“Then send him packing!”
The practical, pretty Elena objected: “What’s the point of me driving him away if there’s a chance he won’t encounter any insurmountable obstacles and he’ll become world famous? A man like that, I could marry.”
“And what if you can’t wait that long?”
“I’ll take pleasure in the fact that the famous researcher Octavian, back when he was just a poor little thing, was hopelessly in love with me … ”
Octavian understood everything but couldn’t do anything about it. Elena had become a part of his life more permanently than a sarcoma tumor in a diseased man’s lungs; deeper than a narcotic in the bloodstream; more tenaciously than a louse in one’s hair. He couldn’t evict her from his life without displacing himself, too. For the time being, though, his love of folklore was saving him.
Octavian watched as dusk danced and swirled passionately with the light from the campfire across Elena’s face. “When we finish collecting the data, I’m going to begin work on a new theory.”
“Oh really?” asked the pretty girl reluctantly, without looking away up the campfire. “What theory might that be?”
Octavian was full of fervor. “It seems that contemporary Italy takes the place of a general afterlife in the consciousness of the peasants,” he started to say.
Elena, who was an outstanding linguist but a wanting historian, interrupted him.
“There’s no such thing as a ‘general afterlife.’ There’s a division between hell and heaven.”
“But that’s a tradition that came later,” Octavian patiently explained to the girl he was secretly in love with. “What we’ve got here are early Hellenic traditions that somehow survived into the twenty-first century. You don’t think that’s surprising?”
“Why?”
“It would be like … like finding the remains of a village from the Stone Age right in the middle of modern London! Can you imagine?”
“To be honest, not really.”
“Alright, fine. At any rate, the way the local peasants’ brains work isn’t in sync with the rest of the world. Rather, they’re more similar in mentality to the inhabitants of ancient Greece. In their conception, there’s no heaven and hell, but rather, hell would be what Moldova is now.”
“You see, there is hell.”
“But it’s not the hell of the Christian tradition. It’s an ancient Greek hell, where there’s no suffering, there’s only nonexistence. Life being cut off—that’s what terrified the ancient Greeks. Thus, they didn’t have hell. And, correspondingly, no heaven either.”
“Olymp—”
“A place for the gods and the elite! What’s more, pious behavior in life in no way guaranteed a place in the afterlife on Olympus!”
“Interesting …”
“In the same way, Italy is neither heaven nor hell for the local peasants. It’s simply a fairytale land, where little honey islets dot the rivers, floating on waves of milk, and Swiss cheese cliffs hang over everything. It’s really cool.”
“It’s alright.”
Octavian tossed some twigs into the fire. He turned away. “Can I ask you a very personal question?” he asked the occasional cracklings in the night.
“Go ahead,” the girl answered softly. “If it’s personal … ”
Octavian gathered his breath and blurted out:
“Tell me, why do you torture me? I’m crazy about you, I can’t live, I can’t sleep. Can’t breathe. I’m not asking for anything, just tell me you don’t like me. I’ll be happy with that. I’ll live my life with that, like the Romantic hero who’s satisfied with just the glove of his Beautiful Lady.”
Elena was silent, and the young philologist understood that the card he’d bet everything on had turned out to be a losing one. His outburst, which had seemed to Octavian so brave and recklessly touching, had only scared the girl and turned her away. “I couldn’t have waited another few years,” thought the student, “so it’s just as well … ” He couldn’t turn back in Elena’s direction, otherwise he’d burn up under her mocking glance. He rubbed his hands together and, with deliberate joy, exhaled:
“Well, what do you say, time to tuck in to our tents, otherwise we’ll miss out on an entire volume of fairytales tomorrow.”
The girl was silent for a while. Then, “Akhrrrrr, akhrrrr …”
Octavian couldn’t believe it. He turned around. Elena was actually sleeping, snoring. The boy’s fingers, shaking in humiliation, grabbed at his shirt collar and he went off to his tent. Elena lay there another twenty minutes just to be sure. The only effective way to exit a conversation, she knew, was to exit a conversation. The girl silently opened her eyes and, just in case, said one more time, “Akhrrrrrr, a-khrrrrrr.”
