Ioana Pârvulescu - Life Begins on Friday

‘What does it mean, ‘different religions’?’

‘It means one makes the sign of the cross from right to left and the other from left to right or not at all.’

Nicu thought that maybe it depended on whether you were left- or right-handed and asked curiously: ‘If you make the sign of the cross with your left hand, are you of a different religion?’

The doorman did not answer, because to tell the truth, he did not much care about such hare-brained twaddle; he left such things to his wife.

‘I know a love story, but it’s not to do with religions,’ said Nicu. ‘I met Mr Alexandru Livezeanu, he was in a big hurry, like he always is, and he sent me on an errand, even though Sunday’s my day off. He said it was urgent! Do you believe me when I say it’s to do with the strong chains of love ? You know, young man, who I mean,’ he said excitedly.

The doorman didn’t ask who it was, unfortunately, although Nicu would have been glad to tell him. Old man Cercel wasn’t curious by nature. As a doorman for a big newspaper, he had met too many people in his life. He wasn’t curious about people. That was why he reared doves.

On by one, the General took the Calendars placed in a pile on the table, then the magazines which the hound had sniffed, firstly with interest, then without interest, before raising his muzzle to the much more entertaining fringes on the upholstery of the armchair. The borzoi looked at Algiu reproachfully: for two hours he had not budged from the armchair. The hound’s almond-shaped eyes showed a shadow of puzzlement: his master was reading, motionless, without calling his name, without so much as glancing at him. The General, on the other hand, was reliving every day of the year 1893, when his poor wife had still been there beside him, on the other side of the table, working on her embroidery, a time when the hound had not even been born, and Lord’s parents, each a borzoi of impressive pedigree , had been separated by many kilometres, one in Craiova, the other in Bucharest. Mrs Turnescu’s visit, coming soon after Costache’s, had reawakened his longing to work. He went back over the news items about the demolition of the Sărindar Church, although he knew them almost by heart. At the time he had already resigned the post of Prefect, but he well remembered the circumstances of the demolition and told himself yet again, that Filipescu was not to blame. In any event, it was not because of Filipescu that he was rereading the article, although somehow it was all connected. He then returned to the recent newspapers. And just as he was about to give up, he came across a news item in tiny letters that he had hitherto missed, although it was below a drawing of the courtroom in Brăila, during the trial of Miss Gorjan, the daughter of General Gorjan, whom he had known as a colonel. He now read the article and within its circumference he saw that the riddle that the young Costache had told him about was beginning to make sense: light, Popescu, light, Holy Mother, gift …

‘Not now, Lord, be patient!’

The General made some notes in pencil, consulted other calendars of ephemera, and then summoned his adjutant, who arrived with his ears pricked up and with his usual whiff of boot polish.

‘Go and find Mr Costache. If you do not find him, leave word that I invite him to come today, tomorrow, whenever he can, no matter the hour.’

Had he not known that orders are to be obeyed not questioned, the adjutant would have had a number of solid objections. But as it was, the man looked at the General with the same expression in his eyes as that of the borzoi earlier, a similarity compounded by the fact that the eyes of both were almond-shaped.

The hound at last received a pat on the head and was taken out into the yard, where he ran madly around in the blizzard. The General felt like doing the same, but he was accustomed not to reveal his feelings. He stood motionless by the door, between the two naked statues that were impervious to the cold. The wind blew through the ivy that clad the wall, but without being able to snap it. Ivy knew how to fight, and the General admired it for that reason.

I have been talking to myself less and less and perhaps soon this voice that keeps me prisoner in its depths will fall silent and I will be the same as I once was. Perhaps this world will completely swallow me up and I will no longer long for the other world. Perhaps the interior and the exterior will merge. I don’t know whether this world is real, but I know that my mind is made in such a way that it cannot but seem real to me. I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to understand it more, but I know that until my very last moment I will want to find out .

After I went back with the answer that Iulia was home alone, Alexandru put me in a cab and told the cabman to take me to his house in the centre of town. He told me that from now on I was his guest, and would continue to be for as long as I did him the pleasure of wanting to be his guest, but that on the way I should stop off at the hôtel and announce that I wasn’t staying there any more. He told me what to tell his servant and assured me that he would come later to see how I felt. He was terribly agitated and kept biting one gloved finger. The cabman stopped at the hôtel and told me in a reedy voice that he would wait for me. I climbed down, almost falling again, as it was almost pitch black. I entered, told them I was leaving, and a man who was like an oriental rug, soft and enveloping and convoluted, answered that he was sorry, since everything was paid for a week in advance, that they had been honoured to have a guest such as myself (but why?) and that an errand boy had left some things for me.

‘Are you Mr Frascati?’ I asked, but he laughed cheerlessly and gave me a very piercing look.

I went upstairs to fetch my things from the room, intending to leave as quickly as possible. I felt out of my element and I was afraid. Otto, who was upstairs, didn’t want to let me leave. He planted himself in front of the door and started telling me something about some miracle-working icon. He told me that the churches were in a ferment and that the rumour had spread swiftly from one to the other: a priceless icon has vanished, wunderschön , and then he told me some details that I couldn’t follow, especially since he was speaking now in Romanian, now in German. And especially since a rich young man, sehr sehr reich , Alexandru Livizeanu, was mixed up in the whole affair, and that came as a blow to me. Everybody thinks he has the icon. Is this what Alexandru suggested to me? That he is a thief?

When I went downstairs at last, the man with the oriental air stopped me and showed me something in a newspaper, Lumea Nouă or something like that. I sensed it wasn’t good and I wanted not to look, but it wasn’t possible, given his enveloping manner. The man forced me to read it, with a malicious gleam in his eye. It was my portrait, drawn quite nicely, and beneath it the title in capital letters: A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER. And below it, in smaller letters: Whence comes Mr Dan Kretzu? The unsigned article was about ‘the stranger who seems to know more than we’ and some of the things I had told Dr Marguis, luckily not very many, about ‘a world with other rules and a future time, which will be rather grim for us.’ But the doctor was not mentioned. He had promised me absolute discretion. Can he have betrayed me? In less than ten minutes the only people who have helped me in my new life, and whom I trusted, each seemed to have a serious flaw. The man with the oriental smile assured me that he would be honoured (again!) for me to remain there, that he was prepared to cover all the costs, accommodation and board, and that I would have a room to myself. He gave me to understand that lots of people would come, knowing that… I thanked him and left without looking back, feeling his eyes on the back of my neck.