If You Have No Grandparents, Buy Some

When I pushed the gate, it opened with a creak. Not at all the way it used to.

The three of us hurried beneath the shade of the grapevines, escaping the blazing sun. Days like this simply did not happen here in early September. The heat was unbearable.

“Grandpa made it all himself!” little Viorica said, pointing at the arches of slender poles, thickly covered in grapevines, ripe bunches hanging overhead.

Ever since she had become more talkative at kindergarten, Vio had spent months solemnly telling us everything as though she had just made another discovery.

“Of course he did,” Cristina and I answered together.

“Pwetty!” our daughter exclaimed.

“Magical,” I added.

“Mazical,” she echoed.

Aunt Vasilina had given us the keys in town the day before and then gone off on some errands of her own, complaining about the heat. “It’s all that global warming of yours!”

The house still looked as though someone lived there. The table and benches were clean, the walls whitewashed, the porch and paths swept.

After my mother died, Aunt Vasilina—my father’s sister—had come by a couple of times a week to help him. Then, in spring, Dad was gone too. Since then, she had been coming almost every day.

I helped only occasionally. The year before, I had left my job abroad and taken a new one in the city.

“Hey, Marcel, when are you people actually going to come here yourselves? It is your inheritance, after all,” she would say.

“But I do come.”

“Once in a blue moon? What, do you live on the other side of the world? You get in the car, and there you are!”

“Yes, yes. Three hours here, then three hours back. I have to work.”

“Work, work. You won’t earn all the money in the world anyway! And watch out—or this house of yours may teach you a lesson one day. Tudor... your father used to say it had a character of its own.”

We laughed.

My parents had bought the house after I had already left the village. I came back for Christmas or Easter and sometimes for a day or two in summer. Since courtesy required us to visit relatives and friends around, my parents did not get much help from us.

In recent years, we had put up a trampoline and inflatable pool in the front yard for Viorica and the other children. We rarely went into the back yard, where Mum had planted a small orchard and kept her vegetable beds.

That afternoon we visited Uncle Ștefan, Dad’s second cousin, who lived on the next street. Viorica happily played with his grandchildren, who had also come to stay. Uncle Ștefan and Dad had always lived close to each other, and our families had remained friends.

“I don’t think we’ll ever move here,” I told him. “But selling it to complete strangers doesn’t feel right. Mum and Dad put so much of themselves into this place.”

“What about relatives?” he asked.

“Aunt Vasilina and I have talked about it. I don’t want to rush anything. But if someone close to the family comes along, we’ll see.”

“When you’re ready,” he said, “tell me. Maybe I can ask around.”

By the time we returned, the waxing moon was already bright in the darkening sky and the first stars glimmered faintly. Crickets chirped along the road, swallows twittered somewhere nearby, and every now and then a dog barked.

The air had grown cooler, but inside the house it was warm and cozy. Dad, who had always loved working with his hands, had turned the old house into the sort of place you wanted never to leave.

When cartoon time was over, the stories had been read, and Viorica had finally given everyone ‘permission to sleep’—

Khhh-thunk!

The sound came from beneath the floor.

“Mummy, wha’s that?” came Vio’s sleepy voice.

“Probably a little mouse. Maybe it knocked something over,” Cristi said. “Let’s sleep.”

“A mousie? A gray one? Can we look?”

“We’ll look tomorrow. All right?”

“M-hm.”

“It’s a pity we were here so rarely,” my wife whispered after Viorica fell asleep. “I was only twenty when my mother died. I could at least have done a little more for yours. Mama Rodica treated me like her own daughter.”

I sighed.

“Remember when we invited them to the seaside?”

“Oh yes. They couldn’t get us to drop it. Dad at least went to neighboring villages sometimes. Your mother hardly went anywhere at all.”

“You’ve lost your minds,” she would say. “Where are you dragging two old people—goodness knows where?”

“And when they found out where we were going: ‘What? To the Turks? Not on your life!’”

We laughed quietly until—

Khhh-thunk!

Again.

That strange sound I couldn’t place.

“What have you got underneath here? A cellar?” Cristina asked.

“Yes. Maybe it really is mice.”

“Did it ever do that before?”

“No. Never. Not that I remember.”

We listened.

Silence.

“Maybe the neighbors downstairs are banging on the ceiling because we’re talking,” I suggested.

Cristi snorted. “Oh, stop it.”

The sound did not return.

“Do you know everything that’s here?” she asked. “In the house?”

“Well... I’ve been in the cellar. There’s nothing unusual. We gave away the wine and preserves after the funeral. The last time I saw it, it was empty.”

“Your house is unusual, though.”

“Mum said it was built long ago by a Bulgarian family. Maybe a hundred years ago. Then there were other owners. And only after that came Mum and Dad.”

“Marcel?”

“Yes?”

“Do you remember what they called Viorica the first time we brought her here?”

