Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

Herr Alexianu even allowed himself to be carried away enough to describe the Gypsy fiddlers, “whose music weeps even when it’s joyful.” To relieve his headache, Fräulein Iliuţ had persuaded him to place a moist cloth on his forehead, so that his fanatical gymnast’s eyes stared out like the feverish gaze of a wounded soldier in the field hospital.

During this phase of the festivities, he went on, Major Tildy could be seen examining a picture hanging between two tapestries, with his uniquely unmoved and arrogantly expressionless manner — what might be called his “English” face — while Năstase and his friends were sitting with a few ladies on the sofas. The picture in question was the kind of enlarged photograph they sell at fairs, with an artificial background; it showed a peasant couple in traditional dress in front of a well, framed in unfinished birch twigs that overlapped at the four corners.

People were dancing in the next room. Gyorgyovich Ianku’s curly black head was visible through the open double doors, snuggled against his polished, chestnut-colored violin, rocking back and forth, utterly abandoned to the rhythmic swaying of a tango. The cimbalom player, who had a bean-sized purple-brown growth hanging from his lower lip, watched the tender intertwining of the dancing couples with olive eyes sticky with melancholy as his felted mallets raced over the strings, hammering out bewilderingly fast cascades of melody. Everyone had yielded to the magic of the very popular tango, and joined in on the refrain—“when the streetlights start to glow / and the evening shadows fall”—and consequently Tildy’s aloof manner, the unseemly attention he was devoting to the family picture, seemed conspicuous and somewhat offensive.

Colonel Turturiuk, a supremely cordial host who constantly encouraged his guests to eat and drink by setting an excellent example, himself noticed Tildy’s rigid and much too prolonged examination of the picture. With the tip of a napkin stuck in the opening of his full-dress uniform tunic, long since comfortably unbuttoned, carrying a full glass in his left hand and swinging a partially gnawed turkey leg in his right, he approached Tildy and addressed him, as Herr Alexianu reported, with a moving mix of good-natured annoyance and gruff reconciliation—“that kindness of character,” according to Herr Alexianu, “which blithely and directly dismantles the barriers of mendacious convention that serve to divide people, which is proof that our nation is truly still a child, and an expression of its admirably unspoiled character.”

I will recapitulate the small scene as related by Herr Alexianu, eyes fixed, the damp cloth clinging to his forehead, his face showing an occasional twitch of pain.

Colonel Turturiuk (approaching Tildy, raising the turkey leg above his shoulder to point at the picture): “So, you’re getting a close look, eh, Tildy? Getting a good look, Niculaie, my son. But do you know what you’re looking at? No, you don’t. You don’t know who those two people are up there. Shall I tell you? Do I, your colonel — do I, Mitică Turturiuk, dare tell you who they are?”

Tildy collected himself, very correctly and properly, in his unique, provocatively expressionless manner — his “English” face — displaying a nonchalant polish that according to Herr Alexianu would have been considered ironic coming from anyone else, but from Tildy, who was known for being incapable of irony, could only be taken as an attitude of supreme arrogance. Meanwhile the colonel continued, raising his voice:

“I want to tell you who these are, these two peasants, by the devil and all his relations with his mother. Because I am proud of them, you understand. Understand what I am telling you, Major: these are my parents, my father and my mother, legitimately joined before God by the Orthodox priest, exactly nine months before my birth. Yes sir. Not one day too early and not one hour later …”

Here the colonel paused briefly — Herr Alexianu couldn’t say whether it was to reflect on the somewhat confusing time relationship, which the colonel might have expressed more precisely, or to ensure that his words had the proper effect. In any event Turturiuk immediately continued:

“Yes sir! Both parents. Father and mother of a soldier, by all the whore’s churchbells. You understand, Major? Father and mother of your comrade and superior. Your colonel and your commandant. Do you understand what that means, Niculaie Tildy?”

The colonel was merely trying to dismantle the barriers that exist between people — it was a salt-of-the-earth attempt, candid and direct, but Tildy found no other way to react, according to Herr Alexi — anu, than to click his heels together so that his spurs gave a slight clink, ostensibly as a sign of polite respect, but one that showed the same provocatively dismissive mastery-of-military form for which he was all too well known … According to Herr Alexianu and the accounts of all those who had the opportunity to witness this scene, Tildy’s gesture — at that precise moment and in that precise context — seemed cold to the point of confrontational, and caused the colonel to stop for a few seconds and stare at Tildy, shaking his head and wagging the turkey leg in disapprobation.

Turturiuk: “No, Tildy. No, you son of boyars. That’s not the way to do things, understand? Not that way, Major! I ask you: Do you know who these people are up there? And I answer you: Those are my parents, in the name of the holy whorey Trinity, yes sir, my parents, the parents of Colonel Mitică Turturiuk — these two boorish peasants who couldn’t read or write, photographed on the fairgrounds for three hard-earned kreuzers. But they were real people, you understand? Real people with real hearts. You aren’t a real person, Major. You are a good officer, and a fair man. You wouldn’t be capable of hitting a recruit. There’s no other squadron like yours. But you’re not a real human being. What are you, anyway? A Hungarian? I shit on the Hungarians — we’re not afraid of them. Or are you a Russian? I shit on the Russians, too. Or what, then? You’re a German. Or are you a human being? Tell me yourself, Niculaie — are you human? If you are, then take this glass here and drink! Drink to my parents. To these two simple peasants, the parents of your superior comrade, Colonel Mitică Turturiuk.” The colonel’s head, already deeply flushed, now turned a shade of purple. “To the parents of all your comrades. The parents of this country, which you have the honor of serving, with your arms and with your blood. Drink!”

With that the colonel held his glass out to Major Tildy, while his right hand held the turkey leg aloft like a club.

What followed, according to Herr Alexianu, caused the witnesses of this encounter great dismay, or even disgust, and provided proof after the fact for the legitimacy of the indescribable inner aversion people had always felt for Tildy. Because, as Năstase put it: “Coldness of heart needs to be paired with character. Then it becomes a form of being that deserves acknowledgment, a biologically correct attitude — nature is cruel — in accord with the basic precept of intelligence in dealing with one’s fellow human beings: the respect we receive only grows to the degree we show disrespect for others. Coldness of heart without character, however — in other words coldness of heart that is kept within certain bounds and is coupled with sentimentality and timidity in the face of conventional institutions and ideas, grand phrases and melodramatic situations — that is nothing more than being German.”

In any event Tildy, without a moment’s hesitation, grabbed the glass and, standing to attention, with eyes so fixed on the photograph he failed to notice the smear marks from Turturiuk’s lips, drained it in one stroke.