Читать книгу Life Begins on Friday - Ioana Parvulescu - Страница 8

2.

The people of Bucharest were having a good day. It had snowed, there were still twelve days till the end of the year, and twelve hours till the end of the day. The whiteness, which stretched from one end of the city to the other, from the Cotroceni Palace to the Obor district, and from the Șerban Vodă Cemetery to the flower-beds on the Chaussée, and then onward, into the horizon, was melting in the afternoon sun. The icicles looked as if they were coated in oil and here and there were beginning to drip onto the heads of the passers-by. The streets were quite busy, as they always were on the days before Christmas. Looking up, lest he get wet, Nicu fell head first into the snow, and was as annoyed as when he woke up with his face pressed to the sheet.

‘Looks like you’ve taken another tumble, young man!’ said the boy loudly, shaking off his red commissary’s cap. ‘I’ve told you time after time to look where you step,’ he grumbled in his small voice, but with the tone of a bad-tempered old man. Since the year before, when he started to attend school, that pedantic tone had stuck to his tongue and he could not rid himself of it. But he had been in the habit of talking to himself for as long as he could remember, because to his great misfortune and unlike other children, he had no siblings. He would have been happy to have even a sister, at a pinch.

He dusted the snow off his coat, cast a glance of vexation at the patch of ice on which he had slipped, and at a trot arrived under the clock with the mechanical soldier above the door of L’Indépnedance Roumaine newspaper offices. At twelve on the dot, the chimes began to sound. Nicu always tried to be in time to see the soldier. It was not easy, because he had to tell the time by the sun and the length of the shadows. This time the lad’s attention was caught by something else. On the ground, right in front of him, was a splendid icicle, more than a metre long, perfect for a sword. He picked it up and stroked its slightly rippled surface, oblivious to the chill of the ice. Holding it in both hands, he lowered it to his hip, raised it, still in a two-handed grip, and with a roar made a swordsman’s lunge at an unseen enemy. Unfortunately, the icicle, probably inured to the greater peace and quiet at the edge of the roof, struck where it ought not to: to a man in military uniform, holding a silver-handled cane; a gentleman of middling height who was just emerging through the door beneath the clock. He was the Prefect of Police’s right-hand man: the Chief of Public Security, Costache Boerescu, a man always in a hurry, his short legs rapidly scything the air. In that period he visited the Frenchmen’s newspaper two or three times a day, ever since the director, Mr Lahovary, had been slain in a duel by “that pig-headed Filipescu,” the director of the Epoca newspaper. And so the policeman was in the mood for anything but a duel, irritated as he was by the investigation, which was going nowhere, and by voices from the press, who were persecuting him ever more sorely. He could no longer stand newspapermen: when he did something good, they ignored him, but when he failed to solve some matter swiftly enough, they jumped on him and blackened his name using his own words, but truncating and turning them upside down. Whenever he had occasion and only men were present, he would cool off by calling the press a “painted whore.” Otherwise, he lived alone, and the brothel at Stone Cross had special reduced rates for him, should he so desire. He had visited the establishment both as a policeman and as a customer.

The cursed child ran off before the policeman could grab him by the ear. He made a suicidal dash across the road, dodging the carriages and sleighs, in the direction of Sărindar, not before being cursed by a number of coachmen heading in a column towards the Capșa restaurant, then by those on the other side, on their way towards the Dâmbovița River; one after the other, they had to pull on their reins, lest they crash into each other. The lad looked behind him at the same instant that the copper waved his stick at him threateningly. Nicu then put the incident out of his mind and headed towards the Prefecture, a few minutes’ walk away.

‘You were almost done for there, young man. Mr Costache won’t forget you, he never forgets anything, and he’s as cunning as a snake, he is. You’ve been getting into nothing but scrapes today,’ said the lad, addressing a large snow-laden bush that grew slantwise in a shady spot next to a wall. Some sparrows were hopping with abrupt, bullet-like movements from one branch to another, then lingering a little, touching the thick whiteness of the snow with their plump bellies, and scattering the flakes, before moving to another storey of the bush, as if it were a house. Nicu wondered why they moved around so much, since they did not seem to be following or looking for anything, unlike him. He had a precise goal, which loomed tall in front of him: the entrance of Universul, Bucharest’s most read newspaper. Granted, the men from Adevĕrul said otherwise, but they said everything otherwise. He stepped forward, having swiftly shaken all the sparrows off the bush.

