Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

Nor did he betray Ephraim Perko. No one understood what might have motivated him to forego this final — and, one would think, justifiable — act of revenge. People said he was simply a broken man.

The opposite sounds more convincing: he was anything but broken, anything but ready to resign what was clearly the game of his life. And so, presumably, he said nothing so as to be able to exact his revenge in a far more thorough manner later, without incriminating himself by showing his hand now.

The word among the Russian emigrants was that the old man had succumbed to the unique charm and the astonishing powers of persuasion of Ephraim Perko just like everyone else. But that, too, is highly unlikely. Săndrel Paşcanu was not the man to be fleeced by a brazen scoundrel like Perko, who was as brash as a blowfly. Paşcanu did not feel the aristocratic constraint that required having a creature like that on hand to take care of all the troublesome logistics, the plotting and planning, making the rounds of officials or else going around them somehow, and whose services also helped his clients overcome their own inhibitions. The aristocrat stood to gain much more than he might forfeit by dealing with such a person, of whom he only has a faint picture anyway. The institution of the house-Jew, who feels tacitly permitted to cheat his master at every turn, was an ancient tradition within the feudal caste of the eastern lands. And ever since we met Solly Brill, and had tasted the delights of his amusing directness and admired his juggler’s adroitness in all practical operations, we had nothing but understanding for such an arrangement.

But Săndrel Paşcanu was a peasant and a greedy rogue himself. A man who comes from severe poverty but manages to become a millionaire, and who associates with the great men of the world as with his own kind, is not so easily blinded by the audacity of a cheap crook.

Incidentally, Ephraim Perko casually resurfaced in Czernopol a year later as jaunty as ever. Not the smallest infraction could be proven against him, not even the knowledge that anyone else — much less himself — had ever intended to break the law. Nevertheless, coming back was a risky thing to do. Presumably he wasn’t prompted to do so because of his utter innocence: So what did bring him back to Czernopol?

He wasn’t poor. Counting the Paşcanu diamond with all his other jewelry, which he owned thanks to the misfortune of the Russian refugees, not to mention his cash holdings and the return from diverse transactions — he kept very busy — Perko must have acquired a fortune sizable enough to have allowed him to settle on the Riviera, for instance, where he could have had incomparably greater hunting, with more game in the preserve, so to speak. But he chose not to leave Czernopol. He belonged to this city, just as the city belonged to him. I’m certain that old Paşcanu realized this, and that he had counted on it.

Only in Czernopol was Ephraim Perko allowed to be exactly who he was; only here could he count on an utter and unchallenged acceptance. What need did he have of the déclassé duchesses of the Côte d’Azur, when the ladies of the Trocadero, which was owned by his friend Schorodok, were just as well (if not much better) built? Did the band leader at the casino in Monte Carlo launch into the tango “Ay-ay-ay” the minute Ephraim Perko walked through the door? Gyorgyovich Ianku never failed to do so, even if this meant interrupting the national anthem, which he was expected to play at three in the morning, as a signal that the official portion of the evening was over and the unofficial part could begin. And begin it did when Effi Perko arrived! What need did this diminutive playboy have for yachts in blue bays — he was afraid of water. A Rolls-Royce? Here he happened to be one of two or three people who could afford one if they wanted. But did he? He did not. He preferred the sweet, romantic carriages that swung back and forth, dipping deep into their long leaf springs, and the homey tang of the horses, the brittle old protective leather, and the musty smell of the coachman’s coat. Although he was born in Odessa, Czernopol was Effi Perko’s true homeland. He was attached to this town with a natural, gleeful dedication, a lucky boy in perfect, sunny resonance with the place that was both the source of his good fortune and its stage. And Czernopol rewarded his loyalty by providing him with a willing realm that blossomed forth like King Laurin’s rose garden.

It was also the only place on earth where people could understand his speech.

Effi Perko spoke Russian, German, Romanian, Ukrainian, Polish, Yiddish, French, English, and Italian all in the same way: namely, gurgling, croaking, and choking — like someone dreaming that he’s spitting out his teeth. You had to have a keen and well-trained ear in order to understand a single one of his sentences, and you had to have a similarly keen and well-trained spirit — the spirit of Czernopol — in order to fully appreciate the wit behind his words, both the intended as well as the accidental.

It wasn’t so bad when he explained that he was an aficionado of opera, while his wife preferred comedy — at that time he had been married three times, and two more wives would follow, each more beautiful than the last — and sank his teeth into the sentence: “I likh verry mutch goink to opera, but my wife she prreferrs more the comedies.” But it was quite a stimulating challenge to decipher, for example: “I shut go for makingk bisness vit Peshkaner? I shut vant for go making caca in bucket!”—by which he meant: People think that I got involved in some dealings with Paşcanu; do they think I want to get locked up in a cell where to relieve myself all I would have at my disposal would be a bucket? Even the metaphor he used—“making caca in bucket”—was not some regional turn of phrase but his own coinage, invented on the spot.

And the remarks he casually tossed aside were downright brilliant, as for instance his appraisal of a sensually languid — not languidly sensual — woman: “she snorrs vit de oygen”—she snores with her eyes.

The man clearly possessed great charm as well. No one who saw Effi Perko dancing at the Trocadero, with great abandon, agility, and grace, and with women two or three heads taller than himself — he only liked tall blond women with beautiful skin, ample bosoms, and long legs — could deny a certain admiration for this lucky dwarf with the character of a hyena. He deported himself with the elegance of a racetrack devotee: the high narrow collar of his silk shirts joined with a gold pin clasped beneath his narrow tie, a gray homburg with a bound edge and black band, tilting off his forehead onto the back of his neck, his jacket unbuttoned and opened to reveal his exotic belt of crocodile leather or snakeskin, his hands permanently in his trouser pockets, and more often than not sporting a toothpick in his mouth. He smelled of high-priced fragrances, like a harem beauty. One time he asked old Brill, point-blank: “Say, Brill, who wears such tidy shmattes vat you sell?” It was no wonder that Bubi Brill, for deeper reasons than “simply business,” as he said, sought out Ephraim Perko’s friendship. It was even less surprising that Herr Tarangolian found this highly amusing.

“If Tildy can be considered the only man in Czernopol with a true face,” opined the prefect, “then we rightly have to concede to my friend Perko that no one else — not even Năstase — could boast such nerve.”

As for Bubi Brill, we later had more than enough opportunity to get to know him as he was an avid member of the tennis club near our house, which we eventually convinced our parents to let us join. The clubhouse had been the officers’ salon of the former Austrian military shooting range pavilion and was built in the classic style of the fin de siècle: it was too large to be a weather station packed with barometers, thermometers, wind vanes, and hygrometers, and too small for a bathhouse or public library. The old bullet trap could still be found behind the building: as high as a house, long since overgrown with the most beautiful meadow grass, and hemmed in by streets lined with nut trees — a paradise for the happy children who were allowed to grow up without much supervision, and for the soldiers from the nearby barracks, who on warm summer nights attempted to ravish the servant girls they lured there. The tennis courts were managed by an attendant, who also served as the municipal dogcatcher, or hitzel , setting forth in that capacity twice a week with a cage mounted to a cart and a wire snare affixed to a long pole, to reduce the prodigious numbers of strays that roamed the streets. He was only too happy to round up pedigreed dogs as well, and charged their owners a handsome fee for their release. The president of the Czernopol Lawn Tennis Club was Wolf Leibish, Baronet von Merores, Junior, who was quite devoted to the sport.