On earlier New Year’s Eves, young and old alike would gather on the village square in feverish anticipation of the twelve strokes of midnight. But as the year 1958 dawned, the square was deserted, the rusted church tower clock didn’t strike, and instead of raising their glasses and wishing one another Happy New Year the residents lay in their beds, sleeping. Only in Vera Raducanu’s parlor were there two flickering candles spreading a meager light. With a long-stemmed glass of sparkling wine, Vera drank a toast with herself and stoutly maintained that her hour of triumph was imminent, the hour when her son Lupu would come to fetch her back to the city and reinstate her in the very best circles.
The New Year in Baia Luna began as the old one had ended. People seldom left their houses, and when they did, they exchanged only the minimum words necessary. Mortally offended by the solid punch in the nose I’d given her on the Mondberg, Kora Konstantin stayed out of sight. She stopped coming to our shop for the things she needed because she had sworn never again to enter the house of “that Botev gang.” Instead, she put a few coins into the hands of the six half-grown brats the drunken Raswan had left her with when he passed and sent them out into the neighborhood to forage for a cup of sugar or salt or a packet of oatmeal. I’m sure Kora threatened her children with all the tortures of hell should they dare to accept a lollipop or a stick of American chewing gum from Grandfather.
Ilja and my mother Kathalina sat in the shop, longing for an early end to winter and hoping that spring would not only restore life to nature but also a spirit of confidence to the village. Dimitru was often absent from the library, not for lack of interest in his Mariological studies but because his tribe had urgent family matters to negotiate for which they sought his advice. As for me, I was crippled by inaction and yearned for Buba. From morning to night, my thoughts had circled her ever since the hysterical Susanna had dragged her through the village by the hair, threatening to banish her from the clan.
On Saturday, January 18, Mother put a hazelnut cake into the oven. It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse of her in the pantry, surreptitiously gift wrapping a warm wool sweater and a dark blue scarf, that I realized why. It was for me. Kathalina was the only one who had remembered that I was going to turn sixteen on Sunday. Even Grandfather Ilja and Aunt Antonia, who always had a little something ready for my birthday, had forgotten the date—which I didn’t blame them for, since I had forgotten it myself. Without really being tired, I crawled into bed early on Saturday night, hoping that sleep would free me from my heartache for a while.
It must have been after midnight when I heard a dull thud. Immediately I sat bolt upright and listened. When another snowball hit my window, I knew who was out there in the cold night trying to get my attention. I opened the window and whispered into the darkness, “Come to the back door.”
“Have you got wax in your ears? I’ve been standing out here forever.”
I put my finger to my lips, took her silently by the hand, and led her through the dark to my room. The whole house was still.
“I had to see you on your birthday,” she said softly and assaulted my face with kisses. I groped for Buba’s hair and discovered she was wearing a babushka. Fear of being caught rose within me, but it lost its power as Buba put her arms around my neck and pressed against me. I felt her chilly body beneath her thin little blouse. Buba was shivering. I pulled her close, my hands were on her hips and then slid down over the firm curve of her buttocks to her thighs. I stroked her bare, cold skin while she pressed against me more and more and gently opened my lips with her tongue. She took my hand and led it to the only place on her chilly body that exuded warmth. My heart was hammering with excitement and pumping blood into my swelling penis. Buba slipped out of her blouse and pulled off my nightshirt. I led her to my bed.
“I . . . I don’t know exactly . . .” I stammered as Buba stroked my hair. “But I know everything.” She nestled against me, skin to skin, and as I shyly responded to her caresses, she lay on top and gently, unimaginably slowly, lowered herself onto me until I was deep inside her and we were united, man and woman. We lay still, trying to prolong the moment into an eternity. I could sense Buba getting warmer and warmer, felt the heat rising to a blaze, smelled her sweat, the aroma of fire, earth, smoke, and the sharp sweetness of her sex. Gently, Buba rocked her hips until I forgot everything around me. All my heartache, all the anguish of the past weeks, dissolved in this moment of pure happiness, while Buba bit her hand to keep from crying out with joy and pleasure. Ever so gradually, we returned from our blissful rapture. We lay in bed, our arms wrapped tightly around each other. And I felt her tears on my chest.
