Читать книгу The Praetor and Other Stories - Aurel Stancu - Страница 11

POSTPONED JOURNEY

Whenever he saw Iulia, anesthetist Viorel Cheran stared at her in fascination. Almost sixty, the woman always left behind her, from the way she walked to the way she spoke, the most fanciful clues. If one had surveyed her life, he would have discovered an ancient statue from another world. Apart from her harmonious appearance, a body that did not attract any illness, carried as if it belonged to an intangible priestess. The people around her had never succeeded in puzzling her soul out or revealing her private life. Their amazement was even greater when, although she was single, and without having any conspicuous love affair, Iulia Datcu gave birth to two boys within three years’ time.

“Don’t tell me you’ve come here just to see me because I’m on duty today,” the anesthetist said kissing both her cheeks.

They were old friends. Many years before, the doctor had tried to conquer her but the woman had said no, love might ruin their friendship. The doctor, a great conqueror, good-looking, well-read, and well-versed had realized he had no chance to make her fall in love with him. So he had preferred friendship to estrangement. In time the bond between them had become very solid.

“I knew you were on duty, in fact I know your schedule, but no matter how hard I’ve tried I haven’t been able to get here. Until now, that is.”

“If you’ve finally got here, it must be very urgent. We’ve never wasted our time on foolish stuff, have we? We’ve always let the world take care of it.”

“Well, it’s not that serious, really. I’ve just come to ask you to be my guide to the next world.”

Iulia’s words, uttered calmly, maybe too calmly, exploded in the doctor’s mind. The woman showed him several papers—there, in black and white, he could see the results of a complete check-up. Viorel Cheran looked through those damned papers as calmly—he had lost track of how many times he had read such papers announcing imminent death. What he was holding in his hands now was a final death sentence.

“How long have you known about this cancer? Why didn’t you ask for my help?”

“Well, I’ve made so many mistakes in my life.… I’ve lived alone.… Now I wonder if it was worth it and I don’t know the answer to why I’m going to die so soon.”

She lit a cigarette. The doctor did the same.

“Do you remember how many nights we smoked in this emergency room, or on that sand next to the sea, or in your living room?” asked Iulia. “How much philosophy we discussed together, turning life on both sides and then putting it straight.”

“There was one thing we didn’t do, though. We didn’t touch each other.”

“We did touch each other emotionally, and that was probably something deeper, more profound.”

“I don’t agree with you there, I think that’s too philosophical for my taste. This platonic love is a vacuum, fabulous, no doubt, but a vacuum all the same,” said the doctor.

“You know something? I don’t need any regrets and I don’t want to review my life. I simply can’t do that. That’s not what I need,” Iulia looked at him, almost crying.

The doctor shuddered. He had never seen her so vulnerable.

“I’m sorry, that really beats me. I don’t know what to say.… Tell me, how can I help you? I know quite a number of extraordinary professors, we could fight together.”

“I’ve got six more months to live, half a year tops. It’s the very specialists you’ve got in mind that told me that. My problem is different: I don’t know how to find a solution to the only thing I’m interested in, that’s why I need you, your keen mind. You’ve seen death many times, you’ve seen how people react when they’re close to it. I need to do something and I don’t know if I really must do it and how to do it.”

“I’ve been working in the Intensive Care Unit for thirty years now but I’ve never replaced God. My advice might be all wrong.”

Iulia stared at the doctor as she always did when she wanted to understand the person in front of her, to break his code. The doctor braced up to fight her.

“What is it that you want, in fact?”

“I don’t know if it’s all right to tell my sons who their father is. Or let him do it after I’m gone. Or forbid him to get in touch with them. I really don’t know what’s best for them.”

“What, do your sons have a father? I thought you had them with the Holy Ghost. Come on, tell me who the man is.… Why didn’t you choose me for that?”

“You were close,” admitted Iulia rendering the anesthetist breathless. “But your personality was too strong, and I wouldn’t have been able to keep it in check. You’d have claimed this and that, got involved, come out to light. I thought a lot of your qualities at the time: handsome, clever, full of energy. But too much of a womanizer, too busy, too reckless. You’ve been too much of an adventurer, my dear. You couldn’t have been the anonymous father I needed.”

“And who was the perfect father who fit your pattern?” asked the doctor a little annoyed.

“The name is irrelevant, I just want to know what you think. Could this man, after twenty-eight years, come out to light? Is it any use? Dragos has his own family now, and he’s got a child.… Mihai is a college student.…”

“Was it the same man?”

“Of course.”

“Talk to him, I suppose he doesn’t know how sick you are, and find the answers yourselves. You’ve stuck to the same principles all your life, and what was the use of it? Yes, I’ve been an adventurer, I’ve changed five wives, I’ve got young mistresses, but my children know who their father is,” the man, wounded in his memories, threw his words at her.

“You can’t understand it because you’re made of different stuff. I haven’t come here to get even or argue with you. I’m afraid of death and revelations. I’ve just come here for help.”

“Me help you? My sons, although good engineers, are badly off in Bucharest, have lousy jobs and live in rented flats. On the other hand, I haven’t made love to my wife for ten years, I can’t touch her; I’ve just heard my best friend in college told the Securitate people everything about me, and I can have sex only if I take Viagra. I’m not dying but I’ve been a zombie for quite a while. Your compass might have been much better than mine, who knows. I fear death too, although I’ve been facing it for thirty years. I really don’t know what kind of advice to give you!”

The two friends hugged each other compassionately.

