It was an embarrassing memory. Marwan had brought them a glass cliché showing the trial of Dr Bastaki, one of a kind, the printer had dropped it and the glass had cracked in two. They had had to summon one of the three artists from home, a specialist in portraits–none other than Marwan’s rival–interrupting him as he was enjoying a late evening collation with some guests. The artist had joined the two fragments of glass and drawn the image from scratch: the courtroom, with Miss Elena Gorjan in the foreground, wearing a little hat with a feather atop her head, with her nose which, due to the artist’s haste, came out a little too long and drooping, and with the face of a splendidly moustachioed guard behind her, the artist’s own addition. He had not had time to draw the woman’s lover, Dr Bastaki, who was a paterfamilias, or Mr Horia Rosetti, one of the lawyers for the defence, although they could be glimpsed in the cliché, but he had drawn Miss Gorjan previously, her prudish countenance having appeared in the newspaper once before. Marwan had lost his temper and left closing the door very firmly behind him: very firmly indeed. And so now the two editors were eager to placate him.
Marwan sat down in front of Pavel, on the chair with a velvet cushion reserved for important visitors. Pavel took off his round spectacles, which tired his eyes, offered him a cheroot and took one for himself. Mr Procopiu discreetly opened the window a crack, letting in a blast of cold air.
‘What will we be reading in tomorrow’s newspaper?’ asked Marwen, with genuine interest in everything to do with the future.
He had become a photographer from a desire to have at least one foot in the door of the new times.
Unlike his brother, Peppin, who spoke in a loud, melodious voice – a fact appreciated by the director, Signor Luigi, an Italian who missed the beautiful voices of his native land – Pavel Mirto smoked heavily and spoke very softly, so that you had to prick up your ears to understand what he was saying.
‘What will we be reading?’ he whispered. ‘The usual, a small fire on Calea Victoriei, in the chimney of the house of a certain Ciuflea.’
‘What?’
‘Ciuflea. Ciu-flea. It was quickly extinguished by the firemen from the station on Strada Cometei. Then a lost wallet, whose contents seem to be very, very valuable, because the reward is three times bigger than usual – I don’t know what it might be, it’s an unusually closely kept secret – then two fraudsters who have been swindling the gullible, like the notorious Andronic used to do, in other words, he takes all their money to multiply them in a ‘machine’... and what else... a Turkish vessel sunk in the Black Sea. Ah, yes, that was the most important thing: it would seem that the Senate is finally going to propose a law against duelling.’
‘I heard that the Princess sent a cable to Lahovary’s mother, expressing her condolences.’
‘No,’ editor-in-chief Procopiu corrected him, ‘the mother of the deceased, Mrs Olympia Lahovary, is in Nice and the news was not sent to her immediately, the other son went there to break it to her gently, because she has a weak heart. Her Highness Princess Maria sent an immediate message to Mrs Lahovary, to the widow, as it were...’
And the editor sighed, for the sake of form: he was too much of a veteran newspaperman to be easily moved any more. Nevertheless, the slaying in a duel of a fellow newspaperman, one of Bucharest’s best journalists, George Lahovary, whom he had seen not long before, had rocked the capital. What was more, it had come after the campaign that Lahovary’s newspaper L’Indépendance Roumaine had waged all year against the present Constitution and after Lahovary had been attacked from every side. It certainly made you think... A good job that Universul was not political.
‘Ah, and another thing,’ continued Pavel Mirto in a barely audible voice, running his hand over his thick hair, ‘a curiosity, a man who says that he is forty-three, but looks much younger, he doesn’t even have a beard, this man was found half-dead in a field, he was rescued by Petre, the Inger coachman.
‘Which Inger, the confectioner from Strada Carol?’
‘Exactly,’ and here Pavel cleared his throat, before reaching for his cup of coffee. ‘It’s not known what the stranger is up to; the police are intrigued. He has a locked case with him, or something of the sort, and nobody can be found to vouch for him.’
Marwan was hard of hearing and did not make much of it, but he did understand that it was a trifle, like a bearded woman or some other circus act.
