“But what if it’s not nonsense, Pavel? What then?”
“Assuming the pope is right and Mary literally rose up to heaven, why would she land on the moon? She could just as well be God knows where—on Mars or Venus. Or sometimes in one place, sometimes in another, floating weightlessly among the stars.”
Dimitru acted insulted. “You didn’t have enough schooling, Pavel. You don’t understand the essence of dialectical deduction. But I’ll explain it to you. Thesis: Mary is on the moon. Antithesis: Mary is not on the moon. And now for the conclusio . . . but that’s the problem. There isn’t one, at least not as long as the truth of the thesis has not been proven by the verification method.”
I nodded. “I sort of get it.”
“Assuming—and that’s exactly what I mean: assuming—the thesis is true and Mary is literally on the moon or anywhere else in space, what do you think would happen, Pavel, if Korolev’s cosmonauts discover where the Madonna is and get their sights on her? It doesn’t take much imagination to know. Pavel, do you seriously believe those atheists would say, ‘Oh, what a surprise, dear Mother of God! Very sorry we made a mistake. Please forgive us that we didn’t believe in you. Just a misunderstanding.’”
“Don’t get mad, Dimitru, but I’m afraid you’ve made a pretty big error somewhere in your brain.”
Dimitru crumbled like a dry leaf. “Why do you say that, Pavel? That’s exactly what makes me so desperate. An erroneous deduction, one tiny fohpaw, and whoops! Your logic is down the drain. A locomotive’s racing through my brain. Will it reach its goal? Has it gone off the tracks? But where? A thinker has to see with a thousand eyes, look at all sides of the coin, solicit contradictory opinions, test, weigh, test again, up to the bitter end of the conclusio correcto. Wrong turns are lurking everywhere. And there’s only one person on earth who could keep me from taking those false turns. Just one, and he’s dead! And I don’t even know where his earthly remains are. Why wasn’t I in the rectory when the murderers came? Why was Papa Baptiste alone with Fernanda? Why didn’t he call for me? They could gladly have assassinated me. I’m just a Gypsy. But not the good Papa Baptiste. Oh, how I miss you, Papa Baptiste! How I miss your wise advice! You must know, Pavel, that in all heavenly matters, no one could put one over on Papa. No one! What have you got there under your coat, by the way?”
I took out the bottle of zuika. “Best regards from Granddad.”
Dimitru spread his arms and made to launch another attack of affection, which I escaped with a quick sidestep, so that he ended up kissing the bottle instead. “The world,” he soulfully declared, “isn’t on the brink of the abyss just yet.” Then he pulled out the cork, threw it into the corner, and drank.
Outside of school I hardly read anything at all, and I hadn’t entered the library intending to change. My curiosity was not for all those books standing on the shelves but only for the single, ominous book that my investigation still needed. But I was unsure if this was the right time to ask Dimitru which book the teacher Angela Barbulescu had borrowed from the library. Instead of taking Baptiste’s note from my pocket, I asked, “Dimitru, do you have the writings of a certain Nietzsche in your library?”
The Gypsy jumped up as if stung by a hornet. His hand flew from forehead to chest to shoulders and back as he crossed himself repeatedly. He tipped up the zuika and glugged half the bottle at one go. “That’s nothing for a boy of your age! If you ask to read his lucubrations I’m compelled to refuse permission in my capacity as director of the library.”
I counterattacked. “You’re just scared, Dimitru. You don’t want me to read that God is dead. You’re afraid that that Nietzsche told the truth. Because if God is dead all your hypotheses are nonsense. Then there’s no Mary in the sky. Am I right?”
He closed his eyes and then stared fixedly at the ceiling. I regretted attacking Dimitru so hard-heartedly. It seemed like an eternity until the Gypsy gave an almost imperceptible nod. Then he opened his eyes and tore off his bandage. His blood-encrusted forehead shocked me, and then he uttered the most deliberate sentences I had ever heard from Dimitru Carolea Gabor.
