Pairs of skaters were beginning to arrive. The military brass band was playing in the bandstand, and the skaters tried to glide to the rhythm of the music: tra-la-la-la-la... tra-la... tra-la... tra-la-la-la-la... tra-la... tra-la. They did pirouettes, and picked up speed. One officer was skating backwards. Nicu laughed and jumped up and down when someone fell; it was too funny to see them hit the ice with their bottoms and fling their legs in the air, like beetles. The women fell more gracefully and gathered their skirts around their legs, and then Nicu did not laugh but looked to see how much leg they exposed. When the music stopped he could hear the metal scratching the hard gleam of the lake. If old man Cercel won the lottery, he would definitely give him something, and maybe he could buy himself a pair of ice skates and learn to glide forwards and backwards over the ice. When he turned his head, he thought he glimpsed Petre, who was Inger the confectioner’s coachman, on the other side of the lake. Thinking that he might find out from him something about his new friend, Dan Crețu, he ran around the rink to meet him. But before he could reach him, Petre started to walk away. So Nicu followed him, not having anything better to do. Petre had brought his sleigh, and Nicu sat down comfortably on the plank at the back, leaning against the edge of the sleigh. All the boys knew the trick: some even tied their sledges to the back and let themselves be pulled along.
Petre’s sleigh stopped in Filaret Garden. The coachman climbed down from the box and set off towards the trees, which, next to the central lane, formed a miniature forest. Near the entrance to the park there were a few people with children, out for a stroll, but the rest of the garden was deserted. Petre vanished among the trees. When the confectioner’s coachman reappeared on the lane, Nicu was still among the trees, following the footprints in the snow. He had just reached the place where the footprints had come to a stop, and was sure he would discover something mysterious. But he found nothing – Petre had merely relieved himself against the trunk of a tree, and Nicu decided to do likewise.
3.
Liza, Costache’s little white dog, was curled up next to the fire. She was getting old, her hair was falling out, and her back hurt. She had difficulty standing up, but Costache consoled her, saying aloud: ‘Never mind, wee dove, we’ll grow old together. You ten-years-old, me five times that.’ However, he still felt very fit and healthy. Neatly arranged in the bookcase, all his catalogues were to hand, their spines inscribed with gilt letters applied by the hand of the same bookbinder. Still in his white nightshirt, decorated with convoluted blue embroidery, Mr Costache sat down in a comfortable armchair, upholstered in dark leather, and set to work. His hair, lighter in colour than the leather of the armchairs, with but few white strands, was dishevelled and needed cutting. His moustache was also awry.
Grudgingly resigned to being more of a batman and barber than an adjutant, Zaharia was no longer surprised by his master’s caprices, nor by anything in the wider world. But he had become gloomy and rather solitary, although there was a time when he had liked to laugh, sing and drink. He pined for 1877 and the War of Independence, when he and his master were young and carefree. He had forgotten the mounds of corpses and the groans of the wounded; he had forgotten the cold and the booming cannons that had left him hard of hearing ever after. Like all simple folk, he associated his own youth with better times. Drawing the velvet drapes, the sun streamed into the room, its rays hitting one of the shelves of the bookcase, lending the titles an unexpected brilliance. Without asking, Zaharai brought his master his rather modest breakfast and placed it on one of the gigogne tables. He then saw to the fire and left the room. Mr Costache paid no attention to him. Impatiently, he opened a thick tome near the end: O... P... R. R? No, the monograms were in order of surname, a idea adopted from the Police files, where it made more sense. He needed to look up O or Z. It depended whether R was a Christian name – probably Radu – or whether O too was a Christian name, but men’s first names beginning with O were rare. Oprea? Ovidiu? Oliver? No, the other variant was better, and so he went back to surnames beginning with O. Oa, Ob, Odebeanu, Odivoianu, Odobescu, Olănescu... Omn, Onn, Or, Otetelișanu, no, that was not it. It had to be Z. But under Z there were only three monograms: Zbârcea, Zătreanu, Zorilă. What then? Probably he had overlooked something. He leafed through the R’s, in the event that R might be a surname. There were fourteen names, from Racottă to Rosetti, but none in combination with O and Z or even one of the two.
