The Days of the King (9 page)

When the Dutch merchant went out the front door, after the second cockcrow, it was impossible for the girl to see his profile (aquiline according to some), but she touched an unfamiliar object on the table, she stroked the delicate cloth and clenched it in her fist. It was his handkerchief, with a monogram.

 

Siegfried was in the wicker basket. In the other basket, made of osier, there was a jug of milk, some fried fish, half a chicken breast, and some sweet cheese. The first basket hung as ever from the arm of Joseph Strauss, and the high, curved handle
of the second was in the hands of Otto Huer. They advanced with difficulty, in the middle of February, when the cold sometimes bore the name of frost and warmer days still seemed distant. On that Sunday the cobblestones were cracking beneath the white expanse that had blanketed garbage, horse flop, potholes, gutters, rat tunnels, molehills, and carrion. At a crossroads, the dentist had almost stumbled over a dead sorrel horse, whose chest, furrowed by ribs, was poking through the snow. They were heading toward the Batiştei quarter, in search of the house of the washerwoman Leana, who every Saturday collected the towels, cotton napkins, and smocks from Otto's shop, returning them clean and ironed on Mondays. They found the house easily by asking a group of urchins gathered around some curled-up, shivering dogs on a patch of waste ground. A young man nearby, wrapped up snugly in a felt coat, discovered the tomcat in the basket, blew out his snots, and laughed. They had never heard of two gentlemen in German garb paying a visit to a she-cat. Leana showed them inside and offered them pumpkin pies. The young man showed them a jug of apricot brandy and some copper beakers, and the urchins showed them the she-cat. And after they had all stared their fill, Siegfried, the real guest, jumped from the basket. Ritza sniffed him from afar, tensed, she lifted up her tail, paced slowly, inquisitively forward, sensed something, bristled her whiskers and approached, then she sensed more things and all of a sudden flung herself down on the bare earth that served instead of floorboards, with her paws outstretched and her head held back. She was meowing softly. Then she twisted around and meowed sharply. The two of them, Siegfried and Manastamirflorinda, touched noses, they rubbed up against each other and against all the things around, they sang their duet (and those
people, like all people, thought they were purring), and at last, while their tails in passing entwined (hers black, with a ruddy spot at the tip, his white, with a black tuft), from the trapdoor of the attic, through a little hole, there emerged four kittens. They paused on the top steps of the ladder that leaned against the wall. They hissed and spat at the unfamiliar tomcat. They descended slowly, fearfully, hesitantly, nudged forward by their mother, who had stopped calling them and climbed up to them with agile bounds. Then, as Joseph and Otto munched hot pies and the beakers had once more been filled with apricot brandy, it happened that the two tomcats came face to face, one large and imperturbable, the other small and bellicose, always on the prowl, lurking and growling, the fur on his nape bristling, his ears pricked up, his back arched and his tail puffed up like a shaving brush. They looked so much alike that the dentist, tossing back the brandy, had the feeling that the present Siegfried was being menaced by the former Siegfried, as he had been three years previously, when Joseph found him in the Gendarmeriemarkt under a blossoming acacia bush. And the tomcat moved once, as swift as an arrow, placing his paw on the top of the kitten's head, he stopped him fighting, licked him, and lulled him. He did the same with his sisters, little lumps of fur that were tabby like Manastamirflorinda and pressed trembling against her belly. Later, he jumped up onto the table, searched in the osier basket, and grasped a piece of perch with his teeth. The kittens tore at it from four directions, seized by passion, bravery, and hunger. By the time Siegfried thrust the chicken meat toward them, they seemed exhausted and full. Smoking his pipe, Joseph read the countless lines on the face of the woman and gazed into the wide eyes of the children. He put on his overcoat, scarf, cap, and gloves in silence, whispered something to the barber, and left. He returned in less than an hour to find the kittens asleep, curled up among the bones of the chicken breast. He placed a canvas bag on the table, and extracted from therein everything he had been able to find in the larder at home: sausages, honey, olives, salted cheese, ham, smoked fish, bonbons, and wine. He also gave them a silver coin, to purchase the cats. Then the dentist and the barber departed through the creaking snow with the tomcat in the wicker basket, the she-cat in the osier basket, and the kittens in the canvas bag, wrapped up in an old sweater. At the midway point between Saturday and Monday, Otto Huer had seen for the first time what became of his laundry in that interval. At lunchtime, the smocks were lying in a long trough to soak, and the towels and napkins were hanging on lines to dry around the oven. He knew that for a long time he would not be rid of the annoying feeling that his linen was imbued with a stale reek of pies and brandy.

