Outside the baths it was already pitch black, but luckily inside everything was illumined with electricity, and the freshly painted walls were still clean and white. The reason why all kinds of people flocked to the Grivița Baths was thanks to the advertisement in Universul, a popular newspaper, read, as its editors said, in both working class districts and in palaces; and also thanks to the efforts of Vasiliu the pharmacist, who ran the establishment. As a leading member of Bucharest’s council for hygiene, he had taken his colleagues by surprise when he invested his entire personal fortune in opening a bathhouse with the latest amenities. As the prices were reasonable, it was a place suited to every pocket, and even going second-class, at one leu and ten bani, you could come out looking like new. The bath attendant was happy when, gauging a customer with a single glance, he was able to offer, to those with the means, hydrotherapy, massage and electrotherapy, first-class, of course. Another novelty was the discount for all the members of the City’s pharmaceutical and medical societies. In any event, the bathhouse was more successful than Mr Vasiliu had anticipated, and he had raised the attendant’s wages without the latter having to make any great effort in that direction and without any effect on his general demeanour.
It took the attendant quite a while before he found the 30 bani change and handed over the towel and soap. In the meantime, the Moldavian examined his face, weighing him up. He had with him a large silver-coloured case, and the attendant told him he would have to leave it at the door. The man took him aside and slipped in his pocket an amount that was around twenty times larger than the cost of a first class ticket, causing the attendant to turn red in the face. It was very hot inside as it was, making it a joy to come inside, out of the cold. The Moldavian was afraid the man in the white gown was going to throw a fit, which would have been the last thing he needed right then, but no, after a few moments things returned to normal, and so he went off to take his bath, not in second-class, but in the luxury section. He lingered for almost an hour, delighting in the hot water, which seemed to melt away all the painful knots in his body, and then he went to take a massage. As he was leaving, the attendant gave him a bow, such as he reserved only for distinguished customers. Nobody noticed that the man had arrived with a case and left without it. As for the attendant, he was at that age at which you quickly forget everything non-essential to your life. When he arrived home, he told his wife, who was a housekeeper, that he had come into a sum of money and that for the first time ever they would be able to spend New Year’s Eve in Sinaia at a nice hotel, where they would be treated like boyars.
Sunday, 21 December: A Good Day. With Some Exceptions...
1.
Today I experienced a great joy. A surprise. It was about time, otherwise I would have said that I was beginning to resemble Amelia from Vanity Fair, and heaven knows nowadays kind, weepy creatures are more unfashionable than Grandmother’s long nails and her bunches of curls hanging next to her ears!
No sooner did I wake up than I saw rays of light shining through the curtains, dancing on the walls in oblique stripes. They made me smile and then laugh. A breeze was blowing and the rays deftly slid over and beneath each other as if wielded by a master swordsman. It was one of those sunny days that make your soul tingle. I got up, stoked the fire, washed, and chose my blue dress to match the sky. I try to paint the world with the colours of my dresses. Since I was not expecting any visits, I did not put on my corset. When I was little, and our teachers at the Central Girls School forbade us to wear corsets, filling our heads with the reason that they hindered normal bone development, that they caused anaemia, because we would not be able to eat sufficiently, we all used to do exactly the opposite. We wanted to do everything they forbade us to do. If I could not wear a corset in the daytime, lest they caught me, I used to wear one at night and sleep in it, to give myself a slender waist and straight spine. But now, when I am allowed to wear one.
The truth is that Dr Gerota is solely to blame for me not liking them any more. I was at Papa’s surgery two months ago and Dr Gerota came in. I knew him by reputation: thirty-years-old, talented, educated in Paris, and only recently having returned, with plans to change the world from its foundations upward, a lecturer on all the latest medical trends. Papa told me that since October he has taught anatomy at the Academy of Fine Arts. (I would dearly like to attend the Academy, but unfortunately I have no talent. But in any event, I am determined to enrol in a university faculty next year.) Papa calls Dr Gerota by his first name, Dimitrie. And this Dimitrie, who almost made me forget Alexandru, when he saw me encased in a corset – I had not eaten, because there was a party that evening – clasped my waist between his large hands, with his handsome fingers, and saw that it fit there snugly. But instead of complimenting me, as I thought would have been polite, and as Safta and the cook had done at home, he scolded me so severely that the tears came to my eyes.