20
“KEEP IN MIND, SONNY BOY, WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT Italy. There once was a pretty young girl who lived in these parts. She went by the name Persephona.” Octavian was copying down the words of the peasant, who’d grown quite fond of the boy. Octavian was the spitting image of the old man’s grandson.
“Persephone,” corrected Octavian. “With an “e” at the end.”
“Persephona,” asserted the elder reproachfully. “It’s a she, not a he. But listen. She lived without a care in the world, she didn’t want for anything because her mother and father had what to live on. I mean, they were lifted up and placed on high by the communist powers. They were leaders of the collective farm and for sixteen years their daughter never lifted a finger. If she ever carried water into the house, it was the morning dew in her hair … ”
“Oh!” Octavian admired this flourish in the old man’s speech. “Can you repeat that so I can copy it down accurately?”
“And if she ever carried water into the house, it was the morning dew in her hair,” repeated the old man with pleasure. He’d read this turn of phrase in a literary journal once, the complete set of which was collecting dust in his basement. “Her last name was Demetrescu.”
“What was that?” The student couldn’t believe his own luck. “Demeter?”
“What the hell kind of Demeter?” the man said angrily. “Demetrescu was her name! Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” jabbered the student. “I’m sorry, I’m writing it down.”
The peasant spun his yarn: “Well, when the Soviets left, the village began to live poorly, and Italy slowly started looking attractive to people. Nearly half the village left. And our Persephona herself was almost ready to go to Italy, but her mother, the Old Mrs. Demetrescu, wouldn’t let her.”
“She was afraid?”
“And how! Not a soul who’d gone to Italy had ever come back! And so Persephona Demetrescu cried for a year, then she cried for another year, because there were no suitable men left in the village. Whoever wasn’t working in Italy had taken to drink, and whoever takes to drink would rather roll around with a barrel than a bride.”
Breathing heavily, the old man reflected with pride on his “rather roll around with a barrel than a bride” – a phrase of his own invention. The student, holding his breath, looked at the peasant. Octavian figured he was thinking about Persephona Demetrescu.
The peasant continued: “As it happens, there arrived in these parts a representative from a tourism agency that exported our people to Italy. I reckon the company is still operating today. And the last name of that gentleman was Plutonescu.”
“Pluto!” Octavian slapped his knee. “Absolutely, one hundred percent Pluto!”
“Plutonescu,” the peasant corrected him angrily. “If you mean to listen, then listen! So this comrade looks at Persephona Demetrescu and loses his head over her. He starts in on offers to her parents: ‘Let your daughter come with me to Italy,’ he says, ‘I’ll set her up as a housekeeper, she’ll make a thousand euros a month.’ ”
“Oho,” said Octavian sadly. He was thinking of Elena, and of his increased scholarship of seventy-lei. That was less than five euros. “Not bad.”
“And this guy, you see,”—the old m
an saw that the student was transfixed by the story—“this guy spoke so slick that the girl’s mother was ready to agree to the whole arrangement. But her father was against it. And they didn’t let Persephona go to Italy.”
“That’s it?” asked Octavian. “End of story?”
“Of course not,” said the old man and waved his hand. “What are you talking about? This Plutonescu character talked Persephona into running away from her father’s house with him. And she, of course... ”
Octavian, who was already constructing a brilliant theory in his mind, for which fate would hand him both the Nobel Prize and the hand of Elena Syrbu, stood up and stretched. He was exultant.
“Shall I tell you what’s next in this myth, grandpa?” he asked, rejoicing.
“What myth?” asked the old man. He didn’t understand. “This is the pure truth, as it happened.”
“Of course, of course,” nodded Octavian. “Still, shall I tell you?”
“Well?” said the old man, surprised. “If you know it, why’d you write it down? If you’ve heard it before … ”
“I haven’t heard it, but I know it,” explained Octavian. This Demetrescu of yours, whom they called Persephona, she ran away from home with Plutonescu, right? They made their way to Italy slowly, slowly, and the entire time the girl’s parents chased after them.”