* * * *

The very next day Iulia invited over her colleague, Emil Mateescu, a biochemistry professor. Emil Mateescu agreed to go to her place with a mixture of joy and fear, preferring not to ask any questions. He had asked his last question twenty years before. Their story had started much earlier, though, almost thirty years before. All this time their great secret had not been known by anyone else.

Iulia Datcu grew up in a family of ambitious intellectuals. She was so impressed by her parents’ self-seeking that she only wished to surpass them. She went through school like a breeze. She came first in all school years up to the very end of college. She started her teaching career at the Faculty of Food Chemistry, eager to become its dean, sooner or later. She realized that her parents’ jobs made her father and mother go separate ways, turning their marriage into a convention. Then her mother died and, a few months later, her father married another woman and moved out. Everything had been perfect in their family except for the marriage, which made Iulia try hard not to fall in love with anyone.

One day, however, she said to herself it was time to have a child of her own flesh and blood. So she started to look for the man to fit the classical pattern: handsome, clever, good political extraction, good-natured, available, and approachable. At first she liked Dr. Viorel Cheran but, without knowing it, the anesthetist didn’t pass the test so the woman focused on Emil Mateescu next, a fully accomplished, married colleague of hers.

Iulia became aware of the fact that, in order to persuade Emil Mateescu father her child she had to charm him first. Therefore she made him violently fall in love with her. He was one of the most popular professors in their department: he didn’t flunk too many students, didn’t take money or gifts for higher or passing grades, didn’t make advances to female students or have any obvious vices. In a few months’ time Iulia enslaved him with her beauty, intelligence, and ivory body, and thoroughly confused him when, giving herself to him, he saw that at the age of thirty she was still a virgin.

After getting pregnant, especially after giving birth to Dragos, Iulia forbade Emil Mateescu to do two things: say who the child’s father was and go on with their affair. Little by little, she estranged herself from him, accepting his presence only at work.

She became notorious when she gave birth to the child but never revealed the identity of the father, and her career marked the time because of her supposedly loose morals.

The situation didn’t discourage her, on the contrary, she went on doing research, writing studies, and taking care of Dragos. Three years later she decided she wanted another child and resorted to Emil Mateescu again. This time gave him to understand that she wanted him all for herself and would love him for ever. Only to deceive him again. And it worked. Finally, she gave birth to Mihai and sent his father flying for the second time, without any regrets.

Her second son’s birth made Emil Mateescu, who had two daughters, divorce. He found it very hard to buy a bedsit and live there alone. Year after year he waylaid Iulia and her boys, at one time being introduced to them as their mother’s boyfriend but not as their father. He was happy with that too. Gradually he came to take more care of his secret children than his legitimate ones. Still, the boys saw him as a decent man and nothing else.

He had been invited to be there at 19:00. Emil Mateescu bought a nice bunch of five red roses, something he hadn’t done for years, and started thinking of all kinds of scenarios.

“You haven’t made too many changes here, have you?” he said looking around. “I thought that, after Mihai’s going to college, you’d make some.”

“I chose to take some time for myself,” Iulia replied gently.

The tone of her voice touched him, although he sensed something in it that alarmed him. Was it really possible? For the third time?

“Something happened that I don’t know?” Emil asked a little ironically as he usually was the last to hear the latest news about Iulia.

“I’m dying, Emil,” she said.

“Is that a joke?”

“I’m more serious than I’ve ever been before. I don’t know how it happened but, being so obsessed with my career, I forgot everything about my health, you, or the little joys of life.”

The man grew stiff. What could he do? Shout, break something, hug Iulia, kneel down and pray? He stood stock-still and stared at the woman of his life as if she were a stranger.

“I wish you knew how many years I’ve waited for you to make up your mind and ask me to live with you. I once knelt down and kissed the trace of your foot on the carpet in the faculty room. I breathed in your perfume, and I caressed your coat on the hallstand. I’ve spent my life waiting for you to phone me, answer my greetings, and allow me to take a walk with my sons, waiting for the morning to come and me to go and see you at work.… I’ve grown old waiting for you. And now you want to leave for ever, without me?”

“Please relax and listen to me. I think you should tell the boys you’re their father. But not now, after my death. You’re a good man, Emil. Even if I’ve ruined your life, here I am again, asking you the last favor. It might not be the right time to disturb them with such a revelation but you can be the guarding angel they will need so badly.”

“If only you knew how many times I wanted to break the oath and tell them that I was their father, that I guarded their door and steps and thoughts…so many memories and so much distance.… Why can’t I die in your place?”

“Don’t say that! Can’t you see the chaos we’d create if we could negotiate and replace death?”

* * * *

The doctors had been right. Almost six months later Iulia Datcu died. A few hours before she did it, she asked to see her sons and told them: “I’m leaving without you. Good-bye.” And she closed her eyes. On the funeral day it rained a little. There were many people there, wreaths, there was the religious service.… Being mature now, Dragos and Mihai didn’t lose their head. Emil Mateescu cried all the time. In the local newspaper there was a whole page full of obituaries and a commendatory article signed by the dean.

For one year Emil Mateescu tried hard to tell Dragos and Mihai that he was their father. He was afraid of the consequences of such a revelation. He didn’t meet the boys, just talked to them on the phone, several times. He missed Iulia so much that he created an almost mystical image of her in his imagination.

At last, one evening he decided to take the train to Bucharest the following day, find the boys and tell them the truth. He went to bed happily but didn’t come to take the early train because he died overnight. As if Iulia had sent him a last message in a dreamless sleep.