He entered by the door on the left. The doorman shook his hand as if he was a grown-up. Old man Cercel told him that he would have to wait: the parcels had not yet been brought from the “distribution bee-oo-row.” Nicu sat down in his usual place. He was most satisfied. Conversations with old man Cercel were always instructive, because the doorman read the paper every day and kept him up to date with the news. Nicu asked him whether he had decided to play the big New Year’s lottery; the jackpot was ten thousand lei. Six numbers had to be chosen, and the lad had asked to try his luck, without any claim on the prize (although the money would not have gone amiss), just so that he could lend a helping hand. Nicu knew that as far as he was concerned, his choice was nine and eight, because next year would be 1898, and the doorman would choose the remaining numbers, except that he would make his mind up one day, only to change it the next. Old man Cercel replied yet again that it was no joking matter and he would have to think carefully. From today’s paper he had a news item even better than the one about Jack the Ripper, who had thitherto reigned supreme over the headlines.

The doorman picked up Universul, held it rather a long way from his eyes, and read slowly, syllabically: “Sundry items. From Bor-del-... Bor-der-and... Bor-der-land magazine. The planet Mars and the Martians.” ‘Hear that?’ And then he read on, slipping in his own comments, as he always did: “The Martians do not eat meat, but use mam-moths as beasts of burden. Their horses are no larger than our ponies.” As large as our ponies – what ponies? “Their oxen are smaller – in other words, we have larger oxen, and so where we are, if you’re an ox, you’re a big ox – and have just one horn. The Martians have very pen-et-rat-ive eyesight. They have learned how to fly, but only for short distances. They walk on water with the same ease as they do on land. War has been ab-ol-ished on Mars. The Government is the-o-crat-ic. They have twelve states. They have no private property.” Then I’m not going to Mars. This is my country here, my private property, my house, my garden, my wife, my pigeons, and my plum trees,’ said the doorman, folding up the newspaper thus ending all discussion, having been fully enlightened as to the Martians.’

Nicu did not agree. He was something of a Liberal. He knew very well that the Martians could fly and walk on water and that they rode mammoths, as he had seen the drawings in Universul Ilustrat. And so in that respect, the same as in many others, he could not share Cercel’s opinion, although the old man’s broad face and splayed nose, beneath which grew a shaving brush of a moustache, demanded respect.

Nicu said diplomatically: ‘I for one would go, if it were possible! I’d go to have a look and if it wasn’t any good, I’d come back straight away.’

‘For the time being, run and deliver these papers!’

Probably annoyed at having been contradicted, the doorman rather brusquely took the newspapers from the hand of the man who signed himself Peppin Mirto. Mirto was employed as a translator and proof reader, and was recently given the responsibility of dispatching the Gazette to important clients, if it included important articles: Mayor Robescu; Petre Grădișteanu, the director of the National Theatre; the Royal Palace; Caton Lecca, the Prefect of Police; and the directors of the other newspapers, even those with which Universul was at war. Nicu ran errands for the paper, earning five lei a month, paid on the first of each month, plus tips, in addition to his usual wage as a commissary. He had to deliver parcels containing all kinds of small items, which were sold from the newspaper premises. The items were kept in untidy heaps in the administrative office downstairs and in the director’s office upstairs, since the director himself was more likely to be found at home or at his club than on newspaper premises. Nicu worked for two hours a day at most, straight after school. He clandestinely hitched rides on the back of carriages and sometimes even the horse-drawn tram, when there was a lot of traffic and he could pass unnoticed. But it was rare that he had such luck.

‘How are you, laddie?’ asked Pepin Mirto, in his sonorous, operatic voice, and Nicu doffed his cap by way of greeting. He was about to tell him about his plans to go to Mars, but the man quite simply turned his back on him, shouting a ‘Be on your way now!’ that boomed as far as the courtyard. Why did people ask you questions if they did not wait for the answer? True, here at Universul you saw only men who were in twice as much of a hurry as Nicu’s other acquaintances. They were like Martians, the lot of them, but without their good qualities! As he was leaving with the parcel tied up with string, he almost collided with a young man who had slipped lizard-like through the door and was asking old man Cercel how he could place a small ad. He was agitated and kept knocking his gloved hands together, jerking his head.

‘Good day, young gentleman,’ said the doorman, still in the same voice as when he had been spelling out the words in the newspaper.

‘Good day, young gentleman,’ Nicu seconded, but without doffing his cap this time.

Too agitated to reply to these greetings, the young man got straight to the point: ‘Where can I place a small ad? A wallet has been lost and the owner...’

‘With money in it?’ the boy and the doorman both asked at the same time.

‘Not, not with any money...’

‘Any jewels?’ asked Nicu, just as the doorman was asking: ‘Any documents?’

‘No, with a... with something else. And my owner, its owner I mean, is offering a handsome reward. We live not far away from the Icoanei Church, on Strada Teilor, the new houses, which they were working on all summer.’

And here he knocked his fists together once more.

‘The second door on the right where it says: Announcements. This way, please.’

