I Must Betray You is a chilling portrayal of life in communist Romania under the brutal regime of Nicolae Ceausescu just as the Soviet Union is collapsing.
One gray October day in 1989, seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu is called to the office by the school's Comrade Director. Terrified, Cristian finds himself being blackmailed by an agent of the Securitate, Romania's feared secret police, into becoming a spy.
Cristian's mother, Mioara, works as a maid to a U.S. diplomat, Nicholas Van Dorn. While waiting for his mother to finish work, Cristian is friendly with the diplomat's son, Dan; they talk and trade stamps which is illegal in Romania. The Secu, whom he calls "Paddle Hands", threatens Cristian with this knowledge and coerces him into spying for the Secu. In return, Cristian's grandfather, Bunu will receive medicine to help his leukemia.
After meeting with the Secu agent, Cristian encounters Liliana Pavel, the girl he's been trying for days to "co-incidentally" meet after school. As they walk home together, they meet "Starfish" a boy a few years older than Cristian who is involved in the black market. Starfish invites them to his video night on Saturday.
So Cristian begins spying on Dan Van Dorn. Cristian believes he can outwit the agent at his own game so he starts by noting things he believes the Secu agent might be interested in such as the location of rooms and furniture but which are harmless.
Eventually Cristian meets up with Dan Van Dorn again and makes mental notes about the apartment while Dan looks for stamps to trade with Cristian. At this point, Cristian realizes that Dan knows he is under surveillance. He also meets Dan's parents.
Cristian also believes he knows who informed on him - his best friend Luca Oprea, a kind boy who plans to study medicine. When he and Luca are assigned to help harvest vegetables, Cristian beats Luca.
At a second meeting with the agent, Cristian tells him about the Van Dorn's apartment and is tasked with noting what's on the father's desk and also to accompany Dan to the American Library. The next day Cristian and his family, like every other family in Bucharest, must stand in line for anything they want at the Alimentara, the grocery store. It is bitterly cold, and Cristian reflects on how each member of his family takes their turn in the lines.
But when Cristian visits Dan in his home again, he cannot help but notice the stark contrast to his own living conditions. It is warm like summer, there is a large colour TV, and a video player with head phones. The contrast is even more extreme when Cristian watches a home made video of Dan's friends and is stunned to see the inside of a large refrigerator stuffed with food from top to bottom. "All kinds of food. In bottles, cans, cartons, dividers, and drawers. So many colors and quantities. Of food...Fresh. Ripe. Just waiting to be eaten." When Cristian confronts his mother about what he's seen at the Van Dorn's, she becomes defensive and angry, telling him it's no use dreaming about things they can never have.
At school, after a classmate confesses to being an informer, Cristian realizes that everyone is informing on everyone. "The teacher must be an informer. He informed on the students. The school director was an informer. He informed on the teachers. The secretary was an informer. She informed on the school director."
Meanwhile at home, Bunu works to repair their broken radio. As he and Cristian discuss communism and the Secu, Bunu reveals that he was paid a visit by someone and given "medicine" to help him and that this was because someone in their home is an informer.
When Liliana and Cristian meet up and discuss what happened in Cristian's class, she wonders if the world knows what is going on in Romania. Thinking about how they can listen to broadcasts from Radio Free Europe, Cristian wonders if he could sneak his secret notebook to Mr. Van Dorn with a request to send it to Washington. He believes that Ceausescu has fooled the Americans into believing Romania is a successful country.
At his next meeting with Dan, Mr. Van Dorn writes the word TIME on paper and tells Cristian to look for the most recent edition at the American Library. This leads Cristian to believe that he can share the truth about Romania with him. When Cristian reads TIME at the American Library, he is stunned to learn that their neighbour, Hungary is free and no longer communist. He knows he has to tell Bunu.
But as it turns out, Bunu already knows because he's had their radio repaired. Listening to Radio Free Europe, Bunu believes East Germany will be next. As freedom spreads throughout the Eastern Bloc with the fall of communist regiimes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, Cristian plans to deliver his notebook to Van Dorn anonymously. Soon he finds himself drawn into the spreading revolution in Romania, along with freedom, will come terrible loss and painful revelations.
Discussion
Ruta Sepetys has crafted a brilliant historical fiction novel that effectively portrays the repressive regime of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu through the eyes of a teen character, seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu.
In 1945, the communists came to power in Romania due to the occupation and intervention of the Soviet Union.Prior to this, there had been a struggle as to whether Romania would adopt Western style democracy or Soviet communism.
From 1945 until 1965, Soviet-style communism with its antagonistic approach to the West controlled Romania. In 1965, with the death of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Rej, Nicolae Ceausescu came to power as leader of Romania's Communist Party. He worked to move Romania away from the Soviet sphere of influence, ending its participation in the Warsaw Pact military alliance and condemning the Soviet Union's invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979. Unlike the Soviet Union and its Bloc countries, Ceausescu was not interested in shutting Romania off from the West: he was friendly towards the United States and signed trade agreements with the European Economic Community.
However this openness did not last. In 1974, Ceausescu became president of Romania but he also became increasingly authoritarian. Romania had a much-feared secret police, called the Securitate and they began to develop a large network of informers. This caused much fear and division as people never knew who to trust and made any form of resistance almost impossible. The Securitate was responsible for the torture and death of thousands of Romanians.