“We come from God and we return to God. Alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. I would never have dared to doubt that, Pavel. Never. Not until I saw Papa Baptiste, saw that old man on a chair and so much, so much blood. There was no more heaven. Only earth, nothing but earth. Dust to dust without beginning or end. Since then I’ve been afraid, Pavel. Yes, you’re right, I’m afraid. Not of the devil and not of that Lupu Raducanu and his gang of thugs that everyone in the village fears. I’m afraid that we come from the void and return to the void.”
Dimitru paused for a long time. Then he asked if the teacher Barbulescu had told us about Friedrich Nietzsche in school.
I said no. “It was Hofmanns’ Fritz who talked about the death of God and claimed the churches were just God’s grave. And Fritz’s father had a lot of books by Nietzsche in his living room, a whole yard of them, at least. I never read any of them. But what’s so dangerous about them?”
“Books are never dangerous, just people who understand them the wrong way.”
“Do you pray a lot?” I asked suddenly.
“Very often, my boy. A Gypsy prays day and night. And if you want to know if my prayers were ever answered, I’ll tell you: no. God is a poor partner when you want something from him.”
“Then it doesn’t matter if God is alive or dead, like this Nietzsche says.”
“No, Pavel, it does matter. Remember this: people who understand Nietzsche right go crazy. And people who understand him wrong have no more boundaries. And whoever knows no boundaries thinks he has a license to do anything he wants. If heaven is dead, there’s only earth left. And the earth doesn’t care about anything. Mother Earth is a bad mother. It’s all the same to her. Sow your seed, groan, give birth, eat, die. Dust to dust. In between just a fart from the ass of life. That’s all there is.”
Dimitru tipped the last of the schnapps into his mouth. The empty bottle fell from his hand onto the floor. Then he said the odd words, “God dies because we can’t bear it that we’re killing him.”
With an effort he got up from his chaise longue. Grief and schnapps had left their marks on him. He staggered to the bookcases. He was falling-down drunk, but he pulled out just the book he wanted, opened it, and handed it to me. I sat down and began to read the story of the crazy man who lights a lamp on a bright morning and runs into the marketplace crying, “I’m looking for God! I’m looking for God!”
Outside in the hall someone kicked against the door. I put Nietzsche aside and opened it. Buba stood there, a jug of fresh water in one hand and in the other a pot with hot polenta.
“Sorry, I didn’t have a third hand to knock with.” She smiled at me. “I’ve got dinner for Uncle Dimi. He always forgets it when he’s with his books.”
Dimitru was asleep on his red chaise longue, his mouth open and snoring. Buba put his supper on the floor, straightened his jacket, took off his shoes, and covered him with a blanket.
“Haven’t seen you in a long time, Pavel. Didn’t even know you were paying Uncle Dimi a visit. D’you like books?”
I seized the opportunity. “Do you have some time?”
“For you? Have you got something to tell me?”
Buba tried to conceal her beaming smile, sat down, and leaned her back against a bookcase. I sat down and slid nearer to her, and all the thoughts that had been oppressing me during the preceding days came flowing out. I talked about the missing coffin, the search for the dead priest, the trip to Kronauburg, and the meeting with Commissioner Patrascu. Via Fritz Hofmann and his mother’s move to Germany, I arrived at the story of the Eternal Flame. Then I pulled the priest’s note from my pocket and explained the real reason for my presence in Dimitru’s library, talked about my concern for Angela Barbulescu and my suspicion that on the day of her disappearance the teacher had borrowed an important book from the library. And since I unders
tood Buba’s silence for what it was—the expression of her wonderful gift as a listener—my heart became lighter with every sentence so that I had no hesitation in telling her about our teacher’s shady past as well, about the lewd photographs and the whippings Heinrich Hofmann gave his son, and about his friend, the party secretary Dr. Stephanescu, and Barbu’s affair with him, which must have ended very unhappily for her. When I told Buba about her mysterious assignment that seemed to me more and more like a desperate plea, she took my hand, so that I decided not to tell her about the evening when a drunken Angela Barbulescu in her sunflower dress had made a pass at me.
When I had talked all the tribulations from my soul, Buba said, “And I thought you didn’t like me anymore.” After a quick glance at her uncle assured her he was asleep, she kissed me on the mouth. “You’re my boyfriend now. And I’m your girlfriend. Don’t do anything foolish without me anymore.”
