I told the driver to go on ahead and to tell Dronţu I’d be late for dinner.

Five years! I’d never given them thought, never counted them. The master’s reflections came back to me anew. Five years. I added them up – exactly five.

I can still recall that rainy day in March; the master, old Rice, Dronţu and I getting out of the automobile in the middle of Uioara, surrounded by frightened children and spied on by the entire village, holed up in their houses behind windows and curtains. Rice hadn’t anticipated entering a completely hostile area. All we had to go on was a vague notion from the papers about the conflict between Rice Ltd, Mining Surveyors, and the peasants who were the previous owners of the concession. In any case, I knew nothing about the extent of the conflict. Possibly not even Rice had any idea how serious things were, as he had signed a whole string of cheques and was under the impression that this had resolved everything. This bony American would never lose the awe-inspiring attitude of a man who could say, ‘I can pay!’ wherever he went, at any moment, to anyone.

That first walk of ours on the site was a sombre affair – Rice, calm, hands in pockets, the master with a silence that was at the same time interrogatory, Dronţu curious, looking in bafflement at the deserted little street, crossed only by an occasional panicked chicken, a sign at least that the place wasn’t utterly dead.

‘Hello!’ shouted Dronţu randomly, in case anyone could hear.

Nobody replied and we wandered on in that ringing silence, far past the edge of the village, from where you could see the scaffolding of the first test wells some three kilometres away.

Despite our strange reception, the fine rain in our faces and that muddy washed-out road, the landscape was beautiful. Immense chunks of black earth had recently been cut from the flank of the hillside. Great boulders and the trunks of giant trees had been tossed about together as though in the wake of a giant plough.

A cold, gusty wind blew, the sharp smell of damp vegetation stronger than that of burning oil and coal.

From the derricks came the beating of hammers and the high, almost musical, whine of a saw. The sounds were distinct in the thawing March air.

The master looked around 360 degrees, taking in his domain, and I immediately understood that the project interested him. He made several sketches on the spot, took some photographs (I’m still amazed today at the speed with which he took in the relevant features of a site), noted some figures, gathered all the papers and prints in an attaché case and said briefly, in conclusion: ‘We’ll see.’

On the way back, in the automobile, I asked Rice to tell me something about the people who lived in Uioara.

‘Never seen them,’ he confessed. ‘They run away from me and I’m not crazy about them either. I paid for the land to the last penny, as evaluated by the surveys. What more do they want? They’re stubborn and stupid.’

‘It must be because of the plums,’ interjected Marin Dronţu.

‘What plums?’

‘The plum trees. Didn’t you see them? They’re white from top to bottom. No idea what the hell fell on them: cigarette ashes, coal dust – no idea what it could be.’

‘It’s drilling mud,’ Rice informed us. ‘What we used for test-drilling. Last autumn I took a first sounding from Hole A 19.’

‘But couldn’t the plum trees have been protected?’ exclaimed Dronţu, rather to our surprise.

‘Nonsense, sir. It’s clear you don’t know the oil business. There are inevitable risks. And they’re usually minimal. And what’s a plum tree at the end of the day?’

‘Well, this is the source of your quarrel with the people of Uioara. You don’t know what a plum tree is.’

I’ve recalled this comment of Dronţu’s many times, since there would have been no conflict in the area, no litigation, if it hadn’t been for those damned trees, which he, having come straight from the land, had seen from the first with his peasant’s eye.

‘This thing with the plum trees is serious,’ he tells me still, when at the derricks we come across somebody from Old Uioara and he looks straight at us, scowling, tugging his cap down over his ears to make sure we notice he’s not greeting us.

Rice understands nothing. ‘These people are crazy,’ he shouts. ‘Completely crazy,’ he goes on, ‘but you have to deal with their madness.’

I still laugh today when I remember old Ralph’s face in April five years ago, in his office in Piaţa Rosetti, when the master put the preliminary proposals before him.

To perform a new evaluation of the concession area and to distribute supplementary compensation. The village of Uioara will be moved from its present location to one several kilometres to the right, to the valley of the river Ursu, its new location. Conservation of all orchards beyond this point and the regeneration of those previously harmed by drilling mud and oil, and avoiding any future harm.

The present village of Uioara is being bought from the peasants who are its beneficiaries and will be at the disposal of the company for the construction of any buildings necessary in future: refineries, storage facilities, offices, housing for engineers and officials, roads to the wells and derricks. The village of Uioara is simply erased from its present location on the map and rebuilt in the valley of the river Ursu, so that nothing stands in the way between the wells and Company headquarters.

‘Absurd,’ shouted Ralph Rice. ‘Absurd,’ echoed all the mining engineers.

The master’s plan was indeed a grave matter. The risks were clearly great, and it was arguable whether it would succeed.

Nevertheless, Rice argued it. I’ll never forget the hours of fighting in the old man’s office, where the master, stimulated by coffee and cigarettes, argued until three or four in the morning night after night, using sketches, diagrams and figures, Rice listening to him, furious and sombre, pacing from one corner of the office to the other, exclaiming from time to time or beating his fist on the desk when he felt he couldn’t argue back.