Life Begins On Friday

by Ioana Parvulescu

  Two young women passed by the half-open door, and Dan’s eyes lingered on one of them, who even stopped by the doorway for an instant, before walking away, towards the stairs. It seemed to him that he had seen her somewhere before.

  ‘That was all the newspapermen needed. It was as if somebody had set them ablaze. They blackened the name of Lahovary and his newspaper along with him. Some said he was “in the pay of the French,” others that he was in the pay of the Russians, still others that the King had bought him, newspaper and all, so that he could turn Romania into a despotic state. Some even called him “a pathological case.” I believe that we, and Constituționalul in Jassy were the only ones not to attack him. They reviled him and showed no sign of letting up. And do you know what Lahovary did?’

  Mr Mirto stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, next to Dan’s.

  ‘He immediately published the series of articles in a book, at the newspaper’s press, because like we do, they have their own printing press. The title was not quite understood, Histoire d’une fiction, and in Romanian it is more unintelligible still, Povestea unei ficțiuni (The Story of a Fiction). Some said that it was too abstract, others that it was metaphysical. Some of the opinions from that book would be worth discussing, but nobody discussed them, and hence the tragedy. Upon my word it is a great and very courageous book. Look, let me tell you honestly that I for one would not have dared to write such a book...’

  For the first time the translator saw Dan smile and he was left almost speechless. It was something that completely illumined and altered him, it sweetened his features, as if he were emerging from one of the paintings in the Florentine churches Peppin had visited in spring, when he went to seek the southern sun and the traces of his Italian ancestors.

  After a long moment he continued: ‘And after all that, George Lahovary wrote an article against the director of Epoca, Nicu Filipescu, whom he accused of being two-faced in certain unpleasant affairs that took place at the end of last month in Strada Carol, I will not describe them; cases of vandalism, in which some students were suspected of being involved, which is why the Rector of the University, Professor Maiorescu, I do not think you will have heard of him, after paternally urging them to keep out of such villainous tricks, nonetheless resigned, which is a great loss. Mr Filipescu, a rather impulsive, agitated man, as well as being from an opposing newspaper, immediately sent his seconds and challenged him to a duel. I wonder whether this was the drop that caused the cup to overflow...’

  Here, Mr Peppin Mirto broke off what he was saying and rushed outside to speak to Miss Iulia Margulis, who was just coming downstairs. After about five minutes he came back.

  ‘As I was saying, forgive me for the interruption – Miss Margulis asked me for an opinion, she consults me about translations, and I assist her with pleasure. As I was saying, the political adversary sent his seconds. Nicu Filipescu trained regularly for two weeks, although he is a good swordsman to start with, but Lahovary had not laid hands on a sword for five years, according to his valet, a Frenchman by the name of Paul, and he was a little lame. He says that on the morning of the duel, 29 November – more than three weeks have passed already – he nevertheless did a few exercises.’

  For the first time, Dan interposed a one-syllable question: ‘And?’

  ‘And they went to the fencing hall on the Dâmbovița embankment. Before the duel, his seconds said that they ought to abandon the duel, because it was very cold, but Filipescu would have none of it; they would fight as planned. The seconds later recounted what happened. By the end of the very first bout, Lahovary had been backed up against the wall; it was as if his fingers had frozen to the sword hilt. Victor Ionescu, one of Filipescu’s seconds, who had drawn the straw to oversee the duel, stopped the bout and allowed the adversaries to resume their starting positions and to stand en garde. Immediately after they engaged and their blades locked, Filipescu feinted, and then, with astonishing vigour and speed, he plunged his blade in Lahovary’s belly. But with such strength that the tip touched a rib and bent! He felled him on the spot. The rule had been that they would fight until one of them was visibly unable to continue. The duel was broken off, and what stirred even greater passion and compassion were Lahovary’s last words: ‘I die! I die! They have assassinated me...’

  Peppin had recounted the whole duel with an actor’s mastery.