The drunken Dimitru tossed from side to side on his chaise longue. Then he muttered something in a singsong that sounded like old women mumbling litanies in Latin. “Uncle Dimi talks in his sleep when he’s been drinking.” Buba laid her hand on Dimitru’s injured forehead, gave him a kiss, and put out the light. “It’s better we wait until tomorrow morning to ask him what Barbu was doing in the library, when he’s slept it off. If you want me to be there, too, that is.”
“No more foolishness without you.”
On the way home I was glowing so much I could have melted the snow. My weakness had vanished. The shadows of the last few days were no longer a threat but a challenge—a darkness demanding illumination.
The next morning I was up before seven. I washed with cold water and, contrary to my usual habits, I also brushed my teeth thoroughly. As I approached the library I was happy to see Buba waiting for me at the door of the rectory. Despite my fear that Dimitru would be unapproachable after his bender the previous evening, we found him not with a pounding headache but in the best of spirits. He put aside his pot of cold polenta, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and offered his niece and me a place on the couch.
“I’ve been thinking since our disputation last night.” He turned to me. “First about God, then about Nietzsche, and finally, in the sense of synchronous research, about both of them. Seen in the light of day, the question is, Who’s the smarter of the two, the evangelist of God’s death or the Creator of all things? Which has the most staying power, the everlasting breath of creation and salvation or an ephemeral work by an admittedly clever philosopher?”
“Who’s Uncle Dimi talking about?” Buba looked at me.
“Let me guess,” I said without answering her question. “God is smarter than all the thinkers combined. In the long run. But only if he isn’t already dead.”
Dimitru clapped his hands in delight. “Correct, my boy! But God is not dead. God is a hedgehog.”
Buba rolled her eyes in exasperation because she couldn’t follow the twisting course of her uncle’s inspiration. But I feared the zuika of the night before was still having an effect. The comparison of God to a hedgehog, I remarked grumpily, was pretty far-fetched.
“Not at all,” Dimitru disagreed. “You know the tale of the race between the hare and the hedgehog. The hare is swift as the wind but as dumb as a board. The hedgehog has short legs, but he’s slyer than a fox. So he uses the principio duplex, the law of doubles. Father Hedgehog stands next to the hare at the starting line. Ready, set, go! Longears zooms along the furrows as if the devil himself were at his heels. At the finish line, there’s Mother Hedgehog waiting for him. ‘What’s been keeping you? I got here long ago,’ she calls. The hare in his stupidity demands an immediate rematch. The same thing happens. Only this time, Father Hedgehog calls out, ‘Where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting for you!’ The hare almost goes berserk, demands another race and another and another and another. End of story. He collapses on the field, run to death. Earth takes him back. Exitus finitus. Dust to dust.”
“An illuminating story,” said Buba. “But if the double hedgehog is God, who’s the hare? You mean people like your cousin Salman, always on the road on business but never really getting anywhere?”
When her uncle answered, “I mean Nietzsches’ Friedrich,” Buba was disappointed. “Never heard of him.”
“There’s a catch in your story, Dimitru,” I said. “Your hedgehog God puts one over on the hare. Your God is a swindler, a cheater, who only pretends he’s always there waiting without ever really moving from the spot while the poor hare—or that Nietzsche, for all I care—runs himself to death honestly and with no cheap tricks.”
“Exactly,” Buba agreed. “The hare dies of exhaustion ’cause God double-crosses him. It’s a dirty trick.”
Dimitru cleared his throat. “It’s youth who are mistaken in this case. The hare doesn’t lose because the hedgehog double-crosses him; he loses because he wants to be the first at any price. He’d rather kick the bucket than accept defeat.”
I took Buba’s hand. She returned my gentle squeeze.
“Dimitru,” I said, “will you help me?”
“Gladly. Anytime.”
I took the note out of my pocket and handed it to him.
“‘A, period, Barbu’! It’s his handwriting! Papa Baptiste wrote this!” Reverently, as if holding a sacred relic in his hand, Dimitru examined the piece of paper. “Six, period, eleven, period. Pavel, you know numbers are absolutely not my strong suit, unlike your good old granddad Ilja.”