The old man opened his eyes wide and looked at the young man in disbelief. The latter, satisfied with the effect his words were having, continued.
“And so, when Persephona’s parents caught sight of the runaway girl and her fugitive friend, and when they were just about to grab their daughter by the hem of her skirt, Plutonescu and Persephona traversed the symbolic boundary of hell—pardon me, I mean, the official border of Italy—and they were unreachable for the parents. Right? The mother, seized with grief, turned to the higher gods. That is—excuse me, grandpa—to the Italian Consulate in Bucharest, demanding they return her daughter. The daughter, though – she’d gotten hitched to the old man she’d been keeping house for in Italy, and she didn’t want to come back! So, the people at the consulate concocted a plan that would satisfy all parties.”
“What was that?” asked the old man.
“ To let Persephona leave Italy for six months, for spring and summer,” said Octavian. He burst out laughing, completely happy. “But for fall and winter she’d have to return to Italy. Right?”
The old man, who’d grown completely quiet, looked at Octavian and moved farther away from the student, just in case.
“Grandsonny,” he said hotly. “It wasn’t like that at all. Plutonescu turned out to be a brothel keeper. And Persephona’s been suffering there for some years.”
Octavian, who’d been sitting still for what felt like an hour, slowly rose and went to the toilet. He threw his notebook into the cesspool. Little orange circles floated before his eyes. “This is the second blow in the last twenty-four hours. Oh, damned self-satisfaction,” he thought, barely caring anymore.
“Right you are, sonny,” said the old man, consoling him. “This research of yours won’t do you any good. All the stories I’ve been telling you about, I got them from a book of mine. Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece. You caught on yourself. Well, I doctored the last names a little bit to fit our Moldovan ears.”
“Why?” Octavian asked calmly, as he walked the dirt path back to the courtyard where the old man was. “What’d you do that for?”
The old man held up his arms. “I could tell you were looking for different stories, and lots of them. So why not help out nice folks?”
“You mean, everything’s out of that book? And about Persephona?” asked Octavian with a sigh.
A gloom came over the old man’s face and he poked the earth with his finger.
“About Persephona – that’s the truth!” he snapped. “She’s a granddaughter to me, that’s how I know.”
“My apologies, then. Looks like it’s time for me to go.” Octavian rose.
“Don’t you fret,” said the old man calmly, to Octavian’s back. “This girlie of yours isn’t meant for you, anyway. Don’t you get it?”
Octavian carefully closed the gate and without paying attention to the mud, headed for the tent. He gathered his things and heated himself up some tea on the campfire. There were three hours left until the train and the young man was in no hurry.
It was evening. The dogs of Larga picked out emaciated flees from bald spots on their coats with the occasional whimper. In the distance, a bell was ringing on a dirty sheep with a stinking wool coat. Every once in a while, the puny shepherd yelled at her. The sky was gray but transparent and from the hillock where the tents stood, it seemed a closer distance to the shepherd than to the village itself. Octavian sat with legs crossed and felt empty inside, and at the same time he felt rich. He felt all of the universe inside him, and he quietly hummed something under his breath, imagining himself to be a Medieval mullah who arrived at this place in a Turkish transport, on the way to conquering Larga. Then it seemed to him that he was an Egyptian scribe, the kind depicted on pottery displayed in the Louvre.
Suddenly the sky above Larga and the Dniester River, which snuck along somewhere nearby, became clear and rosy. It was the sun, dipping down from out of the evening clouds onto the edge of the horizon, sending the village a final salute. Octavian squinted his eyes in sweet enjoyment and caught a ray of the evening sun with his shuddering lashes. They were handsome lashes, Octavian knew. Just as he’d known since yesterday evening that Elena Syrbu meant nothing to him. And that from this day forward he’d never again study philology. What he would become in this world, Octavian didn’t know. He only knew what he wouldn’t become.