“Buba, what’s wrong?” My voice shook with fear and worry. I felt for a pack of matches and lit a candle.
“We won’t be together again like this for a long time. A very long time,” Buba said in deep sadness.
“But why not? I’ll be with you forever, and nothing can keep us apart.”
“Yes, it can, Pavel. You’re forgetting: I’m a Gypsy and you’re a gajo.”
“I don’t care.”
To my shock Buba pulled off her babushka: there wasn’t a single hair on her head. All the marvelous curls I loved so much were gone.
“They shaved me because Mother claimed I’d been in bed with you. Now at least she’s right about that.”
My dismay at the loss of Buba’s mass of curls turned gradually into anger. “Even if she is your mother, she’s a terrible woman.”
“Yes,” said Buba, “my mother is sick. But only since my father ran off with another woman. She didn’t used to be so bad. And you must never forget that we’re Gypsies, my mother even more than me. When she caught us together in the library, she wanted to disown me. She really meant to. But they couldn’t hold a clan council since no one could notify our relatives because of all the snow. I owe it to Uncle Dimi and him alone that I wasn’t cast out. Without him I wouldn’t even be here with you. Uncle Dimi knows everything.”
“What does he know?”
“About us. I told him I never wanted anyone but you.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“He wanted to hear what made me so sure. I told him I loved you and you had sensitive hands.”
I blushed. Looking at Buba and her shaved head, I knew no scissors in the world could spoil one iota of her beauty.
“And it’s all right with Dimitru that we’re together?”
“Yes. He says I could never find a better man than you. He also knows I’m with you tonight. He even made some tea for my mother that made her sleep like a log all night long.”
“And Dimitru also saw to it that you wouldn’t be cast out from your family just because you want a gajo?”
“He threatened them, ‘If you expel my Buba, then I’ll leave, too. I won’t be a Gypsy anymore.’ But that’s really all he could do for me. Even Uncle Dimi couldn’t keep them from punishing me, although everyone in the family listens to what he says.”
“And that’s why they cut off your hair?”
“Yes, but that isn’t so bad. Uncle Dimi says it’ll grow back three times as beautiful. But there’s something much worse than that,” and Buba began to cry again. “This summer we’re going to the market in Bistrita, and my mother intends to marry me off to some man I’ve never seen before.”
That took my breath away. “But, but, I don’t want some other man to have you! If I even think about you being together with someone else like you are with me, I—”
“Never! It’ll never, ever happen. I’m like this only for you, and I never will be for anyone else.”
The words were hardly out of her mouth when I saw how her eyes were shining in the light of the candle. She even smiled and gently shook her head.
“What are you thinking?”
“Uncle Dimi’s not just a good person, he’s sly, too. Very sly. Much much more clever than any of us can imagine.”
“What do you mean?”
�
��I was surprised at first when he allowed me to come to you tonight. But now I know why he did it.”
“Why did he?”
“Because for me as a Gypsy, it doesn’t matter that there’s no other man I want. What’s important is that no other man wants me. Uncle Dimi knew I wouldn’t be a virgin anymore after this night with you. And no other husband could live with that shame.”
“Does that mean we can be together forever?”
Buba smothered me with kisses. “Yes and no. I have to get married. And when the man they choose for me discovers I’m not a virgin, I don’t know what will happen. But I have to get married, you understand? It’s not about me, it’s about my family’s honor.”
“So what can we do?”
“Uncle Dimi says that day will come when the laws of the heart are stronger than the laws of blood. And he also says it requires patience—a lot of patience. But he promised me on his honor as a Gypsy that the day will come.”
“And when will it come?”
