Kitty & Virgil
Page 27
I hear them. I hear them.
And he and his brothers-in-arms consigned their names to the huge darkness of history.
I am not leaving a bloody mess behind. I have a piece of rope to hand.
I am erasing the life he gave me. It is the least I can do on this day of days.
Post Scriptum: Forgive me, Kitty. I am to blame for Radu’s ordeal in the institution. I hope he also forgives me.
(‘I realise my opinions have never counted for anything with you, Kitty, but for what it’s worth I think your new Romanian is a distinct improvement on the other one. He wears sensible clothes. He doesn’t look as if he had the worries of the world on his shoulders. And he doesn’t laugh like a madman either.’)
Another Life, another task to distract her.
The Life that was to release her from her trance of grief was scarcely more than a monograph – a short character study, simply written, running to a hundred and twenty pages. Its subject was Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, the eldest son of the great Johann Sebastian, a man desperate to escape from his father’s shadow. She learned that he was an accomplished composer at an early age, the pleasant harmonies coming easily and naturally to him, in the fecund manner the music-lovers of Leipzig expected of a Bach. Yet Wilhelm Friedemann grew disenchanted with the facility with which he was able to write for the orchestra, the keyboard and the cathedral choir, and took to experimenting. His ambition was to create a new sound, a sound distinguishable from Johann Sebastian’s, a sound that would be recognised as his and his alone. But his father’s shadow lengthened and darkened with each new composition and Wilhelm Friedemann sought relief from his frustrations in drink. Alcohol mellowed him, dulled his demons, and in his final years he was one of the familiar sights of unrespectable Berlin – an amiable drunkard, shuffling from tavern to tavern in old and shabby clothes, his once tormented nature apparently at rest.
By the end of the book she was moved to tears of pity and deep commiseration. She went out to her garden and let the rain fall on her. And as she stood there, she saw Virgil coming across the lawn, his Communist tooth gleaming in the dimness.
Five Poems
by Virgil Florescu
newly translated by Kitty Crozier and Dinu Psatta
Stainless Steel
The archaeologist opens the glass case
And brings out, like a conjuror, a shining object.
He is aglow with scholarly excitement
As he stands before his devoted pupils
Who are waiting impatiently for him to speak.
He is their favourite elucidator of mysteries.
He invites them to pass the bright little beauty
From hand to respectful hand, with care.
They are amazed, bewildered, awe-struck, speechless.
They have not looked quite so confused, he tells them,
Since the day he produced the Bronze-Age kettle,
Battered and rusted beyond recognition.
Would they believe the object was once a tooth
In somebody’s mouth, a thousand years past?
A fabricated tooth, from the age of Stainless Steel,
Guaranteed free from corrosion, and unbreakable?
Its owner was homo sovieticus, a man or woman unsung
Of whom this little beauty is the only trace.
It is my tooth the students are examining.
And now the words of the dentist are almost echoed
By the astute professor of archaeology.
I hear him saying to my anxious mother, on edge at my side,
That the tooth will see me through the longest life
And even after. Worms will find it indigestible
And the fiercest fire concede surrender.
Cerberus
He has only one head in the photograph,
The usual allotment of eyes and ears,
A solitary nose he is proud to call Roman
And a thin-lipped mouth that looks like a scar.
He would seem to be ordinary.
His other heads are temporarily invisible.
He has the gift of making them vanish
Whenever his master recommends concealment.
Heads Two and Three are always camera-shy:
A pair of shrinking violets.
Three heads are better than one in his profession.
It’s a risky business, guarding the gates of hell.
You need exceptional qualifications
And he’s exceptionally qualified – this beast
Seen here in the guise of a man.
I am the son of Mister Trinity-Head,
The human Cerberus, the beast in a suit.
He tried to teach me his canine tricks –
Licking the devil’s hand; barking the devil welcome.
I was a hopeless student.
He’s an old beast now, the three-headed survivor
With a single cunning brain. While he sleeps
Four eyes stay open, and four ears pick up
The faintest footfall. The devil rests secure
With such a restless guardian.
The Fisher of Perch
I told the recruiting officer
I was living a quiet life
Here in Arcadia.
This is a place, I said,
Where nothing much occurs
Of any significance
Between birth and death.
History of the bloody kind’s
Unknown to us.
He patted his gleaming sword
And strode into my humble hut
Near the brooks of Lerna.
I watched as his cold eyes noted
My few necessities –
My pots and pans, my bed of straw,
And the garb I wasn’t wearing.
The brooks are bursting with spotted perch
And I’m a fisherman, I babbled,
With work to do, with mouths to fill.
Besides, I don’t know what your war’s about.
That’s when he laughed. Oh poor Menoetës,
Ask Jupiter, ask Juno, question all the gods,
Ask every Trojan who came through the flames
And then ask Prince Aeneas. Don’t ask me.
And so I didn’t. I went off to fight,
Losing my peace of mind that brisk spring day.
I shared his ignorance until my death
Some several battles later.
No less a hero than the great King Turnus
Dispatched me with a swift and savage jab.
I tasted fish before my gullet flowed.
Breaking the Glass
Free me, the voice inside the body whispered.
Free me, I beg of you. Let me be released.
I’ve served my sentence. Set me free at last.
The dead man’s brother could not hear the cries.
He smiled to think a soul was hidden somewhere
Within the mass of flesh, bent on escape.
Please break the glass, the feeble voice insisted.
Do as I plead. The window’s right behind you.
Waste no more time. Proceed without delay.
The brother made a fist and hit the glass.
It stayed unbroken and his hand unbloodied.
He told his nephew, then, to fetch a stone.
The stench is foul in here, the voice complained.
Please set me free to breathe the cool fresh air.
The glass is fragile. Smash it. Smash it now.
The corpse’s son hurled the rough piece of brick
Straight at the window, but the brick bounced off
As though it had a spring in it, like rubber.
Please try again, the tired voice entreated.
Take pity on me. Show a little mercy.
I’ve suffered long and hard in this dark place.
The brother and his family washed the body,
Then poured the cooling water round a tree.
The dead man’s
soul would drink it on its travels.
‘And may the earth be light on him’, the priest intoned,
And from the coffin came an anguished gasp –
His soul’s last sound before eternal silence.
That night the dead man’s son stood at the window
And stroked the stubborn glass. His gentle touch
Did what the fist and stone had failed to do.
A cackling laugh rose from the shattered fragments.
The Time of Afterwards
is when
no one hungers
no one thirsts
is when
no one craves peace
no one covets war
is when
there is a lasting silence
is when
no one hears that silence
is when
there will be no when
or now
or then
The time of afterwards
will be no one’s time
will be no time at all