Old General Algiu arrived at nine o’clock, on the box of his carriage next to his inseparable adjutant, but he was oppressed by the great empty space on the other side of him. The General knew he was too old, in soul rather than body, to fill that empty space with another woman. Today was the last day of a year of mourning, which meant that today was the day when he had lost his beloved wife. New Year’s Eve would always be a black day for him. But it was better that he should spend it in company.
Costache arrived an hour later, with Mlle Olympia Mărculescu, Gilda. The two arrived at the same time as the carriage driven by Alexandru, from which alighted Miss Margulis. The surprise was mutual: Costache was amazed to see Iulia alone in Alexandru’s carriage, and Iulia to see Mr Costache with a companion, when she thought him to be single. Their eyes met. The policeman apologized to his hosts for being late: he had come straight from the Opera, where the female lead had, as ever, earned a standing ovation. After reminiscing about New Year’s Eve parties from the recent past, Mr Hristea Livezeanu showed them a French caricature from Le Figaro, which depicted a beautifully arranged festive meal and beneath it, in small letters, the words of the host: ‘Please, no politics and no Dreyfus Affair!’ And at the bottom of the page, there was a drawing of the same table, in disarray, with drunken guests and the caption, in equally small script: ‘Ils en ont parlé’ (They talked about it).
Following that delicate apropos, the company was invited to sit at the dinner table. There were fifteen people seated at the large dining room table, which was of solid wood and could be extended or shortened: a convenient number, although sixteen would have been better for symmetry’s sake. Five in number, the children sat at a smaller table. Nicu kept going back and forth between the two tables, since he constantly had something to tell Dan, until Agatha saw him and scolded him.
4.
‘If the honour falls upon me to open the first window to the future,’ said the host, ‘then this is what I see: within a year or two, before the turn of the century, the ‘iron lady’ will be deposed. At least so I hope!’
Before twelve o’clock on the last day of the year ’97 or the hour 0 of the first day of the year ’98, Marioara proposed a game: let each make a prediction about the future, instead of the usual pie containing fortunes on slips of paper, of which everybody was sick. (Marioara did not confess that her pie had burned.) Better to have predictions. The predictions could go as far as one liked. The idea of having a small pause before the roast garnered unanimous approval. The fifteen adults were joined by Nicu, the sixteenth, since he felt he belonged to the big table rather than the children’s table. Since people took to him, he was accepted as a novelty. And so numbers were inscribed on slips paper, from 1 to 16, and they were dropped inside Peppin Mirto’s hats, which would be drawn to establish the order in which each would speak. The hat and chance determined that Mr Hristea Livezeanu was first, and Dan Crețu last. Of the others, many declined to take part, either from bashfulness or other reasons hard to divine.
Procopiu, who was second, had already prepared a vague answer about the next issue of Universul, but when he heard that Hristea Livezeanu wanted the ‘iron lady,’ in other words La Tour Eiffel to be demolished, he felt it his duty as a journalist to intervene. Having risen to his feet, following the example of the first speaker, although his shoes forced him to sit for as long as possible, he asked permission to commit the impoliteness of disagreeing with his host: ‘The Eiffel Tower will endure for centuries. It will be visited by many people. Paris will be synonymous with the Eiffel Tower, and the Eiffel Tower with Paris.’
‘Encouraged by Mrs Livezeanu’s smile, since she always ascribed to the view contrary to that of her consort, he went on: ‘It will last for at least as long as the Statue of Liberty in New York, which... on whose metal structure Eiffel also worked. M Gustave Eiffel is a genius of steelwork, as everybody knows. It is true that the Panama Canal affair, which the newspapers, even in this country, have exaggerated so much, has tarnished his fame as an engineer somewhat. But it has been a long time since Léon Bloy, a writer who has written no great books, called the tower a ‘tragic lamp,’ while a better writer, albeit one rather too eccentric for my taste, M Huysmans, described it, may the ladies forgive me, as a suppository full of holes!’
