Tag #120437 - Interview #87387 (Rifca Segal)

My mother had a dowry, my grandfather was rich, richer than the grandfather from my father’s side. And do you know how it was formerly? If the dowry were large, cousins, relatives would marry each other, so that the fortune wouldn’t be estranged – such was the notion. But my mother – it’s not the fact that she was my mother, yet – was both very beautiful and very smart. And my parents were cousins. You wouldn’t believe it, if I told you. My father’s mother and my mother’s father were brother and sister. And they weren’t allowed to get married according to the laws that were in force back then, during the rule of king Mihai. They needed a royal exemption in order for them to get married. For the fact that they were cousins was public knowledge in Sulita. If this were to happen in Bucharest, the people at the registrar’s office would have been none the wiser. And then my mother wrote a complaint – or her parents did, I can’t say for sure – to the king, and she had to base her argument on the fact that they had lived together. Formerly, sleeping with a man before getting married – oh my, it was a crime. To make love – I won’t say to have sex, for I dislike saying that – before the marriage, oh my, it was serious. Especially in a small town. And they were so chaste – that’s what they tell me, I wasn’t born at that time. And that’s how their marriage was approved.