Buba supported her uncle the few steps to his couch. A few minutes later she removed the notebook in question from one of the shelves.
We sat on the floor against the bookcase where we had sealed our friendship the night before. With trembling hands Buba opened the autograph book bound in green cloth. On the cover there were remnants of dried glue. Schoolgirls like Julia Simenov and Antonia Petrov possessed similar albums and passed them back and forth. But this album belonged to a grown woman. Inside the front cover were some faded pencil lines drawn with a straightedge. On them was written in a schoolgirl’s hand, “This book may be read only with the permission of Angela Maria Barbulescu. Strada Bogdan Voda 18, Popesti.”
“Popesti!” Buba exclaimed. “I know Popesti. It’s near the capital. That’s where Uncle Salman lives when he’s not traveling on business.”
Buba opened to the first page. The first entry was dated September 17, 1930. Early blooms wilt all too soon. Your friend, Adriana. Three days later a certain Juliana wrote the rhyme Love makes us into royalty; lock up your hate and lose the key. And a best best friend by the name of Alexa advised, If I’m away and so are you, remember always: I love you. Dated October 2: Pray and hope without a frown, even when your luck is down. Your teacher, Aldene Dima. We skimmed over the aphorisms that followed, written into the autograph book by schoolmates, friends, and aunts. One was dated December 24, 1931, and signed Your Mother: Hope for nothing and you won’t be disappointed. “That’s not right, Pavel,” said Buba quietly. “Whoever hopes for nothing is not a flesh-and-blood human being.”
I guessed that Angela Barbulescu must have been about ten or twelve in the year of the first entries and had gone to school in Popesti. A quick calculation brought me to the unexpected discovery that if Barbu was about ten in 1930 she must be somewhere in her mid-to late thirties today. “She always looked a lot older up in front of the class.”
“She was worn out,” Buba surmised, “because she didn’t catch a man.”
“Or she caught too many.”
The next entry, still in a schoolgirl’s hand, was not dated. At home we always just sit around. Mama doesn’t want to go out or see other people. It’s all too much for her. She never wants to do anything. And Papa always makes promises he doesn’t keep. Why couldn’t I be lucky and have parents like Alexa’s and Adriana’s? They go to the mountains in the summer. Papa says he’ll take me to the seashore sometime. He won’t, though! With these lines the character of the green notebook had changed. The autograph book of her girlhood became a diary that Barbu kept only sporadically. There were years when there were no entries at all, followed by little notations and occasional long passages in which her handwriting lost its girlish roundness and became more and more rough and uneven. Words were often distorted to the point of illegibility, and when Barbu did write something in a neat hand, she would often cross it out with brutal slashes, which led me to speculate that the teacher had been drinking heavily when she wrote, while Buba argued that she must have been very desperate.
“Let’s take a look at what she wrote more recently,” I urged.
“Not so fast.” Buba stayed my hand. “I want to read it through in order and find out what happened back in those days in the capital.”
If one could trust Angela Barbulescu’s notebook, her father had died in 1942 in an accidental explosion at the Ploiesti oil fields where he was a guard. There were no remains left to be buried. Her mother Trinka seemed unaffected by the loss of her husband. In any event, one got the impression that her dull life continued to run its joyless course. Since there was no mention of either brother or sister we could assume that Angela grew up an only child. If she had already suffered under her mother’s melancholy while her father was still alive, after the war Trinka Barbulescu’s loathing of anything lively or joyful grew ever stronger. Angela must have tried from time to time to escape the prison of her mother’s gloom, but Trinka had obviously reacted to each of her attempts with clever stratagems to keep her daughter tied to her apron strings. It wasn’t easy to know whether the different illnesses that beset her—from migraines to fevers to a heart attack—were genuine or merely simulated. At any rate, Angela felt tethered to the cramped and stuffy maternal apartment except for a few mornings a week when she attended a training program for elementary schoolteachers at the new party academy in the capital. My courses would be easier if I could study with the other student teachers. Why does Mother have to make everything so hard for me? she wrote in March 1946.
On August 14 of the same year (she was already twenty-five or twenty-six years old), she wrote down some sentences that for the first time give evidence of her yearning for happiness. A young man named Fabian from the party academy had sent Angela a postcard with the picture of a red rose and asked her to the summer ball of the party youth group. I’ve never danced, but Fabian promised to teach me all the steps. He’s so friendly and I’m so excited! When her mother found out that Angela was going to learn the pleasures of dancing, she must have remained silent for days on end, which Angela didn’t take as permission but not as a clear prohibition either. Alexa is sweet, she noted in the book. Even though we hardly see each other anymore she’s going to lend me her blue summer dress.
As we read the next entry, Buba wept tears for the first time onto the diary of our former teacher.
August 20, 1946. I hate her. I hate her. Why did I have to come out of her belly!!!
On the afternoon of the ball Angela had already applied some of Alexa’s red lipstick and put on her friend’s dress. Then she sat at the window, waiting. When Fabian rang the doorbell Trinka walked over to her daughter with a bread knife in her hand. She smiled, turned her left hand palm up, and drew the knife across her wrist. Blood spurted onto the borrowed dress. The doorbell kept ringing and ringing. Angela’s throat constricted at the sight of what her crazy mother had done, and her scream was silent. She threw herself onto her bed and bit her fists and was still lying there hours after the bell had stopped ringing.
She never saw Fabian again, and Alexa had stuffed the bloodstained dress into the garbage can.
I want to replace it, the diary recorded, but Alexa says the dress isn’t even worth burning because it reminds her of a certain scumbag. Sometimes Alexa’s pretty coarse, but she’s a nice person.
Alexa had offered to share her small apartment in town with Angela. I have to get out of here. Mother is crazy and just lies in bed all day. I spend all our money in the pharmacy, but even with all her pills Mother doesn’t get better. She’s a lost cause, but why should I be, too?
Angela apparently didn’t accept her friend’s offer, and another year went by with almost nothing in the diary.
I flushed with excitement when under the date September 2, 1947, I finally spotted the name I had been looking for the whole time: Stefan.
“That must be our Kronauburg party secretary,” I whispered to Buba.
“The friend of Fritz Hofmann’s revolting father?”
“Exactly.”
My guess was confirmed. At the beginning of October, Angela had learned from Alexa, a certain Stefan Stephanescu was to receive his Ph.D. in economics. First there would be a ceremony with university dignitaries to which they weren’t invited, but that evening Stefan was planning a party and had invited a bunch of amusing people.
September 7, 1947. I don’t have a dress but I’m going anyway, even if Mother . . . The sentence broke off. Angela was certainly determined to go to Stephanescu’s party with Alexa. Although she continued to run to the pharmacy for her mother in the following weeks, she apparently bought cheap vitamin pills instead of the expensive heart tablets. Mother doesn’t notice the difference. I ought to have a bad conscience, but it hasn’t piped up at all. Soon I’ll have saved enough for my dress. I would have liked the one with a rose pattern, but it’s gone from the shop window. But the one with sunflowers will be lovely, too, and maybe Alexa’s right that the brown accents go better with my blond
hair now that fall has come. On September 11, 1947, Angela wrote, First installment paid! It will be mine in three weeks.
Only later, when I’d read the diary several times, did I notice that from that point, Angela’s mother never appeared again. Not a single word about what had become of Trinka Barbulescu.
After the party at Dr. Stefan Stephanescu’s house Angela moved in with her friend Alexa. Her entries lost their melancholy and tortured tone. Suddenly they sounded not like those of a grown-up woman but of a dreamy girl.
October 3, 1947. He danced with me. It was so wonderful. I always thought I couldn’t dance. But with Stefan I can do anything. When we’re dancing and he’s holding me in his arms, I’m light as a feather. I’m floating. He so attentive and not at all like what you’d expect from a doctor of economics—boring and strict. And he’s not stuck-up either. He’s funny and popular and makes everybody laugh, especially me. He wants to see me again—soon, when one of his friends has a birthday party. His name is Florin and he’s a brand-new doctor, a specialist for nerve problems. Stefan wants to take me and wants me to wear the dress with the sunflowers again. He likes it. He likes me. Life is wonderful.