He paused and took a sip of coffee. Ugh, weak! He had forgotten to tell Zaharia to put an extra spoonful in the coffee pot and to measure the water by the cup. His adjutant was an old man who was thrifty to the point of avarice and constantly subjected him to unwanted rationing. Although Costache had pointed out to him that the war finished twenty years ago, that he personally could afford it, and indeed had always been able to, Zaharia always scrimped on coffee, sugar and firewood. He made savings at the market, on water and lighting, although the only advantage of living in the centre of town was running water and electricity. It would even be hard now for Costache to live in a place without all these delights and the benefits of modern times. When he visited the Margulis family on Strada Fântânei, he could appreciate the difference; the difference in his favour, obviously. On the other hand, the constant din of the carriages had begun to weary him. He decided to take a shower before continuing his search, and so he called for his old adjutant to heat up the water in the boiler. ‘Twenty-three degrees, mind you!’ The doctors did not recommend frequent showers and advised him to use hotter water, but he neither accepted nor imparted advice. Here he differed from his friend Margulis, who nagged people as to what was and was not best, although he wagged his tongue for nothing. The hardest thing to bear is to do something stupid not on your own initiative, but on somebody else’s advice.
Reinvigorated after his wash, Costache resumed his search, just as the bells chimed noon. He remembered that he had thought of talking in person to Epiharia, the woman from the Icoanei Church, because he did not wish to frighten her by inviting her to come to the Prefecture, but now it was too late to catch her at the service. He would look for her another day, he said to himself, since she attended church more punctually than a clerk at his office. He opened the catalogue again at the letter O and this time found an Oz and an M – probably another member of the family. He studied the monogram, recognized it, read the few lines that accompanied it, and got ready to go out. Firstly, he would go to the police station, to telephone 297. Ilie was on duty and to Costache fell the duty of going to the Filaret Station in time to catch the Giurgiu train.
*
When he discovered with whom he had the honour of talking, the stationmaster at Giurgiu straightened his back and directed him to the manor of Manolache Ochiu-Zănoagă, after placing at his disposal a good, rested, roan horse. Costache had not ridden very much lately, but now he felt the need to expend his energy. He felt young when he rode at a gallop. And he knew he would have to undergo a policeman’s hardest test: announcing a violent death to the family. He had chosen to perform this duty for a simple reason: he wished to find out what the young man’s last words might mean, the riddle that had been in his mind when he went to bed and again when he woke up. Unfortunately, he would have to take advantage of sudden grief, when people least guard their words. He arrived at half past four, just as the sun was setting.
4.
Young aristocrat slain near Băneasa Forest. The editor-in-chief of Universul had got out of the habit of writing. He was the newspaper’s clear head, he verified, he rectified, but rarely did he take up his pen to write, and then only in exceptional circumstances. This was why he was pleased to come up with the headline from the very first, although he had wavered between boyar, nobleman, of good family and aristocrat, the latter word won in the end. That was what happened to him with headlines: either they presented themselves straight away or he could not hit on them at all, and then he would have to ask his colleagues’ advice. Păvălucă was the best at them: it was if he pull
ed them out of his sleeve, like a conjurer or a card sharp. But he had discovered two months ago that the man with whom he shared an office was writing a novel; which explained a lot. All he had managed to wrest from him was that it was set in the future or something of that sort. He suspected that it was an imitation of Jules Verne and he did not have very much faith in his colleague making a success of it.