Procopiu’s cheeks flushed and his fellow diners sensed that the journalist’s Achilles heel had been struck. His colleague Pavel Mirto knew why. The editor-in-chief’s childhood dream had been to become an engineer, and Gustave Eiffel and Anghel Saligny were his great role models, in a world in which models were hard to choose, given they were so numerous. He had been to the Paris Exhibition in ’89 and he hoped one day to shake the hand of Eiffel in the flesh. He knew Saligny well; they were of the same generation. Procopiu had attended the ceremony to open the Cernavodă Bridge across the Danube in ’96, on 14 September, and he remembered with a thrill the thousands of people who had arrived on five special trains, including the most famous journalists. He even remembered the special train on which the entire royal court, diplomatic corps and ministers had arrived. A week later, Neculai Procopiu had accepted an invitation to attend the banquet held by the Ministry of Public Works in honour of Saligny and the other engineers who had worked on the bridge.
Alexandru politely raised his glass to Procopiu and congratulated him. He had courage and passion of which he would not have believed him capable; he had always seemed to him somewhat banal. And in order to pass over the rather embarrassing mention of the suppository, a word that was osée on a festive occasion and in the presence of the ladies, although this was the risk one ran when one invited journalists, he said: ‘Number 3? Who has number 3?’
Full of the importance of the occasion, Nicu declared himself. He stood next to Iulia’s chair. He had taken off his coat and inserted his thumbs behind his braces, as he had seen old man Cercel do: his model. He spoke quickly, as he did at school whenever he had to answer a question, with his eyes fixed on Dan: ‘Through the window of the future is Mr Dan and farther away is Jacques, who is going for a walk, without his crutch... with you,’ he added, moved by the silence that had fallen around him.
‘Bravo!’ Now it is my turn,’ said Alexandru, since the company was even more embarrassed than they had been at the previous speaker, although Jacques was smiling from his seat. He understood that Nicu had sacrificed his own wishes for his sake. Nicu looked curiously at Alexandru, to see whether he would reveal the secret he knew.
‘I do not see anything, but I wish to write for Universul. At least a society column, since you do not have one,’ he said to the three newspapermen, who seemed to approve the idea, at least out of politeness.’
‘A welcome idea!’ said Madam Livezeanu. ‘I shall claim the right not to make any prediction. But I would like to climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower before it is demolished, as my husband predicts. Naturally, using the ascenseur. Surely we shall find the five francs in our pockets. À bon entendeur, salut,’ she added, for her husband’s ears.
It was Pavel’s turn. He spoke in his usual muted voice, so that only those sitting next to him were able to hear.
‘Some of you know that I am writing a novel. I hope that the God of our future is not a novelist, to kill off his protagonists unexpectedly and invent bad things (although He, the Creator, is good, is He not?) merely so that his book will turn out good and so that the devil will not say that He, the Lord, has not created a world without horns and a tail. Or a different version: let us hope that we are not living in the world of Old Nick, who, a fearless plagiarist, has compiled the world of God, but added some original evil on his own account. And from time to time God manages to sabotage him with something good. Let us hope that whoever is the One has written this world –’ here Pavel pointed his finger at the ceiling and then at the floor ‘– loves happy endings, and that all is well that ends well.’
‘Is everything well when it ends with death?’ interjected Dr Margulis in irritation.
‘Thi
s is what we ought to believe, is it not?’ replied Pavel, barely audibly, but without getting ruffled. ‘Here is a good ending to a novel. All is well when it ends with death. And I believe that is what will be once more.’
‘What, the good or death?’ said Agatha, losing her patience. She herself had encountered both. To her, too, Păvălucă seemed annoying. ‘I have not very well understood your predictions, Mr Mirto, but it is true that the Pythian said more or less the same kind of things.’
Hristea Livezeanu was slightly deaf and could not make out anything.
‘Well, if you want it to end with a wedding or a baptism, you should know that my brother is of a mind to marry next year, or at least to get engaged,’ said Pavel, looking at his brother, who, contrary to the custom, was gloomy, probably because of his tailcoat.
