The Madonna on the Moon

by Rolf Bauerdick

  Finally a certain Jozsef offered to show us the way. His boast was that Dimitru’s cousin Salman was a half brother of his cousin Carol Costea Gabor. Fifteen minutes later we were standing with our guide before a half-demolished building. Without his help we never would have found it in that desolate sea of neglect.

  Jozsef pointed to the tangle of wires hanging out of a bank of doorbells that didn’t work for lack of electricity. “Dimi and his fat white wife live at the very top.” Then he asked Fritz for another cigarette. With the words “Be careful, he’s not right in the head,” he twirled his finger next to his temple and left us.

  At our repeated knocking, Antonia finally opened the door. She rubbed her eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled. “Pavel!” She called at the top of her voice, “Dimi! Dimi! He’s here! Pavel is here!” Then she pressed me to her considerable bosom and almost suffocated me.

  Fritz and I entered the spotlessly clean apartment. Buba greeted us with a quick peck on the cheek, turned on the bottled-gas stove, and put up water for coffee. Her lips were pale, and she looked exhausted.

  Only then did I spy the Gypsy. Dimitru was sitting in a corner and rose painfully, leaning on a cane. I wasn’t sure this old man was indeed Dimitru Carolea Gabor, and to my surprise I noticed he had been sitting on a battered white crate that looked like a child’s coffin. Dimitru was wearing the same black suit he had worn decades ago on special occasions in Baia Luna. It used to lend him a great deal of dignity, but now he seemed lost inside it. I was horrified at Dimitru’s diminution. I hardly recognized him. Looking into the eyes of this fragile old man, I could find none of the sly intelligence that had once made Dimitru so unique. But it was he. His voice was unchanged.

  “You’re late, my boy.”

  Then he turned around and shuffled back, the cuffs of his oversize pants dragging along the floor, and sat down on his crate again.

  “He doesn’t talk much anymore,” Antonia whispered, “but he hears everything.”

  Buba put coffee cups on the table. Her hand trembled as she poured, and she said quietly, “We must never repeat what we did last night, Pavel. Never, ever again.”

  As though it had taken these words to make me realize it, I suddenly felt how much the encounter with Stephanescu had exhausted all my strength and left me burned out. Fritz, too, was suddenly overcome by oppressive weariness and could hardly keep sitting upright.

  “I’m done in,” he groaned and crossed his arms on the edge of the table. Just as he lowered his leaden head onto them, a crystal-clear voice cut into our unfathomed weariness of soul.

  “Whoever compels the demon to show his face is in great danger. For the sight of the demon makes a person empty. It sucks a person out, and once he is hollow, the demon enters him. Whoever sees the demon becomes a different person.”

  Buba was trembling all over and cried out, “You’re scaring me, Uncle Dimi!”

  “We’re all scared, Buba,” Dimitru continued, “because we destroyed something. Today we destroyed a person. It doesn’t matter if he deserved what he got or not. Judge not, that ye be not judged. But we did. You, Buba, you, Pavel, and me. I have sinned. I as chief justice. I pronounced his sentence long, long ago. But I had to, and I would do it again, even if it cost me my peace of mind in all eternity.”

  “What are you saying, Dimitru,” I pleaded with the old man. “I don’t understand! Are you talking about Stefan Stephanescu? Yes, we destroyed him. We did him in and it was terrible. But I would do it again. I had to! The man was unbearable! What else could we have done? But what about you? What kind of sentence did you pronounce? I don’t get it, Dimitru.”

  Without answering, the old Gypsy in his corner continued, “The demon is stupid. Very stupid. But it’s evil. Very, very evil. That’s why it seeks out the clever ones. It only shows itself to them. It only gains power when a smart person carries it. And then the smart ones become stupid without noticing, because they mistake the power of the demon for their own power. Then they feel invincible, and they smile. Some people shiver at the sight of that smile, the people who carry an angel within them. They’re the only ones who can . . .”

  At that moment something strange happened. Fritz Hofmann wiped a tear from his cheek, stood up, and asked Dimitru if he would permit Fritz to sit next to him. When Dimitru answered, “But of course, permanente, anytime,” everyone in the room had the impression that it had gotten a bit brighter.

