I opened my eyes, dropped down, and put my head into the snow. While the men were imagining I couldn’t take the sight of the dead woman, the pain I was feeling gave way to a cool clarity of thought. I stood up and turned to the Scherban brothers.
“Can you help me? We have some digging to do.”
“You’re not going to look for her shoes and coat, are you?” asked Rasim. “That can wait until spring.”
I didn’t answer but started shoveling into the snow, cutting my hands on the sharp ice crust. Some of the men broke up branches thick as arms that the storm had brought down and used them as digging tools. Soon everyone was helping to clear away the snow. The digging allowed the men to turn away from the half-naked woman in her thin dress. None of them knew what we were looking for except me. When a woman wants to close the store for good, the old commissioner Patrascu had said, then you could bet you’d find the bottle of courage corked up. But what if we found a bottle without a cork, as I feared? In that case, Angela Maria Barbulescu would not have been alone in her final hour. Then she would not have taken her own life. My anxiety proved groundless. We found no uncorked schnapps bottle—and no corked one either.
“Here! There’s something here!” Hermann Schuster pulled something out of the snow that had been leaning against the trunk of the beech. Hermann held up his find. A picture in a dull gold wooden frame with a shattered sheet of glass. “Who’s this? Anybody know him?”
“Could be one of those party bigwigs from the capital,” said Karl Koch, “the way he looks.” Koch looked up. “I bet she called it quits because of him. I’m telling you, she was crazy. Somebody hangs herself in a dress like that is nuts. No wonder such a fancy-pants wanted nothing to do with Barbu.”
Karl Koch had hold of a corner of the truth, but he was wrong.
If only I had grabbed her hand and held it back then, in her parlor. That’s what kept going through my head again and again. When she turned away Stephanescu. But she was just Barbu. From the branch hung Angela Maria, and all her pain and suffering lay behind her. And all her hate.
Andreas, Istvan, and Petre returned sooner than expected. Upset, Andreas threw the wool blankets down on the snow and panted, “The Madonna is gone.”
“What? Gone?”
“Sh-she’s not in the chapel.” Petre was gasping for breath. “Just the empty pedestal.”
That unleashed a barrage of questions. “Why? How come? What happened?”
“Just gone! Stolen!” Istvan cried. “Get it through your heads: the Madonna is gone.”
In his consternation Hermann Schuster couldn’t think of anything better to do than start intoning, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . . ,” but few of the men joined in. When Schuster got to “Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,” all eyes turned to Kora Konstantin.
The whole time she had been sitting over on the side in the snow and giving the impression she was recovering from the strenuous hike. Now everyone could see in her face an enormous tension behind which a slavering spitefulness lay in wait. And it appeared that Kora had only endured this tension in order to let it loose at this moment. Before we had time to realize it, her enormous hate exploded.
“Blessed is the fruit of thy womb! No! No! No! This womb was cursed. Barbu’s to blame! The demon! The witch!”
Kora’s piercing scream sliced through the silence of the mountains and made the blood freeze in my veins. Like a madwoman she stormed toward the hanging body. “You murderous whore, you damned Satan’s bride! To hell with you!” she screeched and leaped at the dangling dead woman. She grabbed a corner of her dress, pulled and tore at the thin material until the sunflower dress ripped into tatters, completely exposing Angela Barbulescu’s naked corpse.
This furor had broken over the men like a sudden storm, so that no one made a move to restrain Kora’s frenzy. I went up to her calmly and punched her in the face as hard as I could. A fountain of blood erupted from her nose and sprayed the snow. Kora Konstantin fell instantly silent.
In another half hour the sun would disappear completely behind the Mondberg.
“Even if she ended up like this, she was a human being, too,” said the sacristan Julius Knaup.
“That’s why we can’t leave her to the wolves and bears,” said Hans Schneider while Karl Koch grabbed a limb and hoisted himself into the beech to cut the dead woman’s rope.
“The least you can do is catch her!” he called down angrily. The two Scherbans sprang into action and helped me take the weight of the stiffened corpse. We wrapped her naked body in the blankets meant for the Virgin of Eternal Consolation. Then Karl Koch tied up the bundle with the rope and heaved the dead woman onto his shoulder. We began the descent into the valley. Each one of us walked alone, not looking to see if his neighbor was keeping up or not.
