The company didn't collapse then, when it was taken over and the other shareholder sold his shares.
That factory collapsed one May morning. On the hot concrete, swallow chicks agonizing, drying out alive, among the remains of their destroyed nests. That's how the order came from above. And there was no one to say no. There was no one.
She came home sick, her jaws clenched in horror, it's a law for Romanians never to destroy a swallow's nest, because you didn't choose for it to come to you, the swallow chose you and the Lord allowed the miracle, for two days she didn't speak out of sorrow and I kept silent too, knowing that the end was not far off. When you reduce everything to numbers, economic equations, and no longer look at the clouds, the end is not far off.
I met the director of the Năsăud hospital on Ascension Day. His eyes smiled, 'Don't worry, Father, no one will touch the swallows under the eaves of the sighing building. They cause us trouble, you know, the cars. But we are there to solve troubles, aren't we?'
And yesterday, suddenly, on Whatsapp, a Christian woman from the mountains, 'Father, you must advise me, I'm scared, they told me they're bringing the glass for the windows of the annexes and, when I look, some swallows had made their nest there, tomorrow morning the craftsmen are coming to install the glass and I'm scared, what should I do?'
I told her about that factory. She remembered. You've been working on that house your whole life, you were your daughter's age when you started it, autumn will come soon and the swallows will leave, have patience with them as God had patience with your house. For the Lord, unseen, installs the glass in our windows and the sheet metal on our roof. In His hands are the keys to our life.
Then silence. My heart curled up, trembling, you can just smile, I take these small things very seriously, the swallows and people's fears, the color of the sky when I wake up and the eagle's trace in the sky, everything we see are gates of heaven through which the Spirit of the Lord breathes.
AND then, suddenly, the message.
That's what I'll do, Father. That's what I'll do!
It will be well. Still, it will be well on earth.
Fr. Crin-Triandafil Theodorescu