Life Begins on Friday. Ioana Parvulescu
too needs his hours of sleep. I went back, discouraged and more exhausted than ever. Yet again I had to wait for my eyes to grow accustomed to the pitch black. I was shut outside the world. I undid the string tying the blanket and out of it fell a little package, wrapped in paper. It was surely a gift from the woman, from Epiharia. I groped for a long time on the cold, dusty, filthy floor. The package must have been very small and light; it made not a sound when it fell. I found it only after I had scratched my hands on some jagged objects or splinters. I went to the threshold, where there was more light, and tore off the paper. Inside the paper she had wrapped a box of matches, with long, thick sticks, and a little crucifix. ‘God is awake,’ I said to myself. ‘God be with you!’ the woman had said. I would have to be careful not to waste the matches. I readied the icon lamp, closed the door, lest a gust of wind blow it out, rubbed my hands together for a long while, so that my fingers would not be numb, and then, groping like a blind man, took a matchstick, carefully scraping it over the knobbly sandpaper. The matchstick snapped. It was only after a number of attempts, with impatient hands, that I succeeded. A flame appeared and gently tilting the lamp I managed to light it, although I burned my fingers in the process. Yet I did not feel the burn; for there was a light, which soothed me. It was my lamp. I was able to see the objects around me: some paintbrushes, empty leather chests, which were old, their lining torn, stones of every size, ragged clothes, an empty, dirty bottle, a broom made of twigs, a hammer, nails, and things to which I could put no name. I used them nonetheless. I warmed my hands on the lamp, and then I gathered the stones to make a hearth, in which I placed the torn paper from the parcel – a piece of newspaper – and the lining torn from the suitcases. I spent a while snapping the twigs from the broom and made a fairly large heap. I did not waste any more of the matches, whose white phosphorus was now more precious than gold, but set fire to a paintbrush, which gave off a revolting, suffocating, unbearable reek of paint, but which burned well. I kindled quite a decent fire and the air lost a little of its chill, while the smoke poured out of the broken windowpane. I gathered all the rags off the floor and laid them on the plank bed, and then, in the overcoat Petre had given me and in the blanket Epiharia had given me, I lay down. I kept the icon lamp burning. Behind me, unintelligible, the longest day of my life faded away.
Yet I did not fall asleep straight away, despite my exhaustion; probably because I was thirsty. I could see fragments of the city, jumbled together. The road here had been a labyrinth. I knew roughly the direction to Strada Berzei (Stork Street), but it was as if I were no longer a native of Bucharest and the city was playing with me, tricking me at every turn. The horizons, the buildings were different. The few lights were street lamps, the distances were deceptive, and I had found no street signs. I regretted that I did not even know the churches, whose names I had not made an effort to remember, although the woman had told me them, and I saw only the roofs gleaming like nickel teeth. There were fewer and fewer people on the streets. I asked them the way, and some of them gave me directions, but after the first corner I lost my way. I was frightened by all kinds of unlit horse-drawn vehicles, from which came shouts and curses. After a time I had to admit to myself that I was completely lost. The darkness became thicker and thicker and it was getting colder and colder.
In the middle of the night I came across a man walking quickly down the street. I tried to catch up with him, and when I did, I tried to stop him, I touched him, but the man almost leapt out of his skin, looking behind him in terror. I picked his bowler hat up off the ground. It fit my head and was still warm from the head that had been wearing it. I put it on. I continued to walk at random and just as I thought I could not go farther from my goal and had abandoned my struggle with the labyrinth, a church loomed in front of me, with a band of saints painted under the roof. It was the Church known locally as “The Stork’s Nest”. Right next to it, the woman had told me, was the painters’ house, where I would find my own nest.
