In May 1892, a delegation of over 200 Romanians traveled to Vienna, seeking redress from their systemic oppression by the ruling Hungarians. The emperor refused to grant them an audience, and their written memorandum was later returned to them unopened and unread. Two months later, the Stănescu family left their village of Sândominic, never to return.
❧
“Uite, Ana.” Look. They had passed out of the mountains and were crossing a vast plain as the sun rose behind them. Dália sat next to her mother and stroked Ana’s black wooly hair as they looked out the window at the unfamiliar countryside flying past. Ana wore a white blouse with delicate flowers embroidered at the collar and cuffs, a dark blue skirt, and a small black apron around her waist. Ana’s brown eyes and red mouth were also embroidered, limiting her response to silently nodding her head. Dália held her rag doll’s face to the window so Ana could continue watching the scenery and turned her own attention to the inside of the third-class carriage.
She couldn’t see much, just a mass of bodies sitting and standing, muttering and sighing, coughing and farting. There was, therefore, plenty to hear and smell. Her father sat on the hard wooden bench beside them, softly snoring through his mustache. Other travelers crowded the aisle, swaying as one through the curves, their clothes redolent of goat and sheep. The acrid scent of sweat was seasoned with the sweet smell of fried onions and a dash of paprika. Somewhere out of sight beyond a forest of legs, chickens in crates clucked and squawked indignantly, protesting their treatment.
And of course, there was the incessant sound of the locomotive wheels clacking on the rails undercutting it all. The humid air in the carriage was suffocating. Dália had wanted to open the window, but her mother forbade it, knowing that the wind would blow a burning cinder into someone’s eye.
They changed trains at Keleti station in Budapest.
“Uite, Ana,” Dália breathed when they entered the atrium. The ceiling soared overhead, cupping the enormous arched window in the western wall. Dália had never seen a building so large, so perfectly geometric, with more rectangles and semicircles than she could count.
They were fortunate to secure a single seat for the next leg of their journey. Dália perched on her mother’s lap while her father stood for the entire six hours. Silvia tried to switch places with him about halfway through, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “Omul cât trăiește, face munca bărbatului, că nu-i de femeie,” he said, shaking his head. A man, as long as he lives, does the work of a man, for it is not the work of a woman.
When the train eventually wheezed into Trieste, the Stănescu family wormed its way to the end of the car and alit onto the platform, Gheorghe holding Silvia’s hand, Silvia holding Dália’s hand, and Dália holding Ana’s. Holding their large valise in front of him, Gheorghe maneuvered them through the main hall to the exit, out of the bustling station and onto the bustling street. “Vom găsi o cameră mai departe de gară,” he declared. We’ll find a room farther from the station.
They trudged south towards the waterfront as the sun took its leave from the ruddy sky and sank into the sea on their right. They had been traveling for the better part of two days, first by oxcart from Sândominic to Miercurea Ciuc, a rough and plodding journey that began before dawn and mercifully ended in the midafternoon, then by train south to Brașov, then overnight to Budapest, and finally to the port of Trieste on the Adriatic. They were understandably exhausted.
Peering down a side street, Silvia saw a sign hanging over a doorway, with a picture of a bed and a lantern. “Camere,” she read with relief. Rooms. Gheorghe smiled at her and Dália, then led the way inside.
❧
Early the next morning, they strode down to the docks, eager to secure passage on a steamer. Dália had never been out of the Carpathians before and was delighted by the sights and sounds and smells of the harbor. Battered fishing boats with oil lamps at their gunwales returning from a night’s work. The crashing and banging of enormous steamships being loaded with cargo. Dock workers shouting and cursing. Birds wheeling and screeching overhead and diving into the water. The invigorating tang of salty air. The disquieting stench of dead sea creatures under the wharves.
The ticketing office teemed with people: mothers with mewling babies and grimy children guarding their baggage, fathers jostling in line, harried clerks behind the wide wooden counter consulting ledgers and timetables, no doubt a pickpocket skulking and plying his trade. A cacophony of voices filled the air: Italian, Slovene, Serbian, Croatian, German, Hungarian, Greek, Yiddish, Albanian, you name it. Although the morning was not yet an hour old, the room was already uncomfortably warm and close. A bead of sweat ran down Silvia’s back as she staked out a corner for herself and Dália, while Gheorghe joined the queue.
He returned some time later, damp under the arms and visibly frustrated. Dália watched as her parents argued, adding Romanian to the din. The ship they wanted was leaving that very day but there were no tickets available. No, there was nothing available tomorrow. Maybe next week, who knows.
