Читать книгу Life Begins on Friday - Ioana Parvulescu - Страница 15

2.

There are two things in life of which you are never bored: looking at falling snowflakes and gazing at the flames in a fireplace. At dawn that Saturday, Mr Costache was able to do both of these at once. It had started to snow and for a while he had looked out of the window onto Victory Avenue. Now he was looking at the flames. He had finished his Turkish coffee, laced with French brandy, to help him forget his annoyance at the disappearance of the case, and he had glanced at the announcement in Universul, taking note, without surprise, that it had been placed between two stupid advertisements. What prestige could the Police preserve if its requests were placed next to an advertisement for a confectioner’s? And it was not even a renowned confectioner’s, like old man Fialkowski’s, but one that was here today and gone tomorrow. Then he came across the news item about the man found in the snow: ‘The man under arrest who was found unconscious yesterday almost frozen near Băneasa Forest (by the lakes) has declared that his name is Dan I. Kretzu, that he is a...’ and observed two things: primo, that they had spelled his name with a K and a tz, although in his statement the man had written it with a normal C and a normal ț, and secundo, that he, Costache Boerescu, had been omitted from the news item. But these were trifles. And he looked into the fireplace once more, at the dancing tongues of flame, which soothed him, and then he went to the window again. No snowflake resembled any other, and, so Costache hoped, no fingerprint could resemble any other. Unfortunately, it had not yet been proven whether the patterns on a man’s fingertips might alter over the course of his lifetime, but Costache was almost certain that within a few years the fact that they did not would be demonstrated scientifically. His superior arrogantly contradicted him and gave as an example trees, which, when sawn in two reveal their own print. But if you compare the rings of a young tree with those of an old tree, you will see that in the latter the distances between them are greater and increase with the years, and that the accidents of good and bad years change their outlines. The same must also apply to a man, the Prefect of Police concluded.

Costache did not get on with his superior, although he acknowledged that he was not a stupid man. The 22nd of November had been the anniversary of his arrival, the date when, full of complexes and affectations, he had taken up the post. His brother Ion, the Prefect of Bacău, had been mixed up in a scandal involving the torture of a prisoner, from which he had got off scot free, while some poor constable had been made the scapegoat. Costache still missed Colonel Mișu Capșa, who during the year he had held the post of Prefect had made things run smoothly. He had been a just commandant, he knew how to give orders without humiliating a man, and above all he feared nothing. Indeed, he had been a war hero, decorated at Plevna and Vidin. Even the lawyer Deșliu, although he had been with them for only one summer, in ’94, had been better. And the best of all had been in ’89: General Algiu, who had remained a friend and whom he still visited when he needed advice. The more recent ones, good and bad, magistrates and career soldiers, these he did not count: they had come only in order to have a stepping-stone to other positions and so that they could be saluted by the crowd when they followed the King in their own carriage during parades.

The present chief, Caton Lecca, was a politician, the most slippery of species. He thought he knew everything. He had also been a member of parliament and a senator, suspected of electoral fraud. He acted the cockerel in front of his thickset wife, but the cannier agents directly subordinate to Mr Costache used to call him, with a hidden meaning, Cato the Elder. As for Costache himself, they called him Taki the Great, a double-edged epithet, since their dear chief was rather short, although well built and possessed of handsome eyes with velvety depths, seemingly unsuited to his profession. Apart from that, there was constant ill feeling and backbiting among the agents, sergeants and constables of the Prefecture. The turkeys, that is, the sergeants, who had numbers on their caps, laughed at the goldfinches, that is, the constables, because of the green or red patches on their shoulders. And the goldfinches called the commissars and sub-commissars, that is, Costache’s men, who had degrees in law and spoke French and German, coxcombs, bookmen and earwigs. Mr Costache heaved a sigh. Ultimately, the quarrels and the prefects flowed by like water, while he, like a rock, remained. But it was not easy to be a rock.