They moved on to a fashionable subject: Roentgen’s rays and how a surgeon from Germany had been able to see the stone in a man’s gall bladder and in another man’s liver, and how he had operated on the patients. ‘To see a man on the inside is worthy of the front page.’ Mr Procopiu had written an article on Roentgen’s discovery, titling it ‘The Miracle-working Ray.’ He had been happy to be able to write about his favourite subject: science. Apparently, one November day, exactly two years ago, the diligent researcher had seen in his rather dark laboratory a greenish ray that seemed to be coming from some cardboard covered with barium. He gazed in wonder before extinguishing the cathode tube, whereupon the light from the cardboard also vanished. He turned on the tube and placed his hand, probably by accident, between the piece of cardboard and the cathode tube. On the cardboard appeared some delicate and very real bones. His own hand, as if photographed on the inside! The upheaval he felt in his soul cannot be imagined! And so Mr Roentgen was the first mortal in the universe to see himself on the inside without so much as scratching his skin.
On learning this, his colleague Pavel, who was artistic rather than scientific by bent, declared that hypnotism was as good as proven, since it was probably also transmitted by an invisible ray. And the man who signed himself Marwen told how the director himself, Signor Luigi Cazzavillan, had recounted a few days previously, when he met him at the club, that in Rome a venerable lady had been sitting in the salon when all of a sudden she had clearly seen her husband, who was away in Milan, appear in the doorway and call her by name, before vanishing as if in a puff of smoke. The lady had fainted and, as a cable later revealed, her husband had died suddenly in Milan that very moment. Pavel recounted in a whisper a matter that was all the rage, especially among the servants, concerning a house maid who had told her master about how she dreamed that a wounded Turk had buried some gold in the roots of a gooseberry tree in his yard, and when the man dug there, sure enough, he found the gold. The girl had gone back home with a dowry, she never had to work again, and her master became a rich man and had built himself a palatial home in a leafy suburb. And then there was the startling case in the Procopiu family: a sister who at the age of thirteen dreamed she married a miller and her best friend drowned in a mill race, and now she was Mrs Miller, and her friend had indeed drowned, but in the waters of a lake. What was even stranger was that Mr Miller was an engineer. Neculai Procopiu sighed with envy; his brother-in-law’s profession had been his own dream.
‘You would say that all the things that have been and will be are now too, in the present,’ said Pavel softly.
Having heard but half of the phrase ‘all the things that will be,’ the photographer took his leave. No sooner had he left than to the surprise of the two editors there was another knock on the door, firm and polite, which was not like the knock of the lad from the printing press. They both lifted their eyes once again. Mr Costache Boerescu, the Chief of Public Security, entered. He did not like to shake hands or to sit around and chat, and so when he did so they knew he had an ulterior motive. This time he asked the two men in a hectoring voice to introduce a short announcement in the morning paper, right that instant, while maintaining the utmost discretion as to his identity. Pavel Mirto stood up and took the piece of paper down to the printing press.
‘Ah, lest I forget, is your number two-nine-seven?’ he asked Procopiu as he was leaving.
‘The telephone number? 297, yes, but in the evening there is nobody to answer it. Didn’t the girl at the switchboard tell you?’
An hour later, the proofs arrived, for a last quick look before t
he edition went to press. Mr Procopiu read the headlines in capital letters, and the beginnings of the news items, and the most important announcements: PLANNED LAW AGAINST DUELLING. OTTOMAN BRIG WRECKED in the Black Sea. Events from the capital. A confidence trick à la Andronic... Legal news. Births and deaths. Deeply moved by the tragedy... H.R.H. Princess Maria. Wedding banns. FROM ITALY. FROM LONDON. ... Opera. Mrs Olympia Mărculescu and Mr... in Rigoletto. ‘A chamois leather wallet has been lost in the Teilor-Clemenței area. Please contact...’ ‘A white cat has been lost. Left hind leg amputated...’ ‘The man under arrest found yesterday unconscious and half-frozen near the Băneasa estate (by the lakes) has declared that his name is Dan I. Kretzu, he is a journalist and not a malefactor...’ Neculai Procopiu’s eyes fell on Costache’s announcement, crammed rather incongruously between the advertisements for the Inger Confectionary Shop and the Romania Weaving Loom. He noticed that the brand name ‘Romania’ lacked quotation marks and added them with an indelible pencil, wetting the point on his tongue, in order to make it clear that it was not a loom that wove the beloved homeland, although that would not come amiss, every now and then. Because of the indelible pencil, the editor-in-chief’s tongue was permanently purple. He carefully read the Police announcement: ‘A young man who seems to be of good family, around twenty-two years of age, has been found shot and is in a serious condition in the Health Establishment of Dr Rosenberg. Anybody with information about this person or who has information about the circumstances of his wounding should contact the Prefecture of Police, in Calea Victoriei, No. 25.’
