[7] The lines come from the poem “Tivoli” by Friedrich Theodor Vischer, The literal translation would be:
The cypress and the olive tree,
piney woods and hill and meadow
sink into the heavenly deep
spotless fragrant blue
Around the waters and the lands,
high and low and far and wide,
Heaven wraps the outspread
arms of eternity
[8] From Die Fackel, Heft 781, 1928.
All that is heavy sinks
away from the things that expand
and the earth drinks
wonders of release
15 Journalistic Activities of Herr Alexianu and Professor Feuer; Death of Old Paşcanu
A POPULAR ditty started spreading among the so-called patchkas, or groups of young flaneurs who swarmed up and down during their daily morning and evening promenades. It was in Romanian, and people attributed the authorship to Herr Năstase on account of its wit, as well as because of the undisguised allusions to the goings-on in the house of Tildy, and to the Germans in general. The catchy refrain went like this:
Poftiţi cu toţi acuma la balamuc,
unde boeri de rasă azi se mai duc:
comfort—guic-guic
fără bucluc …
poftiţi la balamuc …
Balamuc is an idiomatic expression for asylum. In translation the song might sound like this:
Just follow me to the nuthouse, please,
where aristocrats come and go with ease;
it’s swank beyond dispute
and no one gets the boot,
so off to the nuthouse, please …
In reality this creation was taken from an article in the newspaper Vocea that focused on the discovery of the insane “poet” Karl Piehowicz.
As I have mentioned, the junior house physician of the municipal asylum, Dr. Kipper, had forwarded a selection of the transcribed poems to a certain Herr Sperber, who published them in the Tschernopoler Tageszeitung, with some remarks:
… we are literally confronted with the mysterious revelations of a vibrant lyrical spirit that comes from another sphere and speaks through the medium of this broken mouth. What a font of words, what breath of the earth! Not since the days of Johann Christian Günther and the other noble Baroque poets has such a voice been heard. Am I exaggerating? Here is the proof
This page found its way to the great critic Karl Kraus, who called it “by far the most respectable thing I have found in a journal in a long time, and certainly the most important I have ever discovered in a daily.” He published the poems ostensibly authored by Piehowicz, along with what he knew of their origin, in his highly influential polemical journal Die Fackel, juxtaposing them against some poetic creations recently published in German newspapers, in an essay entitled “From the Editorial Desk and the Asylum.” This was the focus of the article in the Vocea, which carried the headline “Voice from the Beyond”:
An apt old proverb states: For the jackal to admit his soul is black, think how black his soul must be … We are always happy to discover professions of ethnicity that serve to unmask a pose of national arrogance. Recently a particularly delightful example came to our attention. This particular voice comes from a nation that suffers more than any other from the flatulence of exaggerated self-opinion, and which misses no opportunity to rub the excesses of its discharges (which somehow never seem to bring relief) in the noses of other nations—to put it plainly, from the German nation, whose sons, down to the last stinky-foot, claim to be the descendents of Goethe and Beethoven—even in circumstances where intelligence (not to mention tact, which they don’t possess) would counsel against claiming a binding legacy, namely when living in scattered groups as guests of other nations, where the validity of such assertions is easily checked by comparison. However, the voice that now surprises us with its revelatory insights, with all the gravitas of a voice from the beyond, does not hail from our local ethnic Germans—the Volkdetusche, whom alas we must count among our minorities—but from their own homeland, although it is connected with an occurrence in our city. The great German journalist feels compelled to proclaim: “My inquiries led me to discover that the greatest German poet is an insane locksmith by the name of Karl Piehowicz, a resident of the Czernopol municipal asylum. He deserves every literary prize that Germany has to give
The author went on in the same malicious tone, lifting another sentence from Kraus’s article with poisonous glee:
I would particularly award him (Piehowicz) the Schiller-Prize, albeit without the bonus offered by the Odol Mouthwash Company, which has led the German people from literary Idol to literary Odol, a symbolic move that suggests their language is good for rinsing out the mouth
Nor were the attacks confined to general targets. The writer went on:
… We have since made our own inquiries and learned that it is an officer of our own army who has particularly distinguished himself in helping the Germans acquire a new genius, insane though this brilliant poet may be, as has been clinically proven beyond a doubt. It happens that this particular Herr Major is in the asylum himself, where his own mental state is under observation following a series of lunatic acts that several weeks earlier sparked both laughter and terror in this city. The entire chain of events begs the question of whether we ought not pay more heed to leaders of the nationalist program who advocate a thorough purge of our army, and give them a freer hand to implement their commendable plans than hitherto …
This was an allusion to General Petrescu and openly dragged the case into the political arena. The article ended with a satirical verse:
—as proof that we are not ourselves lacking in lyrical gifts
—even outside the municipal asylum—
And was signed Ali.
