RUMANIA: Money Devil

In the village of Palmagyu, Rumania, in the Transylvanian Alps, peasants stood in idle groups last week and talked in proverbs of the devil and money. Had they not just seen what the money devil could do to a strong man? Ion Gerghuta, their neighbor and a thrifty farmer, had come back from the town of Kronstadt with his crop money—25,000 lei ($15,000 ).

He had spread the bills on the kitchen table to gloat over them. Then he went to get a drink. His six-year-old son, a neat child, found the dirty scraps of paper littering the table. He swept them together, clutched them up, pushed them into the fireplace. The flames spouted and little black cinders of money blew up the chimney throat. When Ion Gerghuta came back and saw what his son had done he killed him, swiftly. In another room Ion’s wife was bathing her year-old baby. She heard her son scream and ran to him. When she returned, the baby had drowned in its bath water. Ion Gerghuta’s wife ran from the house to the farm pond, plunged in, drowned herself. Ion Gerghuta, when he saw that she was dead, found his revolver and killed himself.