He stood up and started pacing up and down the room agitatedly, between the fireplace and the window, while I listened to him insatiably. But then came the blast of cold water.
‘But one thing does not fit, no matter how much I would like to believe you. If science had achieved something of the sort, you would have had to know about it, to know that you were the first who... but since you know nothing, it is more likely to be only an aspiration, an ideal, a figment of imagination that you have come to believe to be real. Perhaps what Dr Margulis supposed is the only acceptable explanation. Have patience and I believe that you will find the explanation for yourself in the end.’
And with the selfishness of all people in love, he turned his attention away from me, as if what I had told him were a mere bagatelle, and came back to his own pressing concerns: he asked me, in fact begged me, to go to the Margulis house that afternoon at five o’clock, finding some pretext or other, and if Miss Iulia was in a position to receive him, to send him word. He would wait for me by the St Sava College. And then he surprised me by inviting me to his New Year’s Eve party and told me not to worry, because he would place me in the hands of the family tailor. That was the last thing I was expecting, a tailor! True, I had already been tailored with a bandage, and the tailor would have to take account of my shoulder.
Alexandru added, sombrely: ‘I invite you even if I will perhaps not be present. My future is uncertain in this moment. I shall inform my sister Marioara, who is taking care of the preparations. It will be a rather formal party, there will also be newspapermen there, since I’ve told you that profession interests me.’
4.
The hands revolved unseen, because the fog obscured the face of the clock on the façade of the Prefecture of Police. Petre the coachman had as usual left his watch at home and he was afraid he might be late. He had been summoned to come at eleven o’clock. If he had not known the way, he would have got lost, so alien did the white city seem, not even sounds came from where they should have, and the horse took fright when they came face to face with another carriage. He had with him the chocolate cream and almond cream that he had bought from the confectioner, to sweeten the policemen.
For a Saturday, there was a strangely large number of people there; men and women, some standing, some sitting, some walking up and down the broad ground floor lobby aimlessly, some standing at doors. You would have said every form of distress and person in distress had assembled at the police station, now that Christmas was over. Caton Lecca was there too, and from his first-floor office, the one with the three arched windows right above the main entrance, raised voices could be heard, and the soldiers were walking around on tiptoe. The chiefs were arguing among themselves, and what filtered through the door were mutual accusations the likes of which had never been overheard there before. Petre was growing more and more frightened, because the man who was shouting the loudest was Mr Costache Boerescu, who had sent word that he should come. What would happen when he came face to face with him! Obviously, the wallet could no longer turn up, since the men had come to empty the privy on the very same day – blind luck – and so even if they made a search, nothing would be found, but the thought gave him no peace and it was as if it had begun to reek. His horse, Murguțu, had started to limp in that damned fog, and limping was a bad sign, because he was highly skilled at shoeing horses, he knew how to make a horse stand calmly, and sometimes his assistant did not even need to use the bull tongs. His children ran riot, but horses obeyed him, and anyway he was more patient with them, and spoke to them lovingly. And here he was sweating like a horse in fear, although the dampness of the fog chilled him to the bone.
The door flew open and Mr Costache burst forth, without looking at anybody and without seeing him. Petre followed him and before the Head of Security could enter his office, he stopped him with a hoarse ‘Mr Costache!’ The policeman turned around and it seemed that only then did he remember him.
‘Ah, a good job you came and don’t make me waste my time with you, otherwise I’ll have you put in a cell downstairs, and then you’ll see how they ask you questions.’
Petre looked at Mr Costache in terror and the stump of his index finger started to throb.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘I want to know everything, and tell me everything you concealed the last time. What you took from that boy and why, and whether you shot him!’
‘No, not me, sir, I never even had me gun with me that day. I ran away from home, from me wife’s tongue, she were nagging me, ’cause she don’t want me to be a Jew’s servant all me life, she wants me to be a blacksmith and indebendent. I didn’t have no gun! First I saw him on the ground, the one that didn’t have no moustache, I thought he were drunk, he were trembling and I gave him me father’s overcoat, God rest his soul, and ten minutes later I found the blond one, lying there like he were dead, but he weren’t dead, and I bicked him ub.’
Mr Costache looked at him unrelentingly. When he wanted to, he could paralyse all those around him with a single glance; he could give orders without opening his mouth. He had never yet raised his hand to anybody, he lowered his voice to a whisper, but he could get his way like that more quickly than by using the old methods. He had a bearing that cowed even criminals, and Petre all the more so, since he was not a criminal.
‘I took it, sir.’
‘Took what?’
‘The burse.’
‘And?’
‘I threw it in the shi... er, in the brivy, so as nobody would find it. I don’t know why I took it, I thought I could oben a smithy and shut me wife ub and I knew very well that the blond lad didn’t have long to live, and so he wouldn’t need it. But I swear that all it had in it was a key and not one benny, I swear on the holy icon!’
Petre made a sweeping sign of the cross with thumb and one and a half fingers, and Costache dismissed him with his harshest glare. The coachman retreated backwards, – one advantage a man has over a horse, which doesn’t know how to walk backwards so easily.
5.
Mama and Papa and Jacques left at half past four, in our carriage. I thought to myself: if I put my corset on and arrange my hair, he will not come. If I do not put it on, he might come, and then I will appear to him in the worst possible light and with the largest possible waist. Nevertheless, if I do not put my corset on, I have two advantages: I will be comfortable and if he does not come, I will not have gone to ridiculous lengths of preparation for nothing. Often I play the lottery with my thoughts in this way and always have the winning ticket. What a win! By the way, my cousin, who always has good initiatives, urged me to enter the New Year’s lottery, only she knows that I have bought a ticket, especially given we have financial difficulties. I have hidden it right here in my diary. I placed the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 together, not being able to think of anything better, arranged as 12, 34 and 56. Vasilica chose hers at random: 65, 43 and 21. I cannot even imagine what we would do with ten thousand lei, but surely we should start with a bigger surgery for Papa, with the latest instruments, since his a very out of date. How much would a Roentgen machine cost? I have not the faintest idea. At a few minutes to five, I started to bustle around, I looked in the mirror, I arranged my hair a little, although whatever I might do, it will not stay in place, I suppose that it does not like what is inside my head, in my ‘cranial container,’ as Papa so nicely puts it. Oh, is there anybody who is exactly as she wishes to be in every respect, both inside and out? I have had no news from that person. Who knows from what great-great-somebody I inherited this black and unruly head of hair!
At five o’clock on the dot I almost fainted in fright, because I heard the front door and then Safta appeared. But I could immediately tell she was not wearing her Alexandru Livizeanu face. It was Mr Dan Crețu, seemingly in a better mood – who wished to thank us for lunch – how nice of him, he is well-educated after all! But when he heard that I was alone, he did not wish to stay, although I insincerely begged him to. He was in such a
hurry that he did not even take his hat off, the man is very absent-minded, but he is very dear to me the way he is! Well, let us see how I shall recount what happened next, since at the Central School they never taught us such a thing...
After Dan left, I was so disappointed, having believed for an instant that the other man had arrived, I was so disappointed that I extinguished all the lights and withdrew to my room.
However, not ten minutes after Dan Crețu’s departure, Safta appeared, this time wearing her Alexandru face, which is to say a solemn and defiant mien, as if I were a mule for agreeing to see such a man. I did not even have time to regret that I had not arranged my hair, he entered and I cannot remember whether or how he greeted me. I quickly picked up Vanity Fair pour me donner une contenance. He sat down next to me on the couch, although I had invited him to take a chair. He looked deeply and steadily into my eyes, and I did likewise. When Jacques and I were younger, we used to play at looking into animals’ eyes, and they would never hold out, always quickly turning aside their gaze, especially dogs. I wanted to show Alexandru that I could hold out, that I was not a dog, but I could not understand what his gaze meant. Perhaps it meant nothing.
‘What does ‘green and red’ mean?’ he asked.
‘I wanted to ask you the very same question.’
It was not the first time that we had thought the same thing in the same moment. He smiled, although, not as luminously as Mr Dan Crețu smiles. See how objective I can be!
‘Nicu brought me a coded message, like in charades: ‘Five o’clock, green and red.’ Without a day, without a place, and the fact that I came today is boldness on my part, especially given that on Monday I had the honour not to be...’
‘But what about the letter?’ I said, interrupting, since I felt guilty about Monday. ‘My letter was clear!’
‘What letter?’ and as he said it his face took on that innocence it often shows when he is lying, and which so infuriates me. He was up to his usual tricks again – and my heart felt heavy. Nicu is renowned for never having lost any envelope or parcel that has ever been entrusted to him, by me or anybody else, and he told me that he gave him the envelope. Given the choice between Nicu and Alexandru, allow me to believe Nicu. I rose to my feet, but remembering I was not wearing a corset, I quickly sat back down, thus allowing me the better to conceal my lack of that item of attire, and I think I blushed slightly. It was obvious, however, that he had straight away noticed the lack, because his eyes remained on my dress, namely my waist.
‘Why did you come here on Monday?’ I asked and the question sounded colder than I had intended.
‘Iulia... I am in difficulties, I am in a situation that might turn out badly for me. I have told Mr Boerescu, but I got the impression that he did not believe me, just as you do not believe me when I tell you that I did not receive a letter.’
He had an utterly different tone of voice than any I had heard from him thitherto, but his eyes still had his “home à femmes” tone, although he panted slightly as he spoke, as if he had been running. And he quickly stood up to leave. My heart quailed, but just as quickly he came back and sat down, right beside me, and cupped my cheek in his palm. And then rather than telling me about his difficulties, he prepared difficulties for me; a host of future difficulties because the sole lamp could be easily extinguished and the flames in the hearth flickered softly, and because my lack of a corset helped things to happen there, on the couch. He aroused my breasts, alarming each in turn, and then there was an all-encompassing yearning, tighter and tighter, and a boundless compassion. Yes, it was something higher than us, higher than me, and he said: ‘you little face looked as if you had been born, it was like a child’s first scream.’ My body did everything it had to without anybody ever having taught it. I think Safta knows, because since then she has looked at me with a kind of annoyance.
6.
In the afternoon, the fog lifted for a few hours and it was possible to see the smoke from the chimneys. The smoke was not as straight as a candle, as it was on fine days, but hunchbacked and humble, trembling, as if hesitating to go on its way and unravelling into slenderer and slenderer threads. At around four o’clock in the afternoon, the fog engulfed the smoke that had lain hidden in it, and in the evening the darkness engulfed both. Beneath the white and black waves, the top of the L’Indépendance Roumaine building disappeared. Inside, the editors talked endlessly about their erstwhile director, hoping with all their hearts that Nicu Filipescu would go to prison.
*
The rather ordinary-looking Adevĕrul building on Strada Sărindar also disappeared. Inside, a brand new attack against the monarchy was being hatched. The baroque building of the Universul popular newspaper also disappeared, a building atop which two almost naked bodies joined their winged shoulders, right above the window of the director’s office. Thence, one by one, Mr Peppin Mirto and Mr Dan Crețu emerged into the whitish murk, each heading in the direction of Theatre Square to take a cab. Then, from the last office on the left, as you look at the front of the building, editor-in-chief Neculai Procopiu came out, later followed by Pavel Mirto, after he had finished writing a few more pages of his book. Old man Cercel was the last to leave, after checking that none of the lights in any of the offices had been left burning. Although there was no longer any danger of a fire, the doorman did his duty the same as he had in the old days, in his youth, when any candle could turn Bucharest’s buildings into torches. And besides, electricity was expensive, and Mr Cazzvillan has asked him not to leave any of the lights on. The fog enveloped him, as he headed towards his little house on Strada Vișinelor in a carriage whose side was inscribed UNIVERSUL in white letters.