October 11, 1947. The party was nice, because Stefan was there. His friends are really interesting even though I’d rather avoid Florin, he has such a penetrating gaze. Heinrich even came over from Kronauburg for the party. He’s a little older and married already. He brought his camera along and took lots of snapshots. One of Stefan and me, too, giving each other an affectionate kiss. I hope I don’t look stupid in the picture. I’m sure I had my eyes closed. Heinrich promised to bring me a print next time, since he’s going to have things to do in the capital. I don’t get some of Stefan’s friends, though. Maybe because they’re so free and easy. But that Koka guy is really obnoxious. Alexa says Koka’s a puke, but she flirts with him. She says she’s choosy, but she kisses everyone. Stefan says life holds a thousand possibilities and I’ve only tried one or two of them. He’s right. He wants to show them all to me. I have to learn not to be afraid to live.
October 28, 1947. This noon another guy came out of Alexa’s room. She’s so nice, but why doesn’t she fall in love with the right guy? She says she’s waiting for someone who has more to offer than just his . . . I don’t like it when she talks like that. How can I tell her I can’t sleep when she’s squealing so loud in the next room? Stefan’s been traveling for two weeks. On party business. Waiting for him was awful. Does he miss me, too, this much? Really got sick and could hardly eat. Still went to class and forced myself to do the reading. Alexa thinks I’ll sail through final exams the way I study. But it’s hard for me. Stefan says good teachers are needed now that the war is over. But I don’t know if I’ll really be a good teacher for the children. Learn from the past, plan for the future, enjoy the present. That’s what Stefan always says. The party has big plans for him, Heinrich says. That makes me happy.
November 2, 1947. Didn’t go to the cemetery yesterday. Stefan asked me out, to his apartment. At last. Alexa was starting to joke about how long I intended to keep running around as a virgin. She talks so frankly. I thought it would hurt, but Stefan was gentle. Didn’t know how many places you can be kissed on. I’m getting warm just thinking about it.
The following entries from 1948 suggest that Angela Barbulescu invested a lot of effort in her training as a teacher but was enjoying herself at the same time. She spent the weekends with Alexa and Stefan’s clique, often partying all night long. Sometimes she and her beloved (as she called him) spent all day in bed. Some evenings they went to the new movie palace on the Boulevard of the Republic. After evening cultural events Stefan took her to elegant restaurants. Paris couldn’t be more beautiful.
In the summer of ’48 Angela Barbulescu passed her exams at the teachers’ college. Attached to her certificate was a memorandum recommending regular courses offered by the party to consolidate her ideological foundation. The day after graduation she left with Stefan for two weeks on the Black Sea in Constanta. During the day they swam in the blue water. In the evening they strolled arm in arm along the harbor promenade before dining at Rapsodia. At night they churned up their bed in the elegant Palace Hotel, and Angela’s notebook revealed that even before she’d had any breakfast she wanted nothing but to feel Stefan inside of her.
“I want to go to the seashore, too,” Buba blurted out. I blushed.
Nothing in the entries of 1948 suggested that Angela’s carefree happiness was the least bit endangered, except for one small hint of uncertainty at the end of their vacation on the Black Sea: Asked Stefan about all the money this wonderful trip must have cost. He just laughed. The man earns and the woman spends. Alexa says his parents are loaded, but why doesn’t he introduce me to them?
December 23, 1948. Not looking forward to Christmas. On party letterhead Koka invited us to an Oh Unholy Night celebration. That’s his idea of humor. Stefan’s been traveling a lot lately on account of collectivization. Some of the farmers resist progress, he says. But he’ll get the job done. He can persuade people. If only he wouldn’t drink so much on the weekends. He has me, isn’t that enough? Alexa says I shouldn’t worry about the Christmas party at Koka’s. Drink enough and he’ll seem nice, she says. Oh, well, Alexa and her liqueurs. Stefan doesn’t even listen when I say I don’t want to go to Koka’s. He admits that Koka’s a stupid bungler and a windbag to boot, but he’s also an acting deputy of the Central Committee with excellent contacts with President Gheorghiu-Dej. You can’t turn down an invitation from someone like that, Stefan says. Alexa thinks so, too. She suggested exchanging dresses for Christmas Eve. Me in her striped one! Why not? Even though everybody says the sunflowers go so well with my hair.
December 26, 1948. It was all a bad dream. I can’t go on like this. He once asked what I would do for him. Anything, I said. I would jump off a bridge for you. He doesn’t deserve it! It hurts so much when someone betrays you. He didn’t stand up for me. What shall I do now? Alexa just lies in bed. She’s hiding from me. I’m so ashamed!
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 ti
e. 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.
The Madonna on the Moon Page 17