“It means the sixth of November. On that day, the teacher Barbulescu was in the rectory. And it looks as if Pater Johannes gave her the key to the library.”
Dimitru knit his battered brow. “Now it’s beginning to make sense to me. I never forget the sixth of November. It’s your Grandfather’s birthday. On this November sixth I wasn’t here in the library. I was at home on tenterhooks all morning, waiting to see if my chuckleheaded cousin Salman would get here with the television on time. Salman arrived after noon, with the machine but without the antenna. Instead he brought that Hun with a mustache and a wart on his cheek, the guy who asked after the domicile of the village schoolteacher Miss Barbulescu in such a stilted way. I didn’t return to the library until the next day, the day after Ilja’s birthday. When I came in here, I said to myself right away, Dimitru, something’s not right here. It all looked the same as usual. But”—Dimitru tapped his index finger on his nose—“it smelled different. At first I thought someone had left me flowers, but I couldn’t find any. I swear it smelled like roses. Imagine that, in the middle of a frosty winter! How can it smell like roses? But I’m not crazy—I’m never crazy.”
“Barbu has a perfume that smells like that,” I explained.
“Then she was here!” Dimitru looked at Baptiste’s note again, turned the paper this way and that, and held it up to the light. “Miss Barbulescu was here, hundred percent guaranteed. And since one of the duties of a librarian is to protect the books from unauthorized access, I always lock the door when I’m not here. She must have gone up to Papa Baptiste. There are two keys: one’s always in my pocket, and the other hangs on a board next to the coat closet up in the pastor’s apartment. You see how empiricism comes in handy? Test your theory and monitor the results!”
Dimitru hurried up the steps. Quick as a flash he was back down and opened his palm: there were two keys.
“They’re both the same,” I remarked.
“They’re identical,” he corrected me.
Together we concluded that Angela Barbulescu had asked the pastor for the key to the library in the early afternoon of November 6. Johannes Baptiste had handed over his key and noted it down on a little piece of paper so he wouldn’t forget. Barbu went to the library, left behind a scent of roses, and returned the key, which either Baptiste or the orderly Fernanda had returned to its hook on the rack of keys. We could deduce the chain of events up to that point.
“Now we have to find out what Barbu was doing in here among all these books,” Bu
ba summed up.
“Usually you go to a library to borrow books,” I said.
“Or to return a book you’ve already borrowed,” Dimitru added.
“Had Barbu borrowed a book?” I asked eagerly.
“No, never. She never crossed the threshold of the rectory. I would know if she had, since she lives right next to us Gypsies. When she moved to the village, I often invited her to come to the library. ‘The welcome mat’s out to the world of knowledge,’ I told her more than once. Umpteen times, in fact—she was a teacher after all. She always said, ‘One of these days I’ll come see you, Dimitru. Promise.’ But as we know, woman is a fickle creature.”
“Not true!” objected Buba. “She was here on November sixth, but you weren’t.”
“But what did she want? Dimitru, can you find out if a book is missing?”
The Gypsy closed his eyes. Buba put her finger to her lips and signaled me to keep quiet.
“No book is missing,” Dimitru announced after a pause. “However, something in this room has changed.”
To my astonishment Dimitru walked toward one of the walls of books, got a running start of two or three steps, and swung himself into a handstand. His steadied his feet against a shelf and explained his strange behavior: “We look but we don’t see. Things reveal themselves when you stand the world on its head.”
I was silently amazed. At first I thought that Dimitru’s skinny arms would not support him for long, but then I realized that he had fallen into a strange state of semiweightlessness. Dimitru held himself upside down against the bookcase for more than an hour. With his eyes open. But then he suddenly crumpled sideways like a sack, looking bewildered and apparently without any memory of his eccentric behavior. At last he spoke.
“All the books that belong in this room are here. Angela Barbulescu did not remove a single one. She did the opposite: she took nothing, but she gave something. Seek and you will find it. Somewhere in among the other books. It’s a green notebook. On the front cover there’s a picture of a red rose. But the picture may already be worn away. Forgive me, but I’m very, very tired now. I have to lie down and take a nap.”
The Madonna on the Moon Page 16