I smiled.

“Of course. Viorica, little sneak-a!”

“Remember how she pretended to be asleep, waited until Grandma left, then climbed onto the table for the sweets?”

We had barely smiled when—

Khhh-thunk!

“Well, somebody downstairs is definitely knocking!”

“That’s... strange,” my wife said, no longer laughing. “Maybe you should go and check?”

“Who? Me?” I was beginning to feel uneasy too, but tried to joke about it. “What if it’s Bau-Bau? No, thank you. Besides, we’ve got crosses and icons all over the walls. He probably can’t get in anyway.”

I had dropped to a whisper too.

“Oh, Marcel.”

“No. Let’s test my theory. If we lie here quietly, it shouldn’t happen again.”

“Oh... all right. Just hold me close. I’m scared.”

We lay there without making a sound.

For a long time.

So long that...

We woke to the first roosters crowing.

The cellar had not “thunked” again.

At least, we had not heard it.

Before breakfast, Viorica insisted on joining me in the cellar.

The entrance was off the front hall. Behind a small door, stone steps led down. Dad had run electricity there, and neatly built shelves lined the walls.

Everything was clean. And empty.

The cellar was surprisingly large—almost half the size of the house above it. Vio walked carefully, trying not to make any noise, and investigated the empty shelves.

“There’s nothing here,” I said.

“Wha’s there?” Vio asked, pointing at a door in the far wall.

“That’s the second entrance. Old one. We haven’t used it for years.”

“Where does it go?”

“Into the back yard. But it’s all overgrown with bushes now.”

There were also a couple of narrow ventilation openings near the ceiling on that side.

We heard no khthunks and saw no mice. With a shrug, we went back upstairs.

We had planned a walk to the lake after breakfast.

“When are we going?” Viorica demanded with all the seriousness of a child. “I want to see what’s there!”

The water was not far from the house. We crossed the outskirts of the village, then walked between small fields and vegetable gardens until the wooden observation tower near the shore came into view.

Everything had changed a lot over the years. New streets had appeared, along with new places that made life here more comfortable. One main road ran through the center: one way toward Cahul, the other toward Giurgiulești and the Danube. It felt well cared for and full of life.

I simply walked and looked around me, remembering my childhood. I had helped Mum and Dad a great deal, yet somehow those years still seemed carefree.

A friend had once told me, “It’s good while your parents are alive. We still get a chance to be children every now and then.”

Now that it was too late, there was so much I wanted to ask mine. Or simply to sit beside them for a while.

“Vio, look!” Cristina called.

A hedgehog was moving through the grass beside the bushes.

“Can I pet it?”

“Better not. It’s prickly.”

There was no stopping her.

“Well... it’s not that pwickly,” she announced after the hedgehog escaped her loving attention.

Walnut trees and mulberries grew beside the road. Viorica picked up a round green walnut.

When I was a child, walnuts had been one of our autumn treats.

“For some reason I don’t like them much anymore. But I used to love them. What about you, Cristi?”

“I loved ice cream more then, and I still do.”

“I love ice cweam too!” Viorica announced.

“The walnuts on our tree are ripe too. The one in the back yard. Yesterday I thought I saw quite a few ready to pick.”

When we reached the water, the breeze was light and warm. White swans glided across the mirror-smooth surface and ducks quacked nearby. Then a flock of geese, calling noisily, rose from the lake and soared into the sky.

“Oh! Look at that huge white bird!”

“That’s a heron, sweetheart,” Cristi said.

“A heron sweetheart?”

We laughed.

Even at that age, she enjoyed making jokes by twisting the meaning of what we said.

“She gets that from you,” my wife said, nudging me in the side with a smile.

“Do people catch fish?” Viorica asked.

“No. This is a nature reserve. The animals here are protected.”

“Oh! That’s a vewy good thing they invented,” she replied solemnly.

After taking far too many photographs, we headed back. We spent most of the day visiting friends and Dad’s relatives and did not really return home until evening.

Cristina took the old photo albums down from the shelf.

“When was this?”

“And who’s that?” Viorica asked.

“Daddy.”

“Daddy? Doesn’t look like!”

“And that’s Grandpa.”

“Yes, Gwandpa looks like Gwandpa!”

“That was when I came to visit your grandpa at the repair workshop. He worked with farm machinery at the collective farm.”

“What does that mean?” Viorica asked.

“He repaired tractors and combine harvesters. He taught me a bit too.”

“Wow!”

“Your daddy is clever, isn’t he?” Cristi asked.

“Clever, yes. But he still doesn’t look like,” Viorica added.

And just as we had settled into bed—

Khhh-thunk!

Straight from the cellar.

As though someone had been waiting for us.

“Maybe the house is singing us a lullaby,” I suggested.

“Doesn’t sound like one,” Vio responded.

“Well then, what is it saying?”

