The Romanian (37 page)

Born in 1884 to a Romanian peasant woman and a Greek smuggler who frequented Brăila's ports, Panaït Istrati never received an education beyond the age of twelve. Like Romulus, he floated from country to country, often as a stowaway, picking up odd jobs and sleeping in parks. He came to literature by accident when he happened upon Tolstoy's
Resurrection,
during a foolhardy jaunt to Egypt, as he lay penniless and hungry on the banks of the Nile. A year and a half later, after learning to write in French and having sent a twenty-page letter to, and received no answer from, the French writer Romain Rolland, who was a champion of the underclass, Istrati slit his own throat in a park in Nice. But in the hospital, the letter he'd written to Rolland, which had been returned marked “No forwarding address,” was found on him. Rolland was contacted and was astounded by the work of this penniless transient who'd taught himself French. Istrati was brought to him at once. By the mid-1920s, he'd become an international literary luminary.

As I turned paged after page of
Kyra Kyralina,
it became clear that Istrati saw life as legend; his narrative had a biblical flavor. Exiles from marriage, child-rearing, schools, hospitals and all the other institutions of middle-class life, his characters lived according to one principle only: universal brotherhood. It was a rich, bisexual force that had nothing to do with permanence, security or faithfulness and a lot to do with the body. Neither was it that obsessive, narcissistic passion that bound Carol and Lupescu together and that took hold of me. There's a tenderness about the attachments of Istrati's characters that makes the most perverse situations feel natural, even winsome, fleeting as a breeze.

Depleted and demoralized, while Romulus philandered, I fled into
Kyra Kyralina
's atmosphere of perfumes, cushions and patricide, learning the ways in which lovers who seemed much purer than I did turned their suffering into legends and poems. Little by little the beach and the sea dissolved, and the scenes from the book filled their place.

The story opened in Romania, before it had forgotten its Turkish roots—when gentlemen wore caftans and pointed slippers and women undulated with gestures that came from the harem. I saw nine-year-old Dragomir, blond and creamy-skinned, playing lookout at his mother's window, while she and her daughter, Kyra, tease and entertain salacious hookah-smoking admirers with rosewater-scented hands. Their dances intermingle Greek and Turkish steps. They drink tea and Turkish coffee, sip sweet fruit syrups and eat little Turkish cakes called
cadaif
s.

Little Dragomir's job is to give the alert when his father and brothers are returning, so that his mother's handsome lovers can slip out the window and escape. But at times, his attention wanders, especially when his beautiful sister Kyra is dancing seductively for her sensual admirers and gazes from under eyelashes dipped in kinorosse oil and eyebrows darkened with charred basil. Nothing seems more beautiful to him than her graceful movements, fragrant hair and laughing mouth.

At times like these he joins the frivolity, entertaining the visitors with his own serpentine belly dance. His nine-year-old heart knows only days of lazy sensuality, never suspecting that the afternoons of sweetmeats and languorous flirtation will soon come to a violent end.

Distracted one day by the swirling skirts and mad embraces of his white-limbed mother and sister and the faces of handsome gentlemen, Dragomir forgets to keep watch. Discovered by his irate father and brothers, Dragomir is beaten senseless, and so are Kyra and their mother. His mother nearly loses an eye and is locked up in an airless cellar by her husband. Meanwhile, bloodied Kyra is confined in a dark closet. And Dragomir, who has used a hookah to smash the head of the brother who held Kyra by the hair, is dragged off to his father's woodworking studio for punishment as a slave.

He escapes and frees his sister and mother, only to find that his mother's beautiful face is now swollen and disfigured, a condition she can't accept. She must leave her children, and will never see them again unless her eye, which is hanging from its socket, can be saved and she can return to a world of tasteful hedonism and sexual pleasure.

Kyra calls for revenge against their father and brothers, and enlists their uncle's help. When the night comes for them to be killed, Dragomir is racked with scruples and prays that he won't have to witness it. His prayers are not answered. Before his very eyes, a brother's skull is cracked open like a melon, while his father escapes. Dragomir and Kyra are taken to a hotel for safety, and their avenger pursues their escaped father.