  ‘The Police have still not been able to established whether or not it was intentional, whether the director of L’Indépendance died for his ideas, for his principles, which were not to the liking of some, or whether ‘merely’ for his honour. Costache Boerescu interviewed them all, he invited them to dinner – first one, then another – taking a softly-softly approach. In any event, a great loss... I am greatly saddened. I knew him quite well... he was not a fierce man; he was balanced, honest, and rather jolly. His family is devastated... How are things with you? How do you like your new lodgings?’

  Dan was about to say something, but Peppin sat back down at the desk. It seemed he shared that trait of people who talk a lot: he listened but little.

  *

  Upstairs, in the office of the editor-in-chief, the conversation came less easily. Peppin’s brother, Pavel, having been around garrulous people from a young age, had become taciturn, while Procopiu, who had a talkative wife, loved silence above all else. When he was not speaking, Pavel dreamed up all kinds of scenes that he wrote in his mind. You couldn’t even imagine what was going on behind his round spectacles. You had the impression that he half opened the door, spoke on the threshold to the people outside, and then abruptly slammed it in their faces, shut the windows and drew the curtains, broke off all possibility of contact with the exterior, and tumbled into himself, as if into a deep pit, crawling with the snakes of ideas. Every day, he woke up at the same time as his wife, at seven in the morning, washed, tied his lavaliere, made himself dapper, as if he were about to get engaged to “The Idea.” In the meantime, his wife incessantly nagged him, and so when he left the house it was a blessing. He chose the streets that were full of people, he looked in the shop windows, sometimes he even entered a café on the Boulevard, where he always ordered a cappuccino, which he sipped at leisure, keeping an eye out for public figures.

  Today, he had ridden the tram around town for a long time, in search of a good story, from the Bishopric to St George’s, then as far as Moșilor Avenue, and thence along the Elisabeta Boulevard as far as the Cișmigiu tram stop. From the tram stop he proceeded on foot, along the edge of the park – in summer it was a joy to see the flowerbeds in all their bright colours and the solar clock – before turning right up Strada Brezoianu, and here he was, in despair at not having found any good event to turn into a front-page story. Everything was going too well and all the people that crossed his path were amiable and settled. But it was disorder and incidents, fires and thefts, that were a newspaper’s greatest fortune, the things that increased circulation. Should he write something about the City Hall’s ordinance regarding printing presses? That was not much of a novelty. Ever since the invention of the printing press, its toxic disadvantages have been known. Of course, the strictest tidiness and cleanliness reduced the risk of inhaling lead dust, but did not eliminate it altogether. And to speak of such a thing was somehow dangerous, when you were a large gazette with its own printing press and you boasted a rotary that had been brought all the way from Würzberg and which was the only one of its kind in Romania. Better the way other confreres do it; those that print American-style news items that astound you, but which don’t become subjects of debate: for example, a compositor sets twelve thousand letters a day. If you take into account the distance the hand moves when setting each letter is about two paces, then in a year, not including holidays, a compositor’s hand moves around six thousand kilometres. Which was about the distance to New York.

  ‘Do you think that Nicu Filipescu will be convicted?’ asked Pavel, lifting his head, as if he had sensed the anxieties of his colleague and wished to al
lay them.

  ‘A former mayor? It is hard to believe, although it is possible, because I have never seen public opinion so heated, not even when he was the one who decided to demolish the Sărindar Church. I can remember the dust I inhaled when I was on my way here, and the people from Adevĕrul, although their offices were in the Passage Vilacross, took the opportunity to turn it into a big scandal. But when I think that poor Lahovary was exactly the same age as I am, and when I remember what a decent and jolly man he was, I wish with all my soul that Filipescu be convicted.’

  ‘But why?’ said Pavel heatedly, his voice more irritated and louder than usual. ‘Don’t you have the right to send out your seconds when your name is blackened in a gazette? I’m not defending Filipescu, but in this case his honour was at stake. Lahovary was the one who attacked him. And he knew that he was striking at a man who was quick to anger.’

