Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

If you drew a straight line from that pub across the city of Czernopol — something like the flight of a wild pigeon — directly on the other side of town you would come to a small oak forest called Horecea, where Paşcanu had built a mausoleum for his two wives, modeled after the Taj Mahal. The house where Paşcanu lived lay almost exactly on this line as well.

Later, once we had finally outgrown full-time supervision, and were occasionally able to roam through the city, we often visited this house, to see if we might catch a glimpse of something behind the windows or in the yard, some particular feature of the environment where some of the most exciting events of our childhood had taken place. It was on a crooked old little street, in the neighborhood around the so-called Turkish fountain — we had no way of knowing whether it really dated from the time of the Turkish occupation or not; things in Czernopol rapidly acquired the patina of great age. The buildings of that neighborhood had gabled fronts that faced the street, in the old-fashioned way, with a wing off to the side for stalls, just like a farmhouse. The large gates, which usually had an entrance door cut in, were made of mighty planks and covered with wood-shingle roofs. They were covered with layers of paper an inch thick: movie posters, advertisements for Passover matzoh, death announcements, slates of candidates of various parties, and wanted posters — all scribbled over with obscenities. The street descended with the escarpment; powerful streams of sewage flowed down the gutters of the bumpy cobblestone, which was only visible during the spring thaw and was otherwise covered with coarse, ankle-deep mud or else floury dust. The back boundaries of the yards ran alongside a beautiful old Jewish cemetery where birch trees shaded the slanting gravestones. We were told that most of the surrounding buildings — and especially the former stables that had been remodeled for human habitation but were in great disrepair — housed the rooms used by the neighborhood streetwalkers. Large feral cats lurked in every corner, coupling every night with loud passion, multiplying without restraint. A single lantern, completely at the mercy of the street urchins and their throwing-stones, cast a dreary light lengthwise down the ridge of the street, which curved off into the thick darkness on either side. Looking the other way you could see the five onion domes of St. Parachiva towering over the rooftops, a ridiculously atrocious construction of brightly glazed brickwork.

Paşcanu’s house was larger and more solid than the ones surrounding it, and furnished with slate tiles rather than the usual tin. An ancient acacia stood in the courtyard, practically devoid of leaves. In no way did this building resemble how we imagined it ought to look — as the town house of the richest man in the province and the husband of a Princess Sturdza. The front wall had lost all its stucco except for bits around the first window, and the bare bricks gave a desolate impression indeed. In the Austrian times the gatehouse had contained a kiosk that sold tobacco, stamps, and salt from the state monopoly; the wooden shutters still bore the weathered remains of the once black-and-gold paint, in slanting stripes like on a sentry’s hut. In the early 1880s this house may very well have seemed the epitome of patrician dignity and well-established tradition, at least to an adventuresome shepherd boy who had only recently emerged from the forests; the black-and-gold-striped kiosk in particular must have made an impression on him, as an institution of the state, so to speak. Incidentally, Princess Sturdza never lived there, though it was rumored that a famous Titian, a painting worth millions, which Săndrel Paşcanu had bought for her, was still hanging in the house.

Because by the time Paşcanu married the Princess Sturdza, he already owned several other houses, in the city as well as in the country, including a hunting lodge in his huge forests, where princes of royal blood had been his guests. But even at the height of his grandeur he lived in the house by the old Turkish fountain. He clung with great tenacity to that first house, which he had acquired soon after his return from the siege of Plevna, paying for it with shiny Turkish gold coins — coins of shadowy provenance, from uncovered treasure perhaps, or else from a robbery — the rumors about it abounded. And, indeed, the former owner of the house was found a little later, murdered and robbed. And while things like that were not exactly rare in Czernopol, and there was certainly never a shortage of suspects, the crime was popularly attributed to the young new arrival, though nothing could ever be proven against him.

In any event: he stayed, and multiplied his wealth — whatever its origin — by a fantastic degree. No one knew for sure exactly what business dealings he pursued in his early days — and, to some extent, in later life as well — and on that subject the rumor mill was equally active. The fact is that he could never write more than his name. In later years he would have the paper read to him by his coachman, a scopit , or member of a Russian religious sect that required men to undergo castration after producing two children in marriage. Săndrel Paşcanu had his business partners read his contracts out loud and immediately memorized the wording down to the tiniest detail.

His main business was lumber. The egregious purchase of entire forests, scandalous con acts, bribes, and misappropriations filled entire annals, from which Herr Tarangolian was able to recite the most amusing entries. Because anything Săndrel Paşcanu undertook had the character of a coup — and often of a caper as well. And for the longest time he enjoyed a fabulous success. Even one of his middlemen came into a sizable — and, as it turned out, more stable — fortune, and in 1916 was raised to the landed Austrian gentry: Baronet Hirsh Leib von Merores — people later spoke of the family’s Spanish heritage.

The stories about his two wives, however, were far more exciting and eerily romantic: the legitimate spouse, the born Princess Sturdza, and his mistress, the beautiful peasant girl Ioana Ciornei. He had lived with both at once, and rumor had it that they died at the same time — that is to say, he killed them, or they killed each other. The motive was said to be a fabulous diamond, a single stone of unusual size and unique cut: Săndrel Paşcanu was said to have presented it to the princess the morning after their wedding night, and later to have taken it away to give to Ciornei on a similar, though less legitimate, occasion. Supposedly the two women, whom he forced to live in the same house, battled each other fiercely, and at the center of their conflict was the stone, which became a kind of a symbol, a fetish for conjuring the love of Săndrel Paşcanu.

People said that they conducted their feud with the strangest weapons. For instance, Ioana Ciornei couldn’t withstand the princess’s gaze and always wore a veil whenever the latter was present, so that Princess Sturdza would lie in wait, ready to reveal her eyes and force Ciornei to her knees and make her give up the stone. Meanwhile, the princess had a very delicate sense of hearing, and couldn’t bear her rival’s voice: so once the princess had recovered the diamond through the power of her princely gaze, Ciornei would sing peasant songs day in and day out, both happy and sad, until the princess was driven to the point of insanity and would hurl the stone at her rival’s feet. In the end Paşcanu is said to have killed them both, or else they killed themselves, their hands so firmly locked onto the diamond that they had to be buried in one coffin.

Of course that was sheer fantasy. After all, we had our friend Widow Morar to thank for most of the stories.