The Madonna on the Moon (23 page)

The party in Koka’s luxurious apartment had apparently started out pleasantly enough, although Angela was hurt that she couldn’t persuade Stefan Stephanescu to attend Christmas Mass
with her beforehand. The host had spent a fortune to entertain his dozen or so guests, half of them men and half women. The buffet in the dining room was groaning with dozens of delicacies: Caspian
Sea caviar, lobsters and oysters from France, Atlantic scallops. Then came venison and pork terrines and a huge grilled ham with an oversize fork and knife stuck in it. There was Russian vodka and
French cognac to drink as well as American bourbon that Koka always cut with genuine Coca-Cola. Silver ice buckets kept the champagne cold, and on a sideboard stood bottles of local Tarnava
Riesling and red Murfatlar from Dobruja in addition to fruit cordials especially for the ladies. Alexa started right in with the motto “Don’t study ’em, drink
’em!”

Since Angela Barbulescu was obviously utterly despondent as she wrote about what happened that evening, Buba and I had difficulty deciphering her handwriting in some places. Angela had crossed
whole passages out or written over them so that I had to fill in the gaps with my imagination to reconstruct that 1948 Christmas Eve party in the home of a certain Koka.

The mood must have been very boisterous. Contrary to her usual habit, Angela had drunk a few glasses of champagne. Alexa stuck to her cherry
exquisit
and flirted with everyone, male or
female, while Stefan alternated cognac with red wine. All the women were tipsy and the men high. Then Koka and a guy named Albin made a bet to see who could drink the most “Russian
piss” in a minute. Stefan counted off sixty seconds while everyone else shouted encouragement. They both more than half emptied a bottle of vodka, and put side by side, you couldn’t
tell a bit of difference between the levels. But Koka was declared the winner anyway, because he claimed Albin had taken one more swallow after the time was up. Which probably wasn’t true.
Angela called the bet a stupid little boy’s game and said it had ended in a tie. Koka took that as an insult to himself as host and called her a cheap Catholic cunt who should keep her mouth
shut in his house.
Everybody stopped talking,
she wrote in her diary.
Stefan pretended he hadn’t heard
.

After this lapse on the part of the host, things started to get out of hand. At some point Koka jumped up, slapped his thighs, and danced the polka to liven things up. The others hesitated at
first, then all started to clap in rhythm. Except for Angela, who wanted to go home but couldn’t muster enough resolve to bestir herself. Koka was getting more and more crude and obscene. He
grabbed the champagne bottle and poured it down his gullet. His guests laughed and choked and spluttered as they drank from the bottles Koka forced into their mouths. He jumped onto the buffet and
bellowed, “Silent night, holy night.” To her horror, Angela saw him drop his trousers and take out his penis. Then Koka peed on the oysters to the howling approval of the others.
“Ladies’ choice,” he roared, jumped down from the buffet, took the tray of oysters, and offered them to the young ladies. Lenutza and Veronika grabbed some and swallowed them
down. Lenutza shrieked and let the slimy stuff drip between her breasts. She boasted that the juice reminded her of something else she couldn’t get enough of. “Show us how much you need
it, show us!” screamed Florin. The others joined in the chorus. Lenutza knelt down in front of the host and went to work on him. The drunken Alexa pushed her aside, eager to finish with her
mouth what Lenutza had started with her hand. Koka pulled away from her, saying that Alexa was so hot she needed more than one man. Stefan looked on grinning while Albin, Heinrich, and the young
doctor Florin cleared the buffet. Alexa pulled the dress she was wearing—Angela’s dress—off her shoulders and down to her waist, took off her stockings, underpants, and bra, and
lay down on her back on the table. She spread her thighs while the men unbuttoned their pants. Except for Stefan Stephanescu. He shook up a champagne bottle and sprayed the foam between
Alexa’s legs. While Heinrich Hofmann took flash pictures of the scene and the men masturbated onto Alexa, the front door slammed, and Angela Barbulescu wandered lost through the Christmas Eve
darkness.

“Barbu makes me sad,” said Buba quietly. “What kind of person is this Stefan, anyway? He tramples on her heart.” She shivered and pressed closer to me. “Will you
put your arm around me?” She sighed, but I had already hugged her to me.

