The Days of the King

by Filip Florian

  This particular Carol wore a frock coat with broad lapels, a striped waistcoat, a white shirt, a beard trimmed so that the edge was round, like a collar, and boots with two rows of buckles. His eyes were bulbous and lacked lashes, his hair was combed back, his lips were cracked. All in all, his features made him look like a plump thrush. He remained on his feet, filling the minutes with dry observations about the whirlwinds of dust that would soon whip up, about the dog-day heat that stalked the horizon, about the fleeting summer rains. He did not sit down until mugs of beer fringed with thick creamy foam appeared and he grasped one by the handle and glued it to his mouth until he had emptied it. For a little while, he exhaled greenish, sluggish vapors, which enveloped him and then dissolved. They were sitting on a narrow bench near the main gate, whose ivy and roses brought to mind a pergola for promenading ladies and gentlemen. They had not talked together for a good few weeks, not since before the last snowfall, a storm that had loomed over the council of ministers held after Prince Karl Ludwig's twenty-ninth birthday and after he had yet again been driven to the limit of his patience, a late and feeble spring snowstorm, which turned into a breeze and a family affair, with Zinca Golescu's older son, Ştefan, being replaced as head of government by her younger son, Nicolae, the general and former triumvir. Many things had taken place since their last meeting, and the newcomer lingered to sip cold, tongue-tingling beer and tell his tales. He had lived in Bucuresci for a quarter of a century, and besides knowing all the well to do, all the full purses, he also knew the city's history. And as the poplar fluff and midges floated by, he told the dentist that in the past hangings had been carried out in that very spot where they now quenched their thirst, after the condemned were marched there in chains, being whipped as they went, as a lesson for the commoners and as an opportunity for chiloman and jibes. And after the gibbets in the reign of Brîncoveanu, he went on, under Mavrocordat they erected stakes at the Moşilor tollgate on which they impaled calpuzani in the winter, to set the merchants' minds at rest and slake the mob's thirst for executions. At those unfamiliar words, chiloman and calpuzani, Joseph raised his eyebrows in incomprehension, and that other Carol decided to relinquish Romanian, and explained in fluent German, but with a Cluj accent, that he had been talking about the fever of the mob and counterfeiters, respectively. They went on drinking and seldom looked at each other, rather, they gazed over each other's head at the horizon, one to the north, the other to the south, deciphering the various glints of the afternoon, the streaks like bean pods at one edge of the heavens and a fine, slightly verdigris dust at the other bourn. Since his nocturnal visit to the Silvestru quarter thirteen months earlier, Herr Strauss had been summoned to the palace only once, for a recalcitrant canine with inflamed roots, and so he wanted to find out more about Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrinus Ludwig, a man extraordinarily dear to him, a man whom he missed. With his arms folded across his chest, he listened to the voice of the watercolorist, a drawling voice that frequently accompanied the prince on his travels around the country and in the past had kept four other rulers company—Ghika, Bibescu, ûtirbei, and Cuza—and that could often be heard in the mansarded studio at the top of the Green Inn, where the voice's owner made daguerreotypes, talbotypes, and stereotype plates, some with a coating of albumin and silver iodide, others with wet collodion. From that plump thrush of a man there gradually flowed news and details: about the prince's skill in reading his subjects, about the fury that their indolence and toadying aroused in him, about his impeccable general's uniform with its gold epaulettes, about the establishment of a new sort of academy, christened the Literary Society, about his inspections of barracks, grain silos, railways, and ports, about his weakness for miniatures, portraits, and landscapes unsullied by Impressionism, about the purchase of two artillery batteries from Krupp and twenty thousand rifles, about his numerous excursions to the country, including one on horseback through the enchanted forest of the Peleş Valley. Their chat was suddenly interrupted—somewhere beyond the gate, a commotion had broken out. Couples walking arm in arm quickened their pace, a throng of expensive attire (silk gloves, canes, lorgnettes, hats, handbags, medals, high-heeled shoes, voilettes, buttonholes, jewels, and lavallières) amid which excited exclamations could be made out. The crowd was flocking toward a marble tower in the middle of the fairground. The other Carol stood up, inclined his head, and left at a run, coming to a halt next to an extraordinary apparatus on whose sides was inscribed Painter