Timpuri Vechi
CALEA VICTORIEI IN 1940
As seen by Countess R.G.
Waldeck in ATHENE PALACE (1942)
Toward the evening of the day I came to the Athene Palace a
light breeze relieved the glaring heat. The sinking sun put a rose sheen on
the whiteness of King Carol’s palace, and brought life to the bronze
Carol I in the square. Cars began to come out then, and people. At one point
in the square each car hit a bump in the asphalt, jumped high, then wobbled
amusingly as it settled down.
This was the hour of the “Korso,” the slow nightly stroll up and
down Calea Victoriei which was dear to the hearts of Bucharestians. It was
the bourgeoisie of Bucharest which made the Korso, looking as the bourgeoisie
looks in most Southeastern capitals of Europe. The women were mostly hatless,
with dark curls swept up over highly made-up, strong-featured, large-eyed
faces. Voluptuous bodies balanced gingerly on the exaggerated cothurns of
cork which served as shoes.
 |
Calea Victoriei circa 1940,
Athenee Palace Hotel is on the right. (Picture Bucurestil
Interbelic) |
These were Western women, but about them hung the flavour of the harem. They were an attractive mixture beside whom their men were disappointing. Romanian men pride themselves that they descend from the bastards whom the dashing begot with the native Dacian ladies. But since the Roman colonization under Emperor Trajan, torrents of barbaric populations successively descended upon Romania: Goths and Ostrogoths, Sarmates and Huns, Tartars and Bulgars, Finno-Hungarians and Mongols, and finally the Turks had conquered the country, one after the other. All left their mark on the Romanian men, flattening out their hard tribune’s profiles and grafting all kinds of un-Latin features upon them. I knew that there were handsome Romanians, but the average product as it appeared that night on the square was pasty-faced and paunchy.
Collectively these people seemed a pleasant crowd, but as I watched them from my window on the first floor of the Athene Palace - couple by couple, person by person - I saw that they were tense and did not smile. For this day had given them a bolt from the blue, sudden, unexpected, devastating. Yesterday ten out of their twelve daily newspapers - the remaining two were said to be paid by Dr. Goebbels - had expressed the confidence of the past year: pro-Ally bulletins, pro-Ally editorials, and articles by Allied military experts were prominent and, as for the last nine months, all of them scoffed at the ability of an ill-fed, ill-trained German horde to attack mighty France. German victories in Poland, Norway, Holland, and Belgium were called military stupidity on the part of these small countries, and the work of treasonable fifth columns … But the French! They would just have to say “Assez” and the Nazis would be licked.
Then today, under the pressure of hard facts, the Romanian press had for the first time told the truth; all regular editions and one-page extras gave information of a new sort. It could not be said any longer that papers predicting French defeat were supported by Goebbels. Goebbels was not everywhere; Goebbels could not have planted in every paper the story that Hitler had demanded the surrender of Paris to save it from destruction. Or that the French had declared Paris an open city. Nor could the radio be guilty of deception when it carried Reynaud’s appeal to America …
