The entry at Leuşeni is all gray concrete and deserted. A woman in a uniform takes your passport and disappears for fifteen minutes. Only Moldovans and Romanians cross here, and probably not one of them comes for pleasure. After that, to the right, is a village on a slope. Several houses atilt; the rest have fallen. The earth sank and took a few dozen farms with it. On an untouched scrap of ground is a church outlined against the sky. The hills are long, low, green. In an occasional valley you can see a village, which at a distance resembles a camp: the houses all the same size, shape, and color, and all topped with the same asbestos tile. They look like tents of bleached canvas. Nothing stands apart; they are all of them together. Then you have nothing until the next village. Endless green, a gray blotch of cramped habitations, more green, more green, and again a clump of cement squares kept in place by an invisible perimeter. The average salary here: twenty-five dollars. A dollar is about thirteen Moldovan lei.