I knew in that hour that the bonds of the village community were severed, and I wasn’t the only one. Grandfather knew it, too. It didn’t matter that the women of Baia Luna had decorated the parish church in the meantime. In previous years the prayer that concluded the penitential pilgrimage had always been short and simple because after arriving back in the village in the evening the shivering and exhausted pilgrims longed for nothing more than their warm parlors. Now, however, the women had decked out the church with yuletide fir sprigs, white candles, and red ribbons to prepare a proper welcome for the Madonna. But when they discovered it was Barbu being brought down into the valley on Karl Koch’s shoulders, they extinguished the candles.
The sacristan Knaup and the organist Konstantin had already discussed the destination of Angela Barbulescu’s corpse on the way back from the Mondberg, although Hermann Schuster was not happy about the solution they hit upon. For in the entire history of Baia Luna, not a single inhabitant had ever taken his own life. It was true that in the case of Laszlo Carolea Gabor, an unbaptized person had for the first time been buried in the cemetery on the orders of Johannes Baptiste. But in the end it exceeded even Hermann Schuster’s capacity for sympathy—and he was by no means a hard-hearted Catholic—to think that a woman who had been destroyed by alcohol and then killed herself should find a final resting place in sacred ground.
With shovels, pickaxes, and torches, some of the men set off in the direction of Cemetery Hill. Before they reached the entrance gate, they turned off to the left and looked for an appropriate place. At first they thought of under the old oak, but when Julius Knaup objected that from there you could look down on the children playing in the school yard, they chose a spot behind the upper wall of the cemetery. The gravediggers shoveled the place free of snow, hacked a hole in the frozen ground, and placed the dead woman in it. Then they filled in the hole again and stamped the earth down with their boots.
There was nothing for me to do. I was adrift in a sea that knew no shore.
Chapter Eight
A STUPID MISTAKE, A LONG FAREWELL,
AND THE DELUSION OF A HALF-TRUTH
Despite his fifty-five years, Grandfather Ilja had never set foot outside the district of Kronauburg. Even if he sometimes dreamed of setting off to see the Virgin of the Torch in faraway America, his intellectual expeditions were never flights of completely unbridled imagination. They never called into question the world of the village, the homeland to which he was attached down to the last fiber of his being. Baia Luna gave roots to his feet and purchase to his life. It was a place where his dreams could return safely back to earth. To be evenhanded to everyone was his sacred rule, and that required a benevolent eye, free from mistrust and suspicion. It allowed my grandfather to put up with sanctimonious Christians like sacristan Knaup as well as party faithful like the Brancusis, both the shrew Kora Konstantin and the snob Vera Raducanu, without ever being consumed by resentment.
Until that ill-fated Christmas of 1957, that is.
While my mother Kathalina slept, Grandfather sat at the kitchen table. His downcast—even bitter—face betrayed that
the insidious and corrosive poison of doubt was eating at him.
“Pavel,” he said after what seemed an interminable silence, “Baia Luna isn’t my Baia Luna anymore. And I’m to blame.”
“What are you talking about, Granddad? It’s not you. None of this is your fault.”
“Yes, it is, Pavel. What that crazy Konstantin woman did to Miss Barbulescu was my fault, although it pains me deeply to say so. If Dimitru ever finds out how stupid I was, he’ll stop being my friend.”
“But what happened?”
Grandfather poured himself a glass of zuika and took a swallow as if to free his tongue from its fetters.
“Forgive me, Pavel, for burdening your heart with tales you’re still too young to hear.”
“I’m old enough.”