He looked at the clock: it was barely ten in the morning. He had the whole day ahead of him; he had told his wife that he would be coming home for lunch at two. And so he dipped his nib and wrote. On 19 December, in our Friday issue, our Gazette published the news of an unknown man who had been found shot, but was alive... He paused and above the line, he added a still after the but. He continued the sentence: ...but was still alive, near the Băneasa Forest. The young man was taken, according to an understanding with... he crossed out the with and changed it to between ...an understanding between the Town Hall and Dr Rosemberg’s Hospice of Health... He crossed out the m and changed it to an n. Dr Rosenberg’s... It did not work. He crossed out the whole sentence and rewrote it, after which he pressed the blotter to it, rolling the wooden holder back and forth. As there is an understanding between the Town Hall and Dr Rosenberg, with regard to unidentified patients in need of medical treatment, the young man, in his death throes, was taken to the Hospice of h... he crossed out the h and made it a capital letter ...Health, where every effort was made to... to... hmm, to help him. He stopped and reread what he had written. He blotted the ink once more and continued writing. But the throes of creation do not concern us here, they are far too intimate a matter, and so we shall look at the final result, the article on the first page of Universul, published on Monday, 22 December, a fair copy having been made and a vignette added the day before, at twenty to two on Sunday:
Young aristocrat slain near Băneasa Forest
On 19 December, in our Friday issue, our Gazette published the news of an unknown man who had been found shot, but was still alive, near the Băneasa Forest. As there is an understanding between the Town Hall and Dr Rosenberg, with regard to unidentified patients in need of medical treatment, the young man, in his death throes, was taken to the Hospice of Health, where every effort was made to help him. Notwithstanding, at eleven minutes past six on Saturday, the young man breathed his last. A special reporter from our newspaper witnessed the sad event. Because some of the young man’s items of clothing were embroidered with the monogram R. O. Z., Colonel Costache Boerescu, the eminent Chief of Public Security, managed to discover that the letters referred to the Ochiu-Zănoagă family from Giurgiu. Before breathing his last, the young man uttered a few words and a name. An investigation is in progress, but the Police have a lead, which, we hope, will lead to the murderer. It is possible that it was a duel with pistols, which is why we believe that the law against duelling proposed by Senator Viișoreanu will be adopted as soon as possible. We remind you that the Senator has proposed that the articles regarding duelling be struck from the Penal Code, which means that in the future duellists will be treated as common criminals and tried by jury.
Mr Procopiu spoke in the name of the newspaper, and so he did not sign his name to the article. Satisfied at having finished in time, he took his stovepipe hat, since he no longer had a bowler, and went down to the print shop to have the article replace the current front page. Then he went home with a hearty appetite, for he never fasted.
5.
I dreamed that my soul had separated from my body. So much peace, so much solitude – and with those words I woke up. It is still dark and I can hear a crowing cock shattering the stillness of night. How has so much sadness coagulated within me? Whence all the strangeness from which we are made? Who guides us? It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to see that such thoughts seem to obtrude from outside you rather than to rise from within, as if somebody injected them into you with an unseen needle. Maybe we ought to start from scratch and conceive of everything in a different way, if we are to understand it at all. Maybe we should take a different path, one nobody has ever taken, if we are to get to the core. What would we find, if we stopped couching everything in other people’s words and images? What if we thought with the whole of our bodies, rather than just a part of them? What would we remember about our past, our future? What would we make of the independent choices we have made? I keep thinking about the big question and my head strikes against a thick ceiling of silence. There is something that prevents me from talking intelligibly, even in the moments of grace when I understand. It lasts but an instant, no longer. How can anybody live when we all know... and when we all don’t know? Can we even be sure we are alive?
In the room there is a fire and a bed, in which a man is asleep. The hotel is called the Frascati and is unfamiliar to me. A ‘colleague’ from the newspaper brought me here. What will my real colleagues be doing right now? In a register I wrote my name, profession and the city where I live, as the hotelier requested. Dan Crețu, journalist, Bucharest. It is true but even so it feels more and more a lie when I say that. Maybe I really will lose my mind, lying even as I tell the truth.
