Ioana Pârvulescu - Life Begins on Friday

Nicu wondered which was his real mother, the one now or the one of a few days ago, with the cracked voice and insane eyes, the one who couldn’t recognize him? Who was it who took his mother’s place and tortured her and why did she torture and frighten him too? He hugged his real mother as tightly as he could, so that she wouldn’t go outside and run down a mole hole where he wouldn’t be able to reach her.

*

When he came home, after work, which had been tiring — five errands to addresses that were quite far away from each other — but which had also provided a few tips to match, his mother was doing the laundry, scrubbing the clothes on a washboard that tickled your palms if you stroked it, but which gave you calluses if you scrubbed properly. The shirts and handkerchiefs were boiling in a cauldron with starch. In the meantime, they ate and then Nicu offered to hang the clothes on the line. He liked the way the soft, steaming clothes stiffened in the frost and stuck together, and when you separated them, they creaked like a rusty door hinge. He was too restless to stay at home and he told his mother that he was going to visit Jacques, to take him the mammoths he had promised him. He showed her the drawing in Universul Ilustrat , and she laughed at their saw-tooth backs and their tails as long as a day of fasting. Her laugh reminded him of another laugh, her mother’s, as if his grandmother was still there in his mother’s laugh, the same as people who are far away can be inside the funnel of a telephone. He was little then, very little, and they were eating stony cherries together. His grandmother tore them in two for him so that he could chew them more easily. He took one and to his amazement he discovered that something nice was wriggling inside, like the horns of a snail. He showed his grandmother and she said: ‘Ugh!’ and when he started to laugh, they did the same thing with each cherry: when the little worm appeared, she would say: ‘Ugh!’ and they both laughed till their bellies ached. The cherries without worms weren’t funny, they set them aside; only the ones in which there was movement interested them. It was one of the happiest days he remembered, and ever since Nicu had reckoned that only when he laughed was it a good day. And today was a good day. His grandmother had told him that when she died she wanted to turn into a sparrow, that he should be very careful with sparrows, because maybe it would be her, hopping around among them, although it was hard to imagine her hopping, she had had a stiff back and found it difficult to move around the house. It was very hard to recognize her, since all sparrows looked alike, and so far none had seemed to take special delight in meeting him. He was sure that his grandmother would have drawn his attention by signalling him with her wings. On the way to Strada Fântânei, Nicu thought to hear a voice in his head, which said to him: it will be well! it will be well! it will be well! He didn’t know whose voice it was, for he could not believe the voice was his.

Jacques was happy too: Dr Rizea had given him a new flute as a present, a real marvel. He played Nicu Handel’s minuet, tee-tum-tum, tee-tum-tum, and then, unexpectedly, he stopped in the middle of a phrase and said: ‘You are invited to come with me, I mean with us, to Alexandrrru Livizeanu’s New Year parrty. Mr Dan Crrețu will be coming too. Is that not wonderrful? Papa received an invitation for the whole family and I asked that you come too, Iulia said that she would give you my suit for special occasions from two years ago, I have worrn it only twice, it is brrand new.’

He added in a whisper that Iulia and Alexandrru were ‘in love,’ and Nicu told him, putting on an uninterested air, that he had known that for a long time. Dr Margulis recommended that when you are ill you should always think about getting better and to keep saying to yourself: I’m getting better, getting better, getting better! Even when you’re not ill, it’s useful to say to yourself: it will be well, it will be well, it will be well! At least you get to wear a new suit at the end of a worn out year.

‘Will it be well?’

Pavel Mirto’s eyes glittered ironically behind his round glasses, while Procopiu, from the other office, inspected his moustache, as was his habit, as if he were afraid it might disappear.

‘Yes, I believe that Romania is like an orchestra, except that it has yet to play in a concert. It is still rehearsing. One of the violinists keeps playing wrong notes, the soloist enters in the wrong place, the wind section plays out of time and the conductor loses his temper, stops the music, scolds them all, everything is fragmentary and has to keep starting all over again, but at the concert, the melody will come together flawlessly and Europe’s applause…’

‘And when will this concert be, Mr Procopiu?’ asked Pavel, his whispery voice laden with a sarcasm that was inappropriate given he was the younger of the two.

‘Before you get married,’ replied Procopiu, with slight irritation, at which point Peppin came in without knocking.

‘Who, my Păvălucă? Are you getting married, laddie?’ he said in a voice that filled the office with good humour and scattered tension between the other two men. ‘I shall be first, let it be well understood. It is in order of birth, so that there won’t be a mad rush. The older brother takes priority.’

‘No,’ said Pavel drily, without raising his voice, ‘we were talking about the future of Romania, which Mr Procopiu was comparing with an orchestra endlessly rehearsing.’

‘Ah, no, to me it seems exactly like playing billiards at Fialkowski’s. You strike a ball in order to set another in motion, every move has a hidden aim, a zigzag of consequences, and everything moves closer and closer, as part of a cosmic mechanism. Maybe that was how God set the worlds in motion, with a cue. In the end, even if we cannot see it yet, we will win our historic billiard game.’

‘No,’ said Pavel, just as drily, ‘it sooner resembles a swarm of locusts.’

‘A flock of locusts,’ Procopiu corrected him.

‘A cloud of locusts,’ proposed Peppin, given his experience as a translator.

‘Never mind that, swarm, cloud, whatever! Until recently I didn’t even know that locusts do not fly, but only jump, they make huge jumps… And they let themselves be carried away on the wind like swift flying ships, they make no effort, put up no resistance, they harness, as I say, all the services nature provides free of charge.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Neculai Procopiu rather threateningly, but at the same time interested in the engineering side of the problem. ‘That we destroy everything like locusts?’

‘Oh, no, not at all, I have not made myself understood! On the contrary, I meant that the tempests blow over us and that we have no way of resisting them, our powers of resistance cannot compare with the power of history, and the same goes for personal life. Whenever the history of the world turns a page, we make a jump, without being able to control it, and our only chance is to let it carry us away, while harnessing the steam of events to the greatest possible extent, lest we be left behind on the ground. Let us be in step with the speed of time, or rather the times. Let us adjust ourselves, rather than put up resistance.’

‘Ah, yes, interesting,’ admitted the editor-in-chief, now calmer, ‘I can subscribe to that, especially if the times are favourable. But now time presses, rather than the times: we need to get down to the New Year issue. What do we have?’

They talked about the case of the missing icon, but they did not have any details. Procopiu offered to investigate the matter first thing in the morning, and if he could find nothing attractive, they would make a plain announcement. There was no further news about the Rareș Ochiu-Zănoagă case and the holidays had passed quietly. There was nothing they could use.