“You’re sure there aren’t any mice?” Cristi asked.

“There might be. But there’s nothing down there for them to knock over.”

“It’s empty,” Viorica confirmed.

“Come on. Why am I the only one making things up? You two think of something funny too.”

“All riiight...” Cristi considered. “Maybe it’s a fly banging into the ceiling because you forgot to switch the cellar light off!”

“I did switch it off!” I protested. “And that would have to be one very large fly.”

We laughed.

“Maybe the house is telling us, ‘I’m here’?” Viorica suggested. “Maybe it’s pwotecting us?”

“Oh! Aren’t you our little optimist?” Cristi said, smiling.

Khhh-thunk! Khhh-thunk!

“Oh...” Cristi looked puzzled. “Twice.”

“Maybe it likes Vio’s idea?”

“What if there really is something...” my wife began.

“Like Bau-Bau?” Viorica asked.

“No, there’s no such thing as Bau-Bau. That’s just a story.”

“But you said it was twue! How am I supposed to undewstand that?”

“Well, it used to be true, and then it turned into a story,” I said.

“But what if the story turns back into twuth again?”

“Then maybe Grandma and Grandpa’s house really is magical,” I said. “Maybe it’s trying to tell us how much it misses them.”

Khhh-thunk! Khhh-thunk!

We fell silent.

“We miss them too,” I said.

“Yes,” Cristi echoed.

“Miss them...” Viorica said thoughtfully.

Khhh-thunk! Khhh-thunk!

Did the house understand us?

We did not know.

Viorica soon fell asleep. Cristi and I whispered for a while longer. Every now and then another thunk came from below, almost as though the house were answering our thoughts. But the sounds no longer frightened us.

The next morning was a little cooler and windier. We decided to tidy up, rake the leaves, and gather pears, plums, and walnuts. After that, we would see whether there were any books or belongings we wanted to take with us.

The woodpile stood behind the house. Almost all the firewood had been given to the neighbors, but a little still remained.

I decided to have a better look around and walked through the tall grass along the back wall, past the pear and plum trees and then the walnut tree.

Fallen fruit and nuts lay all over the ground beneath them.

I took a few more steps past the raspberry and currant bushes when I started and froze…

Khhh-thunk!

Years ago, Dad had reinforced the old adobe wall here by facing the outside with pale local limestone blocks—the kind we call ‘cotileț’.

I was now standing near the far end of that wall.

But he had done something else too.

“Cristi! Viorica! Come here!” I shouted. “You won’t believe this! I found our mouse!”

“Where?” they called almost in unison as they ran towards me.

I remembered that during the last year of his life, Dad had often told me what he was working on whenever we spoke on the phone.

And at some point he had mentioned a pair of new horizontal metal hatch doors he wanted to install over the second cellar entrance.

“What do you need those for?” I had asked.

“So I don’t have to shovel leaves off the steps every autumn.”

I never checked whether he had finished it. He had.

He passed away in early spring, when the rains had come and everything was turning green. I had not even come around to this side of the house then. The ground was too wet and soft. Why would I?

I had been back only a few times since, of course, but I had still never come here. There was simply nothing here I needed, and the bushes grew thick against one another along the wall.

Now I understood.

The old door between the cellar and the outside steps, beneath the metal hatches, was thin and weathered. Any sound from outside could pass through it easily. The ventilation openings could carry sound too.

Elder bushes grew above the cellar doors on this side, with tall grass bending over them.

There were no windows on this wall of the house, so when we were in the room above, any loud sound coming from here could easily have seemed to come from beneath the floor.

The three of us stood there looking at the green walnuts scattered across the metal hatches and on the ground around them.

Then, without saying anything, we all looked up.

The walnut tree had grown considerably over the past years, and several of its branches now stretched directly above the cellar entrance.

Khhh-thunk!

Rustling through the elder branches, another walnut fell onto the iron hatch with a hollow clang, bounced once, and dropped to the ground.

We looked at one another.

“Well, that’s quite a mouse,” Cristina said.

“Well... But doesn’t look like,” Viorica concluded philosophically.

We smiled. For a while, each of us was lost in our own thoughts.

“It’s like a letter from the past,” I said.

“From the past?” our daughter repeated.

“Yes. The house is reminding us that things made with love go on living.”

“It really is...” Cristi said softly. “Grandma and Grandpa made this house magical.”

“You know that old saying?” I asked my wife. “It’s really more Romanian than anything. You don’t hear it very often around here anymore. ‘If you have no grandparents...’”

I paused.

“...you should buy some,” Cristi finished.

Her eyes sparkled mischievously, just as they had many years before.

“I did study in Iași, remember?”

Viorica looked from me to her mother and back again, puzzled.

Then she wrapped her arms around us and announced proudly:

“But we have them!

Right?”

We nodded, smiling.

There was a little sadness in those smiles.

But even more, there was tenderness.

And love.