Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

Herr Tarangolian woke up from the idly relaxed and reflexive pose of the bon vivant. His perfect teeth flashed beneath his twitching mustache; his temperament gave wings to his hands, and they began to speak with him, forming and kneading his thoughts, sketching pictures in the air, sculpting his speech into strikingly animated forms. Animated himself, he leaned forward as he spoke, delighted by the liveliness that had taken hold of him.

“How could you possibly understand old Paşcanu! Forgive me, but to do that you have to be a child of this nation. Pride, you say. Yes — but what kind of pride? Even you, a Russian, my dear Sergei Nikiforich, overlook the mythic element. He was a force of nature, this old swindler, a true son of our Romanian soil — personal pride has no part in this. He was always half wild, I tell you: they had to pin him down to get him to wear shoes, they had to chain him, like a wild horse being shod for the first time … Have you ever wondered what his secret was, how he managed to keep it all so well hidden for so many years, the fact that he was totally bankrupt? There had to have been at least a dozen people who knew of his circumstances, and not all of them were so entangled in his shady dealings that they thought it prudent to keep their mouths shut. No, the force of his personality outweighed any such prudence. Today we know he was never as rich as everyone thought. But he had the aura of a man of unlimited wealth. You see: he knew that this aura was suddenly in danger. Not that he wouldn’t have been able to slither past the catastrophe in the years still granted him. Anyone who’s managed to pull it off for as long as he had can manage a little while longer. But that’s not what he was after. What he was concerned about, if you will, was saving face. More exactly, in saving the aura that had surrounded him his entire life. Because he, too, was in danger of disgracing himself through idleness , like my chivalrous friend Petrescu, or like Tildy, if you follow me. It was again time for one of his strokes of genius, some fantastic, and if possible clever, coup that would have dazzled and amused everyone as much as possible. His dealings were always astonishing, witty, and sly, full of a con man’s grotesque humor. He would bluntly grasp a possibility that others overlooked either due to lack of spirit or lack of brains. As a result people were inclined to immediately forgive the more disturbing aspects. As a son of this nation he knew in his blood how to best impress his brothers. Force alone is not enough. You need wit, you need satire. That is the only thing our people truly value — and their respect is absolute — because of its symbolic character, because wit is both a symbol and reflection of life. Of course …”

The prefect was practically glowing with joy at how vividly he had been able to summon the character of the man he claimed to know so well. “Of course, it was his pride that drove him to that act of insanity, the pride that had always been his most prominent trait — just like his nose. But it was a clown’s nose, you understand, a bluff, a joke for its own sake. By the same token, his pride was not that of a gentleman; it was the vanity of a great bluffer and prankster … the pride of a clown. Once more, and for the last time: he was never anything else but the wild man of the woods who climbed down from the mountains to live among people: a half-child with a fairy-tale imagination, a primitive peasant with a knack for hatching devilishly cunning plots and ruses, and intricate schemes that took a long time to devise and a long time to develop. He was a man full of superstitions, given to drastic images, unbridled emotions, plagued by twisted passions, a soul as coarse and colorful as a wood-block print from a calendar, full of uncouth humor and wily schemes. Ah, I always loved him, this prankster of my homeland, this great and fundamentally humble swindler. Yes, humble. Because what we see as pride was actually his humbleness before the world that he wanted to conquer. And his fear came from this exposed humility. Săndrel Paşcanu’s intended scam with the jewels was a childishly primitive attempt at saving himself from ridicule. It was his fear of being unmasked. He feared the spirit of Czernopol: the lurking vigilance so eager to reduce every claim to greatness to its true measure — to the satisfaction of all who are lowly — all in the service of one great unembellished reality. I know of no more potent form of blackmail than this spirit of watchfulness. It extorts tribute from everyone, and especially from those who have managed to deceive it for a while by giving it the run-around. It is a vicious profiteer, and whoever attempts to buy its respect winds up squandering all he possesses and sinking into debts no fortune can pay off. Whoever makes a pact with this spirit is bound to go under, just like Săndrel Paşcanu. Didn’t it come to fetch old Paşcanu exactly like the devil comes to fetch a soul? He died on a great slide into the hell of ridicule, and his death was ghastly and grotesque — and thus only then did he finally achieve symbolic status … Ah …” said Herr Tarangolian, “I see that you don’t understand me …” He waved his heavily ringed hand in a gesture that was almost dismissive, and then draped his hands over the back of the chair, dandy-like, so that his pretty fingers with their clawlike nails dangled in the air.

“We are trying with all our might to understand meaning of what you say,” said Uncle Sergei. “But as you know: tout comprendre, c’est tout mépriser …”

Herr Tarangolian stared at him for a while with inscrutably melancholic eyes. “I think I understand what you mean,” he said. “But is there any other way to understand something except by interpreting it through our own person, or in other words, by uncovering in it the secret we are not willing to reveal about ourselves? Be that as it may, this misunderstanding, if you care to call it that, still gives us information about ourselves. And what else is there, I ask you, that we truly want to understand ? What I meant to say was quite simple. I found myself moved by Paşcanu’s tragedy, by his figure’s tragic stature. Because in essence he was anything but the conscienceless rogue, the predator that people make him out to be. Essentially he was soft and gullible and compliant, so compliant that he was all too willing to become what the world he inhabited expected of a man. He was not the vulture that his nose suggested. Quite the contrary: he was a dove — one of the wild and shy doves that live in our forests and that occasionally fly past the city of Czernopol. One could have tamed him and placed him in a garden as a kind of ornament.”

At the time, we were enrolled in Madame Fiokla Aritonovich’s Institute, which Uncle Sergei had recommended to our parents as an excellent educational institution. In this matter, our easygoing and charming relative found an unwavering advocate in Herr Tarangolian, much to everyone’s surprise.

Madame Aritonovich was a Russian whom Uncle Sergei knew from St. Petersburg, where she had been married to a fabulously wealthy Armenian from Tbilisi and had presided over a large household.

“If I tell you,” Uncle Sergei declared, turning to our father, who as a result of this description later had cause to say of course it was all to be foreseen— “if I tell you, a salon. Not only société but artists as well. Writers, intellectuals, theater, ballet, the choice is yours. She has been at university herself, Fiokla Ignatieva, she is very educated person, she knows life, is talented, une artiste , she has for instance a certain faible for my voice, wanted me to train for the opera, à tout prix. She danced, as well, naturally not on the public stage, only in private circles, but for experts and connoisseurs — just ask Krupenski, ask Dolgoruki, ask any of my countrymen here, she had great talent. Legat knew her and was great fan; Cecchetti was an intimate friend: he said it was tragedy that he could not get her for the Maryinsky. She spent thousands on her collections, poets — whatever you wish. Et une belle femme! Her neck — I can see like today — her neck was most elegant neck in all Petersburg. Un cou de cygne. Nefertiti is nothing compared to her, nothing at all. A neck that makes you wish you were an executioner— vous comprenez ?”