Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

Will it sound off-putting if I say that we weren’t the least bit dismayed to realize who it was? But this was not because our other image of the man had faded; on the contrary, it had long ago acquired a life of its own, inside us, unfettered from his person, forever free and independent — the hussar in his dazzling uniform that threw off sparks of blue and gold, his stallion and saber transforming him into a dangerous hornet, the menacing protector of his lady who glided alongside, at rest in the shell of her sleigh, the dogs dancing around like a pack of mythic guards … It’s true that this image had flashed by in an instant, straight into the enigmatic depths of the past, where it was entrusted to our powers of imagination before our eyes scarcely could take it in. But that doesn’t mean that it had become a dream with no correspondence to reality — no, that wasn’t the reason we remained unmoved when confronted with the actual man. In fact, it was precisely because we recognized him, because our vision of the hussar was a perfect, seamless match with the somber stranger in his well-preserved travel suit — that is to say, the reality was so convincing it left us no room for baffled amazement.

Because this reality was inherently transcendent, made plain to us by a gently persistent illumination, a dawning sobriety, which although it did not originate with this reality and in fact barely touched its skin, much less its core, did offer an intimation, like the distant echo of a sounding, that all reality occurs in this way : not merely in the sense that our expectations of life might find fulfillment — albeit only as it is granted or rather fated — so that we only acquire late in life what anticipation has long divested of its true value, but also because the reality never really affected us directly. However, even if the world was removed in a way that made it impossible for us to truly experience it, we nevertheless clearly felt how much it molded us from without, from outside ourselves. No refraction by the prism of perception can diminish the power of the events themselves. Tildy had come to talk to Aunt Paulette about his wife, since he knew our aunt was a friend of Herr Adamowski’s. Because Tamara Tildy had left the house in our neighborhood and moved in with Herr Adamowski.

Naturally we never found out anything about the conversation he had with our aunt. He left half an hour later and cut through the aura of the woman at the garden gate, his countenance unmoved, his back flat and straight as a board. Overcome with curiosity, we ran into the house and ascertained what we could. All we were told was that Tildy had finally been released from the asylum, but was going back one more time — presumably to fetch his things. As for his future, they simply shrugged their shoulders. Given the party now in power, there could be no talk of his being rehabilitated.

“Won’t he duel with any of the men he challenged?” We posed our question in all innocence but they didn’t understand that and dismissed it as inappropriate and silly.

That same afternoon, Frau Lyubanarov vanished from the gate.

“If you didn’t know who she was waiting for, day in and day out,” Widow Morar later told us, smiling with eyes closed in a state of ecstasy, as if blinded by the joyful truth coming out of her golden mouth, “if you didn’t know before, then now you do: he was the one she was waiting for. And every man that passed by was his herald. Because she has evil in her blood. She was conceived in sin and born and nursed with her mother’s hatred, the hatred of a common maid. She had to wait for him in order to annihilate him, out of hatred for the other who is her sister and is not her sister, a princess so delicate and so unique that in this world she is like a butterfly in a thunderstorm.”

But the strange thing was that our old friend’s oracular whisper now struck us as vapid. The biblical intonation, part curse and part annunciation, which used to cause our eyes to gape and filled our hearts with an almost holy awe, no longer held us in its spell. The monotony of her interpretations began to bore us. Their mythic oversimplification no longer sufficed to explain all the incomprehensible things that life now offered.

Another strange thing happened: our interest in the fate of our hero declined — or you might say became more abstract — just as his dramatic situation was approaching its pointed end. Much later, while reading Dorian Gray , we would be upset by a cynical remark of Lord Henry concerning the suicide of Sibyl Vane: namely, that he felt younger by years upon hearing that romantic gestures of that magnitude, which no one really believed people actually did, truly happened. Our experience was just the opposite, although it did not completely contradict that sentiment: namely, that living through a genuine drama only amplifies its incredibility; in other words: that the loss of reality stands in direct proportion to the intensity of the experienced reality. The appearance of Tildy shorn of mystery only touched us on the outermost surface because it was so irreversibly real; and in that same way, the news of his death and the circumstances surrounding it merely struck us as a distant echo. It took a long time for his story to become absorbed in us —a long time and much travel until we regained the wondrous world of the literary existence of our childhood.

As for Frau Lyubanarov’s disappearance from the garden gate, which would set off subsequent events, we heard yet other commentaries.

“ Que voulez-vous? ” asked Uncle Sergei. “The fact that she went after him is the most basic female psychology. He almost fought a duel on her behalf. What can convince a woman more about her man than his willingness to die for her? Read Leskov …”

Aunt Paulette, to whom he was speaking, remained unmoved for some time, and then said, slothfully: “Yes, I will read your poet in order to better understand women. But I think there’s a simpler explanation: He was the only one who never paid attention to her.”

“How so?” Uncle Sergei was getting worked up. “Are you saying that a man wouldn’t even notice the woman for whom he is willing to risk his life, not even with a small corner of his fantasy? Ah, chère cousine , you consider us men to be less coquettish than we really are.”

“No. I think you are every bit as exaggerated.”

“It only speaks for the unfortunate Major Tildy that he was willing to duel for a principle,” Aunt Elvira chimed in quietly. She didn’t have to swallow the rest of the sentence, since her meaning was written clearly on her face: “—and not for a woman like that.”

Conversations that we chanced to overhear — or, better put, monologues of this sort that were directed against each other — left us irritated, and we responded by being willful and recalcitrant. Against our great reluctance, they exposed us to the entirely new field of stupidity, full of hidden snares. We didn’t encounter the dangers they posed until much later, and even then it’s possible we never fully understood them.

Much later we had an opportunity to hear Herr Tarangolian’s view of the events back then. By that point he had long since removed himself from our world, so we had to remind him of certain specifics surrounding the case before he could recall it in any detail.

“You may rest assured that Tildy wasn’t the only one immune to the charms of this woman,” the prefect said, with dignity, adjusting the flaming red carnation in his buttonhole. “And of course there might be a kernel of truth in the theory that his evident indifference provoked her to follow him all the way to the asylum. But not much more truth than Sergei Nikiforich’s version or the one espoused by your macabre Widow Morar. Or even in the view of Fiokla Ignatieva, which, if I remember correctly, was far more plain and simple: namely, that no other man came down the street that afternoon. Believe all of it and none of it. In general, you should always believe everything and nothing at the same time. This formula is particularly recommended in psychology, which is the reason why that field is so popular, and why it is always correct in the general application and never in the specific case. So always take hold of the most obvious interpretation, while at the same time searching for the most remote.”