 

Amid the deafening din of the Whitsuntide fair in June of that year, Joseph Strauss was not engrossed in buying calves, cattle, mules, guinea fowl, or other poultry. He wanted to see the city at play in the early summer, when the light blended with poplar down and swarms of flies. And it blended in greenish ways, as pale as a duck's egg, as wan as willow leaves, as murky as stewed nettles, depending on how the sun pierced through the clouds. That morning, walking and standing, but mostly walking, he could distinguish these three shades, especially after he left the sprawling market with its throng of horse traders and peddlers, cattle dealers and water carriers, bookkeepers and servants, shepherds and pickpockets, boyars and paupers, people of many nations and places, heated, high-spirited, seeking bargains, flowing between the herds of horses and
cattle, the flocks of sheep and goats. It was a murmuring throng above which floated the cries of the animals, as if at the edge of Bucuresci the Tower of Babel and Noah's Ark had merged. He made his way toward one of the exits and cooled off with a sheep's milk yogurt, sour and cold, and to give himself more time to catch his breath, he bought not baklava, or gingerbread, or pistachios, but the one thing he most desired as the sun's disk sparkled and the light dissolved like linden tea trickling into a pail of water: roast chestnuts. Then he made his way southward, cracking the shells with his fingernails and his teeth, munching the kernels, crushing them with the tip of his tongue and swallowing the milky pulp a little at a time. He walked slowly, so as to be able to observe at leisure, to feel, and to discover. He walked around mountains of crockery, sizzling grills, heaps of tablecloths and carpets, pie sellers, piles of spoons, spindles, and rolling pins, kvass sellers, palm readers, fortune tellers (and among them a large-bosomed woman who read the future with her left breast), he strolled amid saucepans, kettles, pots, and alembics, amid barrels, casks, and tubs, he listened to gypsy fiddlers (unable to tear his eyes from a thick-lipped fiddler beating time with his wooden leg), at a toy stall he picked out for Siegfried a black wooden mouse (in whose belly was concealed a spool of thread and a spring), he passed by mounds built from balls of wool, bundles of frieze, and bolts of linen, by the stalls of tanners and skinners, by the shelves of cobblers, by the hundreds and hundreds of tailor's racks, by the vendors of candles, lamps, mirrors, boxes, harnesses, and wicks, he looked all around him, and even up and down, at the trampled ground and at the patches of clear sky, he discovered and examined many things and once again he grew thirsty, so thirsty that he thought even the beer teemed with the same green glints as the
light of the day. He drained two mugs, tossing back the first, sipping the second, letting the fizzy liquid slip soothingly down his throat. And then he penetrated to the heart of the fair, wandering for hours on end. His walk was an undulating line, and the undulating line was the track of a lazy snake, a snaking that was inevitable, an inevitability called fate. Herr Strauss could not be distinguished among the motley mob, but he was there as it was proper for him to be, so as not to upset the logic of things and so as to fulfill events, all the events of that late spring of the year, 1868. Beneath a bunch of sunbeams as fine as pondweed, he glimpsed a profile with rosy cheeks, flushing or confused, with curly locks poking from under a hat, touching the left earlobe, with a small chin that resembled a ripe apricot. He quivered, hoping and believing that it was Mathilde Vogel, and in that tremulous state he wondered, as he had in the yard of the Catholic Church some time ago, whether it was worth approaching her, whether the fine sunbeams gladdened her or saddened her, whether her strappy shoes pinched, whether her thighs were smooth and moist. He wondered without moving, until the quivering died away, and then he remembered that the optician's sister had become engaged before Lent and that he himself had attended the lively engagement party. Mathilde was to be wedded to Schütze the notary, a Calvinist, and the distant profile proved to be that of another woman, who was waving a cherry-red fan and who turned toward him, revealing how deceptive is the countenance of the weaker sex. He smiled. Then he had a smoke. And he smiled once more at the antics and the capers of some clowns, he grew dizzy on a carousel turned by four donkeys, he quickly grew bored of juggled balls, torches, and skittles, he laughed heartily at a puppet show, in which Vasilache and Märioara tussled on a tiny