As the nervous young man with his lizard-like movements was walking away with the doorman, Nicu set off to his first address, the premises of the rival paper on Strada Sărindar, scanning the snow in front of him, just in case. He now had a goal to make him forget the tedium of his daily duties and the water dripping from the eaves. He was searching for a wallet in which there might be a diamond ring or maybe a ruby tiepin, like the one owned by Jacques’ father, Dr Margulis. But if the man-lizard had been telling the truth, which was not at all certain, then there were no jewels. All of a sudden he had a bright idea: it must contain a lottery ticket, the very one that was going to win!

‘That’s it!’ Nicu said to himself, rather proudly. He had rejoiced when the snow arrived, but now it annoyed him; a good job that it had started to melt. His grandmother, who believed in saints, like all women, had told him that there was a saint to allay every misfortune. He hoped that there was a saint of lost objects too, particularly those lost by other people.

‘Let us hope, young man, that you will lay your hands on that handsome reward.’

*

After he had completed his final errand, Nicu ran home to change out of his red work-cap and put on his free-time cap; for when he wore the red one, people stopped him on the street and sent him off on errands all over the place. From somewhere near the neighbours’ old walnut tree, a crow croaked bitterly a few times. Since there was nobody at home (who knows where his mother might be?), he was able to make his way to Strada Teilor, the place where his investigation must surely commence. It was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack, but he did not have anything better to do, as it was the Christmas holidays. In any case, school had been suspended for a month because of an outbreak of typhus, and so he had been quite well off from that point of view. Lessons had not recommenced until the eighth of December. Nicu had every faith in his luck, despite, or rather precisely because God had already punished him with a feeble-mined mother and no siblings, not even a sister, and so He owed him for the rest of his life. Prudently, he made the sign of the cross, as he always did when he thought he was speaking too familiarly about the Lord in Heaven, but it was a tiny one, more like he was scratching himself.

The boy knew the streets of Bucharest well and a large number of their residents knew Nicu well. He had even made friends with some of them, such as the Margulis family on Strada Fântânei. He was an errand boy on whom you could rely, very useful for urgent business that required discretion. Theirs was a dependable firm, his boss used to say, taking upon himself the merits of the five lads in his employ, who were individually responsible for any mistakes. He looked up and by the Central Girls School he saw a police carriage, as red as the cherries in the bottle from which his mother tippled. He once more fixed his eyes on the snow, which after melting in the afternoon, was now beginning to form a crust, like the skin on boiled milk. How was it that ice and the hot skin of boiled milk looked the same if you held them in your hand, and that both turned your skin red? Nicu walked with long strides and kept his eyes on the ground. It was then that he clapped eyes on the most unusual pair of footwear he had ever seen in the eight long (and hard) years since he had come into this world. They did not look like galoshes or overshoes or even the latest styles advertised in Universul. They were neither officers’ boots nor peasants’ bast shoes. There was not even a word for them; they were strange thingies, the likes of which had never been seen.

*

‘They were strange little thingies, the likes of which you’ve never seen, I don’t even know what to call them, brother dear, neither you nor I have ever seen the like,’ recounted Nicu that evening, in Strada Fântânei.

He was dead tired, having been on his feet the whole day, walking through the snow; the driver had not let him board the horse-drawn tram without paying for a ticket, and he had not wanted to waste the fortune in his pocket: ten pennies from tips alone. But his account of how he bumped into the stranger’s legs reinvigorated him. He felt that all of a sudden he had become an important person in the world. It was not every day that you saw wonderful things on the streets of Bucharest.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Jacques, overjoyed. For Jacques, the errand boy’s tales, mostly embellished and exaggerated as they were, were the water of life. Nicu’s homecoming had got him out of bed. ‘What do you mean, thingies, I don’t understand, explain!’

Jacques sat up straight in the deep armchair that all but enveloped him.

‘Just listen,’ answered Nicu, enveloped in the armchair alongside and twisting his head over the velvet armrest, ‘just listen, you’ll never believe it. They were coloured. Coloured!’

‘Colou-r-r-ed?’ marvelled Jacques, who rolled his r’s like a Frenchman. Therre’s no such thing. I’ve never seen footwear that wasn’t black, or brown, or white, in summer.’

‘And they didn’t have buttons, or laces, or hooks. It was like they were glued to his feet. I look up and I see ugly black trousers, without any stripes, and then an ordinary overcoat, like a cast-off, like a second-­hand bargain, it didn’t fit in with the rest. And, ah, yes, just listen, for you’ll never believe it: he was bare-headed!’

‘Weren’t you afrraid? I would have run away, I mean...’ said the host and blushed slightly.

Nicu hastened to continue, as if he hadn’t heard.

‘Well, no, but his face was quite nice, like... like your sister’s there,’ said Nicu, pointing to above the sofa, where there was a small pastel portrait. ‘I don’t know why, but it bowled me over. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. Whether he was an angel, whether he was a devil, I liked him a lot; I’ll have you know. May you have a brother like him!’

