man--like he was carrying a sack of stones on his shoulders--and even though the kitchen was so close I could almost reach out and touch him, I felt as if he were standing a hundred kilometers away. Whatever was eating him up started eating me, too. I crawled over to the TV and twisted the knob frantically, searching for a Bulgarian station. We didn't speak Bulgarian, but they got much better shows, and sometimes when Columbo came on my father would pretend he knew what everyone was saying, making up silly things till we were all a giggling mess. If that happened tonight, life would go back to normal, I was sure, and whoever had died wouldn't matter, not really, just like they'd never mattered before. "Mama, the TV's all fleas," I called, getting desperate. My mother glanced at the clock. "Then watch the news." "Mama, please ." She dried off her hands, sighing loudly, and stepped out onto the balcony to fiddle with the antenna. When she came back inside, there was still only static, so she changed the channel to the nightly state broadcast. "I want to watch a Bulgarian show!" I said, panicking. Turning on the news was a terrible idea. Most of the time it just made my parents upset. When I kept complaining, Mama shushed me and gave a few gentle smacks to the back of my head. A newscaster was talking in front of black-and-white pictures of the Leader, an aging man with slick gray hair and puffy little boy's lips. His wife was beside him in a skirt suit and fat, shiny pearls. She was always photographed from the front so her nose would look small. The two stood before a huge crowd of people, giant posters of the Leader's face plastered all over the wall at their backs. The people were applauding. Flags were waving. I slid dramatically to the floor and rolled onto my stomach, groaning till my mother shook me to silence with her foot on my butt. A clip of the Leader must have started playing, because I heard him then, speaking to the cheering crowd about the importance of loyalty to the country, about the importance of poetry. "Everyone enjoys a good love poem," he said. "But of course the highest form of all art is socialist poetry." My mother sat down on the couch. She called to my father: "Lucian." He came over and I stopped fussing, lifting my face up from the thin carpet. The Leader read some lines from a poem. I knew the poet they were from. We all learned about him in school. This particular poem praised the state and the Communist Party. But I knew other poems from this poet, as well--ones the teachers did not read in class. I knew them because the poet had gone to university with my uncle Andrei, my father's brother. The poet had written many things that he shouldn't have written, many things that did not praise our country. And before he died--before his spine was crushed late one night under the wheels of a tram--he had inspired my uncle to write poetry too. I tensed and looked up at my father. "What wonderful lyrics," the newscaster said with a smile when the clip ended. "Our writers must always strive for such beauty." My tata's face drained of what little color was left. When he started to sob, my whole body went numb. I thought I might start crying too, but before I could, my mother got up and ushered me into my room. "Don't worry. He's just not feeling well," she said. But I collected stories, so I knew that was a lie. I knew my uncle, the poet, had not been home in a week. I knew now that my father thought he was dead. But recognizing a lie and knowing the truth are two different things. My father wasn't crying just because he was afraid for his brother--his brother who wrote dangerous poems. He was also afraid for me. Excerpted from The Story That Cannot Be Told by J. Kasper Kramer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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Trade Reviews
Publishers Weekly Review
Kramer's mesmerizing debut focuses on the final months of the reign of Communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania in 1989. Ileana, 10, lives with her parents in a drab apartment in Bucharest. Fearful of ubiquitous government spies, she is passionate about two things: listening to her father's stories and creating her own in her Great Tome. When Ileana's uncle, who has written against the regime, disappears, Ileana's frightened parents send her to live with grandparents she has never met in her mother's native mountain village. Kramer intersperses Ileana's experiences of adapting to village life, both more abundant and more arduous than city living, with a retelling of her namesake folktale, "Cunning Ileana," in which a young princess outsmarts evil princes. Similarly, Ileana, creative and resilient, must outsmart the Securitate to protect the village and her family from the government's plans. Ileana's voice credibly connects life under a totalitarian regime and corresponding elements of the folktale, and as the novel builds to a dramatic climax, reality and fantasy become difficult to discern. The supporting characters are all strong and sympathetic, and fully dimensional Ileana exemplifies girl power at its complex and ferocious best. Ages 8--12. (Oct.)