Sunday, 28 December: Press Review
1.
I am writing in bed, propping the diary against my knees, and so my handwriting is bad. I feel sleepy and spoiled and worried, and my thoughts are all in a muddle. I yearn. Last night I dreamed no more no less than I was in the Garden of Eden, it looked a little like the garden of our old house, the one they sold when my Grandfather died. I pass a cherry plum tree, which did not tempt me, and then I came to an apple tree. In the tree I saw a small golden fruit and I gobbled it up without a second thought. Then I saw another, larger, greener apple, and I gobbled that one up too. It was not until I woke up that I thought of Eve. Am I to understand from this that I am guilty for tempting Adam? But what guilt? Perhaps because I was not wearing a corset? What can be bad in good? What can be bad in us? Proof that it is not a bad thing is that the body knows very well what it has to do. ‘A little bad in you.’ It is true that he guided me with a gentleness I would not have suspected in him. Our bodies are made to understand, while our words are made to separate us, because on leaving he said to me reproachfully: ‘Why did I have to see you asleep?’ Incomprehensible words that seemed to be brutal, like a blow. Naturally I was not asleep!
It was still well, but then today I picked up Universul (after Papa reads it, it arrives in my room, since Mama cannot abide it, she says it lacks style) and the devil knows what prompted me, or the devil himself prompted me, to read the letters of Dr Bastaki to Miss Gorjan, the woman who, after two years of amour, shot her lover with a pistol, because of blighted happiness. Those letters are dreadful. It is worth transcribing two of them here, so that I might be warned, having picked the golden apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the summer, in August, he wrote to her thus: ‘My darling love, I have read the letter I received from you this morning and I am still under the influence of a pang of the heart. It is certain that your parents seek only to drive you away from me and employ to that end means that are in keeping with them, means dastardly and unscrupulous. What concern about you grips them, when they speak ill of a man who enjoys the esteem of the whole of society?’ Look how modest he is! At least it is not the case with Alexandru. And nor with my parents. But what follows is even more outré: ‘In order to do so, they ought to have qualities of a higher order, whereas with them it is complet
ely the opposite.’ I have said that Miss Elena’s father is a general. ‘What did they wish to do with their daughter? To marry her off for money?! Therefore they wished to invest you like capital. The question of money trumps all others. Little do they care about quality and intelligence, these to them are a negligible quantity. Well, for people who think only of money, they do not judge badly. Of course, they must now be furious seeing their hopes dashed, their investment lost. That noble body, that palpitating flesh has managed to escape their infamous trafficking and they cannot forgive such an act of independence, the rebellion of a sincere and honest nature. I read and reread your letter and I rage with shame and fury at the very idea that you can be their daughter. You do not deserve to stay one minute in the presence of such people, and this is why I beg you to leave at once that horrible place and come to me. I shall arrange things in such a way as to make you happy. I love you and I want you for the rest of my life.’ Less than a year later, in June, the married man from Brăila wrote a letter such as I have never read before – and I am widely read: ‘Dear friend, This morning I am on the bank of the Danube that threatens us; I have so many things to do that I do not know where to start. My solutions have gone to hell. You did badly to leave Bucharest. In this moment I want to go to the dykes, which we are struggling to keep in place. I cannot leave here and think of anything but the danger that threatens the Lake. It is impossible for me to come to town. What will you do in Brăila? Am I not to be left in peace? Neither the lady nor any other person in the world concerns me at the moment. I think of nothing except what is happening here. Are you determined whatever the cost to compete with the Danube? It is true: you too burst your banks. I am furious to discover that you are in town. I embrace you etc.’
Life Begins On Friday Page 22
