So here's the introduction (backstory?) of our first original kid character, Ion Sollomovici. To clarify, since Romanian history gets confusing around this point (not that Eastern European history is ever NOT confusing), this character is not Romania. ...it's Moldova. (To clarify even further, it's my Moldova, so that you won't be confused trying to imagine Himaruya's strange little pigtailed version running around messing everything up. They're entirely separate.) Romania's making his appearance next time with Ion, bless him. Any further questions you can message me with!
Chapter Text
Albiniţa, Basarabia (Kingdom of Romania)
3 April 1921
Ion had come to America because five sons were a boon but six became a burden when the sixth was…wrong. The community was too small, too close-knit, too claustrophobic to not notice when someone among them was more than what they seemed. And the community was far too religious and superstitious to not make an example of the newly-derelict pariah.
It became obvious to the Sollomovici family (less of a family and more of a clan for their numbers) that Ion, gifted and cursed as he was, could not stay safely in Anenii Noi. But there was no money to be made in Chișinău or even in București, not so soon after the last war, not even with his useful talents.
His mother Adalet pulled him aside one night before the evening meal, leading him by the hand as though he were still a child into the sheep-run, where the ewes were dozing after a long day of very strenuous grazing. He was told of an elderly Turkish aunt (or some sort of female relation) who lived on the coast in Constanța and would, provided he could present himself to her in a timely manner, get him on the last ship departing to Turkey before winter set in. A train would take him into Greece and onto another boat going to the southern coast of Italy.
"And from there," his mother told him, "America."
It was a strange concept to swallow: America was a place of legends and fairytales, like Camelot or Plato's Atlantis. It was not a real, tangible place that one could go to, regardless of the newspapers reeling off long stories about the newest happenings in American cities. But that was all they were: just stories.
But maybe the yarn had been woven so well that his whole family believed in it, that they would tearfully ship him off the following week in old man Wadim's vegetable cart towards Galați, wrapped in sheepskins with embroidered vests, cămase, and tooled leather chimiri that he could sell along the way and with all the money they could spare to gift him with. He embraced his elder brother Andrei and Andrei's wife Nira, his other brothers Vali, Aurel, and the twins Mikhail and Radu. His father Ovidiu clapped him on the shoulder with a slightly lost expression, as though he hadn't quite wrapped his mind around the idea that he was sending his fourteen year old son out into the world on his own. His mother could not be prevailed upon to appear at all, but they could all hear her muffled wailing inside the house though they pretended not to.
Worst of all was saying goodbye to his sister Miruna, his twin, pale-faced and shaking (though not crying, because she was too strong for that). She clung onto his arm as his father and brothers loaded his meager bag into the cart and conferred in quiet voices with Wadim, held his hand as he climbed into the small wagon, and clutched at his fingers and ran alongside the cart until they had picked up too much speed and were too far down the lane for her to continue safely in the dark.
(And Ion thought, maybe, Miruna would've run alongside the cart all the way to Galați and Constanța, Italy, and then America with him if she could have.)
—-
The road to Galați was long, bumpy, and hard going. It rained often, turning the hard-packed dirt roads into a knee-deep mud; either Ion and Wadim would often have to put their shoulders against the rear of the cart and push against it as the other jerked and tugged on the mule's bridle, blaspheming and singing praises in equal measure when the cart finally squelched free onto firmer ground.
Wadim was a sober, stoic man who doled out his words in scanty monosyllables, choosing silence when an economical gesture or quick blow could serve just as well. He was quick to bank the fire when the sun went down, quick to lay out his bedroll, and quick to close his eyes and slip off into sleep, his snores the only loud thing about him. One particularly cold night where the two (three) of them were forced to sleep beside the road for lack of inns, it occurred to Ion that he would likely not see his family again. And so, under the cover of Wadim's heavy snores, Ion pulled his blanket over his head and refused to cry, though any normal fourteen year old would.
(And to his chagrin, he was far too much of a normal fourteen year old.)
Not many days after his revelation, they arrived in Galați and Ion was swiftly set aboard a train in steerage. It was his first time aboard a train—
"—though not your last," Wadim said with grim humor, the most words he'd strung together in over a fortnight. He crossed himself and placed his hand atop Ion's head. "Go with God," he said solemnly.
Ion's last view of Wadim was through the fogged, scratched glass of the train window. The old man lifted his hand briefly in farewell before turning away, each of his steps punctuated by the shrill whistle of the departing train. Watching the last of his old life speed away as fast as a rheumatic old man could, Ion did not cry.
—-
23 December 1923
Later, Ion wryly noted that organizing the latest shipment of wines from Romania had a terrible tendency to make him reminisce. In retrospect, he mused, the reality hadn't been so bad as what he'd imagined. New York City was filthy in every meaning of the word, but poetry hid in its corners, waiting to be dusted off and relacquered. He did not see his family again, but he did receive a near constant flow of letters and photographs (courtesy of Nira, now a mother of two girls and the proud owner of some monstrously expensive camera). He placed all his letters in a collection of empty cigar boxes beneath his bed and pinned all the photographs to the walls of his loft, located above the "café" he worked in.
Sighing breezily and wiping his wrist against his forehead, he toed the last wooden crate of vin into place and then started to tally up the newest arrival of "Canadian whisky" from New Orleans.
He glanced around surreptitiously before sliding his hand through the crate and into a single bottle of whiskey, retracting it a moment later to lick his fingertip thoughtfully. Instantly he recoiled and spat off to the side.
"Formaldehyde," he muttered darkly, kicking at the crate. "Goddamn bayou rats."
He shot the crate one last dirty look before giving out a yell.
"Ei frate," he called up the stairs, "we've got some corpse juice down here."