“How come the bureaucracy is finally getting its butt in gear?” Grandfather inquired as we were leaving.
The lady cleared her throat. “Let me put it this way: official efficiency has improved enormously since Comrade Dr. Stephanescu became first party secretary of Kronauburg. If you ask me, that man is a blessing for everyone.”
I didn’t ask her anything. How wrong that was suddenly came home to me just as we were entering the central warehouse of the T.O. to pick up our supplies at last.
“I wonder what the new prices are going to be,” said Ilja. “The Hossus were always fair, at least.”
The Hossus! Exactly! A few times I had caught a glimpse of the Hossu brothers when I accompanied Grandfather on his trips to the wholesalers. I didn’t know their first names, but I knew their faces. I had seen one of them last night, but I hadn’t been able to place him exactly. An older gentleman enjoying himself with a blond angel in a hotel room—certainly that could occur from time to time. But that he would voluntarily allow himself to be photographed in the act—probably not.
Chapter Ten
A FILTER CIGARETTE, A FLASH OF INSIGHT,
AND MARY AND THE OCEANS
As our overloaded wagon crossed the bridge over the Tirnava in Baia Luna toward evening, the news that Botevs’ shop had not just fresh but extraordinary wares for sale spread like wildfire. We hadn’t even completely unloaded the wagon, and women were already lining up to replenish their household stocks of sunflower oil, salt, sugar, and flour. There was even—for the first time and especially for the ladies, as grandfather pitched it—lemon-scented dish detergent, tins of cream for delicate hands, and two vials of Rêves de la Nuit perfume, one of which Vera Raducanu purchased immediately, while the second bottle would remain on our shelves for years to come, until Dimitru the Gypsy and I finally found a use for it. But most sought-after were the bittersweet exotic fruits only the oldest residents could recall having seen (but never tasted) during the monarchy.
Ilja explained that the low but curiously unrounded prices, prescribed by state decree down to the last decimal, were the result of a national subvention policy he himself did not understand. His new status as an associate of the state cooperative provoked Hermann Schuster to make the malicious remark, “Now you’re in league with the Communists, too.”
Erika Schuster defended Grandfather from her husband’s attack and told him to forget that awful political stuff and judge things by the bottom line. The village women agreed with Erika. But the children were deeply disappointed when Granddad explained that from then on there would be just fruit drops with raspberry flavor but no more genuine chewing gum. Since their sad juvenile eyes continued to weigh on his mind, however, he invented the fairy tale that a raging storm in the Atlantic had prevented the resupply ship from America from dropping anchor punctually in the Black Sea port of Constanta, but that it would arrive soon. He didn’t tell them that the director of the Kronauburg trade organization had declared American chewing gum to be a decadent excrescence of capitalist consumer behavior, and as such it had been completely eliminated from their product line. From then on, the children still reached into Ilja’s candy jar but despaired of getting at the raspberry drops melted together in a sugary clump.
All in all, people in Baia Luna were coming to the conclusion that times might not be exactly rosy, but they weren’t black either. As long as the regime in the capital was lowering prices and the collectivists from Kronauburg hadn’t shown up yet, although village life might not settle back into its old routines, at least there was an acceptable orderliness even without a priest, a Madonna, and an Eternal Flame. Of course, parents were not pleased that there was still no teacher for the school, but that too would certainly get straightened out in a year or two.
The cooperative model seemed to be paying off for our shop. Grandfather had paid with cash from our family savings for half the first batch of wholesale stock and gotten the other half on consignment, according to which he would pay for the rest once he’d sold it. If we subtracted the expenses of staying overnight at the Golden Star and eating in the restaurant, there was still some money left over. At my urging, before we left Kronauburg to return to Baia Luna Grandfather made a down payment on a piece of equipment that would enable us to bring some “cultural enrichment” to the monotony of life in the village: an antenna for the TV. Ilja’s guess was correct that a functioning apparatus would considerably increase the attraction of our taproom, which had been flagging of late. As soon as the postman brought the first month’s salary and it was time for another buying trip to Kronauburg, he would pay the balance for the antenna. And when Grandfather served the men fresh Sylvaner and a few cases of Kronenbräu to boot, even the most dyed-in-the-wool anti-Bolshevist had to admit that although Socialism in general was an instrument of the devil, it undoubtedly also had its good side. From then on, instead of playing cards in the tavern and rolling dice for the check, the men stared at the TV screen.
While the television noticeably bolstered Grandfather’s reputation in the village, another matter was weighing heavily on my mind for a few days after we returned from Kronauburg. I avoided contact with my mother and hardly dared look her in the eye. In a quiet moment Kathalina had pulled me aside and with an angry glare made it clear that she never again wanted to find any filth under her roof. While airing out the bed in my room she had stumbled upon a photograph. She didn’t even want to know where it came from. I turned red as a beet and wanted to sink into the ground for shame. Mother said that, of course, she had torn up the cheap piece of pornography then and there and thrown it into the woodstove. As far as she was concerned, that was the end of the matter, and she would never mention it again. Obviously she hadn’t recognized the champagne squirter, Dr. Stephanescu, or any other man in the objectionable picture.
After a few days of shame, my relationship with my mother was restored to its normal footing. I could get over the loss of the picture. The negative, after all, was in my possession. However, that piece of film by itself did me no good. I didn’t have the technical means at my disposal to print a positive from the negative. I was imagining eye-catching prints the size of the ones hanging in the windows of Hofmann’s shop. But I had no plan for gaining access to the necessary lab equipment. The clock was ticking, however, against Dr. Stephanescu. I needed to be patient. I had to wait.
The first thing was to find a safe place for the negative, for Angela’s diary (which I had temporarily hidden among the out-of-service schoolbooks in my backpack), and for the half-burned photo of the kiss that was still between the pages of Marx’s Das Kapital. I took the picture out and looked at Angela with her ponytail. There was unquestionably a resemblance between her and Heinrich Hofmann’s assistant Irina Lupescu, although Irina was certainly prettier in a conventional sense. But a beauty shone through from beneath the surface of the photo of young Angela Maria Barbulescu, blossoming only at the moment of recognition, beyond all desire. As I discovered for myself the precious beauty of the teacher’s picture, I realized where it could be kept safe. If Pater Johannes’s little silver key that I had taken from the board next to his wardrobe fit the lock I thought it did, then that place was the most secret and safe place for the photo and the revealing negative.
Once Baia Luna was asleep, I crept into the church and felt my way in the darkness up to the chancel and the wall beneath the extinguished Eternal Flame. In the flare of a match I saw the silvery metal plate with the images of bread and wine. It was the door to the niche for the tabernacle where Johannes Baptiste had kept the communion wafers. The key fit. Inside there was an empty goblet covered with a white cloth. I put the negative and the photo of Angela into the goblet, covered it with the green diary, and locked the niche.
The four-wheel-drive vehicle showed up in Baia Luna again at a moment when probably no one except me and Karl Koch was still thinking about Lupu Raducanu. Irina Lupescu’s fiancé arrived with the policeman Cartarescu and three heavily a
rmed militiamen. Cartarescu was wearing a new uniform with stripes and little gold stars on his epaulettes. They stopped on the village square, got out, and headed directly for our T.O. concession. I watched through the window as Cartarescu told the men with the Kalashnikovs to wait on the steps.
Grandfather hadn’t even had time to ask, What do they want? and I knew the answer already. They’d come because of me. At the moment Lupu Raducanu ground his cigarette out with his shoe before entering, I knew the major of the Securitate was following the trail of the things I had forgotten on that night in Heinrich Hofmann’s studio. It was a mistake to leave my cigarettes in the basement.
Raducanu and Cartarescu entered and greeted us.
“It’s really nice to get out of the city in the summer,” said the security agent. “Wonderful up here where you people live. We really appreciate the good air.” He looked at me. “Especially if you stay in a hotel and can’t get to sleep because of your asthma.”
