I missed Buba. Having her at my side would have cushioned the blow of seeing the cross and the words whose cryptic significance dismayed me. “He” could be no one else but the party secretary of Kronauburg, Stefan Stephanescu, the man whom I was supposed to destroy and send to hell. I forced myself to think. The date and place revealed that Angela Barbulescu was no longer in the capital but already in Baia Luna when she had written her grim prediction. Three-quarters of a year had passed since she noted down the progress of her pregnancy and her intention to pay a visit to Stephanescu, the father of the baby. I found no answer to the question of what had happened to her in the capital during the intervening months. The most important stones in the mosaic of her life’s story were missing.
In August 1950, I was eight years old and had only a vague memory of the teacher’s arrival in the village. I was starting the first grade—somewhat late for my age, but back then there was no school in Baia Luna anyway because there was no teacher. The Ministry of Education dispatched Angela Barbulescu as the new teacher for our village. From the beginning, her relations with the villagers were ill fated. The diary entries from the months following her arrival confirmed that. She wrote of the mistrust she encountered as a woman from the big city, mentioned the village gossip about her: rumors, insults, and slurs. The letters KK crop up again and again, an abbreviation that could only mean Kora Konstantin. However, the early entries from Baia Luna told me nothing more than what I already knew from my own experience.
In the final part of the diary, Angela Barbulescu had written resolutions in a shaky hand, resolutions that revealed more of a wish than a real resolve to stop drinking. Although undated, they documented the steady downfall of an alcoholic who had no support. From time to time there were moments of clarity. Angela Barbulescu very consciously witnessed the process of her self-destruction without being able to muster the strength to resist it. She knew very well that she was a bad teacher with just enough energy to assign her pupils endless pages to copy. And she also knew that they were more contemptuous than fearful of her. When I read my own name and Fritz Hofmann’s in the diary it became painfully clear to me that it had by no means escaped the teacher’s notice that Fritz and I were putting down absurdly high solutions to arithmetic problems. She had even found out that Fritz rewrote the stupid party poems to suit himself. Fritz can be so nasty. Like father, like son, I suppose. But he has a mind of his own. And a poetic imagination. I hope he doesn’t turn out like his father, that . . . I couldn’t make out the final word, but I knew enough about the photographer Heinrich Hofmann to make it superfluous.
I paged forward. While I searched for Angela Barbulescu’s very last entry, I knew exactly when she had written it: on the morning of my grandfather’s fifty-fifth birthday, while he and Dimitru were listening for the Sputnik. I had walked Dimitru home through the fog and through her window had seen her sitting at the kitchen table and writing.
It was a farewell letter, clean and clearly printed. It began with a stiff salutation, like an impersonal letter from some government office:
Baia Luna, November 6, 1957
Dear Comrade Party Secretary Dr. Stephanescu,
Yesterday the messenger brought the package from the district administration. I hereby confirm receipt of the photograph. I will follow the instructions to immediately hang your portrait in a prominent place in the Baia Luna school building. Your picture will hang in schools next to the picture of the state president. The children will look up to you. To your smile. Your partner Hofmann has done a good job, as always, although his specialty is another kind of picture.
What the two of you did to me during my labor in Dr. Pauker’s clinic was bad. The photos that Hofmann made of me with your disgusting friends are repulsive. They kept my mouth closed for a long time. But no longer. As far as I’m concerned, Hofmann can send those pictures to the village priest. Do whatever you want with them. Hang my picture on every lamppost. I’m not afraid anymore.
I once told a pupil of mine that you were a sorcerer who turned wine into water. I couldn’t tell that good boy the truth: that you turn wine into blood. “Children Are Our Future” it says under your picture. A beautiful sentence, and a true one. My future didn’t even make it to nine months. You and your comrades disposed of my future, as a bloody hunk of flesh for the garbage can. Since then, nothing can happen to me that hasn’t happened already.
Stefan, you’re going to make it to the very top. But your last hour has already struck. I’m not praying to any God for that, I’m just making the only sacrifice left to me. And if they bury me in unconsecrated ground for it and if I go to hell, I swear we’ll come back to fetch you too someday.
