Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

In this city, where whatever didn’t take place on the street was indiscriminately dragged into the open, the events that led to the animated conversation between Bubi Brill and his father, which Solly had so masterfully reenacted for us, did not remain hidden for long.

People said that Usher Brill looked up old Paşcanu in order to propose a daring business deal with him. But that wasn’t so: old Paşcanu had summoned him.

People knew everything, down to the smallest detail:

On the morning before the night when he paid his last visit to his dead wives in Horecea, Săndrel Paşcanu appeared in the stairwell of his house. He hadn’t slept. He stood there, nearly six feet tall and despite his eighty years — or more, since he didn’t know his exact age — quite erect, although admittedly one hand was leaning on a rough cane, while the other, as horny and clawlike as the talon of a gigantic bird, rested on the dirty handrail of the wooden staircase, scaring the cockroaches into the cracks. He was wearing the trousers and vest of a suit made of the finest material, of a cut that a dying breed of London tailors is taking to the grave. His shoes, too, with their suede uppers fastened from the side, were almost dandy-like in their elegance. Instead of a jacket, however, he had put on a sleeveless sheepskin, a so-called cojoc , which after decades of use hid a fleece that had worn down to a few moldy remnants with the brownish sheen of old bacon rind. His nose was bold, prominent, and vulture-like, and his mustache was white as snow and soft as silk and covered his mouth completely. His black eyes glowed beneath his bushy eyebrows. They were set close together, like those of a lurking boar, wily and dangerous. He was unshaved — white stubble covered his gaunt cheeks. A tall, pointed lambskin cap crowned his skull, which was completely bare; he never took it off, no matter what the season or occasion. He called for his coachman. His voice had retained the power of his youth and betrayed the full tone used by the speech-happy Latins.

He called out three times: “Miron!” Then, louder and louder: “Miron! Miron!”

The scopit , who had the same name as Czernopol’s patron saint, came waddling on flat feet across the yard. The eunuch’s fat rolled up the stairs and was still in motion when its owner came to a stop. Old Paşcanu, who hadn’t taken his angry eyes off his coachman, turned around without a word and walked into the next room, rapping his cane against the floor. The coachman followed. The room was in disrepair, with ugly plush-covered furniture, almost entirely darkened by the heavy curtains in front of the small windows. A covered picture hung on the wall — the Titian. Beside it stood a large iron antique safe.

Old Paşcanu stepped into the center of the room and turned around. The coachman had stayed by the door. He was even taller than his master, and his back was so enormous it could have supplied five times the flesh the other had on his bones. When he was behind the two colossal horses, up on the box of the hulking old carriage, he looked natural enough, but on his own two legs he looked like a human mountain. The street boys of Czernopol called him Gogeamite , which was derived from the name of the giant boxer Gogea Mitu. His spongelike neck was covered with a network of delicate, sharply etched grooves, as if the skin of the oldest Indian temple-elephant had acquired the rosy color and the tenderness of a suckling pig. His body was shaped like a roller, and was wrapped around several times with a purple sash that must been miles long. His back was like a whale’s, beckoning to be harpooned.

Old Paşcanu was clearly tempted to vent his feelings with his cane on that very back. He yelled at the coachman:

“You’re sleeping, Miron! You sleep day and night, in the stable and on the coachbox. You sleep in your shoes. You just hang there in your pants and sleep like a pumpkin in a sack.”

“I’m not asleep, sir, I’m awake,” the man said in a fluting voice that spilled out of his throat like some clear oil.

“You were sleeping while I was on my knees praying next to my wives’ coffins!”

Miron didn’t answer. Old Paşcanu looked him in the eye. His mustache was twitching.

“Praying, you understand!”

“Praying, sir,” the angelic voice echoed.

“Now go to the Jew Brill, you elephant without balls. Go to his house. Tell him to come here right away, before he closes up his shop. Right this minute. I want to speak with him. Tell him to bring his magnifying glass. You wait for him and bring him here. Tell him you’ve been instructed to go to another Jew if he keeps you waiting. Bring him here. Then, while he’s with me, drive out to the Jew Perko …”

“He’s not a Jew, sir,” the eunuch objected gently.

“Are you contradicting me? Go to the Jew Perko, I say. Bring him here as well, and keep him waiting until the other has gone. They’re not to see each other. Now go!”

“I’m going, sir,” said the voice from the whale, with heavenly unction.

He rolled out the door. Old Paşcanu waited until he’d closed the door behind him, then pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket, went to the safe, and opened it. He bent over, panting, leaning on his cane, and plunged his arm up to his shoulder into the deepest place of the safe. He rummaged around a while, finally withdrawing his talon, which now clutched a fist-sized ball of newspaper. He unfolded the paper. A small box appeared. He pressed his calloused thumb against it, as if testing it, and then deposited the box in his vest pocket. With the fussiness of an old man he then relocked the safe, tucked the keys in his pocket, walked to the desk, banging his cane hard against the floorboards, and sat down on one of the plush-covered armchairs. In this way he waited, in the half-slumber of a very old man, slightly bent forward, lightly nodding with his upper body, with half-closed eyes and an occasionally twitching mustache. As soon as steps could be heard on the stairs, however, his eyes reopened, and his entire life force, sinister and incalculable like a violent force of nature, seemed to flow back into him through the crafty slits beneath his white eyebrows. Only his eyelids opened, nothing else moved. Tilting forward, he lurked like a huge forest creature crouching in the damp coolness of the deep leafy shade, awake and ready to spring out of the underbrush, dangerous, wreaking havoc, dominant. He was very striking. A narrow, dense band of light fell through a slit in the curtain at a slant in front of him.

The castrato led in the merchant Usher Brill.

“We want to be alone,” ordered Săndrel Paşcanu, without reacting to the Jew’s greeting.

“Alone, sir!” Miron fluted, then rolled out the door and pulled it shut. Brill was breathing quietly, his calm as profound as a well. Jews are heroes.

“Did you bring your glass?” asked old Paşcanu.

“I did,” answered Brill from the depths of inexhaustible patience.

“Here!” said Paşcanu, and reached into his vest pocket. He had stiff cuffs on his sleeves, clamped together with enormous barbaric cuff links that betrayed his background: lumps of gold studded with rubies. One of these caught on his watch chain. He fumbled with it, then impatiently tugged it off. His movements remained animated after he pulled the small box from his pocket. He tossed it onto the table so brusquely that it bounced. Something rolled out and onto the ground. Brill bent over to pick it up.

When he stood back up he almost bumped into old Paşcanu, who had risen and was looming menacingly above him, his vulture’s nose jutting forward as if ready to hack something to pieces, his white mustache fluffed out, his claws digging into the back of the armchair. Brill glanced at him with sad, cyclamen-colored eyes behind eyelashes that had faded to a colorless stubble. The old man sat back down.