I was taken to a room with two beds, I washed using the water a hotel employee poured into a porcelain basin, dried myself with a rough white towel, and went down to the dining room, although I do not know what I ate, since I was drained of strength. Coming back upstairs, I was surprised to find this stranger, with whom I am given to understand I have to share the room. I lay down on the iron bedstead, the berth of my fears. The sheet was clean, white, and the quilt thick, made of cherry-red silk. It smelled nasty, of cockroach powder, I think. Then I fell into a deep sleep, where I dreamt of so much peace and so much solitude. Day is beginning to break.
My room-mate woke up and made all kinds of sounds. I don’t know whether he was choking or spitting or giving up the ghost. Then, he stripped stark naked and started washing his whole body thoroughly, without any embarrassment at my presence. I noticed his whitish skin. In the meantime, he started to speak, without turning around to see whether his words had any effect. He is called Otto and he is a Saxon, but he speaks Romanian, albeit with an accent. He was born in Michelsberg, that is, Cisnădioara, in Transylvania. They made him an apprentice at the age of twelve, mit zwölf – he is a mason – he finished his army service, and now he is twenty-six and has come here in search of work. Only in a big city can you find work in his trade even in winter, he told me. He arrived on the Zug. At the border, in Predeal, he says that people change their clothes, putting on the luxury items they have bought in Kronstadt, Budapest or Vienna, so that they will not have to pay customs taxes on them, and putting their ordinary clothes in their suitcases.
He found himself with a new hat on his head and had to put his old one in his suitcase: a lady in his compartment asked him to wear it; she had bought it for her husband. They were worried, because in the train there was a rumour that the Romanians from the Kingdom were demanding a Pass. The Turks and the Russians are the only others who demand them. When his turn came, he handed the customs officer all kinds of Papiere, but the customs officer was still not satisfied and handed them back. A foreign traveller before him had been turned back, and so Otto was afraid. Luckiy he had his military passbook, which saved him: the customs officer declared himself satisfied and Otto continued his journey. ‘I escaped by a hair’s breadth!’, said Otto, towelling himself and looking in the mirror, in which he could also see me. He admired die Transsylwanischen Alpen, impressed by their height and peaks, and sat looking out of the train window the whole way. When he alighted at the station, where the wind was blowing, nobody said anything to him, and he liked that, rumänische Ordnung, because in the Empire nothing of the sort would have been allowed. He also liked the train station at Sinaia and the royal platform, but Bucharest’s Gara de Nord had not impressed him much, particularly given that the paving was rather broken. On the other hand, he was bowled over by die Droschken, the elegant cabs, with the cabmen dressed in velvet, with their velvet ca
ps and sturdy roan horses. On the train, he discovered from another Saxon that in Bucharest Germans stay at the Wilhelm, a hotel near the Elisabeta Boulevard.
Otto had finished towelling himself. He hung the towel on the peg by the sink and started to dress, pulling on long-johns and a flannel undershirt. In the afternoon, he reached the capital of Romania, and at dusk the Wilhelm. He walked down a long but rather narrow street, Victory Avenue, passed the Royal Palace, which was like a large hotel – he had done his army service in Vienna and so he could make the comparison – and finally reached a boulevard with electric lighting and trams. He turned right down a short street next to the park. Wilhelm had died, unfortunately, and the current owner said he could stay overnight on a sofa, without charge, but no longer than that. And so he arrived at the Frascati, where he was staying also free of charge, on the condition that he repaint the kitchens and outbuildings in the spring. But he was looking for serious work at some church, because he was hard up. He had met some mural painters and masons and befriended them. Then, he started asking me questions: who I am, how old I am, whether I have a wife and children and a mother, a father and brothers. There are people, such as this Otto, who think that you have to say everything about yourself from the very first moment and you don’t know when they might stop asking questions. So I pretended to be asleep. After he went about his business, I got up and tried to adapt to life, like an animal cub. It is not easy, nothing is where it should be, but it is like a game: I have to find out, discover, pretend, and, above all, not say anything. Every word is laden with danger.
Life Begins On Friday Page 10