Sometime later, the distinguished member of the Russian, Moldovan, and Romanian Academies of Science, a philologist with a named professorship, Octavian Gonts, recalled that day with a thoughtful smile. He remembered it perfectly. It was the most vivid day of his life, when something was made clear to him. What was it? Truth? The purpose of life? Octavian was close to naming it, but he wouldn’t risk giving an exact definition.
Hearing footsteps behind him, and the hard breathing of Elena, who’d climbed up onto the hill, Octavian didn’t even turn around. Even though he usually ran to help her climb and lugged her heavy backpack to even ground.
“No help from you, good sir?” Elena asked him, out of breath.
Octavian’s mind was still blank. With a flutter of his eyelashes he said goodbye to the sun, which had fallen off the edge of the earth, and shook his head no.
“Of course!” Elena Syrbu said mockingly. “But if I asked for a love song, it’d be a different story.”
Octavian took a deep breath, glanced at his watch, stood up and started down the hill. His farewell words were: “Lug your own load, bitch!”
And when Elena, all flustered and blushing, caught up with Octavian and tried to give him a slap in the face, he grabbed hold of her by the chest and tossed her to the ground. True, he wasn’t going to hit her, but he kicked her lightly with his heavy hiking boot and left for the station. The train never came, and Octavian returned to spend the night in Larga, where Elena, without answering the flurry of questions from her classmates, was lying in the tent for a sleepless night.
A year later they were married.
21
IN THE FALL OF 2003, THE MOLDOVAN PRIEST OF THE VILLAGE of Larga, Father Paisii, announced the First Holy Crusade of Eastern Orthodox Christians to the unclean land of Italy.
The reasons rousing the priest to this desperate act were many. But most important among them, as usual, was a lack of money. Father Paisii understood that he’d never see Italy if he had to raise the funds himself to get there. A village priest in a godforsaken parish doesn’t have a shot at collecting four thousand euros. And since he couldn’t pay his way to Italy, Father Paisii decided he’d have to make his way there at the head of Christ’s Army. He’d read about the Crusades in seminary, where he’d been a solid C student. This decision
worthy of Solomon’s name came to Father Paisii not after a long discussion—he had no great love for long discussions—but in the middle of a sermon. The decision was lucid, immediate, and brief. Like a blaze, or a holy prophecy.
“My children!”
Father Paisii was delivering a sermon about Italy.
“And what is this impious country? Can it be the source of all our troubles and misfortune? There are some who will say, ‘We live on the money sent to us by our loved ones from over there.’ But how is this money earned? Our virtuous girls sell their bodies while our husbands, like the Israelites when they were slaves in Egypt, hang their heads and hold their tongue against their hosts, for money that means nothing to the bosses. Who gave these people the right to humiliate poor Moldovans?”
The parishioners listened to Father Paisii, who had fallen into an open-mouthed rage. The priest’s sermon was becoming more and more apocalyptic.
“And does it not say in the Gospels, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle?” asked Father Paisii, the Bible shaking in his hand. “And if it so sayeth, then why does the abominable Italy live with a full belly and contentment, while we here are impoverished, starving, and beggars all. And who, my children, who are the true Christians? The Italians, who sold themselves to that false Latin faith? No! We’re the true children in Christ, and it stands to reason, everything is ours to possess. And so, let us seize everything from the impious and give it to the pious!”
The sermon was becoming more lucid and forthright. The parishioners, mouths still hanging open in amazement, began to understand what the priest was driving at. Many of them were starting to view Father Paisii with approval.
“Seize everything from the impious and give it to the pious!” The phrase rang out through the church.
Timid applause broke out from somewhere.
Father Paisii wrinkled his brow, cleared his throat and took a sip of dark wine from the gilded plastic chalice. His throat felt stuffed with cotton. The wine was dark, not because it was pressed from dark grapes. It was all because of the dust and the parishioners who couldn’t pay for the services of a cleaning lady in the church. “That’s why the place is a pigsty,” the priest thought to himself angrily.
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