Signed,
Angela Maria Barbulescu and a child without a name
As I shuddered in horror at the realization that my teacher had drawn the brown cross in her diary with blood, the door to the bedroom next to mine opened and I heard my mother Kathalina’s steps. It must have been about six in the morning. The night was over, although for me the night had just begun. With my not quite sixteen years I didn’t want to imagine what they had done to Angela in a doctor’s clinic in the capital. I only knew that Dr. Stefan Stephanescu had seen to it that his child in the belly of Angela Maria Barbulescu never saw the light of day. The same must not be allowed to happen to the knowledge of the deed.
With my reading of the green notebook, the days of my childhood were over. My teacher was a different person than the one I thought I knew. And this knowledge entailed an obligation.
Send this man straight to hell! Exterminate him!
“Yes,” I said, “I will.”
Kathalina clapped her hands. “Gentlemen, the night is over.” Ilja and Dimitru the Gypsy lay on the tile floor next to the stove. Slowly they regained consciousness and rubbed the sleep out of their eyes. Without complaint they obeyed Kathalina’s order to apply the water from the tap in the backyard to their faces, something Dimitru only made a symbolic attempt at. Refreshed by the icy water, Ilja immediately remembered he had indulged in alcoholic beverages the night before. He was pleased to discover that he had neither a headache nor palpitations, while Dimitru reminded him with a raised forefinger: “Lesson One: Reading and Writing. Part One: The Alphabet.”
In the weeks of Grandfather’s reading lessons, I learned that although not always the most patient of teachers, Dimitru was a good one. Blessed with a wealth of ideas, he wrote his own practice texts for their daily lessons. He began with all the words he could think of that had only two, three, and then four letters. Then he proceeded to compound words and short proverbs, until finally Grandfather was able to read the simple poems Dimitru composed about the beauty of women and the joys of sex. At first he read haltingly, following the letters with his finger, but with growing confidence. Soon Dimitru was bringing slim edifying tracts on the lives of the saints from the library as well as an illustrated children’s Bible.
Contrary to all expectations, the fifty-five-year-old Ilja was learning at a breathtaking pace—learning to read but not to write. Grandfather wasn’t able to get more than two legible words down on paper without a great deal of trouble. However, after only four weeks of lessons, he was already asking for a “real book.”
“What did you have in mind?” asked the delighted Dimitru, who was hell-bent on fulfilling Ilja’s wish from the rich holdings of his library.
“I’m thinking of the Old and the New Testament. I only know the Bible from the words of the pastor, and now I’m eager to study the Holy Scripture for myself.”
“Wonderful, wonderful! You’re on the right path,” Dimitru rejoiced, then stopped short and drummed his fingers on the table as he always did when in a state of nervous excitement. “I know the Bible, too; I mean, I think I know it. But I’m like you, in church every Sunday (except when my reliquary business forces me to be on the road), and believe me: every reading of the Scripture, every Gospel, and every sermon of Papa Baptiste still resounds in my
ears as if he were right up there in the pulpit this very minute. But to my shame, I must admit that what with all my studying, I never read the Holy Scripture. Why did I need to? I already knew every word of the Lord from the Sermon on the Mount to the Lord’s Prayer to his last words on the cross when he finds out his Father has forsaken him. I also know when and where Jesus performed what miracle. He multiplied the loaves, healed poor Lazarus, restored sight to the blind. At his word, demons fled and adulteresses were spared from stoning. Not to mention that he changed water into the finest wine. As for the Old Testament, I can recite the Ten Commandments backward and reel off the descendants of Adam by heart from Abraham and Isaac and wise King Solomon right down to what’s-his-name. But only if you insist on it, my friend.”
“Some other time.” Grandfather waved his hand. “But could you get me a real Bible from the library? Only on loan, of course.”