The “stinky-foot” reference was all we needed to recognize that the pseudonymous author was none other than our former tutor, Herr Alexianu.
A few days later a response appeared in Herr Adamowski’s Tescovina German Messenger:
FERMENT OF DECOMPOSITION
I hope the foreignness of this title won’t be held against me; it does not come from a German pen, although it does stem from a German-minded one, as is well-known, and from no one less than the pure-blooded Briton H.S. Chamberlain, who thus for all time branded the essence of the Jewish race. The Jew: instigator of dissent, the little man who unlike the little men in Grimm does not roam the woods, but stands on crooked legs nevertheless, exactly as our wise Wilhelm Busch observed with his superb smirking acuity and the unerring discernment of his blue eyes, leaving all grinning aside in order to warn us
Too short trousers, coat to his toes,
Crooked cane and crooked nose,
Eyes pitch-black and soul of gray,
Hat tipped back, with cunning gaze:
Look, here comes Shmul Shievelbein
(Not so handsome as our kind …
And there it is: little Shmul the bowlegged lackey and lickspittle, bent on currying favor with the German folk and sponging off the stock of our tree unless the hand of the watchful forester scrapes it off the oak-bark in time. Because any whose eyesight has not yet been compromised by the mixture of races surely will not fail to see that behind the flatteringly feigned face of bourgeois decency lurks the hideous grimace of a creature whose natural purpose and national predisposition is to decompose, and destroy. Of course it’s often hard to see through the tricks and intrigues of this dwarfish race; the blond and bright-eyed approach, with its straightforward thinking, clearly contradicts the Talmudic way of thought, and easily brushes aside any evil plans concocted by the vermin. Nevertheless, what was hardly an itch can still turn into a bad boil after the louse has been pulled off. Don’t tiny mites cause the oak forest to die? Haven’t you seen how the sheltering tree is felled by the worm? Therefore let us overcome our disgust, as all who are skilled in healing must, if they wish to strike at the pest. If the festering boil stinks, it’s onl
y because the destructive bacteria are eating away inside. One sharp cut will cause the pus to drain away.
Recently we read in a Jew-paper that a poet of the German tongue had been discovered in an asylum here, whose works were of a quality to overshadow Goethe—no, Schiller himself. Not since Agnes Günther, the Baroque nightingale, has such a voice been heard. Well now! Let’s pass by the question whether Shmul Shievelbein is entitled to an opinion on that matter … but no, let us not! The sheer brazenness to meddle with the most German of matters—our poetry!—should raise our suspicion. Does the Jew ever undertake anything without a cunningly devised ulterior motive? Therefore beware! A Jew is always a Jew—so be on your guard. He is not out to serve the German drive for beauty, or to enlarge the German trove of art, but he is relentless in pursuit of his own goals.
This publication falls into the hands of one of the coffeehouse literati who are sadly all too common in the city on the Danube, that great stream of the Nibelungen. Did it blow in on the wind? No! Another Jew passed it to him. And the former, who publishes a monthly rag vilifying anything printed in the German language, is grateful for the opportunity to pounce. He fancies himself a critic. Mere envy, you think? A pallid milquetoast and limp-loin, lacking any creative power of his own, and who therefore chafes at those who are brimming with life and bursting with song? Be on guard—because a Jew is always a Jew! Behind the appearance lurks a vile plan. And never does he point his poisoned arrows with more hate than against his own race. Presumably his aim is wide, too. So he just tears the jester’s cap off the woolly head. What for? Simply so he can put it all the more smoothly on his own. He cloaks himself in the appearance of legitimacy in order to fulfill his task of decomposition all the better, all the more unchallenged. He takes the little verse of the insane man, lavishes the most outrageous praise, as if he were hawking the lines at some flea market, but why? Simply to sprinkle excrement on what is better, to widen a crack into a fissure that he may continue to wedge asunder. And in the guise of fair dealings and just desserts! Beware, the cards are marked! Where deceivers dwell no home is clean.