stage (a crate with the bottom knocked out and set on its side, with a crêpe skirt for a curtain), he watched the dancing bears with rings through their snouts, and was filled with pity, he nibbled walnuts roasted in salt, he fired a bow and arrow, ineptly, at the pear on a scarecrow's head (and did not win the prize of a demijohn of plum brandy), he applauded the brass bands and vaudeville acts, he gave spinning tops and lollipops to Peter Bykow's freckled boys (hand in hand with their father), he bet with the baker on the wrestling bouts, but kept losing, they toasted each other with a mug of sweet red wine and parted, and Joseph threw his head back to catch a view of three acrobats perched each on the other's shoulders, he met an old man on stilts and a one-legged man riding a boar (a stuffed boar, maneuvered with strings and levers from behind a curtain), he shuddered for the dwarf who was prancing and leaping on a tightrope stretched between two posts. After he finished his balancing act and acrobatics, the dwarf collected a few coins in a copper cup, but as he drew closer to Joseph he somehow also seemed to grow longer. Through the greenish-blond strands of sunlight, the dentist saw the dwarf's arms and legs extending, his body becoming fuller, his head, as his proportions shifted, no longer looked like a pumpkin, his strides became long and smooth, and his striped trousers, red waistcoat, and high-soled shoes grew with him. The dwarf who was no longer a dwarf offered Joseph a scarf and asked him to blindfold himself, and he consented, allowing himself to be led through the din of the fair. Finally, they reached a shady, quiet place, like a cool cellar, although they had not descended any steps, and Herr Strauss undid the knot of the scarf. The dwarf who was no longer a dwarf scrutinized Joseph and meanwhile continued to elongate, inch by inch. And he told him that the gates of the heavens would soon open, not
to unleash whirlwinds, floods, and devastation, but to reveal a pale, bluish flame, like burning ethanol, within which he would glimpse things such as he had never experienced and times with a different taste. Joseph wanted to question him, to hear details, but suddenly he woke up in a sweat, with his shoulder leaning against a tree and a handkerchief in his left hand, as if he had swooned briefly in the bustle of the late morning. He quickly came to after a glass of kvass, the apparition faded from his mind, and lured once more by the rustling dresses and the gentle breeze, he entered the tents that loomed in his path, paying as before a few coppers and finding within all kinds of oddities, though none like the one in his dream. He saw a hunchback puffing on eight pipes, without any of them going out, a young woman in shalwars and a turban, knitting, with her ankles crossed behind her neck, a blindfolded knife thrower maiming fearsome wolves painted on a panel made of planks, an incomparable fat lady beneath a gauzy veil, through which could be glimpsed her immensity, a gypsy who turned a sandglass and then immersed himself in a tub of water (until all the sand had drained through), a redheaded woman with a beard down to her chest, knotted in pigtails so as not to cover her breasts, rat fights in a glass vessel (the slaughter transparent), shadow plays cast against a white sheet by clever fingers moving in front of a candle, a long-haired man treading barefoot over broken glass and nails, a huge penis, two feet long, preserved in a jar of formaldehyde, magicians, belly dancers, fire-eaters, a crocodile, seemingly asleep, storytellers, and much more. After so many follies seen and heard, he felt as if his head had swollen to twice its size, though it looked the same as always: a little tapered, with wavy chestnut hair and pale skin. At the southern edge of the fair, he stopped at the booth of an itinerant innkeeper and ordered a cutlet and some greens. He was spent. He sat, extending his long, skinny legs under the table as far as they would stretch. Slowly, the flurry of devilish images in his mind faded away. He had just gulped down a huge, gristly mouthful when someone tapped him on the back of the neck and uttered his name. Spluttering, he turned around and saw Carol, not the prince, but another man.