Dimitru sighed. “Ilja, don’t be angry. I have to confess there aren’t any Bibles in the library. There was one, back when I began my career as librarian. In the winter when your dear wife Agneta and my father Laszlo of blessed memory died, I took the Bible to my people, even though Papa Baptiste had forbidden it. And what did those Gypsies do? They used the paper as tinder in their stoves. The Lord God will forgive them as he does people who know not what they do.”
“I see you gentlemen have gotten back to fundamentals,” said my mother, emerging from the kitchen.
“Just imagine, Kathalina, among the thousand books in Dimitru’s library there’s not a single Bible.”
“Oh, well, the main thing is you have one yourself now that you can read.”
“What do you mean, I have one myself . . . ?”
“I mean the book in your old cigar box. You’re really getting forgetful in your old age.”
Johannes Baptiste’s birthday present! Wrapped in packing paper. When the priest handed him the package on his birthday, Grandfather could feel through the wrapping that it was a book. Now he went to fetch the cigar box and crowed, “The Holy Scripture, Dimitru! What a coincidence!”
“It’s no coincidence. Heaven is sending us a sign.”
Grandfather decided to wait a few days before beginning the Bible. He wanted to start with the New Testament, and what could be a more appropriate day for that than the imminent Christmas Eve? Joy at the birth of Baby Jesus was overshadowed by the memory of Joseph’s fruitless search for an inn for Mary, who was great with child. In his anger at the village for refusing shelter to the tribe of Gypsies, Baptiste had removed the Virgin of Eternal Consolation from the parish church and had her taken to a new chapel on the Mondberg. Amid cold and snow the faithful toiled up the mountain, cursing their own sinfulness and pledging repentance and improvement until Christmas came around again. And had done so for twenty-one years. Last year, Christmas 1956, I had been at the head of the procession and realized for the first time that the pilgrimage against hard-heartedness was no Sunday stroll in the park. Now the twenty-second penitential procession was around the corner.
But Pater Johannes was dead, his body gone without a trace. It hadn’t been quite two months since we found the butchered priest in the rectory and the tooth of forgetfulness was already gnawing on many a memory in Baia Luna. The hot-blooded pledges to remain true to the priest’s memory were cooling off. In the tavern I was hearing the first tentative mutterings that a six-hour procession up to the Mondberg and back didn’t make much sense nowadays. Others stressed their desire to submit to the hardships of the penitential act again this year but hinted they might have to look after an aged father or ailing mother-in-law on Christmas Eve.
In order to ward off the gradual deterioration of the village’s sense of community, Hermann Schuster, Istvan Kallay, and Trojan Petrov called an assembly of all men and women in the village for the fourth Sunday in Advent. It turned out to be the most pitiful assembly Grandfather could ever recall. Among the seven men who showed up were five Saxons and the initiators of the meeting, Kallay and Petrov. After less than half an hour they had agreed on three resolutions. First, the procession would take place under any circumstances, however small the flock of pilgrims. Second, everyone present pledged to convince at least two other inhabitants of Baia Luna of the necessity of the penitential pilgrimage. Third—fearing that squabbling about the pros and cons of the procession would grow even greater in years to come—they decided to bring the Virgin of Eternal Consolation back from the Mondberg and reinstall her in the parish church where she had stood before the advent of Johannes Baptiste. When the sacristan Julius Knaup joined the assembly late and opined that once the Madonna was back in the church the Eternal Flame would certainly once again shine in Baia Luna, the assembly was dismissed.
As we gathered shortly before five on the morning of December 24 under a cold, starry sky, Hermann Schuster counted just two dozen Madonna pilgrims. His disappointment was alleviated when a few more willing pilgrims arrived on the village square during the next hour. They excused their tardiness by saying they had lost track of time since the clock in the church tower was no longer striking. At some point during Advent the hands had stopped at twelve fifteen and—rusted and gnawed by the tooth of time—were never to move again.