“She was a different person than when we knew her,” I said softly.

Despite my shock at Angela Barbulescu’s confessions, I was secretly happy about one thing: the naked woman in the photo under my mattress was not my disappeared teacher.

We heard Dimitru’s even breathing from the red chaise longue, interrupted from time to time by incomprehensible babbling—for Buba a sure sign that her uncle was deep beneath the
ocean of dreams from which he would not emerge in the foreseeable future.

December 29, 1948. Alexa acts like nothing happened. She seriously asked me where I wanted to go on New Year’s Eve.

December 31, 1948. He sent me a letter. I burned it unopened.

January 3, 1949. Comes with flowers. He absolutely must speak to me. As if there was anything left to say.

January 5, 1949. S. rings the doorbell for all it’s worth. Never want to see him again.

January 10, 1949. Day after tomorrow moving to a furnished room near the Piata Romana. A job? Money for the rent?

At some point during those days Angela Barbulescu must have received a letter inviting her to come to the Ministry of Education for the assignment of teaching positions for the school year
1949–50.
I ought to go,
she wrote,
but what’s the point? I don’t want to be a teacher anymore. I don’t want to do anything.

What happened next in Angela Barbulescu’s life remained obscure because there were no entries for the following months. To my and Buba’s complete surprise, however, she suddenly
wrote a half year later, in July 1949, that she was getting married. Buba cried out when she gathered from the diary that Dr. Stephanescu might become Angela’s husband.

“If she marries him, I’ll cut off my curls.” Buba was trembling and had apparently lost sight of the boundary between past and present. She’d forgotten that we were
watching events unfold of many years before.

“Your curls stay on your head,” I commanded.

“And why?”

“Because I like the way they smell.”

“Okay. But she mustn’t marry a man like that—ever!”

The entries on the following pages suggested that something had happened to Stephanescu, an accident in which he was badly injured. First we thought it must have been an automobile accident, but
later Angela gave the impression that someone had tried to assassinate Stephanescu during the collectivization campaign in Walachia. The only certainty was that the party functionary had spent a
long time in the hospital. And Angela sat at his bedside around the clock. Her past wounds seemed healed, as she wrote repeatedly of false friends that Stefan would now avoid—especially Koka.
Stefan’s a new man. He’s talking about marriage, family, children! I can hardly believe it.

“If she marries that man, it will kill her.” Buba sighed again and lowered her eyes. I had already seen Buba throw some kind of invisible switch that allowed her to see with her
“third eye,” something I would never make fun of again. I watched my sweetheart. She was crying from closed eyes and humming quietly, the sound light and airy like delicate singing that
moved through her from some bright realm. Then she came back.

“Buba, what’s wrong?” I asked in concern and wiped away her tears.

“If she doesn’t marry this man, then she doesn’t have to die, because she’s already dead.”

July 6, 1949. I missed my period—it’s been ten days already.

July 18, 1949. Dr. Bladogan says it’s too early to tell for sure, but the symptoms are clear. I’m going to have a baby!!! Should I wait to tell Stefan? Yes. I want to be
completely certain.

July 31, 1949. I’m sure! Dr. Bladogan says I’ll be a mother by April 1 next year. We’re going to be parents! Maybe now I can get Stefan to come to church. It’s not
nice to get married at the registry office.

August 1, 1949. Haven’t slept. Stefan didn’t come, although he promised to pick me up. Heinrich called at ten, sent a thousand kisses from Stefan; he had to make an urgent trip
to Walachia. Trouble with the farmers again because of relocation. Stefan will be gone for two weeks. But he ought to be taking it easy. Politics is horrible.