Is it any surprise that foreigners develop the wrong picture of the German race? Is it any wonder that another paper has taken up the matter, and gloating with derisive bewilderment, poses the question: Is the greatest German poet a madman? And is it at all shocking to see another case enter the discussion, which—however wrongly—connects insanity with Germanity, and raises fundamental questions as to how far the loyalty of national minorities should be trusted … ?!
We have nothing to reply to that except: Recognize the true pest! Observe his methods! Find him out in your own home as well! Clean house however you crave—verily it is necessary! Pick up the iron broom and sweep out those truly bad housemates! Do not overlook the fact that it was German diligence that created this flourishing settlement, as pretty a town as could be, so long as the Jew let it alone! Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater! German military might has served faithfully in many a foreign service, and has always fought bravely, indifferent to displays of gratitude as of thanklessness, concerned only to fulfill our sworn duty to teach the adversary the sharp bite of the German blade. Clean house, then! But with the proper sense of proportion! Do not the scales fall from your eyes when you examine the asylum, from which has emerged this threat to ethnic accord? And when you realize that out of seven medical assistants five are Jews, one is Polish, and one is Ukrainian? To work, then! We Tescovina-Germans will look on calmly, even with delight. Moreover, we offer you our energetic assistance. For we feel bound by the words of Luther:
Here I stand! I can do no other!
God help me!
Averse to hiding behind a pseudonym, and unafraid to sign his own full name:
—Professor Dr. Lothar Feuer,
Senior teacher at the German Boys’ Lyceum in Czernopol
And a dreadful thing happened: the Jews of Czernopol, led by a couple of youthful pranksters, seized the issue of the Tescovina German Messenger in which Professor Feuer’s article had appeared; they bought up the entire run, paying collector’s prices to the German subscribers, and howled with laughter. They read Professor Feuer’s article to one another with tears in their eyes and breaking out into spasms of laughter. They spoke among themselves in a lightly Yiddishized “flickering-Waibling-Wälsung” German, and it became fashionable among young people to talk among themselves somewhat like this: “Sieg-Heil, selfsame Sigi! Have you perchance perceived Luttinger’s lascivious Lily? No, forsooth? Some foul fate has flubbed our flirt? Elsewise she twines about me like the ivy twines about the ash, die sheyne shikse! Nu, so now I’ll have to wend my gleeful galosh-gait into the garden of the Volk. Are you pleased to plan to take your pleasure with another? Engage in a bit of racial defilement with a blonde, perchance?”
The reference to the “Baroque nightingale Agnes Günther” was a particularly delightful tidbit for connoisseurs.
All in all, the newspaper war enlivened the city. The patchkas in the circles around Năstase and Alexianu popularized the satirical verse about the balamuc that was soon put to music. Gyorgyovich Ianku played it for the habitués of the Trocadero, when the doors opened to let them in, with Ephraim Perko in the lead: the popular fiddler Gypsy first plucked the tune quietly on the strings of his fiddle, and little by little the entire orchestra joined in until they broke out in a thunderous march full of joie de vivre:
Just follow me to the nuthouse, please …
The flaneurs hummed it on their paths about town. The promenade pranced to its rhythm. Czernopol was in a champagne mood.
Only here and there were fisticuffs observed. Herr Alexianu knocked a Jewish lawyer to the ground because the man had inadvertently stepped on his feet in the confusing shuffle of the promenade. The leader of the Tescovina-German fraternity Germania struck a cadet of the officer’s school and was locked up for two days. And Solly Brill received a resounding slap when he greeted Dr. Salzmann in the corridor of the Institut d’Éducation with the words “Greetings, O brave cuckold.” He had not understood the meaning of the word and thought it sounded chivalrous, in the style of Professor Feuer.
During this time old Paşcanu died.
Herr Tarangolian never spoke otherwise about his death than as an important signal, a beacon.