  Fritz knelt down in front of Dimitru and said, “I don’t believe in angels. And I don’t shiver at people like Stephanescu, I burn with fury. But Dimitru, please tell me, can one kill the demon?”

  “Who are you? I know you from somewhere.”

  “I’m Fritz Hofmann, born in Baia Luna.”

  Dimitru looked at him. “That’s right. It’s you, Fritz, the know-it-all. Oh yes, you’re a sly fox, even as a boy you were. But you can’t kill a demon, Fritz. No one can. Not even the risen Christ sitting at the right hand of the Father. There’s only one way to make the demon disappear forever. Only one.”

  By now Buba, Antonia, and I had all gathered in a half circle around Dimitru, too.

  “Do you know what it is?” I asked.

  “Yes, I know about it. But I never took that path. You can only kill the demon by redeeming it. First you have to force it to reveal its face. But if you are hollow within, the demon slips into you. The demon is only redeemed when it sees an angel. As you should know, my dears, an angel has big white wings. He flies away with the demon.”

  “Where does he fly to, Uncle Dimi? To heaven?”

  “Easy, easy, dear Buba. The gates of heaven stay closed even to the most powerful angel if he has a demon in his luggage. First you have to go through purgatory. There the demon is purified. When all the evil in him is burned away, then he himself becomes an angel. He is free. He can fly wherever he likes: up to heaven, to humanity, to the mountains, depending on what his assignment is.”

  “One more question, if you don’t mind, Uncle Dimi. How do you get an angel to enter into you?”

  Everyone’s eyes were on Dimitru in tense and reverent anticipation. We saw a remarkable transformation. Dimitru not only seemed to grow larger, he really did get a little bigger as he said in a strong voice, “I don’t know how to open the door to an angel. I always closed myself off from them. They scared me. They were too shimmery and disembodied. And that’s not good for someone as frivolous as me. I was afraid of losing myself. And so I looked for another way, and I thought I had found it. The path to a being who carried all wisdom within, the knowledge of heaven and knowledge of the world. It had to be made of light, like the angels, but also have a body. It could only be a redeemed being of both spirit and flesh and blood. And that could only be the Mother of God. She was the person I assumed had ascended to heaven in bodily form. That was the point of my studies: where is she? I had to know, and I found out. Or so I thought. I was convinced she was on the moon, in the Mare Serenitatis. That was my error fatal. I’m the one who understood nothing. Absolutely nothing. And the worst thing is that I dragged my one true friend in life into the same error. Borislav Ilja Botev. Pavel, I had to ask your grandfather for forgiveness. I looked long and hard for Ilja, but I never found him. I’m asking you to help me, Pavel. I’m asking you all to help me! I won’t be able to die otherwise.”

  Dimitru said the Lord’s Prayer. When he finished, we all said “Amen.” Antonia stood up and got out the Bible that Pastor Johannes Baptiste had once given Ilja Botev.

  “I’m not a smart woman,” she said, “but my dear husband Dimitru is not to blame. I’ve told him that hundreds of times, but he won’t listen to me. I told him thousands of times it’s all the fault of Saint John the Apostle, the one who wrote the Bible. He’s to blame because he went crazy in his old age. When he was young, he still had all his wits about him and wrote in his Gospel that no one ascended into heaven except the Son of Man—not Mary, Jesus’s mother. Not her. And then John spent his whole li
fe waiting for his Lord Jesus Christ to return to earth after the Crucifixion to establish the kingdom of God. But Jesus didn’t come back, and that made John go crazy. Before he passed away, he had that revelation and saw all that crazy stuff and the evil beasts spewing fire.” Antonia tapped the Bible. “I read all about it, it’s all in there. At the end of his days, the old evangelist claims to have seen a woman on the moon, adorned with the sun and a crown of stars. First there’s no Assumption, then all of a sudden there is one after all. Now you see it, now you don’t. That’s what drove my poor Dimi so crazy.”

  “Let me see that.” Fritz Hofmann took the Bible.

  “It’s way in the back, chapter twelve,” said Antonia.

  Fritz read it to us: “‘And there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And she being with child cried . . .’ And before, this John claimed that no woman, just Jesus, ascended into heaven?”