August 2, 1949. I’m completely confused. What am I to think? Since Heinrich was here, I’m sure that Stefan is hiding something from me. He’s lying. I had to get out of here
yesterday, I felt like I was suffocating in this tiny room. And so hot outside. Then who should I run into in the park? Alexa! I haven’t seen her since I moved out. She throws her arms around
me and is all wound up. She talked and talked and talked. Acted like my dearest friend. I think she’d been drinking, although I didn’t smell anything. She had on a new dress and nice
leather shoes. She says she’s with Albin now and she thinks the wart on his cheek is really cute, not like before when she couldn’t stand him. Everything is different now. Koka has also
calmed down. He married Lenutza, that stupid cow who was so hot for the oysters.
Heinrich often comes over from Kronauburg. Koka even loaned him money for a brand-new motorcycle, since he
has such a long trip, and he also lets him use the big apartment as a photo studio. Alexa works with him there. I asked Alexa what she knew about cameras. “Are you kidding?” She made
fun of me. “I don’t take pictures, I let him take pictures of me,” she said proudly. For a fee. Some men pay a lot of money to see the pictures. “Some pay even
more”—she laughed—“so nobody else sees them.”

I’m so stupid!!! Why did I have to blab to Alexa that I’m expecting a baby? Maybe I just wished somebody could share my happiness. But Alexa isn’t the least bit happy for
me. I don’t understand her anymore. She used to want a whole house full of children and now she’s so fidgety, so agitated. Her hands can’t keep still. She hardly listens at all,
and I also told her that Stefan doesn’t know about the child yet because he’s in Walachia dealing with the troublemakers there. Alexa looks surprised. “In Walachia? Aha.
Didn’t know that Stefan had put a bun in your oven. He never said anything about it. Oh, well, accidents happen.” How can Alexa say something like that? How could she tell me that if I
want to get rid of it, I should go see Florin—Dr. Pauker. It would all be private, sterile, and no big deal. “Man,” she said, “really had no idea that Stefan planted one in
your belly, too . . .” I was startled. What did she mean by “too”??? Alexa bit her lip, said “Take it easy,” and was gone. My head is spinning. I’m screaming. I
black out. I only recall that I must have fallen down. What do I do now?

August 16, 1949. Stefan is back, at my door with flowers yesterday. He went to put his arm around me, but I held back. He takes me out to the street and shows me his new car. He saw right
away that I wasn’t happy. He asks what’s wrong. I told him about running into Alexa, asked if it was true what she said about other women. My knees were shaking, it was terrible. How
can he say such crude things, tell me I can kiss a wedding good-bye, since I’m snooping around behind his back and listening to that cheap slut Alexa. Why is he so nasty? Said I could earn my
own rent from now on, spread my legs and let them take pictures, like Alexa. I didn’t dare tell him I was pregnant. How could I say we’re going to have a child? He’s a bad person.
He doesn’t want me. I’m afraid of him.
“Me, too.” Buba was trembling all over. “I’m cold.” At that moment no embrace in the world could have warmed
the girl beside me. Least of all mine, because I was also cold as ice. Outside the tower clock struck noon.

“My God, Pavel, it’s so late. I’ve got to go home. My mother’s sure to be looking for me.”

She gave me a fleeting kiss on the cheek. I replaced Angela’s green notebook between the other books. Buba dashed off. We’d continue reading as soon as we could.

Dimitru stirred on his chaise longue, crawled out from under his blanket, and rubbed his eyes. He stared at me as though returning from some immensely distant world.

“What are you doing here, Pavel? Do you know if Papa Baptiste has left already? Is he still mad at me?”

“What are you talking about, Dimitru? Father Johannes is dead.”

“But he was just here a second ago.”

“You were dreaming, Dimitru. Try to wake up.”

“But I saw him. Papa Baptiste came through that door. He came toward me shaking a stick. ‘What are you doing, Dimitru?’ he scolded. I was going to ask forgiveness and shake his
hand, but zip! And he was gone. Disappeared!”

“No, Dimitru. Johannes Baptiste was murdered. He couldn’t disappear because he wasn’t here.”

“He was here! And he was scolding.”

“Scolding you? What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Dimitru, my arrogant son! Keep faith with the earth! Keep faith with man! Like your father Laszlo! Shall nothing remain of your father’s legacy but dust and bones?
Turn around! What did I teach you? Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. But you, Dimitru Carolea Gabor, you’re satisfied to be by
yourself.’ That’s what Baptiste said. He disowned me, Pavel! I’m a prodigal son, disowned for all eternity!”

“But you know the father loved his prodigal son most of all, more than his obedient sons who were so well behaved all the time. That’s what Baptiste always preached.”

“But the prodigal son returned to his father, Pavel. Don’t forget that.”

Chapter Seven