‘Miss,’ he said, ‘how can your mother allow you to strangulate yourself like this? How old are you? You do not even need a corset: you are slim already, thin even. I think that in the evening your skin must be red and sore, if not bruised, am I right? Have you any idea what you are doing to your internal organs?’
Papa blushed and I felt as if I were suffocating. But Dr Gerota, with his noble fighter’s mien, with his swept-back hair and wilful chin, calmly delivered his damning verdict, without one pang of his physician’s heart: ‘Look at how you are panting, your lungs are imprisoned in a vice. You certainly suffer migraines and faintness, and, I suspect, nasal haemorrhages, and insufficient blood reaches your brain. My esteemed Mr Margulis –’ having finished with me he now took father to task ‘– why do you allow her to subject herself to such torture? For the sake of your daughter, I am going to prepare a lecture on the disadvantages of the corset and I shall send you, your lady wife and your daughter an invitation. Try not to faint, there is no cause for tears, but I ask you to go into the other room this very moment and loosen the laces.’
Rarely have I felt such strength in a man. Papa, although almost twenty years older, was almost completely cowed. I think Gerota is destined for great things.
*
And so, without a corset, I went into the salon. I saw from the pendulum clock that it was quite late. I had slept for a long time – but what should one do on a bright morning such as this? I rushed to open the window, then to the piano, my old, worn-out but trusty Bösendorfer. I picked up an armful of scores, which had started to gather dust, so long had it been since I last touched them. Mama often goes to Graeve’s shop and buys scores for me. I leafed through them, but nothing tempted me, when all of a sudden, as if by magic, I felt drawn to one. It was a transcription for piano of a minuet by Handel. It was as if somebody had guided my hand to pick this one out of the whole sheaf. I had started out with the thought of playing something new, something happy and unpretentious, like the compositions in Le Journal, the review to which Mama subscribes, but nonetheless this page caught my eye. It was the first time I had looked at it; I do not even know when it appeared in the pile. I began to decipher it tentatively, it was in G minor, in three-four time and it was not easy. I kept playing wrong notes, and I could not keep to the right time. And so I fumbled along, but gradually I caught the musical theme and it gave me goose-bumps when I realized what I was playing: it was the music from Jacques’ figurine clock! I had been desperately trying to find out what it was for two years, and nobody, but nobody, had recognized it – no matter whom I had asked – even Mr Wiest! And now, unexpectedly, I had discovered it in my piano pile. Who knows how long it had been there. This is what happens to me: I seek afar and find the desired thing right next to me.
It was only then that I felt the cold. I had left the window open. Like a whirlwind I went to my little brother’s room. He was sitting at the table, upon which a real war of lead soldiers was in progress. I think all the lead soldiers he had must have been there. The dear boy, he was fighting the War of Independence. On the table it was a true massa
cre; few soldiers were still standing. He has not looked well for some time; he is too pale. I said: ‘Jacques, I have a present for you. Something you have spent a long time waiting for.’
Curious, he said: ‘A r-real sword. An officer-r’s uniform. R-robinson Cr-rusoe. A r-real Alsatian?’
‘No, Jacques, not something tangible, but something spiritual.’ And so as not to torture him any longer, I said: ‘Come into the salon and you will see, or rather, you will hear.’
I sat down at the piano and began to play the minuet, still making the odd mistake, but Jacques grew even paler and from the very first musical phrase he let out a cry. ‘You have found it! You have found it! Who is it? What is it?’