At the Bucharest Police, they had been taking fingerprints for almost three years, since before the arrival of Caton Lecca. They had first done so thanks to Dr Minovici, the oldest of the three physician brothers, who had experimented with ‘dactylloscopy’ on dozens of convicts. A year later, Costache had proposed that he himself take over the Judicial Identification Service, a department such as existed in other parts of the world to deal with the biggest malefactors, criminals, forgers and rapists. They had anthropometric records, with photographs and fingerprints. Costache had secretly conducted an experiment on Fane The Ringster: he had demanded that his fingerprints be taken the first time he was arrested. It was a real honour for a jewel thief like Fane, who had not understood what was happening and thought it was some kind of signature – which only went to shown his innate canniness – and all the while he had shouted at the top of his voice that he confessed to nothing and that he wouldn’t sign anything. Now, on his second arrest, Fane shouted no longer.

He merely looked at Costache from under lowered eyebrows and said: ‘What you want from me, Jean? Why do you keep forcing me to get me hands dirty? What you got up your sleeve? What you accusing me of? I work clean, so I do, I don’t maim or kill! I just steal.’

Costache requested the old fingerprints from the archive and studied them for an hour under a magnifying glass with an ivory handle. He could swear they were identical. But he did not know whether the two years that had elapsed were sufficient to provide conclusive evidence. We shall see in ten years whether they’re like tree rings or not! At home, he had dipped his own fingers in violet ink, but nothing clear had resulted on paper. Then he got the idea of using wax. He dripped some wax from a candle and straight away pressed his the tip of his right index finger into it. He would have to wait a few years before repeating the exercise. Yesterday, he had had the fingerprints of the foreign-looking gentleman taken, the rather curious man Petre had brought in, and not only had he not been at all surprised, but he had seemed to know what it was all about. Only one conclusion could be drawn: he was an international crook, perhaps from New York, where, as he had seen in a photograph in the newspaper, criminal files were kept in a room whose walls were covered from top to bottom in hundreds of little drawers. It was Costache’s ambition to have a similar room in Bucharest. He would have to keep this Dan Crețu under close surveillance, to see whether he had accomplices. Sooner or later he would give himself away.

Setting aside the snowflakes and his plans for reform, he went back into his office, rolled a cigarette, lit it, inhaled the aromatic smoke with great pleasure, and pressed a bell. A strident buzz was heard. When the balding head of the sergeant appeared in the doorway, he asked that Petre be brought in. Petre, known as Rusu, the coachman of the Inger family, knew the man who had been found almost frozen. Costache again recollected the advertisement for the cake shop adjacent to his announcement, but he swatted the thought away, like a fly.

‘I’ve called you here to tell me all about the hijinks of yesterday.’

The coachman twisted his cap in his hands, and his cut finger seemed to throb. He answered determinedly: ‘The man’s from the madhouse, your worshib. I think he shot that blond lad, but he don’t want to admit it. He kebt shouting: I recognize nothing! I recognize nothing!’

‘But why was that? After all, nobody was accusing him of anything, like the police...’

‘I accused him, like the bolice, I did! And he goes: I don’t know how to shoot a gun – imagine that! – and that I take him to the hosbital quick, lest he die, I ain’t got no gun, he says, I don’t know where I am, I don’t understand nothing, I recognize nothing, berhabs something hit me on the head! He’s guilty, your worshib! But what about the blond boyar, didn’t he die?’

Costache regarded the cake shop owner’s coachman carefully: ‘Why do you wish to know?’

Petre fidgeted and answered to the effect that it was a Christian sort of question. Costache changed his tone and threatened that if he were hiding anything from the police he would be in big trouble, and from the frightened expression on Petre’s face he drew the conclusion that he had not told him everything. He did not think it was anything important: perhaps he had taken a ring from the man’s finger or something of the sort, but sooner or later it would be revealed.

‘What was he doing when you found him? Was he awake?’

‘He was lying on his side and goggling at the horse, which was taking a biss, bardon my language, as if he’d never seen a horse bissing in his life. I found him just as I was about to go back to town. He could hardly sit ub. I was afraid he might fall off the box. I thought he was blind drunk.’