  ‘But you are forgetting how many attacks that Epoca, via its director Filipescu, made against George Lahovary and his newspaper?’ said the editor-in-chief, becoming upset. ‘So, one can wield a cudgel for a whole year without anything happening to him, but when the other gives him a slap, he challenges him to a duel! You force me to tell you what I believe: it was murder! Because to insist at all costs on duelling with a man who is not accustomed to it, and then, instead of dealing him a scratch, to plunge your sword in his belly, is what I call an assassination! Duelling is a mediaeval practice and I am surprised that a man of your sensitivity, a man with the soul of an artist, can approve of it.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, Mr Neculai, that you are one of those who agree with the outlawing of duels. Don’t tell me that you want to live in a world where anybody can mock you as he pleases and you will not have any weapon with which to protect your honour,’ said Pavel, his voice almost trembling with rage. It is possible that such an absurd situation will exist in the future, if such people get their way, but today at least, whatever other advantages we might lack, at least we have our honour.’

  The atmosphere had become very tense, the same as it had been in parliament when the matter had been debated. The editor-in-chief rose from his desk and paced up and down with long strides. Pavel lit another cigarette, which only heightened his interlocutor’s annoyance.

  ‘And don’t forget what started it all,’ added Neculai Procopiu, without looking at him.

  In a seemingly calmer tone, although they were still seething, they discussed the incidents on Strada Carol, which ultimately had started the avalanche, and tried to establish what had triggered them. Some gangs of ruffians, the dregs of Bucharest, professional thieves, ne’er-do-wells, had broken the windows of the shops on Strada Carol, most of them owned by Jews. The people of Bucharest had never witnessed the like since the robberies carried out by Melanos Bocceagiu and his vagabonds, whom they named the ‘kings of the Old Court.’ At Inger’s and Au Bon Goût they even broke glass partitions that were a centimetre thick, while at Dr Steinhart’s they broke only the windows. A few people had also been beaten-up. The newspapers had taken the side of the Jewish shop owners. The gendarmes chased the malefactors and made arrests. But here there was a small problem. Around Caton Lecca, also known as ‘the Elder,’ there floated the disgraceful suspicion that he closed his eyes to anti-Jewish manifestations. His brother from Buzău had been caught up in scandals of the same kind. But the professional probity of Costache Boerescu was, on the contrary, without visible blemish. People knew that the two got along like cat and dog. And it was said that Nicu Filipescu too was an anti-Semite, although later he had taken the side of the Jews. In his article Two Policies, Lahovary said that Nicu Filipescu was two-faced, that he wrote according to how the wind blew, and he recalled the affair involving Metropolitan Ghenadie. At this point, the argument almost erupted once more, and so the editor-in-chief saw fit to change the subject.

  ‘Have you seen that barbers and hairdressers are demanding that they be allowed to work on New Year’s Eve and Christmas Eve, because otherwise they will lose a large number of customers? And if they are not allowed to, they threaten to go on strike! Have you ever heard of a strike caused by not having the day off? Do you think that would make a front-page story?’

  As he asked, Procopiu regarded Pavel with envy: he did not have such problems, when he was asked for a lead article, he found an up -to -date subject, such as the violin concert at the Palace of the Post Office that was relayed over the telephone. Oh, that interested Procopiu in the highest degree! It was as if you could be in two places at the same time, albeit via a single sense, the hearing. But very soon, so his inquisitive mind told him – the engineer in him, who also possessed the faculty of imagination – very soon we would be able to be in two places at once also via the eyesight, and then via the other senses, and, why not, in a hundred years, in two places at once bodily. It was here, in such news items, that the two men intersected, one arriving with science and hope, the other with fantasy and literature. Procopiu sighed and opened the window. In today’s paper, his article on the first page was about the young aristocrat who was slain, and the story about the Romanian torn to pieces by jaguars had been moved to the margin, although it ought to have had a central column, since the story was worthy of a novel. Beneath it, rather incongruously, was the following item: ‘DAILY ADVICE: A swollen cheek. Take a handful of elderberry flowers, another of camomile, and another of linden flowers, mix them well and place them in a sachet. Heat the sachet well and apply it to the swelling.’ He thought of Miss Margulis, whom he had just seen, because she had had the bizarre idea of visiting the newspaper offices, although her cheek was swollen, and he regretted not having had the chance to tell her about the advice in the Gazette. Who knows, maybe it worked? In fact, he did not have much faith in such advice and nor in the advertisements they were obliged to publish, advertisements for miraculous cure-alls, such as Genoa Water or remedies against the microbes that caused baldness.

