One gray October day in 1989, seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu is called to the school office by Comrade Director of MF3 High School. Terrified, Cristian finds himself being blackmailed by an agent of the Securitate, Romania's feared secret police, into becoming a spy. The Secu tells Cristian he knows about his "impressive vintage stamp collection" and that he has sold a vintage Romanian stamp, accepted foreign currency from a foreigner and is therefore guilty of illegal trafficking. Cristian suspects that his best friend, Luca is the one who has informed on him.
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 met and became friendly with the diplomat's sixteen-year-old son, Dan: they talked and traded 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. Cristian is ordered to "continue to meet with the son of the American diplomat" and "will report details of the diplomat's home and family." He will become an informer, code named "OSCAR". In return, Cristian's grandfather, Bunu will receive medicine to treat his leukemia.
On his way home after meeting with the Secu agent, Cristian encounters Liliana Pavel, the girl he's been trying for days to "co-incidentally" meet after school. She lives in the same building as Cristian's best friend, Luca who has a reputation for being sweet. Liliana is smart, quiet and often goes off to read. As they walk home together, they meet "Starfish" a boy a few years older than Cristian who is involved in the black market. Starfish lost an eye and the thick stitches on his closed eye socket resembled a crooked star. Starfish invites them to his video night on Saturday. To Cristian's surprise, Liliana wants him to come with her.
Cristian, his twenty-year-old sister Cicilia (Cici) who works at a textile factory, his parents, Mioara and Gabriel and his grandfather, Bunu live in a cramped, fourth floor apartment in Bucharest, Romania. Cristian sleeps in the closet by the front door. He keeps a journal hidden under the blankets on the floor. Cristian got the idea for a journal after seeing the notebook that Dan Van Dorn keeps for his college admissions essay. Because people believe that listening devices are hidden everywhere, at home everyone speaks in whispers except for his grandfather, Bunu. They hide Kents - Western cigarettes which are used for bribery, trade or the black market. On the balconies of the apartments, the "Reporters", women who spy on their neighbours, are ever watchful.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." Cristian realizes that the movie he's watched is of "...real people, in a real house in the West, with real food." 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. The school director was an informer. He informed on the teachers. The secretary was an informer. She informed on the school director. Luca was an informer. He informed on me. I was an informer. I informed on Americans." This realization makes Cristian wonder if Liliana is an informer. He believes that Liliana leaving school the day they first met up, might be a sign she was also meeting with a Secu.
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. He also doesn't know what he was given, if it will help him or kill him. At this point, Cristian believes his grandfather knows he's an informer.
When Liliana and Cristian meet up in the darkened stairwell of his apartment building they discuss what happened in Cristian's class. They hear someone on the stairs and it turns out to be Cristian's mother. When they return to the stairwell, Liliana she wonders if the world knows what is going on in Romania and if they would help them. Thinking about how they can listen to broadcasts from Radio Free Europe, Cristian considers sneaking 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 Magazine 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. As it turns out, Bunu already knows because he's repaired their radio. Listening to Radio Free Europe, Bunu believes East Germany will be next.
The brutal murder of Bunu leads Cristian to secretly leave Van Dorn his notebook so he can let the world know what is happening in Romania. Cristian's mother tells him that Bunu's murder is a warning to the young people of Romania not to follow in the steps of the other communist countries. Soon freedom spreads throughout the Eastern Bloc, with the fall of communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria. When protests begin in Romania, at Maria Square in Timisoara, Western Romania, Cristian knows he has to act. He, along with Liliana, Luca and thousands of university students and residents of Budapest, begin protesting. Cristian is quickly drawn into the bloody uprising in Romania. But freedom will come with painful revelations and the loss of a beloved sister.
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. Interspersed in his narrative are the Informer Reports, detailing the activities of Cristian and those around him.
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.Fro m 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. It also 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 had been 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 the many necessities 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 food, fuel, medicine, clothing and other necessities. As glasnost and perestroika spread throughout the Soviet Union in the late 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.
Life in Ceausescu's Romania is one where anyone might be an informer. People are blackmailed into becoming an informer on family and friends, hence the title of the novel. 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 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 must betray Dan, his new American friend. He tries to assuage his conscience by hoping that he can beat the Secu at his own game, but soon learns this is not the case.
However, the Secu's forcing of Cristian into meeting with Dan has an unintended consequence: it offers him a window into what life is like in a free country like America. Watching a home-made video, Cristian is stunned by the amount of food in a family's refrigerator in America, how people interact freely with one another. He even notices how Mr. and Mrs. Van Dorn show natural affection for one another by their touches and looks, something he's never seen his parents do. He realizes that everything he's been told about America is a lie.
Sepetys uses the character, Bunu, Cristian's grandfather, to explain how the Ceausescu regime has been able to control the Romanian people. Bunu tells his grandson, "...Ceausescu may be near illiterate, but even I can admit that he's a statesman and a mastermind...And think about it, Cristi, he starts with toddlers. The little ones are just four years old when they're indoctrinated....Four years old. it's cunning."
Bunu is the voice of truth and courage, telling 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?"
Later on Bunu tells his son Gabriel, Cristian's father, "Mistrust is a form of terror. The regime pits us against one another. We can't join together in solidarity because we never know whom we can trust or who might be an informer....You see, even out here in the street, you're paranoid to be speaking with your own father! You've become a man without a voice. Mistrust. It's insidious. It causes multiple personality syndrome and rots relationships."
The reader learns in the Epilogue that Bunu was informed on by his daughter-in-law, Cristian's mother, who hoped to save her two children. His voice of dissent had to be silenced and so he was poisoned by radioactive coffee and then beaten to death as the threat to the regime deepened. Bunu's brutal murder demonstrates how the Ceausescu regime tolerated no resistance, even that of an elderly, dying man. He was murdered because he was able to recognize and counter the lies of the state.
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 and the Soviet Union: 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. As Cristian writes in his notebook that is eventually published, "If communism is such a Paradise, why do we need barriers, walls, and laws to keep people from escaping?" 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 incredibly detailed research Sepetys undertook to write I Must Betray You. A map of Europe in 1989 opens the novel along with a dedication photograph of Romanian students in 1989. Sepetys's extensive research is evident in the believable characters she has crafted and her realistic portrayal of life in Romania in 1989. I Must Betray You is an absolute must-read!! As author Ruta Sepetys ends her Author's Note: "Together we can give history a voice."
Book Details:
I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys
New York: Philomel Books 2022
319 pp.
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