He said it was the most wonderful present he had ever received in his life and almost wept for joy. I brought his flute. We decided to learn it properly, secretly, before Christmas, and to play it then, as a surprise for our family and friends. Maybe Mr Costache will come too, and our neighbour Giuseppe, the guitar teacher, will certainly join us.
Mama and Papa warned us yesterday that they would be going to the countryside very early in the morning, to our uncle’s in Giurgiu, and would not be back until afternoon. At Christmas, they always bring good things back from our uncle’s place. We have not reared our own pig for a few years. That was because Jacques chanced to see a newly born piglet taken away from the sow to be killed. The servant explained it to him clearly: ‘Count the teats and count the piglets. One is condemned to death!’ Jacques’ sorrow for the innocent piglet condemned to death was so great, his suffering was so material and physical, that Mama and Papa gave up rearing animals.
Both Jacques and I rejoice when we are left to our own devices. And so we played undisturbed until we felt hungry. I have not seen Jacques eat with such an appetite for a long time. I have observed that joy is the best medicine, and even Papa agrees. And so too does the irascible Mr Gerota, probably.
2.
After he combed his mother’s hair, looking carefully to see whether she had picked up any more lice, and after he had tied the prematurely grey hair as nicely as he could, Nicu prepared breakfast. He was happy that she was at home, especially on winter days such as these, and he catered to her every whim, as if she were a child. Sometimes the woman smiled at him with the gentleness of a mother, sometimes she glared at him fiercely, like a wild animal, but it no longer frightened the boy. Of course, when he was younger he used to take fright and join in the yelling, which did not calm the situation one bit. Now, he treated her as he had seen his grandmother do, up until not long ago, talking to her softly and calming her. How could a daughter so ill, so tormented by demons as his mother have been brought into the world by a woman so good-natured and balanced as his grandmother? He hoped with all his heart that he would grow up to be like his grandmother, rather than his mother. Was it possible for a person’s qualities to bypass her children and appear in her grandchildren, like a legacy bequeathed by Nature? Such a legacy would do him much good in future. His grandmother had died at the age of sixty and to him that seemed young. As for his father, he knew only that he was a soldier or adjutant. He told everybody that his father had been an officer. He also said that he was dead, but of that he was not at all sure, and he was fearful lest he turn up and make his life complicated, just as he had made his poor mother’s life complicated – according to his grandmother.
Nicu inspected the larder with satisfaction: they had food to eat. When the other children asked him what he would rather be, a cricket or an ant, they made fun of him when he replied gravely: ‘An ant!’ Almost all the boys wanted to be crickets, but ants were wonderfully organized. The larder was quite tidily arranged: he had kept the boxes and jars in exactly the same order as his grandmother had. True, friends from various houses had given him and his mother food and even clothes as presents. He thanked them and accepted everything, even things for which he had no use. Whenever he went to visit Jacques, they sent him home, to the potters’ quarter, in the carriage with a box of good things, which, now that his grandmother was gone, he made last as best he could. His greatest satisfaction was to open the parcels and arrange the treasures they contained on the larder shelves: ground sugar, salt, lard, maize flour, jam, and cheese. The provisions that kept the longest, the flour and the rice, he placed on the highest shelf, climbing on top of a chair to do so. The things he used every day he kept conveniently to hand. He was always calculating how long the provisions would last and was determined not to throw anything away. In summer, if he received a litre of milk and it was not drunk, he would leave it in a cup to go sour, and then, placing the shank of a wooden spoon in the curdled milk and twisting it back and forth between his palms, he would thin it so that it would be fit to drink. It was harder when it came to bread. He had to be careful lest it turned stale or mouldy, and sometimes he would find they had no bread at all. In other houses, they baked bread in an oven in the yard; you could smell it from the street and the scent entered your nostrils and went straight to your belly. But he had to buy bread and he never had time. He had rusks and sometimes he could trick his mother with them, although she often grimaced and spat them out, making a mess.