It did not seem that the coachman had anything else worthwhile to tell. He sent him away, first giving him an order to pass on to the confectioner, since on Christmas Eve he was invited to the house of both the Margulis family and the Livezeanu family (he had not yet decided which invitation to accept). He had not been hoping for very much from the coachman and he had not been mistaken. He rang the bell once more, calling the slow-witted old man back from the door and feeling sorry for him. He discovered that the coachman who had been assigned to follow the man named Crețu was in the building and he demanded to see him straight away. He received a report on all the details of the previous night, the man’s crazy journey around the streets, his encounter with Nicu outside the Central Girls’ School, his visit to the Icoanei Church, lasting one hour and twenty minutes, his knocking on the locked door of the deacon, something about a plump woman (named Epiharia) who presumably knew more, his departure holding a blanket, and the hours and hours he had gone round in a circle, at random, as if he were trying to make fun of those following him and had irked the trusty coachman more than he cared to say. He had tugged on the reins dozens of times, until the horse was dizzy. And then there was his chasing after a passer-by on Brezoianu Street, and finally, at the very end, his taking refuge inside a hovel next to the Church of St Stephen, also known as the Stork’s Nest. At this point, the Police coachman had cheated: between midnight and the first cock’s crow, he had gone home to bed, sure that the man was not capable of taking one more step, because, unexpectedly for a man of his status, he had not taken a single cab or coach ride during all his lunatic roaming.

‘I’ll bet you anything he’s a madman. We ought to ask Mărcuța, and Dr Șuțu on Plantelor Street, and Dr Marinescu, at the Pantelimon Hospital.’

‘Bravo, well said, Budac. I shall ask you to go there right away. I want an answer by this afternoon. And before anything else, go to the Hospice in Teilor to see how the young man who was shot is doing. If he is conscious, come back immediately. It is extremely important that I talk to him.’

Rather than clicking his heels and saying: ‘Yes, sir!’ the Police’s best coachman soundlessly moved his lips. He knew very well that at Dr Rosenberg’s Hospice, patients without any name or papers were taken in, many of them in a serious condition. The City Hall paid an annual fee to the Hospice for this service, and likewise to Dr Șuțu’s establishment on Plantelor Street, where persons with no means of subsistence were treated. And on top of this, his wife was expecting him at home, as he had to slaughter the pig. It was the Feast of St Ignatius, after all. You can tell the chief’s a bachelor! He thought to himself. Why had he got it into his head to make a suggestion like that, when he knew the chiefs’ working method: if you’re the one who comes up with an idea, then you’re the one who acts on it? He ought to be charier with his words. But he promised himself that he would go home first and then visit every madhouse in the city. That vagrant was a menace. Since Petre brought him in yesterday, things had been going badly for everyone. He was like a curse.

‘Who relieved you?’ asked Costache.

‘I sent Ilie, ’cause he’s got a fast cab. But if it were up to me, two legs would be just as good. You don’t need four wheels to follow him.’

‘All right, never mind. See you don’t stop off at home first! There’s plenty of time for the pig this afternoon!’ called the chief after the coachman, confirming his reputation as a mind reader.

Costache then ordered that Nicu should be sent straight to his office as soon as he returned from Universul, with further instructions that the lad should not be left to come of his own free will but detained as a matter of urgency. He went back to the window: a fresh layer of snow had fallen and the city looked unwontedly jolly that Saturday morning. But it was obvious that the coachman had cursed him, because the sergeant now entered bringing the unbelievable news that the stranger’s chest had not been recovered, despite half of those on duty being responsible for finding it. After warder Păunescu took Fane back to the cell, the sergeant in the room with the safe had dozed off, but the door was locked and the box, likewise locked, was within. Quite simply, nobody had seen anything; nobody knew anything. They were all questioned. The sergeant was given a good hiding, Păunescu was likewise beaten black and blue, but there was something fishy going on, and nothing could be discovered. Now Fane was being questioned. Throughout this description, Costache’s face remained inscrutable, and the sergeant quickly left the office, making himself scarce.

At around one o’clock they brought in Nicu, at a trot, flanked by two soldiers. The lad was swivelling his eyes every which way, but when he saw that there was no escape, he looked Costache straight in the eye, with a kind of scrutinizing mistrust. He held his thin lips clenched in a straight line, like a man who had just had to swallow an undeserved reproach, but controlled himself with dignity. Costache disguised his sudden good mood. The lad was holding his cap by the visor in his left hand and shifting his weight from one foot to the other, leaving splashes of water and mud on the wooden floor. The cop signalled the other two to leave the room.

