“Yes, we were.”
“But Uncle Dimi, you never loved her.” Buba was trembling.
“No, I used her. And when I began to love Angela, it was too late. In our nocturnal encounters we didn’t say much to each other. But I always sensed that something had happened to her. Something dark, earlier, before she came to Baia Luna. I saw the shadow, but I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see it. I wanted her to keep her heart to herself. Until our last night before my friend Ilja’s fifty-fifth birthday. It was almost winter already, and Angela came to me through the cold. She was freezing, and we made love, but it didn’t warm us up. She put her clothes back on and all she said was ‘Dimitru, I’m not going to come anymore. I’m going down into the black water.’”
Dimitru was weeping. “At that moment I would have given anything to save her from that final step. Anything. But it was too late. When Angela showed me her heart, her time had run out. She had touched me, but I saw a heart without blood. It lay dying, wounded long, long ago. When I finally felt my love, I learned what guilt means. She was lost. And I had not stood by her. She would die and take the dark secret of her past with her.”
“Uncle Dimi, Angela kept a diary that—”
“I know, dear Buba, I know. Let me talk. I was desperate. I could think of nothing but Angela. At the same time, it was my friend Ilja’s birthday. When I brought the television into the taproom that afternoon, I had already been drinking zuika. I didn’t want to burden my friend on his special day with my own bad conscience. So I kept on drinking. Our conversation about Korolev’s Sputnik and the Virgin Mary with Papa Baptiste went right past me. I was so drunk that I fell down the steps in front of Ilja’s tavern on my way home. Pavel and Fritz, do you remember dragging me home?”
“Oh yes, Dimitru,” said Fritz. “I’ll never forget that night.”
“I was drunk, believe me, but I wasn’t blind or deaf. I heard the steeple clock strike nine thirty and saw there was no light burning in Angela’s house. But there was always a light on at that time. I knew then she was on her way to the black water. I fell asleep then, but I woke up in the middle of the night. I was terribly cold. I thought I heard a voice calling softly, Dimitru, Dimitru! I’m cold, I’m so cold. I got up and looked, but there was no one out there. I pleaded with God to send Angela to the rectory library. Although I knew that such prayers are never answered, I went to the rectory. And so the disaster took its course. If I hadn’t gone there, those criminals wouldn’t have murdered Papa Baptiste.”
Now Dimitru was crying steadily. Buba put her hand on his shoulder. “What happened, Uncle Dimi?”
“My curiosity was to blame. An envelope was sticking out of the rectory’s mailbox. Although it wasn’t addressed to me, I took it out and locked myself in the library. There were photographs in the envelope.”
“My father Heinrich took them,” Fritz interrupted the Gypsy. “My father put the letter into the mailbox.”
“I guessed that was the case. The pictures were of Angela and some men. They were doing things to her, things no one should do to another person. I can’t talk to you about them. But now I knew why Angela’s heart had bled to death. She was a brave woman. She kept on living although they had killed her long ago.”
“Those pictures,” I asked, “what happened to them, Dimitru?”
“What could I do? I burned them and scattered the ashes in the Tirnava. That’s why Papa Baptiste had to die. The thugs who killed him thought he had hidden the photographs in the rectory, and that’s why they turned everything upside down. But Papa Baptiste had no idea. He couldn’t tell them anything because he knew nothing about them.”
“Maybe he did know something about Angela’s past?” I ventured. “Kora Konstantin claimed that Angela had been with the pastor on the afternoon of Grandfather’s birthday, wanting to confess. Fernanda the housekeeper had listened at the door and told Kora that Johannes Baptiste refused Angela absolution.”
“Yes, Pavel, that old Konstantin woman told the truth. Or what she thought was the truth. But that’s another story. It’s true that Angela was in the rectory with Papa Baptiste and then in the library. When I entered the library on the day after Ilja’s birthday, I noticed right away that she had been back again. It smelled of roses. Angela must have left me a message. I searched and I found the green diary.”
“What?” both Buba and I cried out in shock and surprise.
“You read the diary? So it was only playacting when you did a headstand against the bookcase and afterward said you had to turn the world upside down?” My astonishment was mixed with anger. “You tricked me. You wanted me to find the book so you wouldn’t need to have anything to do with it.”
“You’re right, Pavel. But you’re also wrong. Yes, I wanted the diary to be found, and I wanted you to find it. But let me talk. I holed up for days in the library, and believe me, I read Angela’s book hundreds of times. It seared my soul. I was guilty of not helping her, and I also wanted justice. I passed sentence and decided to kill the man who had killed Angela. Stephanescu had to die. He had to fall when he reached the top. Like in the Bible, like in Mary’s Magnificat. And it was up to me, Dimitru Carolea Gabor, who only saw Angela’s flesh when she was still alive. It was up to me to make sure that at least her prophecy would be fulfilled.”
“But Angela was wrong,” I interrupted the Gypsy. “In her farewell letter she wrote that Stephanescu’s last hour had struck. But that hour lasted more than thirty years.”
“Pavel, my boy, when will you ever learn how to read properly? Always exactamente! Angela didn’t predict ‘Your last hour has already struck.’ She wrote, ‘Your last hours have been rung in.’ There’s a difference. The course for his fall had been set. It was a question of timing when he would be thrown off course. First, he had to reach the top. But you’re right, Pavel. The moment of truth was long in coming.”
“And that moment arrived when the Conducator fell and Stephanescu was celebrating his guaranteed succession,” Fritz added. “Dimitru, what I don’t understand is how you could be sure that Pavel, Buba, and I would be able to topple Stephanescu from his throne. And besides, you declared war on the man, but you sent us into battle against him. You used us for your purposes.”
Dimitru didn’t answer immediately. He looked at the ceiling and murmured in a low monotone, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” Then: “Yes, you were my tools. And yet you fought your own battle. What was I supposed to do? I saw no other way except for one, but I was unable to follow it. After Angela had been buried behind the cemetery, everyone in the village thought I had locked myself up in the library. But I hadn’t. I walked through the snow all the way to Kronauburg. I acquired a pistol from the Gypsies who hung around the train station, and I intended to shoot Stephanescu. I waited for him on the market square for three days, but he never showed up. Then I went up to his villa on the Klosterberg under cover of darkness and rang the doorbell. He answered the door and stood before me. I drew the pistol, but I couldn’t shoot. I was overcome by a terrible fear I’ve never felt before or since. Stephanescu looked at me. He wasn’t horrified or frightened, no, he was smiling. All I needed to do was pull the trigger, and Stephanescu would have been dead. But not the smiling demon. It would have entered me. Everything inside me was pain and hatred, but nothing that would have protected me from the demon: no angel, no saints, no Mother of God, nothing. I threw the pistol away and ran and ran . . .
“I wasn’t the right one to bring down Stephanescu. Someone else had to do it, someone whose eye could see the invisible and ear hear the inaudible, the mute scream of grief. The person had to be smart. And courageous, for he had to get so close to Stephanescu that the demon would be forced to show its face. It couldn’t possibly be me. Don’t forget, I’m only a Black. A person like Dr. Stephanescu doesn’t even consider me worthy to wipe his behind. Stephanescu would only feel comfortable with a white, with one of his own kind, and then he could be lured into a trap.
That gajo was you, Pavel. You were different from all the other gaje I knew. You knew what it meant to turn the world upside down, you and my niece Buba. You two were young and were just falling in love. I was born an old man. But now that my music is ending, I wonder, would it have been better if you’d never come across Angela’s diary? I don’t know the answer.”
Buba took his hand. “But I do,” she said. “Your music was wonderful. Without your song I would have forgotten that I’d forgotten. Without you, Dimi, Pavel and I would never have lost each other but never found each other either.”
“Is that really true, Pavel?”
“Completamente true! And because it is, your niece’s name is Buba Botev from now on.”