The following predictions were also made: man would go to the Moon, like in the tales of Jules Verne, the reds would, alas come to power, the whole Earth would be lit up by electricity, and, perhaps, a cure for tuberculosis would be found (this was Leon Margulis prediction, or ‘prognosis’, as he called it. General Algiu had cheered up somewhat. What was bad to him had been left behind or perhaps he had managed to overtake it. His words sounded differently than on ordinary occasions, as if he had lowered his guard when he stood up to speak.
‘For me, the window of my own future is closed. But through the country’s window I see good things, for the time being. And I would also tell the children to take delight in the present years, because they are more peaceful and happier than any years ever before! I do not know why I say this, how it came to me, but I am fully convinced that it is so. I do not believe in a rosy future; I have seen too many things in my life. I shall leave the young Boerescu to continue, since he is cleverer than I, both in words and in the battle against time.’
The young Costache felt old on New Year’s Eve and hoped to leave before the dancing began, although Mlle Mărculescu gazed at him, smiling enchantingly, her hair piled up around her head like a black halo. She did indeed look dazzling, and Iulia sometimes cast her wondering glances. Costache had known from the start of the evening what he would say. Standing, avoiding Iulia’s eye, looking only at the General, he smiled and, raising his glass, filled with the vintage of ’78, with which he had barely moistened his lips, he said: ‘As for the year on which we are just embarking, I have nothing much to say. But I predict that next century, the twentieth, will begin with General Ion Algiu at the helm of the Prefecture of Police. And that the prints of our fingertips will become the best means of identifying malefactors, who are able to alter their appearance with new moustaches.’
All kinds of comments were bandied back and forth. Some looked at Dan and his newly grown moustache, and a few examined their fingertips. Iulia, who was the penultimate speaker, remained seated, and Alexandru tapped his glass with a teaspoon to elicit silence for her. To the astonishment of all, she turned towards Dan: ‘Mr Crețu, how would you translate Vanity Fair?’
‘Well, it’s Bâlciul Deșertăciunilor (The Fair of Futilities), isn’t it?’
‘Formidable,’ said Peppin Mirto, ‘amazing, you did not pause one instant to think. In fact, that is what it is like when you translate, either you find the right word straight away or you do not find it at all.’
‘My prediction for the future world,’ said Iulia, ‘is that it will be a fair of futilities or a market of vanities. And I also predict that women will no longer wear corsets,’ she added and then blushed furiously and gasped.
At which point Alexandru drank from his glass and Nicu whispered to Dan: ‘The Tuzla Lighthouse,’ and Dan gazed at him in puzzlement.
There was no time left for the rest of the game. Dan Crețu did not get to speak, to Marioara’s regret. She had been looking at him fixedly the whole evening, convincing herself that her first impression had not deceived her: there was nothing, absolutely nothing, mysterious about Mr Crețu; he was a man like any other. She gave a dimpled smile.
The hands of the clock neared twelve. The men uncorked the champagne from the buckets full of ice from Cișmigiu Lake, which was now half melted. At the first of the twelve chimes of the clock, the glasses clinked and the servants extinguished the lights for a few seconds, as if the world stood still. There were whoops and titters, the men’s shirt fronts shone in the darkness, and the children bumped up against the adults’ legs. Anica hid her head in her mother’s lap. The General coughed. Alexandru sought to discern Iulia’s outline in the darkness, her waist tightly contained within a corset. Hrista Livezeanu was bored and had a headache. Dan Crețu felt Nicu’s little hand grasp his. And then the world set in motion once more, the lights came on, enveloping guests and servants alike. It was as if they had met on the other bank of a river. They expected from the New Year all the good that the old one had denied them. The cannons on Metropolia Hill boomed over the city, causing one first to start and then to rejoice. The invisible enemies of the New Year were put to flight. And the words Happy New Year! could be heard so many times, spoken by so many voices in so many houses, that if all the years uttered had been placed end to end they would have stretched far into the future, a future which none could for the time being glimpse.
5.