‘Are you left-handed?’

Costache had as keen an eye for details as did Dr Margulis, except that the cop had an eye for every single thing, whereas the doctor had an eye only for the symptoms of disease. The policeman knew by instinct when there was something untoward, as surely as the doctor knew when he had a stomach-ache. By instinct, Nicu lied to them both.

He unclenched his lips and determinedly said: ‘No, sir, I’m not! I’m right-handed.’

‘Sit down over here. Are you hungry?’

‘No!’

‘Just as well. Tell me to the last detail what you talked about with the stranger you met yesterday in front of the Icoanei Church.’

Nicu sighed and unbuttoned his tunic: so this was what it was all about. Not the accident with the icicles or the wallet, which he would not have like to come to the attention of the Police, because then he would not have received the reward. And nor could it be some roguery on his mother’s part. It was the first time he had spoken to Costache and at close quarters he looked less frightening than he did from a distance. He recounted what he could remember, starting with the nicest part, about the toy cow, and finally he gave his own opinion.

He chose his words with care: ‘I’m not certain of it, but he may be a Martian. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of them,’ he added. ‘It was in yesterday’s paper. You are sure he’s not Jack, the Ripper, I mean?’

‘Why?’ asked Costache, rather confused by the ‘you are sure?’ not knowing that Nicu talked to himself in the second person when he was flustered. The Prefect had indeed discounted the hypothesis about Jack from the outset. Every police force and every newspaper in Europe were in ferment because of the murderer.

‘Because he’s a good man: I’ve seen him. He looks a bit like Miss Iulia. You would think that they were brother and sister.’

Costache’s expression was inscrutable.

‘Where’s the toy he gave you? I want to see it!’

‘At home,’ said Nicu, resisting the urge to touch his pocket. He shrugged regretfully, as if to reinforce what he was saying.

In a sudden rage, Costache asked himself aloud what kind of subalterns he had and how they had gone about searching the stranger. Who knows what else they had missed? Even the case had vanished. Nicu waited for him to vent his fury; he was accustomed to the highly-strung, what with his mother, but he made a mental note of this item of new information.

‘Draw for me what he gave you.’

He handed Nicu a sheet of splendid bond paper. He sharpened a pencil with a penknife. Nicu liked to draw, but up until then he had only done so on a blackboard and in the snow. It was the first time he had had the use of a sheet of white paper and a pencil. He flushed and, stopping and starting, as if he were carrying a heavy parcel, he drew the most comical cow of his entire life, accidentally ripping a few holes in the paper as he did so. He gave it a black piratical eye patch, but did not succeed in drawing the legs, which came out as spindly as straws, each ending in a pinhead. He handed the drawing to Costache, after giving it a dissatisfied look, like a painter who had rushed his work.

‘She’s called Fira. That’s what I called her. She hasn’t got an udder. The only thing worse would have been a udder with three teats!’

Costache seemed able to view people like the mirrored surface of clear water, but when you looked at him the water grew murky and no longer reflected anything.

He announced his conclusions: ‘First of all, you lied about not being left-handed, since you hold the pencil in your left hand, and secondly, you lied about not being hungry, I know that without any proof, and thirdly you lied about not having the toy on your person. This I can prove. Empty your left pocket; don’t make me do it myself.’

Nicu very reluctantly obeyed. His eyebrows were at a more acute angle than usual, like upturned letters v. He kissed the toy cow and handed it over, glancing sideways. Costache examined it and then stood up and went to the fireplace. Nicu was convinced that he was about to throw it on the fire and tried not to cry out. Costache dropped it, whether deliberately or not, but the legs of Fira the cow got caught in the grating of the fireguard and there she clung.

‘You may take her,’ said Costache, without giving any explanation. ‘You may also take the pencil and the paper, as a present. But here’s the thing! Do you want to help the stranger or not?’

Nicu acknowledged that he did. The cop instructed him for a long while and then released him.

‘How’s your mother?’ he asked in lieu of saying goodbye.

‘Well,’ replied Nicu, ending his visit to the police station as he had begun it, which is to say, with another lie. How did he know his mother? Costache was a good policeman, so much was true, but that did not mean the police station was a good place. He ought not to push his luck. And so he left at a run.