I was woken by the bells. I had dreamed of Bucharest, while in a different Bucharest. My colleagues from the editorial office had appeared, they were laughing, although I was uncertain as to whether it was laughter or weeping. And there was somebody – a woman, who had been looking for me, a woman with an absent and ineffably sad mien, but I didn’t know who it was. Just as I was shouting at the top of my voice: here I am, here I am, I heard the bells and I thought: ‘The bells mean death.’ With those words in my mind, I awoke. The bells I was hearing meant life. The fire had gone out. The passer’s-by hat was inside a bucket – the hat I had picked up off the ground after I frightened its wearer in the middle of the night. The room was in complete disarray. Through the broken windowpane I could see snowflakes. It had started snowing. It was my first snowfall in this world; a world that was either real or the figment of a ghost-haunted mind. I knew I had to start all over again. But I was quite simply incapable of getting up. I waited for a miracle to happen. No, I was not in a nest, not at all. Rather, I was shipwrecked, except that on my desert island it was winter and I had salvaged nothing from the disaster. Even my luggage had been sequestered by the Police.
You were waiting for some miracle or other, dear Dan. You were waiting for your new life, looking out of the broken windowpane.
7.
The Ringster coughed and hawked a thick glob of phlegm onto the stone floor, deliberately, so as to nauseate the foppish sergeant who was guarding him, who looked like a young man who had had a mollycoddled upbringing. He was there for the sake of form, since Fane had no means of escape: the doors were locked and bolted. Unlike ordinary men, who sleep from evening to morning and work from morning to evening, Fane did things the other way around. During the day he had caught a few hours of sleep, but he felt on top form: there was money to be had. He could smell money from a mile off, and that invigorated him. He had begun the night stretching from Friday evening to Saturday morning in a good mood. The sergeant, bored, attempted to make conversation, but Fane cut him short: ‘Shut it, Jean, I’ve got work to do!’ To make his life simpler, he had once explained, he called everybody Jean.
The sergeant’s head started lolling, and finally his chin came to rest on his chest. Soon, he started snoring, and Fane avoided making any noise, since he had the fine movements of a wild animal, an instinct he had imbibed with his mother’s milk. He was a handsome man; narrow in the hip, broad in the shoulder, with cunning eyes the colour of frost-nipped plums, long eyelashes and long moustaches, which left no woman indifferent. The silvery box did not look like it had much of a lock, just three numbered rollers, but the mechanism was more like a toy. Fane dialled the rollers, with his ear pressed to the mechanism, to hear how they tumbled. He always went by his sense of hearing, like a bat. At first, he was unable to make out anything clearly, but when he repeated the circuit again and again, and the first roller reached zero, it made a faint sound. He left it in that position and went on to the second roller, which also made a click on zero. He did not even bother with the third: he turned it to the same figure as the first two and heard a clearer click, which coincided with a hiccup from the sleeping sergeant. The sergeant opened his eyes, and Fane leaned over the box as if he were hard at work, covering it with his broad chest. The sergeant watched him for a while, and finally his eyelids drooped over his small eyes again.
The Ringster put the box down and opened it without making the slightest sound. On his face could be read boundless amazement. He carefully rummaged through all the compartments, put everything back, turned the rollers, and crept to the door, whistling softly for Păunescu, who was on duty. He asked to leave the room for a rest break
At dawn, in the office on the first floor, Costache was informed that the locked case was missing. Down below in the basement, Fane kicked up a fuss to cover his tracks: ‘What have you done, Jean, if you can’t even trust anybody in a police station,’ he shouted. ‘Who can you trust then? Idlers, layabouts, bunglers!’ Then he went back to sleep, satisfied that he had a wonderful Saturday ahead of him.
Saturday, 20 December: Commotion
1.
Thank the Lord, my little brother was jollier this morning, on our walk. He was also delighted to espy little Nicu, the errand boy; his red cap always strikes the eye. The boy never stays still. Jacques, the dear thing, would have jumped down, had he been able. But our carriage was moving, and the wee imp was in front of where the Sărindar Monastery used to stand (it still pains my soul that they demolished it, it was Bucharest’s