Dimitru sat up. His eyes were shimmering, and he looked quite youthful. “That is good news. But you really could have thought of it earlier. You’re not the youngest anymore. Pavel, it’s high time for you to start thinking about offspring. Time passes in a flash, and before you know it you’re out of juice. But don’t worry. Abraham was a hundred when Sarah bore him Isaac. And the old guy was just warming up and went on to be a mighty progenitor. You too, Fritz, you should be thinking of the future, too, not just living from day to day, running hither and yon. Like the Gypsies.”
“I’ll try.” Fritz Hofmann laughed. “But I’ve got to get one thing off my chest: Dimitru Carolea Gabor, you’re the slyest fox I’ve ever run across.”
“Now, now, now, my boy. Even your advanced age doesn’t save you from error. You have absolutely encountered a slyer person than me. But know-it-all that you were, you didn’t realize it, of course. Yes, I was always a fox, and do you know why, Fritz? Because I had a teacher who was even slyer. Much, much slyer.”
“Your father?”
“No, no. My father Laszlo was certainly a genius. Without him I never would have gotten into the relics business. But as far as brains go, my father—may he rest in peace—could never hold a candle to Papa Baptiste. Papa was really sly. I would never have gotten wise to him if he himself hadn’t given me the necessary tools, the instrumentum intellectatilibus, or something like that. Papa taught me the language of the Latins, which, by the way, came in very handy in selling my milk to the Orthodox. But I’m getting ahead of myself. When I was only a young man, temptation in the form of woman kept crossing my path—permanente. So I was also regularly kneeling in the confessional with Papa Baptiste. I hadn’t learned enough Latin yet to understand which formulas Papa Johannes was murmuring, but one year on Good Friday I noticed what he didn’t say. At the absolution he never said Ego te absolvo.
“And that’s why what the housekeeper Fernanda Klein overheard and Kora Konstantin spread around is true: Papa Baptiste really didn’t absolve Angela after her confession. He would pray for her—that’s what he’s supposed to have said to Angela—but he couldn’t speak the words Ego te absolvo.”
“Were Angela’s sins really so great?”
“That’s a question I’m not qualified to answer, Pavel. The deciding factor was that Papa was not able or allowed to forgive sins because he wasn’t a priest!”
“What?”
“More precisely, when he came to Baia Luna he wasn’t a priest anymore. Papa Baptiste had been excommunicated, that is, he had been stripped of the office of priest and banned from the Benedictine order and the flock of the faithful.”
“But why? I can’t believe it!”
“But it’s true. When I asked Papa Baptiste why he never granted me an Ego te absolvo he explained it all to me over a glass of zuika. In the early thirties, Papa had been a secret agent in Soviet Russia, working underground for the Vatican as a priest on a clandestine mission. He was constantly on the go between Odessa, Moscow, and some town with a name no one can pronounce, trying to convert the unbelieving Soviets. He was even about to be consecrated as a secret bishop when some Judas betrayed him. Papa was able to escape back to Rome, but some underground Catholic priests were exposed. They got transported to a prison on a nameless island in the White Sea. To free the poor fellows the Vatican had to send an entire freight car full of church treasures to Moscow, where some of the loot was melted down and some illegally sold back to the West for hard currency. Papa told me that then he’d gotten a new assignment from the Vatican. All I remember is that he was supposed to help arrange complicated treaties between the German Hitlerists and the Catholics. Instead, Baptiste wrote a paper explaining why one must never sign a pact with the devil. But Pope Pius tore up the paper, and Papa Baptiste was sent back to the Benedictines in Austria where they put him to work in the monastery library filling out catalog cards and sorting old books. Papa did that for a while, but then he’d had enough. He refused to submit any longer to the authority of the pope and his abbot. That’s when they handed him the certificate of excommunication.”
I shook my head. “I still can’t believe it. He said Mass and preached sermons here. The old folks still say that Johannes Baptiste was the best pastor Baia Luna ever had.”
