My Romance In the Carpathian Mountains: A Past Life Retold

By Alice Ann Lake

Did I remember the past? Is it happening now? This is a love story about an older mountain woman and a younger townsman, both married to other people in 17th century Romania. There is singing and dancing, pagan rituals, mysticism, waterfalls, gypsies, food, sheep, dogs, ponies, a wedding, birth and death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365312366

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My Romance In the Carpathian Mountains: A Past Life Retold

MY ROMANCE IN THE CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS: A Past Life Retold

Alice Ann Lake

Copyright © 2016 by Alice Ann Lake

All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

ISBN 978-1-365-31236-6

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My first acknowledgement goes to Heather Wallace, who said, Why don't you write a book? The seed was planted and continued to grow despite my efforts to ignore it. I had to do it just to empty my mind of all the ideas that kept coming to me.

Without the patient help of Paul Hobday, e-book consultant at Lulu Publishing Co., I could not have produced this e-book by myself. Three months of e-mail questioning did not wear him down! I also acknowledge the suggestion by Andy Reed, of Pisgah Press, to use hyperlinks in my story.

My next acknowledgement goes to the wonderful website https://romaniadacia.wordpress.com, posted by Ana, who has given me permission to link to her photos, of which she has hundreds. I particularly draw your attention to the sub-sites of People, History, Culture and Regions as well as the Generic Information. I have inserted hyperlinks in the text to pictures that illustrate the story at that point. Additional pictures pertaining to the area can be found in References at the back of the book.

Thanks also to Ionutz Apostu for permission to link to the picture of the Lopatari fires on his facebook page. He also has other pictures of that region: scroll down to the picture with Localitatea Plostina Lopatari de Buzau underneath it.

Also, helpful for picturing costumes of specific regions is, http://www.romanianmuseum.com/, and for the Dragaica scene, Romania Journal, which is an English language website for all things Romanian.

Other websites that illustrate aspects of the region can be found in References, including You Tube videos of dancing, singing, gypsies, and Tara Luanei.

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EDITORIAL NOTE

Romanian words are not spelled with correct diacritical markings because of the requirements of electronic formatting.

THE STORY

It's June, my favorite month. The wildflowers are coming in. When they are in full bloom, there is a smear of color on the hillside—purple, blue, pink, white, yellow, orange, even red. Viewed from a distance, it appears like an artist's palette. I'm heading out there to pick bluebells for my dinner table, as we are having a guest tonight.

My husband's nephew, son of his oldest brother, is coming for a visit. I've never met him, and I am anxious to see what he is like. Everyone says he's an adventurer. He is always going places and doing exciting things.

We live at the edge of the woods high up on the Curvature Mountains (the elbow of the Carpathians), in fact, we are the highest farm in our village of Pipul. We are all free peasants, no serfs. Below our house are the orchards—cherry, plum, apple, and pear—and beyond that stretch the meadows and pasture for our sheep, one milk cow, and two Hucul ponies to pull a cart. We also have chickens and a few geese. When my husband is away, he allows me to shepherd the sheep.

I hear a dog barking far in the distance, and I know it is Zarva, my husband's lead sheep dog. They must be coming! I walk on down the hill and in the distance I see my husband's dark brown horse and beside him a dapple-gray. They hitch their horses near the road to the barn and walk the rest of the way up toward me. My husband is taller and larger than the young man, who even from a distance I can see is chatting merrily with a smile.

Madalina! my husband calls to me.

Wadim! I call back.

At last they are standing in front of me, and my husband introduces the young man to me.

This is Iosif's youngest son, Andrei.

I see a thick shock of black hair hanging below his ears in soft waves, and I gaze into black eyes that are looking at me in such an intense way that I could not have looked away if I wanted to, but I did not. And that smile! I never saw such white teeth in my life—his smile is dazzling as if the sun had lit up his face! His skin is darker than most, and I wonder if his mother was a gypsy, but in trying to recall meeting her twenty years ago when I married Wadim, I don't remember any features that suggested Roma. I do recall her carrying a toddler, and assume that must have been Andrei.

Welcome to our home, I say.

"Hello, Matusica, (Auntie)! he says. I have been so looking forward to meeting you." Then he kisses me lightly on each cheek.

He makes me feel as if meeting me were the social highlight of his life, when I, a simple peasant woman, am the one so excited to meet this worldly family member who lives in the town in the plains.

Wadim and Iosif Yavlov had been born in a village on the mountain not far from the village where I was born. Yes, the name is Russian, but the family had lived in Muntenia for some two hundred years. Their parents, now dead, eventually moved to town, and only one spinster sister is left in the old home. Iosif had moved to town also and had become a merchant of rugs and other household items. Wadim on the other hand was the village's Woodman, so he went to live near the forest, where our home is. He supplied folks with firewood and the lumber they needed to build with, and when he had the time, he made cradleboards with intricate carvings.

You see, after we married, Wadim made a cradleboard in anticipation of a baby to