“Explain such an end, if you can,” he said. “Gather up all the possible reasons, place the circumstances in a cogent chain of causality, and you still won’t be able to exclude an element of the demonic. No matter what people claimed to know after the fact, no matter what explanation they put forward—the failure of this venture or that, the catastrophe with Tildy, the attempted diamond swindle, how one thing led to another to exacerbate the mistrust that was already smoldering, and, finally, clear signals of a bad end—that’s all wisdom after the fact. No, no: we must look elsewhere for the true cause of Paşcanu’s ruin. Because ultimately the catastrophe did not affect him alone. Even if we can find sufficient cause in his own person—and that’s not hard to do—it still falls far short of explaining the misfortune into which he dragged others. Believe me, we all think too rationally. The death of Săndrel Paşcanu was a sign …”
And, indeed, other ominous things occurred in those days which had nothing directly to do with Paşcanu’s death. An ill star hung over Czernopol. We couldn’t help but think of articles we had read about the holy hermits of India whose presence protects a land from floods and crop failures, pestilence and rapacious beasts—plagues that soon return when the sainted person leaves. Today, as the story of Tildy has become the myth of our childhood, it seems to me as if we had known back then whose beneficent being it was that had been taken from the city of Czernopol.
The day they arrested Bubi Brill was a Saturday. On Sunday Czernopol was seething with rumors. On Monday morning old Paşcanu was called in for a hearing
Monday in Czernopol was market day. The peasant carts began trickling into town while it was still dark. In the pale dawn the markets filled u
p with seasonal vendors and booth operators setting up their stands; the large vegetable market at Theater Square, near the synagogue, a funfair at the Turkish Fountain, and a flea market behind the provincial government offices all swelled with teeming life. Soon the cardsharps had coaxed the first farmers to try their luck at three-card monte, which they played by manipulating three aces—two black and one red—with bewildering dexterity, by the festering light of sunflower-oil lanterns. After plucking the farmers of a few quick leos, they raced off at the first sign of a policeman. By the time the day arrived, the trading was in full swing. Housewives, followed by their servant girls in colorful peasant dress, haggled with farmwives over vegetables and fowl. Above the flea market, the pungent smell of untanned sheepskins lingered like a poisonous cloud. Ancient horn-phonographs squawked out the disembodied voices of Caruso and Lilli Lehmann. Spectacularly ragged figures stood beside old scraps of newspapers strewn with crooked nails and rusty screws, waiting to make a sale. At the fair by the Turkish Fountain, barrel organs droned away, swings arced back and forth, and the carousels went round and round. Older farmer couples and soldiers on leave with their brides had themselves photographed against a picturesque cutout of a well, their hands awkwardly clasped together, stiff as wax statues. Gendarmes with fixed bayonets patrolled the lanes between the stands, while pickpockets worked themselves into a sweat behind their backs.
While old man Paşcanu was being questioned on the third floor of the courthouse, and the state prosecutor—a young, ambitious gentleman freshly transferred from the provincial capital, eager to earn his spurs and anxious to worm out a confession with whatever display of lawyerly histrionics it might take—was taking pains not to allow his opponent to respond with anything that was clearly innocuous … while this was happening, something unusual occurred: a crowd began to gather on the street and kept growing bigger and bigger. The vast majority consisted of peasants, coachmen from the country, raftsmen, grain dealers, all of whom crowded outside the bombastically severe façade of the courthouse and looked up at the dusty windows in silence or muted conversation: the countryside had come to witness either the downfall or the triumphant vindication of its great son … No, not his vindication, not his resurrection in the glory of innocence—it was his downfall that they wanted to see. The rabble of Czernopol mixed among the country folk, spreading their coarse jests and uncouth jokes. Peasants hunched over from hard work, with shoulder-length matted hair, shriveled by the wind and tanned by the heat of the sun like an old goat ham, with skin as dry as worn-out Gypsy fiddles, listened in earnest amazement to the tales being spun about the heroic feats and dastardly deeds of the man who had at last come to be judged inside that building—the man whose name they didn’t even know, but whose magical powers had brought them there: a great man, a son of the mountains and forests, a son of the earth like themselves, born in the high bracken among the firs, a man whose countless adventures had brought him power and splendor and untold riches—whole lands had been in his possession—but whom the devil, with whom he had been in league, had discarded, and who was now on his way to the place of judgment. Would they hang him … ? Hang him? Outside the city they were already building a platform, first to impale him and then to saw him into quarters and show his limbs to the populace: those arms and hands that had raked in the gold: Jewish thalers and widows’ bread money intended for feeding their hungry orphans … The rabble of Czernopol said all this and more—even as they cleaned out the peasant women of whatever they had in their meager belt pouches.
An Ermine in Czernopol Page 32