  “That’s right,” said Dimitru. “But that’s when John was still right in the head.”

  “I don’t see the problem,” Fritz said. “Assuming—purely hypothetically, of course—what’s in the Bible is right, then maybe John could have spoken the truth both times.”

  Dimitru jumped up. “What do you mean, Fritz?”

  “It’s completely logical. Think dialectically! Thesis: Mary did not ascend to heaven. Period. Antithesis: On the moon John sees a woman with a crown of twelve stars. Period.”

  “And the synthesis?” The Gypsy was vibrating with excitement. “What’s the synthesis, Fritz?”

  “The woman Johannes saw with the moon under her feet wasn’t Mary.”

  Dimitru beamed. I saw that not only were his eyes flashing as they used to, but the size of his body had also increased again by a considerable amount.

  “Fritz, my son, that’s the cleverest if-then conclusio I’ve ever heard from the mouth of a heathen. I have to tell you all that I saw her once, that woman on the moon. When my friend Ilja and I were on the Mondberg in Baia Luna and looking through our telescope. What did the woman look like? I can’t remember. It was a long time ago. All I know is she was beautiful. But maybe it wasn’t Mary, John wasn’t crazy, and I saw a different woman. But who? I don’t know. And my friend knows absolutely nothing about it either. Ilja!” Dimitru cried out in desperation. “My beloved Ilja, there’s something I have to tell you. Ilja, it wasn’t Mary. Ilja, where are you? I can’t see you. Show yourself! Won’t you tell me where you are?”

  I took Buba’s hand. “Can you see my grandfather? Could you try to see him?”

  Buba rose. “My second sight never worked in Italy.” Then she went over to the window, looked out, and closed her eyes. She folded her hands. There wasn’t a sound except for the distant, thin wail of a siren.

  Buba stood there motionless for an hour. Then she said, “In the background are tall buildings. They reach the sky and touch the clouds. The clouds are ashes and smoke. There’s a woman, a gigantic woman. She holds a torch in her hand. Ilja sits at her feet, looking up at her, but she’s not looking at him. She’s staring toward the tall buildings. They’re collapsing. The woman weeps. The sun is shining, but it’s cold. Ilja is freezing. He, he isn’t real. The sun is shining brightly, but Ilja casts no shadow.”

  Buba opened her eyes and sank to the floor.

  “In America?” I asked skeptically. “Is Grandfather supposed to be in New York with the Madonna of the Torch?”

  “Then Buba would have seen a shadow,” Dimitru responded. “Where would Ilja not cast a shadow? The key to the door that will lead us to him is the answer to that question.”

  “What if the shadow is just an image,” conjectured Fritz, “a sort of symbol for darkness or for evil, for all I know?”

  “Then the one without a shadow would be the one who carries nothing evil within him,” I replied. “Someone who’s innocent or cannot be guilty. Maybe a child.”

  “Or all the people who are sick in the head,” Antonia piped up, “the poor lunatics all over this cou—”

  “I know where Grandfather is!” Everyone’s eyes turned to me. Even Buba awoke from her trance. “‘You’re crazy! Psychotic!’ That’s what Stephanescu told Fritz and me this morning. ‘You belong in Vadului,’ he said, ‘with the loonies.’”

  “The demon couldn’t keep its mouth shut. I told you it was dumb as a doorknob!” Dimitru clapped his hands. “Riu Vadului. I know that name. That’s the village my cousin Salman always made a big detour around when he was traveling on business. Vadului, that’s where Ilja is!”

  “We have a German Volkswagen in the city,” I said. “Who wants to come along?”

  In a flash, four times “I do” became “We all do.” Dimitru wanted to set off immediately, but since it was evening already, Fritz and I decided to spend the night in the Interconti. Fritz volunteered to organize gasoline with the help of some connections and his cache of dollars, while I tried to find Petre Petrov.

  As Fritz and I entered the hotel, there was only one topic of conversation among the gaggles of foreign correspondents, namely, that the Conducator was certainly not going to return. The videotapes of the couple’s execution were genuine. The fact that the most promising candidate for the office of the new prime minister was also among the latest victims of the continuing revolutionary skirmishes was more of a footnote for the representatives of the international media. We learned that the Kronauburg regional secretary Stefan Stephanescu had been murdered by masked gunmen during the storming of the Athenee Palace. An American photographer who had been at the scene related in revulsion that the Presidential Suite had obviously been the murderers’ explicit target and that they had not just shot their victim but mutilated his body savagely and beyond recognition.