All these items would be perused at leisure and with thoroughness by those citizens of Bucharest who subscribed to Universul on the following day, 20 December 1897, according to the Julian calendar. The subscribers included Dr Margulis, who would read the paper before setting off to his surgery on Strada Sfântul Ionică, behind the National Theatre. And old man Cercel, who would then convey its contents, censored and commentated upon, to young Nicu. And Costache, over his second cup of coffee, which he always drank at work, and his boss, Prefect of Police Caton Lecca, sitting at the table at home, coddled by his large-boned wife. And Iulia Margulis, who was looking for ideas for Christmas presents. And Luigi Cazzavillan, the newspaper’s director, who, together with the diplomats from the Italian Legation, had already celebrated New Year. And there were many others, countless others, whose names and occupations do not concern us here.
The last lit window on the first floor of Universul, the farthest to the left as you look from the street, was plunged into darkness at midnight. Mr Procopiu set off home on foot. He was rather depressed, perhaps because they had been talking about so many unusual things. And so he hastened his steps and, when he heard a muffled sound behind him, he almost broke into a run. Feeling a hand on his shoulder, he let out a cry.
4.
Perhaps all that was and will be is now, in the present. Perhaps what was is what once more will be. Before you ask me any questions, try to get used to my voice, the voice of a man sundered from a world he had come to know quite well, and plunged into an unknown and unintelligible world. Perhaps without knowing it, we live in this endless moment, in many worlds at once. Perhaps the voice that speaks to you now and which thrashes among the voices here like a fish in a fisherman’s net – this voice that finds itself in the city and the country of its birth, more alone than the voice of any man imprisoned in a foreign land – speaks even now with beings which you have no way of seeing. Or perhaps I, the source of the voice, have already been extinguished, like the sun that has just now set, but you still hear me, there, in your world, where the sun is at its zenith, there in your warm room, or outside, in a green park, on a bench. Or perhaps precisely when you cannot hear me, when you are sleeping a dreamless sleep or when you are yelling at each other like madmen, or when you are bored to death, desperate for the time to pass, perhaps this will be when the essential things will take place here. Or perhaps I will never reach you, although that would not sadden me.
But look how I finally raise my voice to the heavens, and I pray for both you, those afar, and for myself, I pray here, to this silver icon, within whose casing can be seen with the naked eye the head of a woman and the smaller head of a child: I pray for your health, your welfare, and that you not be punished, as I am. I pray that you have an old age as beautiful and soothing as roses. I pray that, if you hear a man’s voice, you will understand. I pray out loud: ‘Thou, the Relentless, spare us, spare me, release me from this net in which I am tangled, that I might find a tear in the net and swim into the open sea.’ I pray: ‘Merciful one, have mercy.’ One day, I am sure, I will come to you somehow and you will hear me again. I don’t know why I am here, in a church, in front of an icon. I don’t know why I am shut up here, in the frozen silver of a world that I did not wish for, just as you, whatever you might say, are from birth shut up as if in a prison, as if in a butterfly net or as if in a birdcage, in a world that you did not wish for, did not know, and have no way of controlling. You thrash around in vain. We are prisoners, condemned, each in his own world, each in his own solitude. Why can you not see me? I am fettered in the frozen silver of the icon of a world that perhaps no longer is. I try to see you there, from the picture frame of my present day, and if you fall silent for an instant, like the waters deep in a well, perhaps you will hear what I say to myself, because I speak for myself and only for myself. I am alone: I who do and I who judge. I am the one who speaks, I the one who is silent and listens: It is always different than we think, dear Dan. You have been cast from life to life.