“You’re right, my boy, you are. As long as I can remember, Pavel, there’s been an agreement in Baia Luna not to make one another’s lives miserable. And if I do say so myself, I was always a reliable guarantor that we didn’t. Honesty is inbred in us Botevs. People always said of my father Borislav that he didn’t have an enemy in the world, only friends, and I myself always tried to instill that virtue in your father Nicolai, who died in the war, and in you, his son. But now something has invaded the village that not only sets aside the rules of respectability but throws us all off course. Even though Dimitru and I never heard the Sputnik beeping, looking back it still seems to have been a harbinger of the catastrophe that’s now upon us. Too many things have happened, Pavel. The Eternal Flame no longer shines in the church. Johannes Baptiste was murdered, and his Fernanda literally scared to death. The body of our beloved priest has found no rest, his grave is empty, and now even the patron saint of our village, the Virgin of Eternal Consolation, has disappeared. Even in the darkest times, she always kept alive the hope that good would win out in the end. I could always make out the gentleness and affection in her tortured face. Hundreds—no, thousands—of times I’ve knelt before the Madonna and looked at her. But now she’s dissolved into thin air. Since I saw poor Miss Barbulescu swinging from that branch, the Madonna has disappeared. I can’t see her anymore, Pavel. She’s gone. I can’t call her up anymore.”
I was surprised and a bit proud that my grandfather was confiding his thoughts to me and no longer talked to my almost-sixteen-year-old self as though I were a child.
“Never, Pavel, never ever was I plagued by doubts. But since Johannes Baptiste’s murder, my faith is evaporating like a spring drying up. I wonder who has poisoned the well? Who allowed the tree to wither? At first I thought the State Security was behind everything. But why would they go to the length of slitting an old priest’s throat? Despite all the vile things the Securitate is supposed to have done, I can’t imagine them doing this. Especially since a priest never stands alone; he has the authority of the whole Catholic church behind him. No state is going to challenge that unless its power is seriously threatened. On the other hand, Pavel, isn’t it possible that there is something to what that crazy Konstantin woman is spreading around? What if Miss Barbulescu hanged herself on the Mondberg because she really did have something to do with the murder of Pater Johannes?”
“She didn’t,” I answered.
“I don’t think so either. And Dimitru is also convinced she didn’t murder Fernanda and Johannes. And I don’t believe the evil rumors Kora spreads about her either. But something bad is still bothering me. Pavel, I did something stupid—really, really stupid, if things turn out badly.”
“Wha-what are you talking about?” I stammered. “What did you do?”
“The Konstantin woman claims the teacher Barbulescu paid a visit to the rectory on Wednesday, November sixth, my fifty-fifth birthday. Most people in the village discount it as the gossip of a blabbermouth. But what if that nasty liar was telling the truth for once? The fact is, Barbulescu never visited the rectory otherwise—in fact, during her years in Baia Luna she avoided contact with the pastor as much as she could. I’m surprised that she really was with Johannes on November sixth, but Dimitru confirmed it. Supposedly Angela Barbulescu wanted to borrow the key to the library. So Kora wasn’t lying when she kept saying she saw Barbulescu going into the rectory. Dimitru was her witness. And me, I’m such an idiot. I thought I had to tell everyone the truth, so I told anyone who asked—the women shopping in the store and the men drinking in the tavern. Of course people in the village talked about Konstantin’s speculations that Barbulescu was behind all the evils being visited upon Baia Luna. At first I kept out of all those discussions. But whenever someone like dear Elena Kiselev was in the store and said Kora was nuts when she claimed to have seen Barbu going into the rectory, I just had to contradict her. Rumors are one thing, but facts are another. If Kora was right, then she was right. But Pavel, now that I saw that crazy woman tear the dress off Barbulescu’s body, I feel like biting out my tongue for saying, ‘Dimitru saw Barbu go in there, too.’”
On that Christmas Eve, my grandfather learned the painful lesson that there are times in one’s life when craftiness is more important than high-minded principle. You can’t always tell everyone the truth. He sensed that his incautious words would have consequences.
On Christmas Day at noon someone knocked at our back door. My mother Kathalina opened it and called up the stairs, “Pavel, a young lady for you!” I rushed down the stairs expecting to see my beloved Buba.
“Oh, it’s you.”
My disappointment didn’t escape Julia Simenov’s notice.