Dan Crețu alone remained to gaze, as the host so poetically put it, through the ‘window of the future,’ and the curiosity of the other guests could not have been greater. The glasses were once more filled with champagne and the foam dissolved like the worn lacework of the old year. Even if you are a rational and know that the newspapers alone have turned a man into a mysterious figure, into somebody different from everybody else, you still feel a slight thrill, like a cold draught in a well-heated room. And if you have been drinking Dom Perignon champagne, you might even believe that there is indeed something shady behind it all. Dan began to speak, as if talking to himself, without rising to his feet, without looking at anybody; it was as if he did not see them.
‘It isn’t good to look too far back into the past, and if your past is in the future, it’s even worse. I will forbid myself to think about my past. Perhaps in my mind, no longer ago than a year, my future was somewhere else entirely. Through a sudden reversal, my past blended with the future. Maybe, as someone here well put it, what was really is what will be. Maybe, as nobody has put it yet, but as somebody soon will say, the years stand still, like a landscape seen from a train window, while we are the ones in motion.’
‘We are the ones who are passing by now,’ interjected Mrs Marioara Livezeanu with a dimpled smile, peeved that Dan Crețu was playing the role of the mysterious stranger for the sake of the journalists. But fortunately, the band of folk musicians in red coats began a well-known waltz and the lady of the house announced: ‘Let the dancing begin! The ladies choose.’
6.
The people of Bucharest were having a bad day. It had snowed, there were still twelve days till the end of the year, and twelve hours till the end of the day. On the large boulevards, where wheels advanced more slowly than legs, the festive lights were lit, but few people looked up to see them. Bluish droplets wept into the net of fairy lights hanging above the procession of wheels, which was without beginning and without end. Somewhere in that procession, like a small yellow splotch, was the old automobile of the journalist, Dan Crețu. He was on his way to the airport, having first dropped into the office of the magazine for which he worked. From the vehicle behind him, four ladies had alighted and set off on foot, impatient with the endlessly stopping traffic. Dan found the sullen air of the driver strange. He had a horn, which he kept blowing, not furiously, but methodically, maniacally. He kept changing lanes, gaining a few metres, only to lose them once more. When the cars drew side by side, Dan could see him in profile: he was smoking. He seemed familiar, but Dan could not place the face. He had black hair and was wearing a cap with a childlike tassel.
At the magazine, Dan had celebrated Christmas a few days in advance, as usual. On the big calendar, which had bold numbers, without any pho
tographs, somebody had moved the red square ahead a week. The whole staff lived to a weekly rhythm, as if somebody moved them seven days at a time, from one window on the calendar to another. The red square on the calendar now framed a Monday: 19 December. Dan Crețu had quickly entered the office, shaking the snow off his coloured footwear. As always, he was late.
He looked around him without curiosity: women and men who did not particularly care about each other. The editor-in-chief was leafing through a science magazine with the Eiffel Tower on the cover. Pavel, a young man with round glasses, was speaking softly to a woman and his mind was elsewhere. The administrator entered, whose voice, by contrast, was loud and melodious, as if he were on stage. In any case, there were few of them. Some were playing truant and for a few moments Dan envied them. People were dressed somewhat smarter than on ordinary days, but the slush on the streets did not encourage fanciful outfits. From waist level upward he could see thin, tightly-fitting blouses, cleavages on display, cheap necklaces and long earrings, or depending on the person, shirts and thick jackets, even a necktie, but at floor level everything was the same, for both the men and the women: blue or black trousers without stripes, comfortable boots, which left muddy prints on the parquet, of different sizes and sole patterns. And then there was Dan’s footwear, which rather stood out. A few editors, proof-readers and people from the printing press had gathered, without enthusiasm, the same as at every work party. They didn’t even have a Christmas tree; they were making economies. The soft transparent plates and cups would later be thrown in the bin. Dan saw a yellowing newspaper, an old Universul, bought from some second-hand bookshop, which Pavel had brought to show his colleagues. He cast a glance at the front page, which featured a questionnaire on the topic Why Do You Fast? and for a second he was amazed to see that somebody signed it whose name was almost the same as his: Dan Kretzu.
Life Begins On Friday Page 28
