Execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu

The Execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu enters the narrator’s account not as a scene of political violence but as a measure of historical time passing beyond her private grief. She remembers the event as part of the five months that elapsed after A’s departure, yet cannot connect it to the writing of any particular page. That separation gives the execution its significance here: world history proceeds in dates and events, while the experience of passion follows a different, inwardly governed clock.

The Event as a Marker of Elapsed Time

The narrator recalls that she began writing about waiting for A approximately two months after he left, though she cannot remember the exact day. She can place the relationship against distinct historical and personal markers: the October riots in Algeria, the hazy heat of 14 July 1989, and the purchase of a blender in June, the day before a meeting. By contrast, the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the execution of the Ceaușescus belong to the five months of world events that passed while she was writing, but neither can be assigned to a particular page or writing session.

The contrast is not a failure to remember that history happened. It is a difference in how time registers. Details from the affair remain sharply located—even an ordinary household purchase carries the charge of its timing—while the global events cannot be made to coincide with the production of the text. The execution therefore marks duration without giving the narrator a usable chronology of composition.

Passion, Writing, and Two Clocks

The narrator explicitly distinguishes living in passion from writing about it: each alters the perception of time in a fundamentally different way. During the affair, actions were directed toward A; after his departure, the earlier mode of waiting and anticipation continued to exert pressure. Writing brought that period back, but not as a page-by-page record synchronized with public history. The execution is named alongside the fall of the Berlin Wall precisely to show the world moving forward while the narrator’s attention remains shaped by the private past.

Writing also changes the form of the earlier pain. The past tense used in the book’s first part creates an impression of endless repetition and preserves the conviction that life had been better during the affair. At the same time, writing generates a distress that takes the place of the former trauma of waiting for A’s calls and visits. The historical event remains outside that intimate sequence: it can be remembered as part of the interval, but it does not organize the memory or explain the grief.

Historical Distance and Private Memory

The execution’s brief mention places intimate recollection beside public catastrophe without claiming equivalence between them. Its role is structural: it makes visible the unevenness of memory, in which a date associated with A can remain vivid while a major event in the world cannot be tied to the page on which the narrator was writing. The memoir thus treats historical time as a surrounding chronology, not as the measure by which the narrator’s emotional experience can be understood.

That distinction also prevents the writing from becoming a conventional diary of concurrent events. The narrator can identify what happened in the world during the months of composition, but cannot use those events to reconstruct the act of writing itself. The Ceaușescus’ execution consequently stands at the edge of the narrative: a concrete historical marker that confirms elapsed time while underscoring how little public chronology can explain the private duration of passion and its aftermath.