and Photographer to H. M. the Prince. And as he ran he oscillated between his real name, Carol Popp de Szathmari, and that demanded by fashion and elegance, Charles Szathmâry. The dentist paid for the beers, cutlet, and greens, and then headed to the site of the impending event. He made his way through the crowd with difficulty, moving along its edge, viewing as if in a giant tableau the Bucuresci beau monde and the allegorical temple at its center, which proved to be made not of marble but lacquered stucco, a mixture of slaked lime, chalk dust, gelatin, and glue. It rested on a wooden plinth in the shape of a dodecagon, with railings and statuettes symbolizing the months of the year, and was girdled with garlands of lilies, daisies, and laurel leaves that climbed it in a spiral. At the pinnacle, above the whispers and manners of high society, there was a large bowl, also of stucco, shaped like a gigantic water lily, with six petals. While the procession of carriages was still some way off, near the area of the stalls, and Karl Ludwig was waving from the banquette of a white coach and bestowing upon the people some words in Romanian, the crowd of ladies and gentlemen parted in two (the same as one might part cream by running one's finger through the middle), without taking their eyes off the slowly advancing conveyances. Soon the horses reached the path that had opened between all those distinguished faces. They were snuffling, perhaps because of the perfumes and French phrases, perhaps because they had had enough of galloping, trotting, and mincing, and wanted their oats. From a small viewing tower, built especially for him and his apparatus, the watercolorist immortalized those moments, experimenting with panoramas, as he had sometimes done from the tops of Metropolia, Filaret, and the Spirii hills, from the ColŢei Tower and the attic of the Grand Theatre. Joseph kept treading on people's toes, he was jostled and crushed by the curious onlookers, he was trying not to miss any of the prince's movements, to decipher whatever there was to be deciphered in the way the prince blinked, reacted to the bowing, deigned to laugh, or showed a serious mien, and above all in the way he smoothed his beard or sideburns, slowly with the index finger, or rapidly with all five. He could see only snatches, only fragments, and so he began to elbow his way forward torturously, striving to reach Szathmari's viewing tower. At the bottom of the ladder he clashed with a soldier of the guard and was shoved back with a rifle butt. However, he did not give up, but shouted at the top of his voice, drawing dozens of glances, and among them the one that mattered. The photographer descended and pacified the soldier, then scurried back up to the platform together with Herr Strauss. The still-young Carol I, second son of Prince Karl Anton, the former prime minister of Prussia and now, on that very Wednesday, military governor of Rhineland, and himself a former Prussian officer, a captain in the Berlin regimental guard, to be exact, seemed to be in his element and was chatting freely. It is hard to say whether the sovereign, besieged with cheers, bows, curtsies, and elegant attire, had time to contract the pupils of his eyes and scan the background. He might have been able to recognize, alongside the court photographer, the dentist with whom he had lost touch and about whom, sometimes, forgetting his embarrassment, he would have liked to hear news.

  Two hours later, the light faded and took on a baleful potency, resembling the glow of putrid swamps or gloomy, witch-haunted woods, a whistle of angry, threatening light, as gusts of wind snatched away the garlands and wreaked havoc among the tents and stalls. The storm began suddenly. It shattered the repose of amorous glances, intrigues, backstabbing, and honeyed fawning. The cream of the nation was drenched, the vaporous gowns were deflated, the striped trousers were r
umpled, the high-heeled and lacquered shoes were spattered with mud, the courtesies were transformed into an uproar of short feminine shrieks and irritated masculine shouts, a stampede toward the carriages and coupés, which in their turn were embroiled in a dreadful hullaballoo, hampered by one another and by all those confused and sopping people. Herr Strauss, shivering and holding his coat over his head, kept near the fence, hoping by some miracle to find shelter or a cab. In a corner on the eastern side of the grounds, as he was never to forget, he lifted his eyes to decide which way to go and met a pair of blue, warm, and haughty eyes that scrutinized him, eyes in which there was no fear. For a few seconds he did not move, who knows for how many, he did not feel the raindrops falling on his face or the water in his boots. He thought that shelter was to be found within those eyes, where happiness had taken refuge. When he came to his senses, he discovered that they belonged to a brown-haired woman with white skin and a slender neck and a little dimple in her chin, like