During the day, they learn to sneak out of the back entrance and play in the fields among the wheat and tufts of wool caught on thistles from passing sheep. The outdoors teaches them a new sensuality that is just as pleasant and varied as the attentions of young men, and the wind on their bodies feels more pleasurable than caresses. At night, the young dandies, who've discovered their whereabouts, come to serenade them beneath their window. Kyra puts on the voluptuous gowns of before and goes out to the balcony, but the men are never invited up.

It's the lure of the Danube and its rushing waters that entice Dragomir, and he walks into them up to his chest and gives himself over to their swirling pleasures. When he and Kyra meet a wealthy Turk, who promises to take them on a boat along the river, they're fascinated. The Turk uses unctuous, elegant platitudes to lull the innocent children. He offers them the opportunity to dance and gives them luxurious clothes to wear. When their minds are reeling with delight from the opium cigarettes they've been given, they think they've gone to heaven. The Turk kidnaps them and takes them to Constantinople, imprisoning Kyra in a harem and forcing Dragomir to become his plaything.

It is here, during a six-year period, that Dragomir is corrupted for life, indoctrinated into every perversion and sordid pleasure imaginable. And during this period, the inner thoughts of the love object are revealed. All the abject misery of pleasing another who is more powerful pours from the pages of Dragomir's narrative, all the stark contrasts between the past, when sensuality represented freedom, and now, when it represents survival. After repeatedly surrendering his body to another, Dragomir's mind becomes numbed. His muteness resembles the helpless, passive world of plants.

At fifteen, Dragomir escapes from the Turk's clutches, but only to discover another kind of tyranny. “May all the devils take you, you scented lump of corruption!” he rails at his tormentor from the shore, never guessing that he'll soon find himself in a similar situation. The boy is beautiful and jaded, stupid as a concubine as a result of his shut-in years, but his rings and gold-embroidered fez make him look like the respectable son of a wealthy prince. In his pockets is enough stolen gold to live an idle life. Unfortunately, his head is empty of sense and principle; he has no idea of the value of things.

Then into his life comes a sensitive soul, Moustapha-bey, a caring aesthete who seems to offer Dragomir the understanding he's always desired. This wealthy, elegant and cultured man speaks exquisite Turkish and lives in a huge villa with a yard that stretches down to the Bosporus. Though he can never fill the void in Dragomir created by the loss of Kyra and his mother, he treats the boy with humility and empathy. Dragomir shares his innermost thoughts with him and finds a ready listener. Claiming to want to help him find his sister, Moustapha-bey sends female spies whom he bribes with gold into the harems to search for her. He offers protection to Dragomir, cautioning him never to enter the city center, where the Turk may be looking for him. He exchanges Dragomir's showy clothes for more reasonable, conservative attire and gives him the security of a well-guarded home with an intimate, quiet atmosphere. He even gives Dragomir a beautiful horse, whom he encourages him to name Kyra, as well as other expensive gifts, all emblazoned with her name, as if he expected that objects used to represent her were all that Dragomir needed to overcome his longing for his missing sister.

As the months drag on, it becomes ever clearer to Dragomir that the search for his sister is fruitless. Moustapha-bey swears that he is doing everything in his power to find her. But Dragomir's faith in him has grown clouded. Despite the pleasurable atmosphere of the peaceful home, despite the joyous hunts on which Moustapha-bey takes Dragomir, during which he rides the horse named Kyra, Moustapha-bey exhibits an overweening fault: he is a sensualist. And with this failing comes another: possession. Thus it is that when Dragomir loses faith in the search for Kyra, even suspecting that his wealthy keeper is not really looking for her, he begs to be set free. And Moustapha-bey, perplexed, refuses, claiming to fear what will happen to such a stupid and beautiful boy if he is left to his own devices.