Silvia held out her hand for the money, which Gheorghe reluctantly handed over. “Omul cât trăiește, face munca bărbatului, dar uneori este nevoie de atingerea unei femei,” she said with a wistful smile. A man, as long as he lives, does the work of a man, but sometimes a woman’s touch is required.
She marched to the far end of the ticketing counter where a young clerk was updating a blackboard with the names of ships, their destinations, and their times of departure. He shook his head apologetically and started to point to the back of the line when she caught his eye and tilted her head almost imperceptibly. Silvia was dressed much like Ana, wearing an off-white blouse embroidered along the edges and tucked into a long dark skirt. The blouse featured a placket with buttons down the front, which she had casually begun unfastening when she reached the counter, presumably to find some relief from the stifling air.
Silvia leaned forward and squeezed her arms against her sides, causing the crease in her ample bosom to deepen. She riffled the sheaf of bills to show the clerk that she had the money to do business, then fanned her glistening chest with it and raised one eyebrow suggestively. The clerk’s eyes widened for a second but he quickly regained his composure and said “Uno momento, per favore.” One moment, please. He hastened to the back of the clerk’s area and knocked on a door, then opened it and stuck his head inside for a moment. As he returned to Silvia, her eyes rolled back into her head and she swooned, fainting to the floor, still clutching the money tightly in her damp fist.
The clerk quickly opened a small door in the counter and crouched over her, making a show of his concern. Silvia’s eyes fluttered open and she blinked in apparent confusion. The clerk, with his face shielded from any onlookers, flashed her a conspiratorial grin. Extending his hand, he helped her to her feet. “Uffizio,” he said with a smile, indicating the door at the back. Office.
The clerk escorted Silvia into the office, which was cluttered with towering stacks of ledgers and papers on every available surface. An older man with a large mustache, clearly a supervisory bureaucrat of some sort, rose from behind a desk and leered at her as the clerk closed the door behind him. When Silvia heard the lock snap shut, she smiled inwardly, knowing that her trap had been sprung. “Bărbați,” she thought with a mix of disdain and pity. Men.
Silvia showed them the money, ninety Austro-Hungarian gulden in all, and held up three fingers. “Trei,” she stated firmly. “Nyew Yohrk.”
The supervisor chuckled quietly and nodded in agreement. He collected the money and began undoing his trousers. Silvia glared at him and cleared her throat. He gave her a sly but approving look—No, I wouldn’t trust me either—and gestured for the clerk to produce the tickets. Silvia, realizing that she had no way to verify that the tickets were any good, went through the motions of looking them over and then tucked them into her blouse, evidently satisfied. She nodded and began lifting her skirt and petticoat as the supervisor resumed unbuttoning his trousers. He pulled out his stiffening prick and spat into his palm, then fondled his cock in order to bring it to full attention.
Silvia leaned back against the desk and held her skirts above her waist, allowing the supervisor to ogle the triangle of delicate black curls between her legs. He leaned forward and kissed her roughly, his breath reeking of garlic, then with no further preamble jabbed his spit-slicked cock into her pussy. Silvia closed her eyes, feigning delight, as the supervisor thrust in and out of her. After a moment, she heard the sounds of papers being shifted behind her. Opening her eyes and turning her head, she saw that the clerk was clearing off the desktop and stacking the ledgers on the floor.
When he had cleared sufficient space, he stepped behind the desk and gently took Silvia’s shoulders in his hands, guiding her to lie flat on her back with her head hanging off the desk upside-down in front of the kneehole. The clerk began kneading and massaging her bountiful breasts through her blouse. This was not part of the usual routine when she was intimate with Gheorghe, but she decided she didn’t mind as long as he wasn’t trying to reach inside and steal back the tickets.
Silvia closed her eyes again as the supervisor perfunctorily plowed her pink pussy. She felt the clerk remove his hands from her chest and heard the sound of him undoing his own trousers. She opened her eyes and was treated to a close-up, upside-down, view of his cock and balls. He flopped his cock against her lips and she flinched in surprise, quite sure that no woman in Sândominic had ever been subjected to such treatment.
Silvia looked up at the clerk around his dick, which was resting on her nose. He tilted his head and made kissing motions with his lips, then dragged the head of his cock across her mouth. Silvia pursed her lips and gave the underside of his dick a tiny kiss. The clerk flopped his cock onto Silvia’s lips, and she responded by planting a flurry of kisses on it. “Pentru a nu-și ciufuli penele, o pasăre trebuie să se confrunte în vânt,” she thought grimly. To avoid ruffling its feathers, a bird must face into the wind. The supervisor kept fucking her, and she was mildly surprised by his stamina.