Prior to the 1980's, Bucharest was known as "the Little Paris of the East" for its cobbled streets, tree-lined boulevards, cafes, historic churches and monasteries, and many grand buildings. After the 1977 earthquake, Ceausescu was determined to remake the center of Bucharest into something more modern like what he had seen in North Korea. He demolished many parts of the city center including the Uranus district and levelled the Vacaresti Hill, the location of an ancient monastery. In place of these beautiful and historic buildings, Ceausescu built rows of concrete apartment blocks. He also built a huge, opulent palace while his own people did without many basics of life.
In the 1980's life in Romania became almost impossible. In debt to foreign banks, Ceausescu began exporting the country's agricultural and industrial products. As a result, people experienced shortages of just about everything including food, fuel, medicine, clothing and other necessities.
As glasnost and perestroika spread throughout the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the communist regimes began to fall throughout the Eastern Bloc. A demonstration in Timisoara in which the Romania army fired on its own people became the flashpoint for the revolution and fall of the communist Romanian government and the trial and execution of the Ceausescus.
In I Must Betray You, Ruta Sepetys uses her characters to describe life under Romania's dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. Cristian and Liliana Pavel discuss how their beautiful city of Bucharest has been destroyed as they walk home together. Liliana remarks, "My father said that Bucharest used to be called 'Little Paris'. There were trees everywhere, lots of birds, and even Belle Epoque architecture." Cristian recalls that his Bunu once told him that "...Bucharest was once a luxury stop on the Orient Express."
Cristian then describes the reality of what life has become under the repressive regime: "Families, like our family of five, were herded into one-bedroom, ashtray-sized flats. I looked at the cement apartment blocks we passed. Some weren't even finished. They had no doors, no elevators, no stair railings. Similar concrete hulks loomed around the city, gray staircases to nowhere. Concrete walls gave birth to concrete faces."
Even worse than the destruction of beauty is the fear and paranoia of life in Romania during the Ceausescu dictatorship. Like everyone else, Cristian tries to pass unnoticed. "I pretended to follow the rules. I kept things to myself, like my interest in poetry and philosophy. I pretended other things too...I pretended that studying English was a commitment to my country... Many things were illegal in Romania - including my thoughts and my notebook." However, he soon discovers that no one goes "unnoticed" by the Secu.
When Cristian is sent to meet the Securitate agent he nicknames "Paddle Hands", he is terrified and doesn't know what he might have done to be in this situation. "What had I done? The truth was, most Romanians broke the rules some way or another. There were so many to break. And so many to report that you had broken them." He learns that somehow the agent knows about his vintage stamp trade with Dan Van Dorn and the dollar he has come to possess. This situation creates a sense of betrayal and paranoia in Cristian, who wonders, "The agent had a file. Who informed on me? I threw a quick glance over my shoulder into the shadows. Was I being followed?"
Cristian being forced into becoming an informer, leaves him deeply conflicted, filled with disgust for himself at not being able to refuse. He doesn't want to be an informer, but does it in the hopes of getting medicine for his beloved Bunu. He tries to assuage his conscience by hoping that he can beat the Secu at his own game. The loss of his friendship with Liliana Pavel who is horrified at his betrayal, fills him with self-hatred. As people rise up against communism in other countries, Cristian fights back in the only way he knows how - with his words, in his journal which he decides to sneak into Mr. Van Dorn's study.
Cristian's friendship with Dan Van Dorn, son of the U.S. diplomat, offers him a window into what life is like in a free country like America. Cristian observes how at ease Dan is walking through Bucharest to the American Library, noting that he can be himself. Watching a home made video, Cristian, who like every other Romanian must line up to get even a rotten can of beans, is stunned by the amount of food in a family's refrigerator in America.
Sepetys uses the character, Bunu, Cristian's grandfather to explain how the Ceausescu regime is able to control the Romanian people and how to fight back. He is the voice of freedom and courage. For example, Bunu tells Cristian, "They steal our power by making us believe we don't have any...But words and creative phrases - they have power, Cristian. Explore that power in your mind." But he also reminds Cristian that the Securitate cannot control what he thinks. Bunu explains to Cristian how he can survive in such a repressive environment. "...You see, communism is a state of mind...The State controls the amount of food we eat, our electricity, our transportation, the information we receive. But with philosophy, we control our minds. What if the internal landscape was ours to build and paint?"
Bunu is informed on by Cristian's mother, who hopes to save her two children. His voice of dissent must be silenced and so he is poisoned. Bunu's brutal murder demonstrates how the communist regime will tolerate no resistance, even that of an elderly, dying man.
I Must Betray You is a stunning novel, and a timely one. Romania's experience with communism mirrored that of most other Eastern Bloc countries; food and fuel shortages, rampant poverty, state police who tortured and murdered their own citizens, constant surveillance with almost no personal freedom. It is a reminder of the brutality and inhumanity of communism at a time when some see it as an plausible alternative to the struggles Western democracies are currently experiencing. Historical fiction can remind us of the lessons of the past, ones that must not be repeated.
The novel includes many historical, black and white photographs at the back, along with a detailed Author's Note and a Research and Sources section that explains the research Sepetys undertook to write I Must Betray You. Sepetys's extensive research is evident in the believable characters she has crafted and her realistic portrayal of life in Romania in 1989.
Book Details:
I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys
New York: Philomel Books 2022
319 pp.
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