That morning, having had her hair combed, she smiled sweetly and calmly, as he had not seen her do for a long time. Maybe it was also because the weather was sunny and he was quietly singing what he had been rehearsing at school: ‘The star rises high, / God’s sign in the sky, / The star shines bright, / Brings tidings of light...’
She too had started murmuring something, in a cracked voice, more and more delighted. He laid the table: bread for her and some rather old marmalade for him. And then he lit the fire. He reminded her to make sure it did not go out, showing her the firewood he had laid by, and put some balls of coloured wool in her hands, with which she played just like a cat. She was happy to ravel and unravel them all day long, and sometimes when he came home he would find wool unravelled all around the room, filling it with colour. By the door, Nicu put on his boots, carefully tied the laces and left. At the time he had promised his grandmother he would go to see her on Sundays whenever he was able. Today he was able. It did him good to chat to her about this and that and to ask her advice. And her voice as it was in life seemed to answer him, albeit now only in his mind, where it had somehow remained, stored alongside other voices, like the provisions in their larder. She always gave him good advice on what to do and how to overcome life’s trials. And for the hardest trials, once you had done all in your power, there were also the miracle-working icons, as follows: St Stelian, in Vergului Church, who looks after children’s health; Sts Cosmas and Damian the Unmercenary Physicians; and St Minas, who looks after the bodily health of all people; a saint whose name he forgot, who prevents girls from being scarred by the chickenpox; and St Eleutherius from the church in Cotroceni, who was to be visited when he wished to get engaged, said his grandmother. On the other hand, you could pray to the icon of St Nicholas any time at all; he looked after the poor and so deeply did he care for them that once he was late for a meeting with God, because he had stopped on the way to lend a helping hand to a peasant whose cart was stuck in the mud. When he arrived for his meeting with God, his boots were caked with mud. But God was not angry, said his grandmother. Nicu also remembered St Spiridon, whose purpose was ‘to prove thieves.’ He did not know what proving thieves meant, but if that was what the saint did, then proved they must be.
Naturally, there was also the icon in the Icoanei Church, which was also to cure the sick, above all the sicknesses of the soul. As for the Virgin Mary at Sărindar, the church that Nicu Filipescu decided to demolish when he was mayor, this was the most beautiful, the most famous; she had diamond stars on her shoulders, said Grandmother, but Nicu had not seen it and did not know where it might be now or what it might be good for, because he only had use for icons as salves or medicines. On the other hand, he thought that if the man whose first name, Nicu, he shared was now being punished by God and might even go to prison for killin
g Bucharest’s best journalist, then it was because he had allowed the church to be demolished, rather than repairing it. That was what people said, it was also what old man Cercel said, and in the present case he himself was of the exact same opinion. Every day, he passed the site where the church had stood, on his way to Universul, and every day he felt sorry for it. Last year, they had built a fancy fountain there, just because Franz Josef was visiting, and now there was nothing but an empty space.
*
His grandmother’s grave was covered with snow, like a mound. With his hand Nicu traced a cross in the snow and wrote in large letters, slightly sloping to the left: ‘I AM WELL, NICU.’ Then he took the cow out of his pocket, showed it to the white mound, and left. The bells had chimed noon some time ago, and the boy decided, because the weather was fine and he felt his soul to be at peace, to go Cișmigiu Park. It was Sunday, and so it was not fitting to work, which is to say, to look for the wallet with the lottery ticket. If the weather allowed, there would be skating on Cișmigiu Lake. No longer ago than the previous year, from the edge of the lake he had seen Princess Maria skating, holding hands with her husband. She was beautiful and seemed so slender, even though she wearing a thick jacket, and her skirts almost swept the ice. Nicu looked especially at her dark green hat, with bows and feathers that blew back as she skated forward. The prince was in uniform, belted at the waist and with a rigid cap, like Nicu’s, but with gold braid. In the middle of the ice, next to the flagpole, stood his adjutants. That was what Nicu would be when he grew up; he would become a skater or a sailor.
Life Begins On Friday Page 9