“I don’t know, Pavel. I really don’t know. It can take a very long time. But I will wait. Do you promise to be there when the day comes?”
“I will be there.”
“Good.” Buba put her blouse back on and wrapped her head in the babushka. “Uncle Dimi said something else: lovers often make a big mistake. In their bliss they forget about everyone else. And when they suddenly discover they have only themselves, their love has died.”
I didn’t reply. Suddenly the image was there again: Angela Barbulescu swinging in the wind up on the Mondberg.
Buba put her arm around me. “You’re thinking of our teacher.”
“Yes. I saw her hanging from a branch in her thin sunflower dress. Everyone thinks she took her own life, but I’m not so sure because she had a visitor the day before she disappeared. It was that guy with the wart your uncle Salman gave a ride to when he brought the television set to the village. He sat in Angela’s parlor and had a drink with her. Maybe it was murder, and he strung her up. But maybe not. I don’t understand what that man wanted from her. After all, she had said she was going to break her silence about what happened in the capital. And she told Fritz he should let his father know she wasn’t afraid anymore. I read Angela’s diary all the way through, and I know what happened to her child.”
“I must know what you know,” said Buba. “I can’t leave until I do.”
I reached under my mattress, pulled out the green notebook, and handed it to Buba. Then I fetched Das Kapital by Karl Marx and got out the photo showing Angela Barbulescu at a happy moment, pursing her lips for a kiss. Buba took the picture and looked at it.
“I know this picture! That’s exactly how I once saw the teacher. Do you remember? The day we were waiting in the school yard and she didn’t come to school, you asked me as a joke what my third eye could see. And that’s what I was seeing—I saw her with blond hair tied in a ponytail. But there’s a piece missing from this photo. There was a man, too. Was it that Stefan?”
“Yes. She burned him off with a candle. It’s a snapshot Heinrich Hofmann took on one of their holidays in the capital.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Last summer I was alone with her in her house one evening. She had invited me and I had to go.”
“Did you sleep with her, then?”
I shook my head. “I think she was looking for me to be her ally. But she’d been drinking a lot. She tried to seduce me, but I didn’t want to. No, I didn’t want to.”
Buba took the green diary. She opened it to the page with the brown cross and the verse:
THE MIGHTY FALL FROM THEIR THRONES
THE LOWLY ARE LIFTED UP
HIS HOUR WILL COME
WHEN HE’S REACHED THE TOP.
Without a word, Buba leafed forward until she came to the teacher’s farewell letter.
When I touched Buba’s arm, her skin was again ice cold.
“Stephanescu and his people cut her baby out of her body,” she said. “They’ll pay for it. Someday Stephanescu will pay this bill. And you and I, Pavel, we’ll deliver it to him.”
“But Angela predicted that Stephanescu would fall when he’d reached the top. She even said she’d come back to fetch him to hell. Why did she go and whisper to me in her last hour in Baia Luna that I should send him to hell? What did she mean by that? What am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know. All I know is she wants justice. Simple justice, nothing else. I have to go, Pavel.” Buba embraced me. “I’ll wait for you,” she whispered in my ear. Then she disappeared without a sound.
All during the month of January, it seemed that Grandfather’s sentence “Dimitru saw Barbu go in there, too” had died away without anyone noticing. Then on February 1, the day before Candlemas, the echo returned. On that day the Gypsy Dimitru Carolea Gabor entered our shop early in the morning, stony faced, and broke off his friendship with Ilja.
“Don’t you know that the truth is fragile? No, you serve it on a tray to people who twist everything into a lie. How can you be my ally when you aren’t even a match for that crazy woman?”
