Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

But as much as her beauty stemmed from her innate vivacity, it derived even more from the masklike quality of her face, which had something terribly sublime — a feature we later found in only two other women, who were as different from her as they were from each other: Madame Tildy, once her addiction had destroyed her and made her into a human wreck; and a young woman who will appear later, a streetwalker named Mititika Povarchuk.

That same day we encountered beauty in another form, which if a play on words may be permitted, was not marked by the terror of the sublime but by the sublimity of terror. It was a child’s face, which belonged to a girl our age, looking at us among all the other children’s faces when Fräulein Zehrer introduced us to our class. Her dark eyes, her tender, pale cheeks framed by a luxurious tangle of black hair, and her almost overly expressive mouth, which seemed too experienced, too mature, showed a ready capacity for enduring all kinds of brutality — noise that was too loud, colors that were too garish, will that was too headstrong — a capacity that transformed extreme vulnerability into courage. Nothing could have shown greater contrast than the bold fearlessness, with which Madame Aritonovich looked upon the face of the Medusa , whereby she became its mirror image, and the brave suffering of little Blanche Schlesinger, who in her way seemed to have learned that the gaze was not to be averted, the sight of horror not to be avoided, and whose torment was amplified by the realization that she would not be able to turn to stone.

It was Fräulein Iliuţ, the hunchback, who found the right words for our schoolmate — she had also worked as a seamstress for the Schlesingers: “Looking at her, you realize,” she stated, “that Jesus was a Jew.”

Blanche was the first person whose friendship we sought and eventually found, although only after overcoming a great and strangely superior shyness, and unfortunately for only a very short time.

Another friendship sprung up right away and established itself with an assertiveness that was so carefree it was practically brazen — and which delighted us immensely. This new friend was a small, red-haired, freckled boy with short legs: very animated, cheeky, and intelligent. His name was Salomon Brill.

He immediately approached us as if it were the most natural thing in the world and spoke to us directly. At first we had some difficulty understanding his manner of speaking, because he pelted us with a hailstorm of questions, and we had been drilled to answer every question right away. It took us a while to catch on that he didn’t expect answers to most of his questions; nevertheless, we kept ourselves ready because of our upbringing and always fell behind, so that every time he really wanted to know something, we became confused, focused as we were on all the previous questions. But that didn’t matter to our new friend, who just considered us a little stupid and clumsy — which he had probably assumed anyway, and which, compared to him, was undoubtedly the case — and didn’t dwell anymore on the matter. So actually it’s not true when I blame our difficulty on some trait of his. There was nothing difficult about Solly Brill: his lively spirit, which was always focused on the matter at hand and never on anything personal, made everything easy; he let things glide as if on ball bearings, so to speak, and we found his company so enjoyable that it gradually became a kind of vice, a habit that was hard to break and produced a severe withdrawal when we were forced to give up our friendship with him.

The minute Fräulein Zehrer left us alone he planted himself in front of us — standing a full head shorter than me — and said, “The new arrivals, let’s have a look at you. So, who are you? What are your names? You want to play with us? Or maybe you’re too good for that? Maybe you want to learn something here? How old are you? Did you bring money for kigla ? Or maybe you don’t know kigla ? Or maybe somebody’s watching you the whole time? Are you enrolled in the French course or the German one?”

He showed a great and completely genuine interest in our family circumstances, the character of each person, how much they owned, and for the quality of our clothes and our satchels.

“Look at those antiques! Nu , you haven’t heard of zippers? You can find them in our store. The latest type. The man who invented them became a millionaire overnight — in dollars . The dollar is worth about sixhundredthirtyfive, figure that!”

“But why should we figure that if you know the answer?” asked Tanya, puzzled.

Solly Brilly never dwelt on misunderstanding. “ Schmontses ,” he said, “what kind of nonsense is that! Figure that, like … can you imagine? Not like go do the arithmetic. Nu , so you want to play kigla , or don’t you know how?”

We found out that kigla were marbles. Solly’s were fantastic — glass ones almost as big as your fist, with bands of color wound inside, and others that were tiny but weighed just about the same, of heavy flashing metal, like quicksilver, like Solly himself.

“Just a game,” he said. “You can have some of mine. As a present. No joke. Later I’ll take something of yours. Deal?”

Solly helped us understand many things — including several interesting details that belonged to the story of old Paşcanu.

It turned out that Herr Tarangolian had a much closer relationship with Madame Aritonovich and her Institut d’Éducation than we had imagined. The prefect came to the school every week, mostly when we had ballet lessons, and would spend entire afternoons there, as a connoisseur of dance, and of Madame Aritonovich’s conversational gifts. Occasionally we asked ourselves how he found time for his official duties, given the number of his visits. But he typically got up very early — although he never admitted this, incidentally — and much to the horror of his subordinates, he often appeared in his offices in the provincial government building at six o’clock in the morning, and was ready to leave just before eleven. Moreover, much of the success and intelligence of the measures he enacted was undoubtedly due to his custom of donning the mask of a bon vivant and mixing, like Harun al-Rashid, among the people, thereby discovering anything of any importance that was going on, and especially what was brewing or ready to happen.

His visits allowed us to witness firsthand the inconspicuous and sly manner by which he came by his information. Naturally this meant we had to give up the exciting and somewhat ominous impression we’d formed of a man who commanded his own secret service — an impression that was reinforced whenever he revealed some amazingly detailed tidbit about a case or an event, something he never did without a specific intention. But even if we had to give up our image of shady, masked characters stealing through the night and reading secret documents by flashlight, or else disguised as lackeys and secretaries eavesdropping on conversations, our admiration for him only increased when we saw how simple and practical his methods were, how ably he could discern background, intent, and motive, and how cogently he drew the proper inferences.

Whether or not it was a passionate folly of Madame Aritonovich that she couldn’t give up, ballet clearly formed an essential component of the institute’s educational program, with the classes conducted by Madame herself. After we had performed our pliés to her satisfaction, we were given a short course in etiquette. The girls were taught the art of curtsying, from the court curtsy — six steps forward four back, knee bending on the fourth step — to the simple curtsy with bent knee while standing; for us boys, greeting a person of respect meant standing three steps away, giving a slight bow of the head while clicking our heels together, then approaching, giving another slight bow and accepting the hand that was offered. We practiced the various intonations of bonjour and au revoir depending on whether we were addressing a superior or someone of inferior rank — if, for instance, a monsieur were added to the bonjour , it was a clear sign that one was dealing with a subordinate. Solly Brill would shrug his shoulders when he performed these assignments and make comments such as “About as useful as a wreath on the head!” or “We’re rocking dead babies here!” a phrase taken up by Madame Aritonovich and whoever happened to be visiting.