Revolution

And then, when he was twenty years old, he made a mistake that changed his life. He played the folk song that the principal had overheard him play at the very begi

It was a second encore after a performance in Bucharest that mostly consisted of Mozart sonatas. It did not fit the program in any way. He hadn’t thought of the tune in years, and certainly hadn’t played it, or even pla

There was a good reason not to. The Romanian government, in one of its periodic fits of paranoia, had ba

It was never completely clear, even to Voda, why the song came into his head that evening, or why he allowed it to flow from his brain to his fingers. Perhaps he intended it as a protest against the state, though he had never harbored such political feelings before then. Maybe it was just misplaced nostalgia. In any event, the crowd heard it as a political statement, and their response was beyond anything he could ever have imagined. Had he stood up and declared himself king at REVOLUTION

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the end of the concert, they would have gladly taken him on their back and carried him to the castle.

He did nothing of the sort. He bowed, went to his dressing room, and later walked to the small apartment he kept a few blocks away. He was sleeping soundly at two in the morning when a troop of policemen broke in and arrested him. He was held in jail for six months, put on trial secretly, and sentenced to six years imprisonment for “treasonous behavior.”

It was there that Voda found his second career. Unlike music, politics was for him a difficult and unfriendly art. He came to it reluctantly, at first puzzled by the way other prisoners looked toward him as a leader. What they saw as an act of resolute defiance against overwhelming odds, he still viewed as a confused and confusing mistake. Only gradually did he come to understand the principles the dissidents were risking their lives for.

Democracy had never seemed magical to him. Surely a man should have control over his own life, but how far should that control extend? Used to long days of practice and grueling performance schedules, Voda didn’t think it should go very far.

When he was let out of jail at the end of his sentence, Voda found that he was no longer allowed to perform. He began moonlighting in small venues as a poorly paid piano player performing covers of popular songs. As long as he did not use his real name and stayed away from classical music, he remained unmolested by the authorities. The gigs paid enough for a very modest apartment, and kept food on the table, though it had to be supplemented by di

With his days largely free, Voda drifted toward the dissidents he’d known in jail, meeting them occasionally for coffee or a walk around town. Gradually, he began doing small things for the freedom movement—nothing brave, nothing outlandish, nothing even likely to earn him time in jail.

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Until, in a fit of pique at a government decree against another musician who had dared play a piece by an American composer at a public concert, Voda gave an impromptu out-door concert at Piata Revolutiei—Revolution Square, in the center of the city. For an hour, playing on a poorly miked upright piano, he serenaded the city with a selection of Mozart pieces he hadn’t played in public for years. By the time the police moved in, the crowd had grown to over 10,000. Men, women, and children pushed and shoved away the first group of policemen who tried to drag him off. Water ca

Two of his fingers were broken in the melee, though it wasn’t clear whether it had been done purposely. This time he was put in jail without a trial.

That was in April 1989. Eight months later a far larger crowd gathered at Piata Revolutiei to denounce and chase out the country’s dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. Voda was released from jail a few days later. He stood for parliament and was elected. From there his rise to president seemed almost preordained. Voda felt as if it was his fate—an increasingly heavy fate as time went on.

The end of the dictator brought considerable problems to the country. The guerrillas were a sideshow in many ways, a

Foreign relations were a nightmare. Russia pushed hard to bring Romania into its sphere of influence. Voda saw the country’s future residing with the West, but deep-seated REVOLUTION

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prejudices among many of the Europeans, especially those in Germany and France, had caused their politicians to drag their feet. On a personal level, Voda couldn’t stand most foreign leaders, whom he thought were bigots and thieves.

Even the Austrians tried to cheat Romania when the gas pipeline deal was brokered. At times, Romania’s only true ally seemed to be the United States, which was pushing for it to join NATO. But even the U.S. could be fickle.

Voda got along personally with the American ambassador, who claimed to own the CD he had recorded when he was just twenty-one. He had met President Martindale twice, not nearly enough to form a real opinion of the man.

By the time he was elected president, Voda had been involved in politics long enough to have made many enemies.

A whole section of the opposition viewed not only him but democracy itself as suspect; they would gladly bring back a dictator in a heartbeat—so long as he agreed with their positions, of course. But the worst were his old dissident friends.

Most felt they, not he, should be the head of state.

The president’s relationship with the military was, at best, difficult. He’d appointed Fane Cazacul as defense minister only in an attempt to placate some of the minor parties whose support was useful in parliament. Cazacul had his own power base, both in the military—with which Voda had problems—and in politics. But Cazacul was in many ways inept when it came to ru

Voda did not count General Locusta as an enemy, but he did not fully trust him either. Locusta was far more competent than Cazacul, and though nominally the equal of Romania’s three other lieutenant generals, was clearly the leading light of the General Staff. He also clearly wanted more power—a natural ailment among military men, Voda believed, and 268

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perhaps among all men in general. For that reason, as well as financial concerns and problems with Cazacul, Voda had hesitated to send Locusta the additional troops he wanted to fight the rebels. But the attacks on the pipeline trumped everything else; he knew he needed to protect the line or lose considerable revenue.