Ioana Pârvulescu - Life Begins on Friday

‘How is Speckle?’ Nicu felt duty-bound to ask, although since she decided to leave him, he didn’t love her any more.

‘She’s eating, drinking, shitting, and sends her regards.’

But the lad didn’t care about her regards or anything else to do with the past. He cared about his New Year’s wish. Because those wishes — as every boy knew — came true and you had to be very careful, like in the story of the golden fish, not to squander your luck. Mr Peppin brought him his commissions and Nicu set off, in more of a hurry than ever. There was one day and eleven hours left until the end of the year.

General Algiu was in the yard trying to train the hound. The snow was covered with the quadruped’s footprints. Mr Costache saw him from the carriage. The fence was not high; Algiu was not afraid of burglars. The General must have sensed him, although he had his back to him, because he turned around immediately and one might have presumed that beneath his white moustache he was smiling, although it concealed his mouth.

‘Forgive me, but I received your invitation only at midnight on Sunday, when I returned from the opera, and yesterday I was in Giurgiu.

‘What was the opera?’

‘ Rigoletto , with Miss Olympia Mărculescu in the role of Gilda. I have never seen the like. There was a storm of applause, and flowers like in the month of May, rather than December.’

Remarking in passing that Mr Costache had told him who played Gilda, but not who was cast in the role of Rigoletto, the General invited him inside. The borzoi led the way, turning his head to see whether they followed.

‘I have solved the riddle, but I have not solved the mystery,’ Costache hastened to say, holding a cup of Marghiloman coffee. ‘I have had occasion to discover that logic is like a drill, but you cannot control the outcome of the battle, for only therein is the truth to be found.’

‘I do not like to philosophize, Costache, but I do not understand what the truth is, when you yourself know that every truth takes a different form.’

‘I am beginning to believe that it is something above us and maybe the poor in spirit are riper, more prepared than those with an iron logic…’

He was unable to develop the thought because the borzoi jumped up and placed his paws on his knees. The General drove it away with difficulty and urged his friend to continue. Costache told him that after he had searched high and low, almost at random, all the mysteries turned out to be connected to an icon with diamonds on its shoulders, which had once been kept in the Sărindar Church. After the church was demolished, it came into the possession of the erstwhile Metropolitan Ghenadie Petrescu. Here things became complicated. Either before or on the day when the Metropolitan had been deposed, during the confusion, somebody had taken the icon. Or else Ghenadie had given it to a bishop who died, after which the trail became tangled once again. Whatever the case, the icon had ended up in an iron safe to which there were at least two keys. The man who was to remove the icon from the safe, as a mere intermediary, was Rareș Ochiu-Zănoagă: he had received two identical keys, placed separately in two deer-skin wallets. One he kept about his person, the other he had entrusted, as a precautionary measure, to the lawyer Movileanu.

Costache paused to drink some coffee laced with cognac, giving a slight smile.

‘Do you know a good lawyer, specializing in divorce?’

The General, who was accustomed to listening to everything until the end before asking any questions nodded to signify that he did and made a gesture with his right hand to signify that he would tell him after he finished. Costache therefore continued. It could be presupposed that with the lawyer Movileanu the young Rareș wished to solve some matters connected with money. If everything succeeded, the sum would have been large, and the money was therefore worth investing. He wanted to have an independent income, so that he could become a painter. He had mentioned something along these lines to the lawyer.

‘The rest I found out from Alexandru, the son of Hristea Livezeanu.’

The General frowned slightly, and Costache, who had known him in the days when he was Prefect, thought to understand what he meant, as if he had read his thoughts: He has a reputation as a coureur , but he is not a bad boy. I am a friend of his family.

‘He himself told me the other day, when I was a guest of the Livezeanu family.’

He refrained from sighing and continued in a neutral voice.

‘Rareș Ochiu Zănoagă and Alexandru had a common friend, a certain Grigore Cernea — yesterday I went to Giurgiu to confirm it — a man of thirty-five, rather shady, a one-time monk, who subsequently became a dealer in religious items. In most cases he was covered, the pretext was charitable works, but he pocketed half the money. But the icon from Sărindar could not be sold, the same as the rest of the monastery’s goods. When Nicu Filipescu decided to demolish it, the monastery’s goods, in the keeping of a number of bishops, had to be preserved for a new church, more beautiful than Sărindar, but whose site had not yet been chosen. As you know, the building of the new monastery has been postponed sine die . Grigore Cernea asked Livezeanu to meet a young man, namely Rareș, near the Băneasa estate on Friday, 19 December, at ten o’clock in the morning, to take a parcel from him and to deliver it to another man, whose name we do not know. Rareș himself was to tell Alexandru the man’s name and where to meet him. As is plain, Alexandru was nothing but another intermediary, who was the link between Rareș and the other man. He did not even do this for money, but from friendship for Grigore, so he assured me. And I believe that between young men of their sort such help is something usual. He is the type who gets mixed up in messes believing he is making a grand and noble gesture.’

Only now did Mr Costache sigh, looking with envy at the hound, which was as restless as a naughty child.

‘There is no need for you to tell me the rest, I understand: when he got there, Rareș had been shot, the package was gone, and he fled, realizing that there was something nasty behind it.’

‘That is what he told me, in almost exactly the same words. He offered to describe minute by minute what he did after he fled the place (he said that he did not even approach the man, and that he was quite simply afraid, thinking him dead), he said that we could send men to search his house and his apartment in town, he had nothing to hide. The fact that he knew nothing of the key persuaded me that he was not lying, otherwise he, rather than Petre, would have taken the one in the boy’s pocket. And he was greatly afraid lest he be accused of murdering him, which is why in the beginning he breathed not a word. Petre found out from the newspapers, firstly that Rareș Ochiu-Zănoagă was not dead, and then, to his despair, that he had died. Because only Rareș Ochiu-Zănoagă could have confirmed his innocence.’

‘And how did you solve the riddle?’ asked the General in a tone that reminded Costache of the moments when Algiu knew more than his subalterns and put them to the test.

Sensing a trap, Costache pondered well before saying: ‘With the exception of the word Popescu , unless it was not Popescu but popa (priest), the others, stars, light, Holy Mother and sar (leap) or dar (gift) are clear: Rareș had been curious and found out what he had to pass on, hence his death: the icon of the Holy Mother from Sărin dar , the one with the stars and light on her shoulders, that is, diamonds.’

‘I am afraid that you have not solved the riddle entirely correctly,’ said General Algiu cheerfully, and Costache frowned. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’