Roumanian Stories, Translated from the Original Roumanian. Anonymous
about two miles away, came the sound of church bells. One hears in a strange way when one is feverish, now so loud, now so far away. The coming night was the night before Easter, the night of the fulfilment of Gheorghe’s promise.
“But perhaps they have caught him by now!”
Moreover, Zibal only means to stay at Podeni till next quarter-day. With his capital he could open a good business in Jassy. In a town, Leiba would regain his health, he would go near the police station—he could treat the police, the commissionaires, the sergeants. Who pays well gets well guarded.
In a large village, the night brings noise and light, not darkness and silence as in the isolated valley of Podeni. There is an inn in Jassy—there in the corner, just the place for a shop! An inn where girls sing all night long, a Café Chantant. What a gay and rousing life! There, at all hours of the day and night, officials and their girls, and other dirty Christians will need entertainment.
What is the use of bothering oneself here where business keeps falling off, especially since the coming of the railway which only skirts the marshes at some distance?
“Leiba,” calls Sura from within, “the coach is coming, one can hear the bells.”
The Podeni valley is a ravine enclosed on all sides by wooded hills. In a hollow towards the south lie several deep pools caused by the springs which rise in the hills; above them lie some stretches of ground covered with bushes and rushes. Leiba’s hotel stands in the centre of the valley, between the pools and the more elevated ground to the north; it is an old stone building, strong as a small fortress: although the ground is marshy, the walls and cellars are very dry.
At Sura’s voice Leiba raises himself painfully from his chair, stretching his tired limbs; he takes a long look towards the east, not a sign of the diligence.
“It is not coming; you imagined it,” he replied to his wife, and sat down again.
Very tired the man crossed his arms on the table, and laid his head upon them, for it was burning. The warmth of the spring sun began to strike the surface of the marshes and a pleasant lassitude enveloped his nerves, and his thoughts began to run riot as a sick man’s will, gradually taking on strange forms and colours.
Gheorghe—Easter Eve—burglars—Jassy—the inn in the centre of the town—a gay restaurant doing well—restored health.
And he dozed.
Sura and the child went without a great deal up here.
Leiba went to the door of the inn and looked out on to the road.
On the main road there was a good deal of traffic, an unceasing noise of wheels accompanied by the rhythmic sound of horses’ hooves trotting upon the smooth asphalt.
But suddenly the traffic stopped, and from Copou a group of people could be seen approaching, gesticulating and shouting excitedly.
The crowd appeared to be escorting somebody: soldiers, a guard and various members of the public. Curious onlookers appeared at every door of the inn.
“Ah,” thought Leiba, “they have laid hands on a thief.”
The procession drew nearer. Sura detached herself from the others, and joined Leiba on the steps of the inn.
“What is it, Sura?” he asked.
“A madman escaped from Golia.”
“Let us close the inn so that he cannot get at us.”
“He is bound now, but just now he escaped. He fought with all the soldiers. A rough Gentile in the crowd pushed a Jew against the madman and he bit him on the cheek.”
Leiba could see well from the steps; from the stair below Sura watched with the child in her arms.
It was, in fact, a violent lunatic held on either side by two men: his wrists were tightly bound over each other by a thick cord. He was a man of gigantic stature with a head like a bull, thick black hair, and hard, grizzled beard and whiskers. Through his shirt, which had been torn in the struggle, his broad chest was visible, covered like his head, with a mass of hair. His feet were bare; his mouth was full of blood, and he continually spat out hair which he had bitten from the Jew’s beard.
Every one stood still. Why? The guards unbound the lunatic’s hands. The crowd drew to one side, leaving a large space around him. The madman looked about him, and his fierce glance rested upon Zibal’s doorway; he gnashed his teeth, made a dash for the three steps, and in a flash, seizing the child’s head in his right hand and Sura’s in his left, he knocked them together with such force that they cracked like so many fresh eggs. A sound was heard, a scrunching impossible to describe, as the two skulls cracked together.
Leiba, with bursting heart, like a man who falls from an immense height, tried to cry out: “The whole world abandons me to the tender mercies of a madman!” But his voice refused to obey him.
“Get up, Jew!” cried some one, beating loudly upon the table with a stick.
“It’s a bad joke,” said Sura from the doorway of the inn, “thus to frighten the man out of his sleep, you stupid peasant!”
“What has scared you, Jew?” asked the wag, laughing. “You sleep in the afternoon, eh? Get up, customers are coming, the mail coach is arriving.”
And, according to his silly habit which greatly irritated the Jew, he tried to take his arm and tickle him.
“Let me alone!” cried the innkeeper, drawing back and pushing him away with all his might. “Can you not see that I am ill? Leave me in peace.”
The coach arrived at last, nearly three hours late. There were two passengers who seated themselves together with the driver, whom they had invited to share their table.
The conversation of the travellers threw a light upon recent events. At the highest posting station, a robbery with murder had been committed during the night in the inn of a Jew. The murdered innkeeper should have provided change of horses. The thieves had taken them, and while other horses were being found in the village the curious travellers could examine the scene of the crime at their leisure. Five victims! But the details! From just seeing the ruined house one could believe it to have been some cruel vendetta or the work of some religious fanatic. In stories of sectarian fanaticism one heard occasionally of such extravagant crimes.
Leiba shook with a violent access of fever and listened aghast.
What followed must have undoubtedly filled the driver with respect. The young passengers were two students, one of philosophy, the other of medicine; they were returning to amuse themselves in their native town. They embarked upon a violent academic discussion upon crime and its causes, and, to give him his due, the medical student was better informed than the philosopher.
Atavism; alcoholism and its pathological consequences; defective birth; deformity; Paludism; then nervous disorders! Such and such conquest of modern science—but the case of reversion to type! Darwin, Häckel, Lombroso. At the case of reversion to type, the driver opened wide his eyes in which shone a profound admiration for the conquests of modern science.
“It is obvious,” added the medical student. “The so-called criminal proper, taken as a type, has unusually long arms, and very short feet, a flat and narrow forehead, and a much developed occiput. To the experienced eye his face is characteristically coarse and bestial; he is rudimentary man: he is, as I say, a beast which has but lately got used to standing on its hind legs only, and to raising its head towards the sky, towards the light.”
At the age of twenty, after so much excitement, and after a good repast with wine so well vinted, and so well matured as Leiba’s, a phrase with a lyrical touch came well even from a medical student.
Between his studies of Darwin and Lombroso, the enthusiastic youth had found time to imbibe a little Schopenhauer—“towards the sky, towards the light!”
Leiba was far from understanding these “illuminating”