“What are you looking for?” asked Grandfather while Kathalina disappeared into the kitchen.
“Just a routine visit,” said Cartarescu, who had been promoted to captain in the meantime. “General supervision of personnel. Your IDs?”
Grandfather took the new pass out of his billfold.
“You, too!” Cartarescu barked at me.
“Got to go up to my room and get it.”
“Make it snappy!”
I ran up to my room, sat down on the bed, and took a few deep breaths. “It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay,” I murmured as I heard in my head once more the voice of Buba’s uncle Dimitru: You’ve got to stand the world on its head. I placed my pass on the counter next to Grandfather’s. Raducanu reached for Ilja’s ID first, regarded it impassively, then said only, “Yes, yes, the good old striped tie. Never out of fashion.”
Then he took my pass. He turned his gaze from my face to the pass and back again. I stayed calm.
“Anything wrong?”
“All in order,” answered Raducanu. “New photo, what? Why are you looking so serious in it? Photo Hofmann, right?”
I looked Raducanu right in the eye.
“Exactly. You’re very well informed. My compliments. We just recently had our pictures taken there. It’s my first real ID, the first time I’ve been photographed. Hofmann’s studio, a fancy place, I’m telling you. They know something about photography. Even a blind person can see that.”
I noticed that Raducanu’s eyes were twitching, and his mind was turning over at a furious pace.
“Have you got an ashtray?” he suddenly asked, although there was one on the counter to his left. Grandfather pushed it over to the security agent. Raducanu fished a white Kent from his pack. “Want to try a good one? Filtered. From America.”
I stuck out my chin. “Thanks, but I don’t smoke.”
“You should give it a try. They’re really good. Don’t scratch your throat like those Carpatis.”
“Sorry, but I never smoke.”
“Very admirable.” Lupu Raducanu’s smile looked forced. I sensed a growing threat. Everything depended on Grandfather Ilja. He knew I smoked.
“But to be completely honest”—I was risking my neck—“‘never’ is an exaggeration. Once I did smoke half a pack behind the school building with my old classmate Hofmanns’ Fritz. You wouldn’t believe how much I threw up. That cured me.”
Ilja was silent, and I thought what a smart man my grandfather was. Lupu took another tack. He groped around in his pocket as if looking for his lighter.
“Got any matches?”
“Sure,” I said. Instead of taking the pack out of my pocket I went to the shelf, tore open a fresh box of matches, and handed the Securitate major a pack stamped PEOPLE’S COOPERATIVE, KRONAUBURG TRADE ORGANIZATION.
“You can keep them. Right, Grandfather?” I looked at Ilja.
“Sure, no need for him to pay. Of course not.”
Raducanu changed color. He wasn’t in control of the situation anymore. His pale face flushed, and his small eyes flickered. Then he started screaming so that his voice cracked. “You were down in Hofmann’s basement! What were you doing there? I know you were down there! I’m absolutely sure!” Raducanu dropped his voice again. “You’re young. But I guarantee that when they let you out of Aiud or Pitesti in five years you’re going to look old. Admit it and I promise you we can work something out between the two of us.”
I closed my eyes and held my hands in front of my face in a gesture that one could interpret as an admission of guilt. I felt Raducanu put his arm around my shoulder. “Everybody does stupid things when they’re young.” The security agent’s voice had nothing threatening about it. “Believe me, I used to do a lot of crazy things myself.”
I sobbed. “I admit it. I was down in the lab. But I promise I never touched her. Absolutely not.”
Vexed, the security agent looked over at Cartarescu, who was so confused himself he didn’t know where to look.
Raducanu took his arm away and snapped at me, “Who do you mean?”
“The lady, I mean, the pretty blond with the ponytail. She was so nice. And so I asked her if she would show me the lab, even though that photography stuff doesn’t interest me. But I don’t have a girlfriend, and since she was so beautiful . . . I had no idea she was already spoken for. If I’d known you were Irina’s fiancé I never would have gone down to the basement. But word of honor: I only looked at her but didn’t do a thing. Even though it was dark.”