The clerk stuck out his tongue and waggled it while nodding in the direction of his dick. Silvia stared at him before giving it a tentative lick, then a longer lick, tasting the salty sweat and inhaling the musky odor. He steered his dripping dickhole to her tongue and she captured a fat drop of his sap, which deformed and stretched into a shining thread as he pulled away. The clerk rubbed the head of his cock all over Silvia’s inverted lips, painting them with his sweet syrup, then leaned down and kissed her softly. Her tacky lips stuck to his for a second as he slowly disengaged. On the other side of the desk, the supervisor continued puffing away, servicing his customer.
Silvia assumed that the clerk’s debauchery had run its course—what else could there possibly be?—when he opened his mouth into an O and nodded at her. Unsure, Silvia slowly opened her mouth, and the clerk smiled encouragingly and slid the head of his cock inside. Silvia was dumbfounded. No woman in Sândominic had ever received this perverse treatment, of that she was sure. He gently fucked her face while his supervisor vigorously pounded her pussy. The clerk leaned forward and ran his hands inside Silvia’s blouse, pinching her nipples as he continued humping her mouth with his stiff dick.
At long last, the supervisor completed his work. He gripped Silvia’s hips and rutted her savagely until he groaned and ejaculated, pumping his potent seed deep inside her fecund femininity. The supervisor staggered backwards, feeling for a chair, but fell to the floor while a stack of ledgers cascaded off a table on top of him. He lay on the floor, too spent to move.
Fearful that the clerk might follow suit, Silvia used her tongue to push his dick out of her mouth, then pulled her skirt higher to attract his attention to her nether region and shook her hips. The clerk’s eyes lit up, and he shuffled around the desk and without hesitation plunged his cock into Silvia’s sloppy slit. She grabbed his shirtfront and pulled him closer, and they kissed roughly as he pistoned his pelvis, pummeling her pussy while his bouncing balls bashed her beautiful bare bottom. A moment later, the clerk’s eyes bulged and he slammed his cock into her one last time, shooting a sea of sperm into her waiting womb.
The clerk stumbled back, tripped over the supervisor’s feet, and crashed to the floor, bringing another pile of ledgers down with him. Silvia lay on her back and breathed heavily as both men’s semen dripped out of her and onto the floor.
The clerk extricated himself from the pile of ledgers, pulled up his trousers, and slowly stood up. Silvia propped herself up on her elbows and gave him a wry smile. Do you like what you see? She accepted the handkerchief which he offered, then used it to mop up her cum-coated cunt. Meanwhile, the supervisor struggled to his feet and did up his trousers as well.
Silvia hopped off the desk and smoothed out her skirt. “Grazie mille,” she said flatly. A thousand thanks. As she reached the door, the supervisor croaked “Uno momento, signora.” She sighed—what now?—and turned to face him, fire in her eyes. He was standing at the desk, counting the ninety gulden. “Due?” he said solicitously, holding his hand flat up to the top of his head. Two? “E uno?” he continued, lowering his hand to his hip. And one?
“Sì,” Silvia confirmed warily. Two adults and one child.
The supervisor smiled kindly. “Settantacinque.” Seventy-five. He peeled some notes from the bankroll and handed Silvia fifteen gulden. Hesitating for only a second, she accepted the bills with a curt nod and tucked them into her blouse before buttoning it up. “Grazie mille,” she repeated, more softly this time. Holding her head high, Silvia unlocked the door and stalked out of the office.
❧
The SS Illyria put in at Venice, Genoa, and Naples before making its ten-day run into the wind through Gibraltar and across the Atlantic. They arrived in New York on a brilliantly sunny morning and debarked in the afternoon to join the shuffling sea of humanity headed for the new immigration processing facility on Ellis Island. All three of them were amazed by the panorama of towering buildings in the distance, and Dália was particularly taken with the giant woman holding aloft a torch, her copper skin mottled with patches of pale green.
Processing was a relatively quick affair. They were each given a cursory medical inspection—no lice, no coughing, no bleary eyes—and then their names were checked against the ship’s registry.
“Papers?” the immigration officer asked briskly. Upon receiving a blank stare, he rattled off “Ausweise? Passaporti?”
Ah, of course. Dália’s father handed over their documents. “Gheorghe Stănescu,” the officer read slowly. “Let’s do both you and me a favor, pal,” he chuckled as he recorded George Stanich in his ledger. “Let’s see… Silvia Stănescu. Just a little fix for you, sweetie.” Sylvia Stanich was inked in the ledger. “And you must be… Dália Stănescu.” He thought for a moment and then with a wink said “I think this will suit you nicely, little lady,” as he entered one more name in the ledger: Delilah Stanich.
Handing back their passports, he smiled warmly. “Welcome to America.”
❧
