Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

“He has the very best, that is to say the most curt, manners,” said Herr Tarangolian. “He despises polite gestures the way a very rich man holds them in disdain. In doing so he sets a high price — too high, perhaps. But he’s one of those men who are more than willing to bleed to death.”

Whether he was aware of this general resistance or not, Tildy did not counter it with anything except himself: his impeccable performance of duty, his cool, elegant propriety that was the tersest possible, and his deadly earnest.

“God knows, it’s not that what he does is too little,” sighed Herr Tarangolian. “On the contrary: it’s too much — too much for Czernopol. But Czernopol is drawing the short end of the stick, if you know what I mean. Let me tell you a story: His people idolize him. Recently, however, one of his men had stayed a few days beyond his leave, and when he came back, he brought his esteemed major a chicken, not as a bribe — heaven forbid — but as a gesture, and in order to mollify him. Still, a chicken is quite a lot for a young farm boy. So what does Tildy do? He assembles the entire company and informs them of the incident. He punishes the man for staying over his leave — not too severely, but not too mildly, either. And he orders that the chicken, which a sergeant was holding next to him on a kind of tray — or was it a cushion for medals — in short, Tildy orders that the chicken be thrown into the regimental kettle. Can you believe it? One chicken in a soup for four thousand soldiers? Even a child knows that the quartermasters steal meat by the ton. But in the name of justice: a single chicken! Even his own recruits no longer take him seriously. No, no, nothing good will come of that.”

Herr Tarangolian spoke with stageworthy pathos.

“And I don’t mean his career as a soldier, although that, too, is doubtful. His superiors can’t abide him, without exception. They respect him, to be sure, but they don’t trust him. They find him odd, and, to put it frankly, disturbing. Recently someone asked me in all earnestness if he might not be an Englishman working for the secret service. Why does he trim his mustache the way he does? But all joking aside: the man will destroy himself in one way or the other. There’s something Spanish about him. He is a hidalgo . Not a conquistador, no Cortés or Pizarro or Alvarez — he lacks their greed, he doesn’t have enough plebeian blood for that. Nor is he Iñigo de Loyola, although I admit he shares the same rigor and passion for a Madonna embroidered on a flag. A shame to find such traits wasted on a cavalryman, isn’t it? But, then again, would Roland and El Cid be able to conquer anything better than a heavyweight championship? For all we know a stigmatized headwaiter might soon proclaim himself lord of the world! But the hidalgo I mean is the other one, the knight of the sad countenance, Don Quixote. That is Tildy’s character through and through. He is indeed the last knight. He is incapable of taking revenge on his own predicament, like everyone else in Czernopol, by laughing at it. Do you know that people deliberately play pranks on him and place bets on how he will react, and that every time the fellow who chooses the most humorless possibility is the one who wins! He himself supposedly said he knows only two types of response: the witty one and the just one. Yes, you heard right: the witty and the just! My God, what an alternative! … And then, on top of that,” Herr Tarangolian added with faux seriousness, “on top of that, this woman …”

One day this woman stood in front of us, spoke to us, stroked our hair, kneeling down to pat Tanya — and we failed even to recognize her.

I believe that happened during the same year, on one of those late-spring days so much like lilac, under the deep mussel-blue of a sky pregnant with rain. We hadn’t seen her coming, because the lance-leaf fence was overgrown, and our garden was hedged by thickets of foliage, like the upholstery of a jewel case, with spikes of blooms that had been blasted by the slow and heavy showers, which tore off the flowers and scattered the petals across the wet leaves and grass. As a result she suddenly materialized, exaggeratedly elegant and at the same time strangely untidy, with large eyes and a disconcertingly fixed gaze. Her razor-sharp aristocratic nose startled us, as if it had simply decided to appear there, and it was out of proportion to the rest of her face, which was smooth and round like a china doll’s. She gave us the kind of smile that comes melting out of someone waking from a happy dream — lost and entranced. And as if she were indeed under a spell, she reached out and ran her hand above our hair, as if she didn’t dare touch it. “Oh you beautiful children,” she said, “you dear, happy children.”

She hastily began rummaging through her pompadour, and since she evidently couldn’t find what she was looking for, she broke into tears. “I don’t have anything for you,” she said, despairing. “I have nothing to give you, please forgive me. Forgive me …”

We understood that she’d been looking for sweets — chocolates or bonbons — for us, and we acted stiff and acquiescent — like children practiced in accepting food, to the delight of the adults, like deer in the game preserve.

But then she suddenly reached for her neck and started groping around, distraught. “Where is my necklace?” she asked, pretending dismay, with a false note in her voice that seemed to pain even her. “My necklace isn’t there. I had put it on. It’s gone. Gone. My necklace is gone.” Her voice had become high and shrill. She looked at us in amazed disbelief, her hand on her throat, all the while repeating: “Gone. My necklace is gone.”

She closed her eyes for a few seconds, rocking slightly. As the tears came streaming down her cheeks, she knelt down beside Tanya and said, “I wanted to give it to you. I had put it on to bring to you. You believe me, don’t you? Of course you do. You believe me that I wanted to bring you the necklace?”

“Oh, here you are!” Miss Rappaport’s English words cut into the scene like a clarinet, beckoning with her slightly sour voice.

The unknown woman sprang up, greeted our governess in the friendliest, most courteous tone, and said she had come to pay a visit. Not a single word or glance more in our direction: she had forgotten us completely.

Miss Rappaport jerked her piercingly bespectacled face a few times between her and us like an ostrich. Then she raised her hand and silently signaled us to follow her back to the house. At that the other woman gave the most gracious and ladylike hint of a bow, the fingers of her left hand delicately angled, and followed Miss Rappaport with quietly rustling, dainty steps, and her coquettishly dangling pompadour.

In a flash, Widow Morar was at our side, hissing at us through her gold mouth, and smiling through her closed eyes: “Did you see her? Did she speak to you? Isn’t she like a little bird? They’ll have to fetch a carriage for her …”

Only then did we realize that this was the woman in the sled, Madame Tildy, the hussar’s wife. What we never would have imagined was her nose: the vulture-like beak of old Paşcanu.

We didn’t have much time to be amazed, though, because Widow Morar grabbed us by the arm and said, loudly and meanly, in the direction of the gate: “What is she standing there staring at?”

And then we saw Frau Lyubanarov, leaning against the golden rain tree by the dvornik ’s hut, from where she had evidently seen and heard the entire scene.

“What is she standing there staring at?” Widow Morar repeated, even more loudly.

“Oh, go get lost, you old washer of corpses!” said Frau Lyubanarov lazily, standing like Danaë under the shower of gold from the tree.