  I set out in search of Petre but couldn’t find him in the darkness. To my relief he showed up at the Interconti in the middle of the night, at first castigating me for always disappearing somewhere while he was risking his ass for the revolution. But Petre calmed down and was ecstatic at the news that there was a good chance the Virgin of Eternal Consolation would be found among the stolen church treasures in the cellars of the Securitate in Kronauburg. Petre said he would make his way to Kronauburg the next day and if necessary carry the Madonna to Baia Luna on his own back.

  Before I retrieved the priest Antonius Wachenwerther’s Volkswagen the next morning from where Petre and I had left it days ago, Fritz purchased the latest edition of the Voice of Truth. We were relieved to discover that the editor in chief had foregone publishing the photo of the naked Stephanescu. Instead, there was an earlier portrait of Dr. Stephanescu with a smiling face. The editor had let the dead rest in peace, done without an obituary, but had speculated at length about the nebulous identity of the perpetrators. Nor did the following days and weeks clear up whether a faction of the splintered Salvation Front or clandestine counterrevolutionary forces from the Securitate had been behind the murder. Despite Stephanescu’s death, the ministerial council of the provisional government had appointed a prime minister that afternoon. It was a name I had never heard before. The new head of state promised to appoint an investigative commission to look into the murder of Stephanescu, but the country never learned if that commission ever met.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE PLACE WITHOUT SHADOWS, A SAVIOR FROM AMERICA,

  AND DIMITRU’S SECRET

  On Wednesday, December 27, 1989, I steered the Volkswagen through the lonely Carpathians. Aunt Antonia sat next to me, and Fritz Hofmann, the Gypsy Dimitru, and Buba were in the backseat. Fritz’s luggage was in the trunk along with his photo equipment, Petre’s carbine, and Dimitru’s white box with the bones of his father Laszlo. No one said a word during the drive. At first an occasional truck or a Dacia would pass us going the other direction and now and then a horse-drawn cart, but for the last half hour before we reached the village of Riu Vadului we encountered nothing and no one.
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br />   The barracks stood at the far edge of town. I stopped in front of a closed gate. A rusty tin sign informed us that beyond the gate was a neurologic and psychiatric hospital.

  “Wait here a second!” I got out, pushed open the gate, and entered. I couldn’t see a soul, only the yellow stone barracks and a large, vacant field to the left. A half-dozen mongrel dogs started growling when they saw me. Despite that, I went nearer. Then I saw the wooden crosses. There were many crosses, some overgrown with weeds, some new. The longer I looked, the more I discovered, all without names. I was standing in a cemetery. The Place Without Shadows. I beseeched heaven that my grandfather not be among those buried here. The dogs were tugging something out of the ground. They were fighting over an arm from a child’s corpse.

  I returned to the car. Fritz and Buba had gotten out.

  “Can we go in?” asked Buba.

  “Yes, but just Fritz and me. Not you, Buba.”

  She started to protest, then she looked into my face. “Is it that bad?”

  “Yes.”

  “No entrance without an appointment,” barked a guard at the gate. Fritz and I couldn’t tell from his appearance if he was an inmate or one of the staff.

  Fritz handed him ten dollars.

  The man snatched the bill and held it up to the light. “What’s this? Swindler! It’s old money!” He tore up the bill and demanded, “Real money!” Fritz gave him some local currency and in a flash the man put it in his pocket.

  “You can go in, but not him!” He pointed to me.

  I ignored the prohibition and started to push past the guard when suddenly a few figures in rags appeared from nowhere. I froze. Before me stood wretchedness incarnate.

  “Food?” asked one.

  At our harsh no, the man began to howl like a wolf. The sound pierced me to the quick.

  “I’m from Germany,” Fritz said quietly. The howling ceased immediately. “I’ll see that you get something to eat soon. You’ll have enough, you’ll always have enough from now on. Not today, but soon. I promise.”