Painter of Silence (2012) is set in the city of Iasi and country town o Poiana,
Romania, in the 1950s. Augustin (Tinu for short) is a deaf mute, the son of a
cook, Paraschiva, who works in a wealthy family’s mansion in Poiana. Tinu is
found unconscious on the steps of a hospital in Iasi. He was looking for a
woman he knew from childhood.
Safta works at the hospital, but she hasn’t seen Tinu since she left
Poiana, before the war. He has no identification papers, and nurse Adriana
calls him Ioan, after her son, a soldier who has not yet returned from the war.
Safta does not tell the hospital that she knows him – she wants to keep her
past a secret. And since Tinu is so sick, can’t hear, and can’t talk, he is not
likely to let anyone know that it was Safta he was looking for. He is passive:
‘even his eyes do not engage.’
She knows he can draw, so she gives him paper and pencils. She draws her
family property where they were both born, six months apart. He is in the
hospital for 2 or 3 months. Safta has written to his mother to come and get her
son, but no one comes for him.
Safta and Tinu both remember the past. Tinu remembers when Andrei from
France visited Safta’s family in Poiana. She was sixteen then, and they fell in
love. But Andrei was already engaged. They parted; Safta to the city. War was
announced and Russian soldiers arrived in Poiana. Tinu sees a lot of brutality;
one episode is the killing of a horse he loved when people evacuated.
‘He understood at the time that it was the drawings that were his crime. He
understood and yet he didn’t understand because no one had showed interest in
his pictures before.’ He wants Safta to understand, but he must get the order
right. ‘He must make her see first the yard, and then the jeep, and then the
young man. Only in that way will he be able to tell her what happened.’ He
draws the yard again, and again, because she doesn’t seem to understand. Safta
wants to communicate something to Tinu too. Safta begins ‘telling him what she
can tell no one else. Finding a voice for thoughts she hardly acknowledged
herself.’
When Tinu recovers, he moves into Adriana’s home briefly, until Safta has
the hospital’s permission to take him to a sanatorium. But they don’t go to the
sanatorium – they return to Poiana. It is only here that she discovers what
Tinu has been trying to tell her.
The novel is written in the third person. Readers know what Safta and Tinu
see, hear, feel, and know. The essence is about communication, secrets, what is
overt and what is hidden. The style is gentle and unobtrusive, almost
dreamlike. The timeframe and location swing back and forth between the past and
present, the country and the city, the war and its consequences.
The beginning was enthralling and intriguing, but for me it lapsed after
that and wasn’t as compelling as I expected, especially in its character
development and in the characteristics of a deaf mute. Tinu’s paintings are
supposed to be intricate, evocative, and revealing – only to Safta – but the
momentum fades and this loses its effect. There’s limited depth and suspense. The
themes are strong, but they don’t have the impact they deserve, and the ending
becomes somewhat muted.
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