Although Jacques was accustomed to the way Nicu spoke when he was excited – Nicu was in the habit of addressing himself in the second person – he thought that perhaps here he was referring to him, because he too wanted a brother. ‘He asked me.’

At that moment the “quite nice” face from the portrait above the sofa looked in through the half-open door. The face was rosier in the cheeks than the one in the framed picture, however. Iulia Margulis, wearing a green velvet dress entered, carrying two plates, two silver knives and two red apples. The doctor had demanded that the children eat at least one piece of fruit a day, and in the cellar there was a shelf full of apples, placed a finger’s width from each other lest one spread rot to the others.

‘Wait, I want to hear it too! What did the stranger ask you?’

‘Have you met him?’ marvelled Nicu.

His eyebrows were peaked like the outline of a roof, rather than finely arching, like the Margulis siblings’, and that made him look permanently surprised or perplexed.

‘He said... erm... he said to me: “Just a moment, lad, please. I’m quite cold and I’m afraid to go home.” ‘Why?’ says I. ‘I think somebody’s living there,’ says he. ‘I need a place to sleep. Any idea where?’ That’s what he said, I remember it very well: ‘Any idea where?’

‘You should have invited him here!’

‘No, no, no, how could I do that? Nor could I have invited him to my place, because I didn’t even know when my mother would be coming home. When she’s angry, she scares everybody, although she doesn’t do anybody any harm. Since we were near the Icoanei Church, I said to him, the same as Granny would have said: Go inside, bow to the miracle-working icon of the Mother of God, the one cased in silver, and you’ll be granted a miracle. I’ve already been granted one, he said, mockingly. And instead of making the sign of the cross, he asked me whether I had a cigarette. ‘I haven’t taken up smoking yet,’ says I. ‘Then don’t start!’ says he.’

Nicu rose from the soft depths of the armchair, thrust his hand in his trouser pocket, and produced an object.

‘And he gave you this, young man. Look at this!’

It was a toy that almost fit in the palm of his hand, a soft, snow-white cow with pink ears and a black patch over one eye, like a pirate. The cow’s four legs were folded under it, like four hands neatly resting in a lap. Jacques took the object with infinite care, as if it might break, he gazed at it gravely and then solemnly handed it to his sister.

‘Can I examine it?’ asked Iulia. And without waiting for an answer, she lifted one of the legs. When she released it, the leg snapped back in place alongside the other three. The young lady did the same with the other legs, but all four quickly snapped back.

‘Oh, Lord, it is almost alive!’ marvelled Jacques, his eyes bulging.

‘Alive or not, it’s got no udder, I’ve looked,’ mumbled the owner of the animal. ‘Who’s so stupid as to make a cow without an udder? I think the legs have got a spring or something. I’ve seen things like this among the Christmas toys in the newspaper. I’ll show you, I’ve got the issue at home, I asked old man Cercel for one, and because it had toys in it, he gave me it.’ Nicu stretched out his hand for his cow, retrieved it, and hid it rather abruptly in the depths of his pocket.

‘Did the strranger seem sane to you?’

‘Jacques means to say: was he in his right mind?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Nicu lowered his voice. ‘Ever since my mother... ever since they kept her there, I can tell one of them from a mile off.... The doctor says that it’s not right to call them madmen, they’re just ill. Anyways, that gentleman was sound in the head, just like you or me. I waited till he went inside the church. When I looked behind me, the police carriage was slowly approaching, at a walk, I recognized it by the colour: like rotten cherries. It stopped a little way away, by the bell tower, and some guard dogs started barking at it. The cops were on his trail, but I don’t know whether he realized... You don’t like the cops. I wanted to turn back and tell him, but I didn’t have time to spare, I was in a hurry, because I had... a job to do.’

‘I shall leave you now, because the cook is waiting for me, we have to confer about dinner tomorrow, when Mr Costache will be coming as our guest,’ said Iulia, casting Nicu a meaningful glance.

To reassure her, he looked at her serenely and with a smile of perfect innocence. The young woman swiftly left the room, but not before arranging the logs burning in the fireplace with two or three deft jabs of the poker. Nicu congratulated himself on not having delayed his visit to Jacques, as he had been tempted to do, knowing that the door was always open to him. And he decided not to pay a visit to Strada Fântânei the following evening, lest he come face to face with the policeman: it was too soon after the unfortunate accident... the duelling incident. But he said not a word about what had happened with the ice rapier or about the wallet: they were secrets. He could not tell Jacques everything, although he considered him his best friend, because he obeyed strict rules in life, rules laid down by the doctor, ever since Nicu had been left without a father and with a grandmother for a mother, and he could allow himself some liberties. He had only managed to examine an insignificant portion of Strada Teilor, alongside the new houses, before darkness fell. He kept telling himself that he and he alone would be the finger and that the handsome reward surely to be had from that lizard of a young man would crown his efforts.