In Moustapha-bey's concern is revealed a subtle elitism, which Dragomir begins to resent. Astonished that the boy could become repulsed by his dignified kindness, Moustapha-bey surmises that he must want women. He explains the error in such a desire, for even the most enticing women end up becoming “sluts.” The comment wounds Dragomir to the quick, because he takes it as a condemnation of his enslaved sister. When Moustapha-bey offers him any woman from his harem or, if he prefers, the fourteen-year-old virgins from the countryside, who would rather be their slaves than married to some lout, Dragomir protests that any girl in her right mind would prefer freedom with a lout to slavery. Moustapha-bey softly replies that Dragomir may be correct, but that he should be more concerned with what is pleasant than with what is right, especially since they are the lords of the country and in a position to take anything they want.

He's become a loathsome presence to Dragomir, a rich man of bankrupt morals, and as his emotional hold over the youth is loosened, his discipline becomes more draconian. Dragomir is locked in his room all day or guarded by a servant during outings. When he falls ill after a foiled escape attempt and nearly dies, he finds the distraught Moustapha-bey prostrate before his bed, begging for forgiveness. But when Dragomir again asks to be set free, Moustapha-bey still refuses, saying that he can have anything else his heart desires.

Dragomir recovers and finds himself a pampered captive, locked in a posh bedroom day and night. In fits and tantrums he destroys every gift he receives, and smashes the beautiful furnishings of Moustapha-bey's house whenever he is let out of his room even for a moment. The mild-mannered Moustapha-bey never complains, but neither does he loosen his possessive hold.

Finally Dragomir escapes, with a new understanding of the evil and selfishness that exist among the respectable and privileged. Never to see his sister or mother again, he falls in with a wizened beverage seller, a truly generous man who's given up a past life of sensuality for one of chastity. For the first time in his life, Dragomir reaps the benefits of real friendship and finds an understanding father figure, who has no need for power or possessions. They travel the countryside together, making a simple living, sleeping in forests and fields. One day his gentle mentor is stricken by a heart attack, leaving him alone but with the bittersweet memory of their friendship, which asked nothing of him but his trust. Disaffected but experienced, Dragomir returns from Turkey to Romania, where he leads a marginal life as a seller of lemonade.

 

 

WHEN I LOOKED UP from the last pages of the book, it was past midnight and the restaurant was closing. Waitresses and busboys were wiping down tables, and had been staring at my fixed face poring over the book's pages without daring to approach.

I paid, got up and strolled back to the hotel. The warm sea air seemed impregnated with images of the characters from
Kyra Kyralina
; I was white and rigid with the thoughts it had sent circulating through my mind. This, then, was passion from the perspective of the beloved. At that moment, I couldn't take it all in. It would be only later, when I'd climbed from the rubble of the relationship I'd so actively pursued, that I'd be able to face the parallels.

XXVII

SINCE I'D FINISHED the translation, I would have been free to spend all day with Romulus on July 31, the day before his birthday. But that morning, when I rose early and walked to the beach and stared out on an unusually calm sea, pride and hurt pushed me into an unyielding position. Even the sea's glassy surface felt barricaded against me. Just as must have happened to Ovid as he looked out over the waters and thought of the distance that separated him from the warmth and comfort of familiars, I was convulsed with bitterness. Tears came to my eyes and, irrationally, I wanted to spit at the sea.

I suppose having Romulus beg me to keep him company would have been enough at that moment. It was, of course, an absurd demand. Even if he felt he owed me gratitude for the sacrifices I'd undergone to make us money, he would have had to hide it according to the very nature of his pride. That day he did, in fact, extend several cordial invitations for me to go with him to the beach or lunch, and I chillingly declined, preferring instead to walk along the rocks and stare at the water with the vain hope that it would suddenly approach, part and enfold me in a welcoming intimacy. What's more, I was suspicious of Romulus, thinking that he'd met someone—a girl, most likely—to compound his betrayal of me. With a kind of masochistic anger I wanted to see it develop.

That afternoon, I ran into him on the beach, where he lay alone, and the sight of his desirable body, with its muscular, elongated soccer player's legs and flat defined stomach, as well as his highly chiseled features, set my teeth on edge. Like an infant from whose hands a favorite toy has been wrested, I felt a tantrum brewing inside me, which I justified by the self-righteous excuse of having been turned into a mockery.