When I opened my eyes, I saw wide blue sky and many trees clad in hoarfrost. Hundreds of pinpoints took flight at each gust of wind. The air clasped me. I was lying on my back. With a city-dweller’s wonderment, I immersed my gaze in the sky. All of a sudden I heard a sound like water flowing from a tap. It came from nearby, to my right. I turned my head without raising it and I could not believe what I saw. There was no doubt about it: next to me a horse had released a gushing torrent of urine. Steam wafted around the jet. It seemed unending, and a round hollow had formed in the snow. The horse was harnessed to a sleigh laden with blocks of ice and a few logs.
There was complete silence, a petrified silence. All around was whiteness, sun, a silence such as I had never heard before, because even silence is audible. The beast thrust its muzzle into the bag hanging from its neck and began to chomp. Its tail was tied in a huge glossy knot.
‘On your feet, lad, or else nightfall will catch ub with you here in the snow. Who can have left you here to berish, where there’s not another berson as far as the eye can see?’
He was a swarthy man, with huge hands, in which he was holding an axe. I took fright. The valise was a few feet away and I struggled to get up, to go to it. I tottered. My legs were frozen.
‘Can’t you bick yourself ub? Some friends you’ve got, leaving you here bissed, to freeze in the snow, dressed like a scarecrow and without so much as a cab on your head.’
When you understand nothing, all you can do is keep silent. He was talking, but it was as if his mouth were full. The man tossed the axe into the sleigh, next to a pick and shovel. He untied the horse’s nosebag and stretched out a horny red hand to me. Half his index finger was missing and it ended in a knot, like the neck of a pouch pinched with a drawstring.
‘Jumb ub, I’ll take you back to town and you’ll bay me two lei and a cub of wine. Let’s fetch that box of yours... Bull this sheebskin over your shoulders. Can you stand ub? I’ve been out cutting logs. I cut some ice, too, on the way, from the lake, but I had to sharben the bickaxe. I’m all of a sweat now.’
As he spoke, steam poured from his mouth. He grasped the reins, and the horse gave its rump a lively shake. The sleigh glided back along its own tracks, as though along rails. It left the forest in its wake, and before it spread the endless white sun-lit plain. Everything glistened with droplets, like the sea. And so there it was: I still had not managed to leave the country. What
was happening? Where had everything vanished to? From whence had everything appeared?
Unlike myself, who found not a trace of an answer, the man at the reins found an answer to all questions; he knew everything. A burly man, with long moustaches that joined to curly, greying sideburns, he inspired both trust and fear in me. But the fear was less aggressive than the curiosity. We advanced, gliding slowly.
‘What time is it?’
Here was my voice, for the first time, hoarse and muffled.
‘How should I know? It’s early! I was ub at the crack of dawn. Ain’t you got a timebiece? Lose it at boker, did you, the same as your coat and cab? Take that there overcoat. I was going to give it as alms, in memory of my old ba, who bassed away last month.’
The coat had bone buttons. He handed me a bottle, which was almost full, and again I saw the crudely stitched stump of his forefinger: ‘Have a swig, to warm yourself ub! If you’re feeling beckish, there’s bread in the knabsack.’
‘I drank; it was plum brandy. But I could not eat; a dreadful disquiet held me by the throat. We passed some crows, stark against the white of the road. They did not take flight, but minded their own business, croaking, tracing patterns in the snow with their claws.
‘Betre is my name,’ said the man. ‘My mother was from Russia.’
‘Petre?’
‘Yes, Betre. Betre!’ he shouted, as if I were deaf.
He was expecting me to reciprocate. Bored of my silence, he broached me directly: ‘What’s the name of your family? Where’re you from?’
‘Bucharest, Crețu,’ I answered unenthusiastically.
‘A relative of Kretzu the abothecary – with the ginger moustaches? And who was it shaved your moustaches off?’
I made no reply. Nothing matched up with anything else. From time to time, Petre cast me increasingly wary glances. I could see he was making a great effort to think. Suddenly he pulled on the reins. I jolted forward as if pushed. He jumped down with a nimbleness that was evidence of long practice. We were in a copse; snow clung to the tree trunks like white moss. A body lay on the ground, on its back. I had not noticed it.
Life Begins On Friday Page 3
