If someone were to tell me that I’d be reading and enjoying the same books that my parents read, I’d probably tell them they were crazy. As part of growing up and rebelling against the elder’s culture, I avoided like the plague the little library that my parents built. Sure, I’d brag about how my parents are well read but I never personally dabbed into the books they chose as companions.

Imagine my surprise when I found myself laughing out loud about the silly characters and impossible situations that not even ChatGPT could come up with.

Let me tell you a story about 320 black cats.

The book is available online and you can also order it in stores but I’m not sure it was even translated into English. It should be but it has so many things that are specific to post-communist Romania that I guess other nationalities would probably miss or deem as weird.

https://www.academia.edu/16364022/320_de_pisici_negre_Rodica_Ojog_Brasoveanu

So let me tell you the storyline. Melania Lupu is a kind old lady, who, after a failed stunt ends up in jail and then escapes with the help of Olga Tudor, her cell mate. Olga was supposed to be busted out by some baddies in order to aid them in the recovery of a golden statue known as the Madonna, weighing close to 78kg.

The baddies (they’re not so bad once you get to know them), are a random group of people including an ugly unmarried lady of just 37years old, a balerino (male ballerina), a teacher and are lead by an English man called Ned Morton, who after promising them a fortune of $10,000, realises that he’s in over his head.

The hit is successful as his men return with a woman of the appropriate age, but what he doesn’t know, he broke out Melania, not Olga. And Melania, playing the silly old lady, figures out that these bad men are after a treasure and she’s all for getting it first.

She’s playing a confused, slightly demented nanna and the baddies feel for her and are trying to do their best to treat her with kindness and respect. They buy her sweets (mostly chocolates), clothes and makeup and when she says she will remember better if her cat Mirciulica would be with her, they do their best to trap all the black cats in the area and bring it to her to judge if this is hers or not.

I started chuckling and then howling with laughter as the comedic scene unfolded. Imagine hundreds of black cats, meowing and spitting and hissing, all together in a two bedroom 4th floor apartment, possibly no more than 50 sqm.

The cats are all the wrong ones but the baddies don’t give up. The Englishman offers now $10/cat so they go with meats and traps attempting to carry more cats to the little old lady who is refusing one after another.

After a while, she said she recognises her own cat and then proceeds to whisper daily to the cat her life story and other stories to the boredom of her captors. She does give them a few “hints” on where she would have left the Madonna (but as she never owned it, it’s a wild goose chase). Melania drugs her captors and escapes the apartment twice, just to be able to go to her own house and erase the evidence that got her arrested in the first place, and second to see what Olga Tudor was hiding.

She’s never in any danger and the Englishman, Ned, quickly realises what she is and who she is and begins, begrudgingly, to admire Melania’s wit and even go as far as saying she would make a great addition to the international villains scene.

Melania and Mirciulica are happy to stay in Bucharest, in her old apartment and enjoy the independence that her new single life brings her. You see, she used to be married to a Colonel and during his life, she was nothing more than a shadow, a yes-woman, content to be in the sidelines. Since his death, she found joy in baking cakes on rainy days, going to the movies on her own for the matinees and reading books in the park. She’s content and happy and her emotional well-being is aided by a very caring black tomcat.

In the end, she goes to the police and claims she was kidnapped by some weird men who were in a cemetery trying to dig out a statue. The police captures them but the only accusation that they could use was the fact they broke her out and that they hit a policeman in the process over the head.

Melania also knows she erased all traces of evidence and she wouldn’t be convicted anymore. To her chagrin, during her evidence erasing session, the tomcat pawed at her scarf which fell down, putting her on the scene once more, as the ladies she was incarcerated with could swear she had a dainty little scarf with her initials on – same scarf recovered from her apartment by the police.

The book ends sadly with a little old lady going to jail once more and her tearing up knowing she won’t see her cat, Mirciulica, anymore.

Loved it. The book is funny, there’s a lot of shenanigans and there’s no violence. Nobody dies, nobody gets hurt and if Melania would be 20 years younger, I think Ned would have married her without hesitation. The story is well woven and the four hooligans have their merits. They all dream of a nicer future. To be seen, to help out, to open a dance school for the rich kids 🙂

The Major who arrests her (Cristescu) is also a nice dude. He doesn’t want to, he likes the old woman, but there needs to be justice.

If you find it in English, give it a read and let me know what you think.

Plus points: It’s happening in Bucharest. You see all people live in apartment buildings and very rarely in houses. People want to buy furniture and fridges in instalments. Chocolates and sweets are expensive (I suppose also hard to find) and the Major, he can get a list of the people who landed in Bucharest very quickly and the list is no more than 10 people in 4 days because in the Communist era, travelling in and out of the country was heavily discouraged and monitored by the Security (like Interpol). There’s also doilies on furniture, polite calling times for the police (after 7AM) and that mothball feeling that people didn’t throw away their old things and just kept using them.