“Absolutely correct, except he wasn’t a Catholic anymore. Why the pope and the bishop in Kronauburg let him stay here I can only guess.”
“I bet Johannes Baptiste knew too much about some people in the church,” Fritz Hofmann remarked.
“Exactamente. That must have been it. They probably thought that up here in Baia Luna, Papa Baptiste wouldn’t cause any trouble. Let him preach what he wants. But I’m telling you, Papa Johannes was an upright man. He baptized children, consecrated the host, blessed marriages, led processions to the Mondberg, buried Gypsies in sacred ground, and it was all a point of honor. The only thing he never did was to forgive sins. And do you know what he said to me over that glass of zuika right here in this library? ‘Dimitru,’ he said . . .
“Pavel, I think a little glass would help refresh my memories of Papa’s words.”
I laughed. “You can always count on a tavern keeper from the House of Botev.” I fetched four glasses and uncorked a bottle of zuika. Buba, Fritz, and I clinked glasses with Dimitru.
“Innkeeper, my glass has a hole in it!” I refilled it for him. “Well, here’s how it was. Papa Baptiste sat here with me on the chaise longue and said, ‘Dimitru, I forgive everything you did, but not in the name of the Lord. I’m not authorized to do that . . .’ And that, that tortures me to this very day. Because I’ve never been absolved. I mean, really absolved. And now I’m scheduled to appear at the Last Judgment. And what then? I want so much to go to the Sea of Serenity and join Ilja there. I promised him I would. But what if they won’t let me in without absolution? What if God turns thumbs-down on me? What then?”
The Gypsy got up from the red chaise longue. He went to the window and looked up at the sky. He closed his eyes.
We weren’t looking at an old man, but at a small, shy boy who raised his index finger for quiet.
“What are you doing, Dimitru?”
“Shh,” said Buba. “I think Uncle Dimi is rehearsing his appearance before the throne of the Almighty.”
From the small boy’s mouth came a deep bass voice: “The Gypsy Dimitru Carolea Gabor! Please stand before the court! Let us look into the book of your life! Sins, sins, and more sins! How dare you appear before me? What’s this I read? You sold the Orthodox bottles of milk supposedly from the breasts of my Son’s mother! Shame on you, Dimitru Carolea Gabor! Do you repent?”
“Not bottles, just tiny little flasks,” answered a higher boy’s voice. “Believe me, Lord. It wasn’t my fault. My father Laszlo had the idea with the milk. What could I do, Lord? Was I supposed to deny my father? Leave him in the lurch? Like you left your Son so long ago? Didn’t Jesus complain bitterly about you as he hung on the cross? ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Did you really expect the same from me? To forsake my father? Why did you put me into the world in the first place? . . . As a Gypsy!”
Dimitru turned from the window, picked up his glass, and drank his very last swallow of zuika with the deepest satisfaction.
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“That’s just what I’ll say this evening. Believe me, if the Old Man up there falls for it, he’ll let me through to Ilja.” Then Dimitru threw off all the warm blankets he was wrapped in. “My God, I’m hot. Take me to my Antonia, my dears. After all, Abraham was already a hundred when he . . .”
A Note About the Author
Rolf Bauerdick was born in 1957 in Lehnhausen and now lives in Hiddingsel, Westphalia. After studying literature and theology in Münster, he taught German, religion, and politics in schools in the Ruhr Valley until 1985. Since 1987, he has worked as a journalist and photographer and has traveled to more than sixty countries. His award-winning articles and photo essays have appeared in European newspapers and magazines. The Madonna on the Moon is his first novel.
A Note About the Translator
David Dollenmayer is a literary translator and professor of German at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. He has translated works by Bertolt Brecht, Elias Canetti, Peter Stephan Jungk, Michael Kleeberg, Perikles Monioudis, Anna Mitgutsch, Mietek Pemper, Moses Rosenkranz, and Hansjörg Schertenleib. He is the recipient of the 2008 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize and the 2010 Austrian Cultural Forum Translation Prize.
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