This particular Carol wore a frock coat with broad lapels, a striped waistcoat, a white shirt, a beard trimmed so that the edge was round, like a collar, and boots with two rows of buckles. His eyes were bulbous and lacked lashes, his hair was combed back, his lips were cracked. All in all, his features made him look like a plump thrush. He remained on his feet, filling the minutes with dry observations about the whirlwinds of dust that would soon whip up, about the dog-day heat that stalked the horizon, about the fleeting summer rains. He did not sit down until mugs of beer fringed with thick creamy foam appeared and he grasped one by the handle and glued it to his mouth until he had emptied it. For a little while, he exhaled greenish, sluggish vapors, which enveloped him and then dissolved. They were sitting on a narrow bench near the main gate, whose ivy and roses brought to mind a pergola for promenading ladies and gentlemen. They had not talked together for a good few weeks, not since before the last snowfall, a storm that had loomed over the council of ministers held after Prince Karl Ludwig's twenty-ninth birthday and after he had yet again been driven to the limit of his patience, a late and feeble spring snowstorm, which turned into a breeze and a family affair, with Zinca Golescu's older son, Ştefan, being replaced as head of government by her younger son, Nicolae, the general and former triumvir. Many things had taken place since their last meeting, and the newcomer lingered to sip cold, tongue-tingling beer and tell his tales. He had lived in Bucuresci for a quarter of a century, and besides knowing all the well to do, all the full purses, he also knew the city's history. And as the poplar fluff and midges floated by, he told the dentist that in the past hangings had been carried out in that very spot where they now quenched their thirst, after the condemned were marched there in chains, being whipped as they went, as a lesson for the commoners and as an opportunity for
chiloman
and jibes. And after the gibbets in the reign of Brîncoveanu, he went on, under Mavrocordat they erected stakes at the Moşilor tollgate on which they impaled
calpuzani
in the winter, to set the merchants' minds at rest and slake the mob's thirst for executions. At those unfamiliar words,
chiloman
and
calpuzani,
Joseph raised his eyebrows in incomprehension, and that other Carol decided to relinquish Romanian, and explained in fluent German, but with a Cluj accent, that he had been talking about the fever of the mob and counterfeiters, respectively. They went on drinking and seldom looked at each other, rather, they gazed over each other's head at the horizon, one to the north, the other to the south, deciphering the various glints of the afternoon, the streaks like bean pods at one edge of the heavens and a fine, slightly verdigris dust at the other bourn. Since his nocturnal visit to the Silvestru quarter thirteen months earlier, Herr Strauss had been summoned to the palace only once, for a recalcitrant canine with inflamed roots, and so he wanted to find out more about Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrinus Ludwig, a man extraordinarily dear to him, a man whom he missed. With his arms folded across his chest, he listened to the voice of the watercolorist, a drawling voice that frequently accompanied the prince on his travels around the country and in the past had kept four other rulers company—Ghika, Bibescu, ûtirbei, and Cuza—and that could often be heard in the mansarded studio at the top of the Green Inn, where the voice's owner made daguerreotypes, talbotypes, and stereotype plates, some with a coating of albumin and silver iodide, others with wet collodion. From that plump thrush of a man there gradually flowed news and details: about the prince's skill in reading his subjects, about the fury that their indolence and toadying aroused in him, about his impeccable general's uniform with its gold epaulettes, about the establishment of a new sort of academy, christened the Literary Society, about his inspections of barracks, grain silos, railways, and ports, about his weakness for miniatures, portraits, and landscapes unsullied by Impressionism, about the purchase of two artillery batteries from Krupp and twenty thousand rifles, about his numerous excursions to the country, including one on horseback through the enchanted forest of the Peleş Valley. Their chat was suddenly interrupted—somewhere beyond the gate, a commotion had broken out. Couples walking arm in arm quickened their pace, a throng of expensive attire (silk gloves, canes, lorgnettes, hats, handbags, medals, high-heeled shoes, voilettes, buttonholes, jewels, and
lavallières)
amid which excited exclamations could be made out. The crowd was flocking toward a marble tower in the middle of the fairground. The other Carol stood up, inclined his head, and left at a run, coming to a halt next to an extraordinary apparatus on whose sides was inscribed
Painter and Photographer to H. M. the Prince.
