Ioana Pârvulescu - Life Begins on Friday

I was taken to a room with two beds, I washed using the water a hotel employee poured into a porcelain basin, dried myself with a rough white towel, and went down to the dining room, although I do not know what I ate, since I was drained of strength. Coming back upstairs, I was surprised to find this stranger, with whom I am given to understand I have to share the room. I lay down on the iron bedstead, the berth of my fears. The sheet was clean, white, and the quilt thick, made of cherry-red silk. It smelled nasty, of cockroach powder, I think. Then I fell into a deep sleep, where I dreamt of so much peace and so much solitude. Day is beginning to break.

My room-mate woke up and made all kinds of sounds. I don’t know whether he was choking or spitting or giving up the ghost. Then, he stripped stark naked and started washing his whole body thoroughly, without any embarrassment at my presence. I noticed his whitish skin. In the meantime, he started to speak, without turning around to see whether his words had any effect. He is called Otto and he is a Saxon, but he speaks Romanian, albeit with an accent. He was born in Michelsberg , that is, Cisnădioara, in Transylvania. They made him an apprentice at the age of twelve, mit zwölf — he is a mason — he finished his army service, and now he is twenty-six and has come here in search of work. Only in a big city can you find work in his trade even in winter, he told me. He arrived on the Zug . At the border, in Predeal, he says that people change their clothes, putting on the luxury items they have bought in Kronstadt, Budapest or Vienna, so that they will not have to pay customs taxes on them, and putting their ordinary clothes in their suitcases.

He found himself with a new hat on his head and had to put his old one in his suitcase: a lady in his compartment asked him to wear it; she had bought it for her husband. They were worried, because in the train there was a rumour that the Romanians from the Kingdom were demanding a Pass . The Turks and the Russians are the only others who demand them. When his turn came, he handed the customs officer all kinds of Papiere , but the customs officer was still not satisfied and handed them back. A foreign traveller before him had been turned back, and so Otto was afraid. Luckiy he had his military passbook, which saved him: the customs officer declared himself satisfied and Otto continued his journey. ‘I escaped by a hair’s breadth!’, said Otto, towelling himself and looking in the mirror, in which he could also see me. He admired die Transsylwanischen Alpen , impressed by their height and peaks, and sat looking out of the train window the whole way. When he alighted at the station, where the wind was blowing, nobody said anything to him, and he liked that, rumänische Ordnung , because in the Empire nothing of the sort would have been allowed. He also liked the train station at Sinaia and the royal platform, but Bucharest’s Gara de Nord had not impressed him much, particularly given that the paving was rather broken. On the other hand, he was bowled over by die Droschken , the elegant cabs, with the cabmen dressed in velvet, with their velvet caps and sturdy roan horses. On the train, he discovered from another Saxon that in Bucharest Germans stay at the Wilhelm, a hotel near the Elisabeta Boulevard.

Otto had finished towelling himself. He hung the towel on the peg by the sink and started to dress, pulling on long-johns and a flannel undershirt. In the afternoon, he reached the capital of Romania, and at dusk the Wilhelm. He walked down a long but rather narrow street, Victory Avenue , passed the Royal Palace, which was like a large hotel — he had done his army service in Vienna and so he could make the comparison — and finally reached a boulevard with electric lighting and trams. He turned right down a short street next to the park. Wilhelm had died, unfortunately, and the current owner said he could stay overnight on a sofa, without charge, but no longer than that. And so he arrived at the Frascati, where he was staying also free of charge, on the condition that he repaint the kitchens and outbuildings in the spring. But he was looking for serious work at some church, because he was hard up. He had met some mural painters and masons and befriended them. Then, he started asking me questions: who I am, how old I am, whether I have a wife and children and a mother, a father and brothers. There are people, such as this Otto, who think that you have to say everything about yourself from the very first moment and you don’t know when they might stop asking questions. So I pretended to be asleep. After he went about his business, I got up and tried to adapt to life, like an animal cub. It is not easy, nothing is where it should be, but it is like a game: I have to find out, discover, pretend, and, above all, not say anything. Every word is laden with danger.

I have a chubby cheek, the like of which I have not had since I was a child. You would think my mouth were full. It might even suit me, if the other cheek did not look starved. Half of my face is well fed and the other half wasting away. I made the discovery as soon as I opened my eyes. I felt the illness in me. I had a fright and, barefoot, I went to the mirror. There I saw a girl with a ridiculous pink bonnet, from beneath which poked black locks of hair, the bulging cheek, and in the whites of the eyes all kinds of pink capillaries, the likes of which can be found in Papa’s anatomy books. They looked like branches and were painful and itchy, like dust in the eye. What could it be? Dust in the eyes and a swollen jaw? I would have liked to study medicine, to study how an illness lurks in concealment and then pops up overnight, becomes visible, strikes the eye, sometimes literally, as in my case. Papa is not at home and he won’t be back until evening. It’s bad not to have a doctor in the house, and it means I will have to stay like this until this evening. I did not know whether I should take a bath, but in the end I did so anyway. I did not know whether I should brush my teeth, either. In the end I did so, but taking great care to avoid the molar that was pulsing more than aching. I put on my gris souris dress.

Six fingernails had already been cut and were lying in a heap on the bathroom table, while the thin white arcs of another four were still attached to the fingers of the right hand that is writing these lines. Naturally, as I write, now, the other four have already gone the way of the first six. But the situation was as I have described it, six to four, swollen cheek, sand in the eyes, grey dress, when Safta entered the room and, with visible excitement, handed me a visiting card on a silver tray. I shivered when I read the name. The house was in a mess, in the middle of being cleaned, and I — well, see above. Of course, who else would have dared to come unannounced on a Monday morning! Safta had always taken his side, even against her mistress (it is of myself I speak!), but as it happens, you should never trust the people in your pay! Sooner or later they betray you: if not from spite or hatred, then from love. I think that Safta is one of the many young women who cannot resist him. True, he treats the servants nicely, which is, I think, one of his major qualities. One of his few major qualities… The other is… it is of no importance.

What did I do? I continued to cut my fingernails with seeming calm, an operation that I perform by myself, unlike others, and then I told the maid: ‘I am not acquainted with any Mr Alexandru Livezeanu. I know a Mr Hristea Livezeanu, a Mrs Maria Livezeanu, a Miss Marioara Livezeanu, Vișinescu by marriage and Livezeanu by divorce, a Miss Elena, who is the sister of Mrs Livezeanu mère , unmarried and undivorced, I know the gentleman Mr Mihai Livezeanu, known as Mișu, a student of medicine in Paris, who last year was kind enough to invite me to his birthday party, but not any Mr Alexandru Livezeanu. And so I cannot receive him, not now, not ever. Tell him that he has no business in Strada Fântânei, to forget the existence of this house and the Margulis family. And further tell him that a well-bred man knows that this is no day and no hour for visits. And tell him to… to…’