I had the impression that a mocking grin flitted across Raducanu’s face.
“Their IDs are in order,” Cartarescu announced and turned to the major. “I think we’ve accomplished what we came for. Let’s go.”
“Just one more thing. That television over there. Whose is it?”
“Mine,” answered Grandfather brusquely.
“And presumably you can prove that?”
Granddad reached into his billfold again. “Here! The first payment on the antenna. And . . . just a second . . . the receipt for the TV, where’d I put it?” Then he opened the cash register and took out the receipt Dimitru had given him. “Here it is! All in order!”
Raducanu glanced at the receipt.
“Your shop seems to be prospering. Where did you come by so much money?”
Grandfather squirmed a bit, looking for an answer.
“If you don’t reveal the source of the money immediately, we’re going to confiscate the TV and take you along, too,” Cartarescu threatened.
When Grandfather finally answered, I had to work hard not to show my astonishment. Grandfather was not just a smart man, he was a very smart man.
“Business,” said Ilja softly. “Private deals.” His billfold proved to be a real treasure trove. “Here’s the new contract with the People’s Shopping Cooperative. The supply situation is tip-top now. But the last few years, before Socialism, how was I supposed to pour a decent zuika for folks? You know yourselves that the supply chain is poor in the mountains. Everything comes to a standstill in the winter. You’ve got to wheel and deal a bit here and there. I had to do business with the moonshiners and, of course, I always made a bit on the deal. Over the years I put the money aside. For a TV. If I had to make a list of everyone who has a still in his barn, you’d have to arrest every man in the village. And if you absolutely have to confiscate the television, what are we going to do here? We hear nothing about the world up here in the mountains. Go ahead and ask around. When they broadcast Khrushchev’s Sputnik speech about overcoming gravity and the victory of Socialism, my place here was full to bursting.”
Cartarescu ticked off the violations: “Illegal production of alcohol, tax evasion, illegal sales. We’re gonna confiscate the TV set!”
“Leave their set alone!” Lupu barked in annoyance at the new captain. “Do you think I’ve come all the way up here to catch moonshiners and confiscate televisions? You can kiss my ass with all this insignificant shit. By the way, where’s tha
t Saxon, that Karl Koch?”
Without saying good-bye, Raducanu stomped out of the shop. Outside, the three militiamen with their submachine guns fell in behind him.
Since the arrival of the four-wheel-drive vehicle, the farmers in the fields had laid aside their hoes and hurried into the village, Karl Koch among them. He was holding a list with the names of all the grown men of Baia Luna. The security agent walked up to him.
“Here’s your damn list, you . . .”
“‘Pretty boy’! ‘Pretty boy,’ that’s the phrase you want, right, Herr Koch?”
Hermann Schuster elbowed his Saxon friend and hissed, “Just keep quiet.”
Karl Koch shut up. Lupu Raducanu took the list and laughed. Then he ripped it up in front of everybody and threw the scraps over his shoulder.
“You son of a bitch!” Karl Koch exploded but was held back at the last minute by Schuster and Istvan Kallay.
“You’re a real warrior.” Raducanu grinned. “Even back in the day. Russia, right? You volunteered for the great campaign against the Bolsheviks. Were you as brave back in the old days as you are now, back then with the women and children in the villages by the Don, you Hitlerist?”
Karl Koch spat in Raducanu’s face.
The security agent took out his handkerchief, nodded curtly to the militiamen, and said only, “Bring him along.”
Hermann Schuster came running. “You can’t just arrest people without cause. Even in this country you still need an arrest warrant.”
“Show this man that everything’s in order,” said the security agent to Cartarescu. When the Kronauburg chief of police pulled out an arrest warrant, the men of Baia Luna knew that Karl Koch’s fate had already been decided. Cartarescu took care of the formalities: “Herr Koch, you are accused of resisting an organ of the state, anti-Socialist propaganda, and disturbance of the peace. We hereby take you into investigative custody.”
The Madonna on the Moon Page 29