And as he ran he oscillated between his real name, Carol Popp de Szathmari, and that demanded by fashion and elegance, Charles Szathmâry. The dentist paid for the beers, cutlet, and greens, and then headed to the site of the impending event. He made his way through the crowd with difficulty, moving along its edge, viewing as if in a giant tableau
the Bucuresci beau monde and the allegorical temple at its center, which proved to be made not of marble but lacquered stucco, a mixture of slaked lime, chalk dust, gelatin, and glue. It rested on a wooden plinth in the shape of a dodecagon, with railings and statuettes symbolizing the months of the year, and was girdled with garlands of lilies, daisies, and laurel leaves that climbed it in a spiral. At the pinnacle, above the whispers and manners of high society, there was a large bowl, also of stucco, shaped like a gigantic water lily, with six petals. While the procession of carriages was still some way off, near the area of the stalls, and Karl Ludwig was waving from the banquette of a white coach and bestowing upon the people some words in Romanian, the crowd of ladies and gentlemen parted in two (the same as one might part cream by running one's finger through the middle), without taking their eyes off the slowly advancing conveyances. Soon the horses reached the path that had opened between all those distinguished faces. They were snuffling, perhaps because of the perfumes and French phrases, perhaps because they had had enough of galloping, trotting, and mincing, and wanted their oats. From a small viewing tower, built especially for him and his apparatus, the watercolorist immortalized those moments, experimenting with panoramas, as he had sometimes done from the tops of Metropolia, Filaret, and the Spirii hills, from the ColŢei Tower and the attic of the Grand Theatre. Joseph kept treading on people's toes, he was jostled and crushed by the curious onlookers, he was trying not to miss any of the prince's movements, to decipher whatever there was to be deciphered in the way the prince blinked, reacted to the bowing, deigned to laugh, or showed a serious mien, and above all in the way he smoothed his beard or sideburns, slowly with the index finger, or rapidly with all five. He could see only snatches, only fragments, and so he began to elbow his way forward torturously, striving to reach Szathmari's viewing tower. At the bottom of the ladder he clashed with a soldier of the guard and was shoved back with a rifle butt. However, he did not give up, but shouted at the top of his voice, drawing dozens of glances, and among them the one that mattered. The photographer descended and pacified the soldier, then scurried back up to the platform together with Herr Strauss. The still-young Carol I, second son of Prince Karl Anton, the former prime minister of Prussia and now, on that very Wednesday, military governor of Rhineland, and himself a former Prussian officer, a captain in the Berlin regimental guard, to be exact, seemed to be in his element and was chatting freely. It is hard to say whether the sovereign, besieged with cheers, bows, curtsies, and elegant attire, had time to contract the pupils of his eyes and scan the background. He might have been able to recognize, alongside the court photographer, the dentist with whom he had lost touch and about whom, sometimes, forgetting his embarrassment, he would have liked to hear news.