Then Dimitru turned on his heel and left. Grandfather was not taken by surprise. Dimitru had only put into words what he felt himself. He was a dreamer, incapable of clear calculation and utterly unsuited for the sly stratagems the Gypsy had so urgently recommended. For as long as he’d known Dimitru, Grandfather had thought of his Gypsy friend as a cunning child while he himself was a tavern owner and businessman with adult responsibilities. But it was he who was still a naïve boy despite his fifty-five years. Like a child he had trusted in the innocence of words. “Dimitru saw Barbu go in there, too.” When my grandfather realized the consequences of those words, his dreams of America and Noueeyorka died and would stay dead for a long, long time.
It started with Julia Simenov storming into our shop on the afternoon before Candlemas, wailing and distraught.
“What happened, girl?” asked Grandfather just as I came running in from the kitchen.
“Who would do such a horrid thing, Pavel? Who could be so cruel?”
“What are you talking about?”
“They desecrated Barbu’s grave. Someone tore the wreath apart and broke our wooden cross, too. And then they relieved themselves on the grave—went to the bathroom right on it.”
My blood was boiling. “You mean, they sha . . . Who did it?”
“Maybe it was dogs,” Ilja tried to calm himself down.
“No,” replied Julia, “it was human animals. Dogs don’t break crosses.”
Grandfather’s suspicion fell immediately on Kora Konstantin. Since she had ripped the dress off of Angela Barbulescu’s corpse, she seemed capable of anything. He was unable to imagine anyone else in Baia Luna doing such a despicable thing.
That is, until Vera Raducanu entered the shop, her head held high and her nose in the air as always. But she didn’t ask for the soap wrapped in gold foil. Instead she began a conversation in an unusually friendly tone. She let fall a few words about the cold weather, complained briefly about the remoteness of Baia Luna, and finally got to the point: her son Lupu. She was very well aware that in the past few weeks some villagers—without ever mentioning her son by name, of course—had been holding the Securitate major responsible for the murder of the priest. Vera formulated it as “pin it on him.” She wasn’t going to mention any names, but it was no accident that the ethnic Germans (led by that Karl Koch) were at the forefront of the attempt to smear her Lupu’s character. Her son would call those slanderers to account once this awful snow had melted and the roads to Baia Luna were passable again. Especially since the case of Johannes Baptiste was now closed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It was Barbu. Kora’s right. Everybody knows it now. Even the Gypsies saw her sneaking into the rectory.”
“Get out of my store!” was all my granddad replied to Vera Raducanu. But when Erika Schuster, then Elena Kisele
v, and finally Istvan Kallay, Karl Koch, and Hermann Schuster came to see Grandfather in the course of that afternoon, and all said that the crazy Konstantin was now going to break her silence and produce irrefutable evidence that Angela Barbulescu and she alone was behind the murder of Pater Johannes, Grandfather realized he had set off an avalanche with his innocent remark. Only Hermann Schuster kept a cool head and suggested they call a village assembly on Candlemas to put a lid on the overflowing pot of rumors once and for all. To stop the gossip, Kora Konstantin should be given the opportunity to air her view of things, produce her evidence, and also answer the questions of the other village residents. Schuster’s idea was immediately accepted, and word quickly spread that on the dot of eleven o’clock on the following day, an extraordinary assembly of citizens would take place in Botev’s tavern that all men and women were urgently required to attend. When Kora Konstantin learned of the idea, she declared that she would say what she had to say but never, ever would she say it under the Botevs’ roof. Since nothing in the world could change Kora’s mind, it was decided to hold the public hearing in the church, which was not a bad decision from a practical point of view, since our taproom would have been bursting at the seams with even a third of the curious who were likely to attend. By ten thirty, a half hour before the announced beginning, new arrivals at the church had to be satisfied with standing room only.
Kora was the last to arrive. Supported by her brother-in-law Marku and the sacristan Knaup, she sashayed down the main aisle at a leisurely pace to the three chairs set up at the front of the sanctuary. Despite the cold, Kora wore only a black suit. Her hair was gathered beneath a fur cap, and a black tulle veil covered her face. She took her place between her two companions as Istvan Kallay, who had been asked to chair the hearing, welcomed those present.
The Madonna on the Moon Page 22