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3--7--This gripping story describes the impact of the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania on the lives of one family and draws on multiple sources of information--folklore and fairy tales, stories told to the author by Romanian friends, and the author's research into history and literature--to yield a powerful mix of fact and fiction. The writing draws heavily from the language of storytelling: "Once upon a time, something happened. If it had not happened, it would not be told." The book centers on Ileana, a young girl whose world is shaken as the Ceausescu regime erodes individual freedoms and sows fear and resentment. Secret police intrude into people's lives. One day, despite her parents' warnings, Ileana lets in an "electrician," who proceeds to install bugs throughout the family's apartment. Ileana, a talented storyteller and writer, is a threat to everyone's safety, especially her own, so her parents send her to the countryside to stay with her grandparents. Life gets more and more constrained, and the secret police eventually endeavor to destroy the village where Ileana is staying, find her uncle, and punish him for writing a political manifesto. The novel's structure draws readers in. Threaded throughout are retellings of Romanian fairy tales about "Cunning Ileana," a smart princess who outsmarts her enemies. These tales encircle the main narrative in fascinating ways that invite speculation and interpretation. It would be hard to end this story and not feel connected to it and curious to know more about what happened in Romania in the 1980s. VERDICT An engrossing read that will raise questions about how to determine the truth of past events.--Myra Zarnowski, City University of New York
Booklist Review
Kramer's debut stitches a patchwork of storytelling, folklore, and history together into a narrative about a Romanian girl suffering under her country's Communist rule and the resistance movement it produced. Ten-year-old Ileana loves writing stories, but stories can be dangerous things when government spies are listening through doors and tapped phones. The day Ileana finds an electronic bug in her bedroom, she is sent into the distant country to stay with grandparents whom she has never met. In the small farming village, Ileana hungrily listens to her grandparents spout local lore and family remembrances, but even their coziest moments are undergirded with fear. Kramer captures the tense, frightening atmosphere in the months preceding the Romanian Revolution, as well as the different forms of bravery that went into toppling an oppressive government. One of Ileana's favorite stories is parsed throughout the main narrative, reflecting elements of her real life, though it is not always seamlessly integrated. The book, nevertheless, is an affecting account of a historic event characterized by monsters, hope, and the power of words.--Julia Smith Copyright 2010 Booklist
Kirkus Review
When the enemy is everywhere, it's impossible to hide.Readers might not think it's a great risk to watch a movie. Or write stories. Or publish poems. But in Romania in 1989, these are all crimes punishable by kidnapping, torture, even death. Any act that goes against the Communist Party and its leader is a threat, and spies are everywhere. Ileana's sense of danger sharpens when she and her parents discover their apartment has been bugged. What might the secret police have heard? Do they know about Ileana's own habit of writing stories? Ileana is sent to her mother's estranged parents' village high in the mountains, for safety. There, she discovers lessons in loyalty, bravery, and friendship that prove essential when she's faced with her greatest challenge. Historical fiction interwoven with parallel, altered fairy tales, Kramer's debut novel is rich with connections to today's world while easily sidestepping the pitfall of heavy-handedness. Ileana is a charming, complex character who stumbles and makes mistakes as she builds up confidence, bravery, and wisdom against a wonderfully imagined backdrop populated with fascinating secondary characters. Her role in battling the Securitate is both inspiring and believable. Characters are pale-skinned Eastern Europeans.A thrilling, emotional tale of one girl's experience of the fall of Communism in Romania. (author's note) (Historical fiction. 8-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Summary
"By turns surprising, poetic, and stark, The Story That Cannot Be Told is one that should most certainly be read." --Alan Gratz, New York Times bestselling author of Refugee
"A mesmerizing debut." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A powerful middle grade debut with three starred reviews that weaves together folklore and history to tell the story of a girl finding her voice and the strength to use it during the final months of the Communist regime in Romania in 1989.

Ileana has always collected stories. Some are about the past, before the leader of her country tore down her home to make room for his golden palace; back when families had enough food, and the hot water worked on more than just Saturday nights. Others are folktales like the one she was named for, which her father used to tell her at bedtime. But some stories can get you in trouble, like the dangerous one criticizing Romania's Communist government that Uncle Andrei published--right before he went missing.

Fearing for her safety, Ileana's parents send her to live with the grandparents she's never met, far from the prying eyes and ears of the secret police and their spies, who could be any of the neighbors. But danger is never far away. Now, to save her family and the village she's come to love, Ileana will have to tell the most important story of her life.
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