“Is this a bad time? Should I come back?” she asked uncertainly. In her hands she held a wreath of fir sprigs and a simple cross made of two wooden laths. When I didn’t answer, she explained, “I thought I’d make this for our teacher, since she has no place in the cemetery and no relatives to look after her grave.”
“I’ll come, too.”
I wouldn’t have expected it of Julia. She was already sixteen, the oldest student in the class. I’d be lying if I said I liked her. But in this one moment, Julia upended everything I thought I knew about the daughter of the blacksmith after eight years in school together. Everyone thought she was a zealous teacher’s pet. She had a quick mind and an even quicker arm, always first to raise her hand. Whether we were using the Rule of Three to solve an equation, regurgitating historic dates, or reciting the homeland poem by Hans Bohn, Julia Simenov always had her hand up before Angela Barbulescu had even finished asking the question. She’d always stayed off to one side when we made cruel jokes about the teacher. Fritz Hofmann guessed she was paving her way to the boarding school in Kronauburg with good grades, something no pupil from Baia Luna, especially no girl, had ever succeeded in doing. No question Julia was ambitious, but now she was standing here in front of me with a simple fir wreath and a cross without a name. I felt ashamed.
I put on my shoes and coat.
“I’m planning to write a letter to Fritz Hofmann, by the way. My father found out their address in Germany. Someone should tell him where mean words can lead,” said Julia.
“Do you think the stuff he wrote about his thing getting hard and out to here drove the teacher to kill herself?”
“Maybe. As the final straw that broke the camel’s back. We have to hurry. My parents don’t know I’m here, and I’m not sure they would allow us to go to Barbu’s grave. When spring comes we can make a proper cross with her name and the year she was born. Do you have any idea how old she was?”
“She was born in Popesti, near the capital, in 1920.”
“How do you know that?” Julia exclaimed. “Nineteen twenty? That can’t be right. You must be mistaken, Pavel. That would make her only thirty-seven years old. She must have been at least ten years older than that.”
“If you say so,” I replied shortly. We walked silently along outside the cemetery wall. The tracks the grave diggers had made in the snow the night before led us past the old oak to the grave site above the stone wall.
Suddenly Julia gave a start and elbowed me. “Hey,
somebody’s lying on the ground!”
Someone was lying, mummylike, next to the mounded dirt beneath which the gravediggers had interred Angela Barbulescu. When I saw the head sticking out of the bundle of wool blankets, I recognized Dimitru’s matted hair. Before I had time to fear that the Gypsy himself had gone to his eternal rest next to the grave, the bundle moved.
Dimitru sat up. He was shivering. He rubbed his hands to warm them and squinted, blinded by the snow in the brilliant sunshine. “Is night already over?”
While Julia was so astonished she couldn’t utter a syllable, I replied, “The night has begun. What are you doing here?”
“Same thing as you,” answered Dimitru when he caught sight of the wooden cross Julia was holding. “I’m paying my last respects to someone. Someone has to keep vigil over this poor soul. But I’m a miserable watchman. I fell asleep like the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane.”
“You can’t compare the two things, Dimitru! The disciples fell asleep when their Lord Jesus was still alive,” Julia replied as she laid her green wreath on the grave. “You fell asleep during a wake. There’s no shame for a watchman in that.”
Dimitru thought it over for a moment and then simply said, “My thanks for your wise reply.”
I planted the cross in the snow, then stood before the unsanctified grave with my classmate, quietly, with folded hands, while Dimitru tried to drive the frost from his bones with various contortions.
“She was too good for this world,” I interrupted the silence.
“No,” the Gypsy replied, “this world wasn’t good for her.”
“It comes down to the same thing!”
“No, it doesn’t, Pavel. Not at all.” Dimitru gathered his blankets together and shuffled back to his people.
The old year was ending. In the capital, in Kronauburg, and even in Apoldasch, public buildings were bedecked with flags and bunting on the orders of the regime. The walls sported freshly printed posters. On red banners the Communist Party congratulated itself on its progressive achievements and promised the people a national renaissance and a glorious world-class Socialist future. While people all over the country greeted the New Year and hoped for better times, the turn of the year in Baia Luna passed without anyone taking much notice.
The Madonna on the Moon Page 21