Chapter 1
May, 1920.
The entire city of Bucharest is intoxicated with humidity and the scent of acacia blossoms. It’s a late afternoon, and outside, a round, complete summer sun hangs in the sky. Everything feels stretched, and nothing has precise contours. Though predominantly horizontal and lined with sprawling gardens, the city burns.
From behind tall gates, ladies draped in lace start to emerge for their promenade on the boulevard. They smile brightly, youthfully. Although their steps are small—because they are out to be admired, not rushed—they glide swiftly into the consuming light and soon disappear from sight. Luckily, others follow, always others...
The most affluent are escorted by gentlemen with meticulously curled mustaches and helped into carriages. The coachmen proceed at a calm, muffled pace, subdued by the unpaved streets, allowing the ladies and gentlemen time to exchange words. It is a time for flirtations and playful banter.
Barefoot street urchins dart between carriages and bicycles, delivering messages, errands, or perfumed letters.
Soon, the lamplighter will come to ignite the streetlights, and from street corners, whispers of love will begin to float.
This is the beautiful side of Bucharest.
The side that, for Lia, does not exist.
On a small, nameless alley—a dead end that appears in no official document—stands a hovel. A narrow, muddy yard devoid of trees, as though unworthy of them. It is the last yard in a row of other small, cramped, poverty-stricken hovels belonging to Nită Briceag, a petty landowner. A slum of the lowest order, so low that even other slums mock it.
Here lives Lia, a soul turned wild, who, from everything that exists on this earth, has known only poverty, humiliation, and pain.
She is 16 years old and has never laughed until tears came to her eyes. She has never truly been happy.
But Lia is not weak, despite everything one might assume about her. Her frail body hides strength and resilience enough for a dozen people. She wants more for herself because she knows she can and that she deserves it!
At home—this crumbling hovel she affectionately calls home—live her mother, father, and two older brothers. All of them have succumbed to the vice of alcohol. Lia does not judge them for it; everyone bears their own cross. Her father and brothers fought in the Great War, as did most able-bodied men of that time. They left for the front as whole men and returned broken. Her father lost an arm, her brothers lost their minds. There is no relying on them for anything. Her mother, weak by nature, chose to join them in their vice rather than oppose them. And so, though her house is full, Lia is alone.
Lia works in the house of Nită Briceag. She is a maid. She works tirelessly, without complaint. She is so accustomed to hard labor that she no longer feels fatigue. Her movements are mechanical, unconscious, almost as if she no longer realizes she is working.
The favorite part of her life is her dreams. At night, when she finally lays her head on the pillow, she dreams almost always of a dark room, a full moon, and the sound of a piano. It is such a beautiful dream that she wakes up smiling in the morning, and that is the greatest joy she can hope for in life.