We had overestimated our strength. Against the advice of our elders, Petre Petrov and I had urged everyone to make up for the late start by increasing our speed. Now it was midday, and we were getting slower and slower. Despite his youth, the Carpati-smoker Petre Petrov was stopping to catch his breath every few steps, and Hermann Schuster Junior was complaining about a stitch in his side that was so bad every stride was torture. He fell farther and farther back. When he finally threw up, he was so weak that his father sent him back to the village. The fact that we weren’t cold despite the low temperature was due to the strength of the sun blazing down from a steel-blue sky. Once we reached the tree line, however, the wind would begin whistling mercilessly around our ears. We would reach that point in less than an hour. Another hour up a gentle slope would bring us to the Chapel of the Virgin of Eternal Consolation. It had been decided to stay only long enough for a brief prayer. Then we would pack the statue of Mary in blankets and return to Baia Luna as quickly as possible. Once the sun set behind the mountains it would turn bitterly cold.
Instead of one hour, it took us almost two to reach the tree line. Maybe it was because we were exhausted, possibly also because with each arduous step, the whole point of the pilgrimage was seeping away. Our penitential enthusiasm was replaced by a dull lethargy, so that none of us younger ones at the head of the march screamed in terror. Where the last copper beech raised its black, leafless branches into the ice-blue sky, Andreas Schuster nudged first Petre, then me. In silent horror Andreas stretched out his arm and pointed into the bare, wintry forest. Spellbound, the other pilgrims also halted and looked around, dazed and gasping for breath, until everyone was looking in the same direction.
The corpse hung from a black branch, swinging in the wind. Her hair fell in frozen strands, and on her head was a crown of snow. In that moment of terror, only I knew at once who the woman in the summery dress with yellow-brown sunflowers was.
Karl Koch was the first to react. He took Hermann Schuster and Istvan Kallay aside. They nodded briefly in agreement. Karl went over to the old people and the women who immediately agreed to take the children by the hand and turn back toward Baia Luna. When Karl took Kora Konstantin’s arm and gently but firmly tried to steer her back toward the village, she hissed at him and quick as a wink scratched his face with her sharp nails, leaving three bloody welts on his cheek. “I’m not going back,” Kora sputtered. “I’m going to the Virgin.” Hermann handed his friend Karl a handkerchief, and then we boys and men fought our way through the snow in among the beech trees, followed by the wheezing Konstantin. We stood silently beneath the tree looking up at the corpse whose bare feet swung back and forth before our eyes.
“The dead keep well in the frost,” said Karl Koch. “I’m just w
ondering why Barbu came up here in a summer dress in the dead of winter to do this to herself.”
“I’ll bet her coat and shoes are under the snow somewhere,” said Petre before Schuster shut him up with a stern look. Then the Saxon folded his hands and said, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .” Everybody chimed in with the murmured prayer and stared down abashedly at the glittering snow long after the amen.
I could not look away. I felt no sadness, only an unending, immense pain tearing at my heart. It was soundless, although it shrilled in my ears. I was too young to give it a name. Only years later would I understand that what I had heard on that Christmas Eve was the death cry of love.
It began to get cold. The procession to the Virgin of Eternal Consolation was over without having reached its goal. But we had to act. Istvan Kallay felt he had enough strength left to continue on to the chapel and fetch the statue of the Madonna. Petre, who just before was threatening to suffocate from shortness of breath, now got a second wind and said he would go with the Hungarian.
“We need you for a trio.” Istvan turned to me, referring to our joint trip to Kronauburg and our visit to Captain Patrascu. “Come along!”
Grandfather Ilja backed up Istvan. “Go with them, Pavel. This here is nothing for a boy.”
“My place is here.”
“My legs still have it in them,” said Andreas Schuster, grabbing the wool blankets they planned to wrap the Madonna in. Then he, Istvan, and Petre climbed up toward the chapel, whose pointed steeple rose in silhouette against the sky and the low-lying sun.
I closed my eyes the way I had with Buba and looked up behind closed lids. Second sight was easy. Without trying I saw the image. But I didn’t see the girl I missed so much; I saw her uncle. Before my inner eye Dimitru stood in his library, took a running start, and swung up into a handstand, his skinny legs resting against a bookcase. Then I heard the sentence “Things reveal themselves when you stand the world on its head.”
The Madonna on the Moon Page 20