the hollow of a shell. Her long locks were plastered to her cheeks, her clothes were sticking to her skin, and at her thighs pressed two young children, a boy and a girl, wrapped in a beige shawl and sheltered from the downpour by a parasol. At once, he threw his coat over her shoulders, then leaped in front of the first passing cab, his shirt fluttering, his feet planted in the greasy mud of the road, his arms raised. The cabman was about to strike him with his whip, but he reined in his horses, gazing at Joseph apprehensively. The svelte Lipizzaners came to a halt, champing at their bits. Joseph spoke to one of the passengers, shook the hand that was extended to him through the half-opened door, conducted the woman and children through the lashing rain, helped them to climb aboard, and then climbed aboard himself, thanking the good Lord and Judge Farmache, their saviors. It was not until they were within, all four huddled on one of the benches, for on the other were seated the magistrate and his wife, that he learned her name. It was a Serbian name. Beneath her blue eyes, as the horses raced over the Outer Market Bridge, her fleshy, slightly purple lips smiled at him. Bizarrely, although he might have been thinking about the Erdreich Baths, with their scorching steam and basins of hot water, all of a sudden he remembered his dream of the dwarf and that pale flame within which he had glimpsed so many things. The woman's eyes enveloped him. There was no need for other words.

  Sometime in July, while blazing heat weighed on the city, another three chairs in the day room had their backrests slashed to ribbons. Herr Strauss was no longer surprised, he did not take it to heart, nor did he imagine that the velvet, full of gashes, rents, slits, and punctures, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, had been gnawed by moths or pecked by sharp-beaked birds. The author of the textile carnage was Siegfried, there could be no doubt, but the deeds and the impulses of the tomcat were worth infinitely more to Joseph than the state of the upholstery. Besides, aflame during those days, not because of the heat but for reasons of amour, Joseph no longer saw the objects around him and often forgot to eat. He would go missing from home for long periods, he slept little and restlessly, and whenever he was to be found in the rooms of the upper story of the redbrick house, at number 18 Lipscani Lane, he would content himself with holding the tomcat in his lap, stroking him and talking to him. His thoughts would wander aimlessly, he would remember and conjure up places, gestures, pangs, touches, always beneath the glitter of blue Serbian eyes. One afternoon, on the feast of the prophet Elijah, in the darkened room he began to tell Siegfried what he had heard that very morning from her lips, in the courtyard of the Stavropoleos Inn, when the chiming of the bells had once more filled the sky. He translated into German for the cat how God's charioteer, flying in his car of fire and with seven cannons to hand, could cast down upon sinners rain, drought, famine, cholera, plague, perdition, and war, how the prophet Elijah was the patron not only of cloudbursts but also of bees, and how on his feast day he caused the dead to wander abroad and honey to be harvested from the hives. The tomcat purred softly, with his black ear pricked up and the tip of his tail aloft, with his muzzle resting between his master's clavicles, and the chestnut-haired, thin man, looking thinner than ever, told him all that had been spoken to him, troubled less by the fury of the Apocalypse and more by the black wind-tousled hair, by the throat as slender as a new shoot, by the plump lobes of the ears, by the small dimple in the chin. As if with a mouth not his own he spoke about the blood that will gush forth and scorch the earth if the Unclean One manages to cut off the head of Saint Elijah, about the folk that will be born and resemble the Blazhini, the Meek Folk who live on the banks of the River at the Ends of the Earth, about the huge burial mound whence will emerge the souls of all the dead, incarnated as sheep and goats, the former following the Good Lord, the latter the Devil. He related calmly things that had been told to him with passion in her low, slightly singsong voice, in a Romanian full of slips (different errors than his own), a language mangled but enchanting in its way, because it bound him fast to Elena Duković. And, to conclude the nocturnal narrative, Herr Strauss poured himself a tumbler of raki and sweetened it with honey, throwing it back in the company of his best friend, the tomcat, since he had just learned that this is an Orthodox custom at the Feast of the Prophet, when the honeycombs overflow and the hives are moved. He did not care about the backrests of the chairs. Nor did he even recall that the first among them had been clawed during his voyage to Istanbul. Almost two years had passed since then, and on different occasions, Siegfried had written on the yellow velvet: