Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

I dreamed about them all, held each of them in my arms, let them engage me in the ever-alluring game of being ignored and then noticed, overwhelmed by their sudden acknowledgment, after which they would give themselves to me. This didn’t take on any concrete sensual image in my mind; what I experienced was the foretaste of a certain bliss, of unity not only with the beloved person but with the universe, a rising and setting, a kind of sensual death, which scared me and immediately made me wish that my beloveds would marry me and live with me a long long time.

Not that I was unaware of how absurd and embarrassingly comic the idea was that Frau Lyubanarov or Aunt Paulette might love the boy I was in any other way than one loves a child. But as the actors of our waking dreams, we are both their most extreme abstraction and their most distilled essence: we are I to the very core, ageless and sexless as the angels, but for the innate wisdom and stupidity of our sex. Never is our self-awareness more pure than in these images that our fantasy fashions from our desire, and at no time is our knowledge of ourselves more clear. Because in the staking and claiming of the world that is our childhood, everything remains image and parable. Including the plunging together of lovers, which produces nothing more than itself — the image of love.

When I thought about Tamara Tildy, this image of love was full of enigmas, of unrest and torments, but it was also ready for a redemption that superseded all reality — a combination of deep bewilderment and Easter-like promise. If I thought of Frau Lyubanarov, it was of a pagan sweetness, of the spirit of the flesh smelted into the scent of honey and the crimson haze of sensuality: my breath basked in the grassy acerbity of her hair, my arms and hands surrendered to the deliciousness of smooth skin pulsating with sunlight. When I embraced Aunt Paulette, it was with a fighting, destructive passion, an angry ardor that opened wounds until our foreheads leaned together out of exhaustion; sometimes I dreamt of both of us dying, of an acknowledgment that came too late, as we expired. When I dreamed of Blanche, however, I was torn by the ache of eternally unresolved difference, the need of two great solitudes meeting only in the gaze of a single yearning. She was the most painful and the most beautiful, the most knowing of all my loves.

I can picture her face, in which only a few, barely discernible differences of proportion, of expression, of lines, caught my eye, kept me from seeing through her mask. It was without a single disharmony, unlike, say, in Tamara Tildy’s face, whose hooked nose shot out of the doll-like oval as if of its own accord, razor sharp. And still there was an awe-inspiring otherness in the relation of her broad and not very high forehead to her narrow cheeks, of her fine, long nose to her large, overripe, and expressive mouth, in the beautiful almond cut of her eyes and the alarmingly rich framework of her firm black and very curly hair — an otherness that she seemed to recognize in herself and which evidently caused her sorrow, and threw me back into my own otherness causing me a similar sorrow.

Even in my dreams I never dared touch her. If my mouth moved close to hers to kiss her, her countenance would dissipate like breath on a mirror. I was only able to imagine her from a distance, and always alone: I pictured her in the flowery meadows of a gentle landscape — a German landscape, the East being too garish for her tender magic. She was not of the willowy slenderness that you see alongside an oasis, a gracefully angled arm propping a tall jar. I know nothing about her body; today I can’t picture how she moved and probably could not do so back then: she would sit or stand in a German world of gentle hills, flowery village greens, distant spired cities, in pale shades like one of Dürer’s early silverpoints — lonely, sad, but accoutred with the quiet and delightful certainty of our love.

For I took care not to conjure the pain of the enormous otherness; I removed it from me, so as not to fall into the abyss of the much larger distance that already lay between us. Not the distance imposed on us by race — that, too, was only a metaphor — but the one that is revealed by love.

We suffered because of how badly she danced. This great-granddaughter of Judith and granddaughter of Salome was incapable of moving in rhythm to the music she so adored. She was too much like a jar herself to carry in her blood the ancient wisdom of the swaying gait under the elongated burden of bulbous jars and the beautiful flow of arms to prop them. Nor did her skin display that saturated ochre sheen that seemed to reflect the terra-cotta vessels she carried on the head. Her skin was opaline, almost transparent, like the fragile sides of delicate Chinese porcelain, sprinkled here and there with a tender hint of sepia — at the bridge of her nose and on her shoulders and upper arms, pale like the tint of an eggshell. Although her lids were a bit on the thick side, they released a bluish shimmer whenever she lowered them; the wreath of her lashes cast a pale shadow on the matte, freckled skin of her gently vaulted cheeks. And another, darker shadow, precursor to a delicate down, could be seen around the corners of her large, knowing mouth. All of that was very exposed and at the same time very static. She was filled with something that weighed her down and threatened to explode at any moment. She couldn’t dance because she didn’t take herself lightly. We had read that angels could fly because they take themselves lightly.

Of course not too much was being asked of her as Clara in the snowflake scene from Nutcracker . As well as she could, Madame Aritonovich confined her part to a few decorative poses. We rehearsed one last time with the full orchestra and in costume. The performance was to take place in the hall of the institute. The orchestra was seated in the gallery. The spectators were seated on both sides of the hall, next to our classrooms. Madame proved a very ingenious director — she thought of everything. There was a cold buffet and punch for the grown-ups, ice cream and sweets for the children. The last week of preparations was enchanted. Dr. Salzmann, who was surprisingly strong, performed miracles transporting furniture. Even Fräulein Zehrer lent a hand; she also contributed greatly by monitoring the precision of the corps de ballet. We feverishly awaited the Sunday evening when the performance was to take place.

The final game of the league championship, between Mircea Doboş and Makkabi, was being held that same afternoon. Even among the residents of our rather remote villa district, the tension over the outcome was palpable. Colonel Turturiuk, the honorary president of Mircea Doboş, was picked up by a delegation from the club and an escort from the national student fraternity Junimea, traveling in a long column of coaches. By noon Frau Lyubanarov was standing at the gate, waving and greeting acquaintances. Even Herr Kunzelmann, who came rattling up on the taradaika pulled by his Kobiela to deliver fruit from his garden, was on the way to the playing field. He was wearing a dark Sunday coat and a gray felt hat with a black band, but hadn’t been able to part with his riding pants and leather gaiters. Whip in hand, he explained to us why he had to be there “without fail”: Makkabi had beaten Jahn a few weeks earlier because the referee “hadn’t been as objective as he should have been” and now he had a craving “to be a witness to the revenge” that at least Mircea Doboş was going to have on the Jews, because this time it simply wasn’t possible that the referee would side with Makkabi. Raising his finger, Herr Kunzelmann also quoted the warning of his great wise man Wilhelm Busch: