Manuscripts
In Darkness and Light
Description
In 2016 I started a novel I had wanted to write for a long time. It was a fictional chronicle blending the history of my family and my wife’s family. When I closed my eyes, I saw two rivers merging into one. I wanted the book to be a compelling and epic novel, a depiction of an entire society, a sweeping tale of the history, love, and survival of these people I cherished. When I finished writing, because of its length, I had to separate the two stories. The first part, based on my family, became The Last Patient, a tribute to my parents and grandparents who are no longer here. The second part became another novel, In Darkness and Light, based on the lives of my wife’s family. While there are a few necessary overlaps between the two works, each is freestanding. In Darkness and Light will be published at the end of spring in 2026.
The novel tells the story of a Jewish woman’s dramatic journey through mid-century Romania. In her teenage years, Tina Friedman, a shy dreamer, joins the underground Romanian Communist Party. During the Second World War, she and her family endure the horrors of deportation to Transnistria. Tina survives, returns home, and becomes a doctor. She falls in love with and marries Iulian, the chief editor of Scânteia, the main Communist newspaper. Iulian is blind. They have a daughter, Lydia. A few years after Iulian’s death by suicide, Tina marries Ben.
Excerpt
Tina examined her face in the small mirror between the two beds. Her cheeks were flushed and her blue eyes full of doubt and anticipation. “I hear he has a reputation with women,” she said to Flora, who was standing behind her. Flora, her lifelong friend and former college roommate.
“Is that a problem?” asked Flora.
“Look at my face, round as a doll’s.” Tina rose on her tiptoes. “And I’m short. Why would he like me?”
“It’s just a job interview, Tina Friedman. He doesn’t have to fall in love with you.”
Flora was five months pregnant. Her belly was showing, and eight weeks earlier, she had married and moved in with her husband. Now Tina shared the room and the rent with another medical student. She had no family in Timișoara, and her income consisted of her scholarship and the little bit she earned working at night as a seamstress. She needed more money and a more regular schedule. The exams were approaching. She lifted her light-brown curls and pressed them against her hot cheeks.
“Comrade Faur is the embodiment of what we admire in a man,” Flora said. “A true comrade. At twenty-five, he’s in charge of a major publication. He is a poet and a communist. Intelligent and totally dedicated to our movement.”
Flora came from a religious family. As a child she had attended Cheder and had studied the Torah, and later, before and after the war, under Tina’s influence, she had traded Zionism for communism.
“Is Faur a changed name?” Tina asked. “I heard he is Jewish.”
“So are we, and you always said that it doesn’t matter if one is Jewish or Romanian. Communism taught us that.”
*
“Comrade Faur, Comrade Friedman is here,” the secretary announced. She allowed Tina to enter an office with a high ceiling and large windows.
He dominated the room, tall behind his desk. His face was relaxed, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. He pointed to an armchair, and Tina sat, clasping her brown leather bag against her chest, making sure not to wrinkle her blouse. Old trees stood guard outside the windows, filtering the spring light through their leaves.
Tina didn’t realize he was blind until he told her what the job entailed—he needed someone to read to him books, newspaper articles, and reports, for two to three hours a day, ideally a person with good diction, a soft voice, and a passion for literature. The magazine he was leading, The Fighters of Banat, published poetry, essays, and political articles in support of the new communist regime. The pay was good.
With a smile, he explained that he was irritable and moody and that he expected a lot from people.
Not surprising for a blind man to be irritable, Tina thought, suddenly calm, like a doctor assessing a patient. She assured him she’d be up to the task, and told him she was a medical student, lived with a roommate, and really needed the money. She said she was originally from Câmpulung in Moldova, at the opposite end of Romania. Being Jewish, she and her family had been deported to Transnistria during the war for three long, horrible years. “I was seventeen when they took us,” she said, and added that her father had died when she was twelve, so her family at that time consisted of her mother, brother, sister, and Babtzia, her grandmother, who did not survive.
She stopped. He had to know the fate of most Jews during the war, but it was hard for her to read his reaction, his face partially hidden by glasses. Uncertain, she continued. “After the war, we returned to Câmpulung and found our house occupied and our valuables stolen. I took a job as an elementary school teacher in the small village of Dorohoi.” She told him she studied at night for her high school equivalency diploma. She was tired and sometimes hungry, memories of Transnistria haunting her sleep. But she was determined to go to college, and, after she took her equivalency, Flora, her childhood friend, convinced her to come with her to Timișoara and apply to the medical school.
“You are young. You have strength and determination,” Comrade Faur said, running his fingers through his curly black hair.
“I understand the value of education,” Tina said. She inhaled deeply.
“Then you’d be disappointed in me. My father didn’t think I was college material. He sent me to a trade school, and, for a while, I worked at a foundry.”
“Learning a trade is useful, and it helps us understand the working class and their just struggle. I’ve been working on and off as a seamstress since before the war when, in Câmpulung, they expelled all the Jews from high school. As for you, look how much you’ve achieved! A well-known poet, in charge of a major publication.”
“Not so major,” he said with a chuckle. “More like a propaganda tool, financed by the Communist Party.”
“I’ve been a communist for many years,” Tina said. “I don’t know if that matters to you.”
“Of course it does. I want to work with someone who shares my view of the world, my convictions.”
“Even though I’m studying to be a doctor, I love literature,” Tina said.
The more they talked, the more she enjoyed his presence, and she dared think that he, maybe, liked her as well. She asked if she would be taking dictation, and he inserted a sheet of paper into his typewriter and quickly tapped on the keys. Despite his lack of sight, he seemed proficient. He wrote, “I know you’ll do very well. You’re hired.”
Tina folded the sheet of paper and silently placed it in her purse, while her face carried a smile Comrade Faur could not see.
*
“You did not tell me that he was blind,” she reproached Flora.
“I didn’t know. After I learned it from you, I asked around. The rumor is that he lost his vision when he shot himself out of love for a woman. Her name was Emma. Apparently, they had a passionate relationship during the war, but she left him when her husband returned from the front.”
“How romantic.”
“Tragic, not romantic,” Flora said.