  ‘Now that most young men wear moustaches rather than full beards, the barbers have had a lot of custom; they can’t cope. And nor is long hair the mode any longer,’ answered Pavel, in a placatory tone.

  Somewhat mollified, since in that respect he could be reckoned a young man, Procopiu stroked his waxed black moustache.

  ‘But I for one preferred Mr Costache Boerescu with a beard rather than a moustache. Who knows for what prima donna he shaved off his beard.’

  Pavel Mirto added, as a means of erasing the traces of the earlier argument: ‘Ah, but I have some more news for you. In France they have founded an all-female newspaper, La Fronde. Santa Maria, Madre di Dio! There’s a place I would like to work.’

  ‘As a smoker, I think you would have difficulties,’ said the editor-in-chief, with implied reproach. ‘What are we doing about tomorrow’s article, have you any ideas?’

  Tuesday, 23 December: The Chance Occurence

  1.

  Yesterday evening, Papa, only just having returned from Giurgiu, took fright when he heard that I had been outside in the cold all day, and so today he forbade me to go out of the house under any circumstances. ‘I shall call my friend Steinhart to examine you,’ he said. ‘As far as I can see, the infected molar is a wisdom tooth, and so it must be extracted. Wisdom teeth are good for nothing and cause only problems.’ ‘Wisdom likewise,’ I said, because I was feeling very gloomy. Let us think about it a little: I had every reason to be gloomy, since I still felt poorly, I still felt as if I had grit in my eyes, my cheek was still swollen, and I had dreamed of Alexandru. He had been duelling with Nicu Filipescu and both were wounded, and I was one of the seconds, the referee. But I could not help him, since I was not allowed. Of course, it could only be the result of the newspapers’ obsession with the Lahovary-Filipescu case, in other words the L’Indépendance versus Epoca case, in other words, a political querelle I do not believe that Nicu Filipescu killed him on purpose; as the servants say: he is notorious for his hot temper. But nor did he have any mercy on a man unaccustomed to swordplay. In a way, it was murder
in the name of honour. Papa put Collir in my eyes; it did not hurt. Nor am I afraid of having my tooth extracted. Papa told me that nowadays there are methods of putting the tooth to sleep, they numb your jaw, and everything is painless, even if later, when the numbness passes, the pain returns. Papa praised me. He says that women are braver than men in the battle with illness. In the family on festive occasions they tell the story of how a colleague once asked Papa: ‘Mr Margulis, what is your opinion of the weaker sex?’ And Papa straight away replied: ‘I think that the weaker sex is the stronger sex.’ This saying then circulated, especially given that Papa is not renowned for bons mots. When I am ill, he always explains to me what has gone wrong inside me and after that I am not at all afraid; it seems to me that we are like mechanisms, which from time to time have to be repaired, oiled and adjusted. He told me that I have conjunctivitis and that both problems are probably because of a draught: ‘Did you keep the window open?’ he asked. He taught me that everything inside our head is connected; ears, nose and throat, and all the canals and nerves are inlets for the bad to enter. He speaks of the body; I speak of the soul. And then, Papa tells me: ‘Mens sana in corpore sano, as Juvenal well put it, although he was a poet.’ He does not much like poets. And then: ‘A good doctor cures both mind and body.’ Let us see, Papa, whether you can cure my mind and body of Alexandru, I thought to myself, downcast.

  ‘I will cure you,’ he said, as if he had overheard my thoughts.

  I have noticed that sometimes he can read thoughts, exactly like our friend, Mr Costache. The truth is that I have qualms of conscience about how I rebuffed Alexandru yesterday. After my dream of last night I see things completely differently. I think he is in danger and that I have to help him. But what if he is very well, thank you, and I make a fool of myself? Ultimately, I have never refused a visit before, and so why should I start with him? And so I opened the drawer of my writing table and began to search for a special-looking envelope. In the end I selected one which, if you held it up to the light, had a fleur-de-lis in filigree. I pondered for a long time. My mind was not working, probably because I did not have a corpus sanum either. In the end I penned the following: