An Ermine in Czernopol

by Gregor von Rezzori

  An hour later we went to see her. “I brought you something. It’s a poem written by one of my father’s patients. I should tell you that the man who wrote it—or, more precisely, whose words were written down, because he can barely write—is insane. My father is a doctor for the insane. This is a fantastic discovery. The poet is completely uneducated; his German is very bad, like with all the uneducated people here, and still he’s created something incredibly beautiful. My father says if it were any more amazing it would be a religious experience. You want to read it?”

  “Read it to us,” we requested.

  “It’s called ‘The Young Dancer,’” said Blanche, warmed and glowing with joy. Then she read:

  Eine groβe Glockenblume

  wehte fort vom Frühlingsbaum

  lichtem Frühlingstag zum Ruhme

  tanzt sie sich in sanften Traum.

  Eine Wolke weiβer Seide

  spiegelt rauschend jeden Schritt:

  mystisch wandeln unterm Kleide

  Blut und Haut und Atem mit.

  An des Körpers Blüten-Stengel

  schwingt des Rockes Glocke sie,

  und der Beine Doppel-Schwengel

  läutet leise Melodie.

  Eine groβe Glockenblume

  wehte fort vom Frühlingsbaum:

  lichtem Frühlingstag zum Ruhme

  tanzt sie sich in sanften Traum … [1]

  “It’s wonderful,” said Blanche, when she reached the end. “The circumstances are just as remarkable: another patient, who is in the institution just for observation, heard it from the lips of the poor sick man. They aren’t even in the same ward. The man who composed it is a former locksmith named Karl Piehowicz. He’s been in the asylum for years and works in the garden, and the other, who is likely not even sick, offered to help with the garden work, in order to have something to do. He is an officer …”

  “Is his name Tildy?” we asked, utterly beside ourselves with excitement.

  “Yes. How do you know that? Do you know him?”

  We tried to tell Blanche who Tildy was, at least who he was for us. We barraged her with stories about his wife, Tamara Tildy, about old

  Paşcanu, about Widow Morar, the dogs that always ran with his horse and about how one of them always limped out of sheer hysteria and how they had all been poisoned. We told her how he had been sent to the asylum, all the people he had challenged to a duel, and how he had smacked Herr Alexianu in the face …

  Blanche looked at us with wide eyes and listened patiently. “You have to understand what a miracle it is that a mentally disturbed person can produce something with such beautiful order,” she said. “My father told me that it isn’t unusual for the mentally disturbed to find some wonderful form of expression, whether they are writing or drawing or painting—but that usually starts off beautifully and quickly turns confused and ends all twisted up in a painful muddle. There’s hardly ever anything that’s complete and can stand on its own, so full of light and clarity, so immaculate as this here. But the most amazing thing about Karl Piehowicz is that everything he composes is just like this, as clear as day. I have another poem here, called ‘Springtime.’”

  She wanted to recite it. We interrupted her, paying no attention to the pain in her eyes. We besieged her with questions about Tildy, and didn’t let up until we discovered she didn’t know any more than what she’d already told us, at which point we were disappointed, and even a little embittered. All at once a distance grew between us, and we were immediately tempted to attribute this sudden inability to understand each other to a more fundamental difference—precisely the one that purports to separate the Jewish and Christian “races.” Was it not significant? We wanted to tell her all about our hussar, and she went on about a crazy locksmith who wrote poems. During those days we felt more inclined to stay at home than we usually did, as if we had ignored all the well-intended warnings about the weather and stayed outside too long, and now, frozen through and sopping wet, were grateful for the comfortable warmth of our parents’ home.

  It was at that time that Aunt Paulette brought Herr Adamowski to our house for the first time.

  When she announced that she had invited Herr Adamowski to tea, no one said a word—a clear refusal to take any stand on the extravagant invitation—and so the decision either to disapprove or else to quietly acquiesce was left up to the mistress of the house, in other words, to our mother.

  “I hear that Herr Adamowski has been looking after Tamara Tildy in a very commendable way,” our mother said. “We should all feel a little ashamed that she has to turn so far for help.”

  No one chose to reply. So Herr Adamowski came to tea. No one—with the exception of Aunt Paulette, of course—had any idea that he was Tamara Tildy’s lover.

  It happened that on the same day some relatives had come from the country, on very short notice. They had come to town just for the day, so there was no way to avoid their visit. No one said anything more about the unexpected meeting, although it was to be feared that our relatives—an older couple given to country pursuits—and the editor would have very little to say to one another. On the other hand, their presence would also prevent it from becoming all too obvious how little anyone had to say to Herr Adamowski.

  What made Herr Adamowski’s entrance embarrassing was the fact that he had taken off his jacket. It was a warm day, and he was carrying it draped on his arm when he stepped through the gate by the dvornik’s hut and headed through the garden to the house, his beret slanting over his head and his monocle sparkling in his left eye. Everyone expected him to put it back on before entering the room, but he hung it up in the hall along with his beret, and brought his cane inside instead, though that could hardly be held against him, on account of his clubfoot. The man also exuded a fairly pungent odor, although that, too, could be forgiven, considering how much effort it took him to keep going with his physical defect. However, the dogs, which were always close at hand, refused to leave him alone, and he had trouble fending off their friendly attention. Once inside the room, he was introduced to all the relatives one by one, and made his rounds rocking from one side to the other, passing his cane from his right hand to his left in order to shake hands, and then taking it back with in the right, until he finally came to a place where he could sit down between our mother and the aunt from the country. At that point the dogs were energetically shooed away and he was offered a cigarette, which he politely accepted. With the stilted gestures of the newcomer who senses that he is being offered an opportunity to shed his awkwardness, he lit it and inhaled, but then immediately had a coughing fit. Everyone overlooked his clumsiness.

  Meanwhile, he felt put on the spot, the focus of a deference that lasted too long and was at best ambivalent. Our country relatives were people happily filled with their own simple self-assurance, and although they were considered open-minded, in reality they viewed whatever was outside their immediate range of vision, or else what didn’t have to do with the joys and limitations of their unpretentious life, with blank incomprehension, before proceeding along in their narrow way of thinking. They were devoted to each other in an entirely uncomplicated and somewhat coarse way, and were not at all shy about criticizing each other, or recounting the occasional vicious disagreement, so that a complete stranger had no choice but to feel excluded from the intimate sphere they never seemed to leave. The rustic isolation in which they lived, with no children, had led them to the habit of listening only to each other. When, for instance, Uncle Hubert said, “It’s horrible how much time you waste in the city. We spent the whole morning running around from one place to another just because we needed a permit to import a new reaper-binder,” Aunt Sophie paid careful attention to his every word, even though she had been present on this errand, which could not have been particularly entertaining—just in case she had to complete his report by reminding him of something he had left out, or even simply to paraphrase what he had already reported. “We set off at five-thirty in the morning, were i
n the city by nine o’clock, and even though we went straight to the permit office before doing anything else, by noon we still weren’t done.” As predicted, the couple paid little attention to Herr Adamowski. What’s more, whenever our mother tried to fill this gap by interrupting Uncle Hubert’s report with a question or comment, Aunt Sophie would cut her off: “Listen to what Hubi’s saying, it’s very interesting.”

  What Uncle Hubert was saying was not the least bit interesting, but it did have the calming effect of the straightforward narration of simple events.

  “Now, I’ve ordered a gun rest for the stag season,” he said, for example. “Because, well, it’s like this: I can hardly see anything with my right eye anymore, since I was wounded in the war. So I ordered a telescopic sight from Zeiss so I could shoot with my left eye. Except I can hardly hear with my left ear. So when the gamekeeper locates a stag, he has to go to my left, to hand me the rifle with the sight and point it in the direction of the stag so I can see it. Then he has to step behind me over to my right, where I can still hear, and whisper how many points the stag has, because I can’t see that while I’m hurrying to look through the sight. I mean, of course I see it when there’s time to. Then I can give him a good looking-over, but mostly there isn’t enough time, what with the thick underbrush out where we are, not like what you have, with those tall fir stands; but where we are it really is like a brush. So when I don’t have enough time for a proper identification, the gamekeeper has to tell me what it is I’m shooting at. After all, you don’t want to be shooting the wrong thing, do you? And then he starts whispering in my right ear, and as it is I can barely understand the man, what with his pipe in his mouth …”

  “So now Hubi’s told him he can’t bring the pipe anymore when they’re out together,” seconded Aunt Sophie. “But that man always has something in his mouth—he’s always either chewing on a blade of grass or a button or something …”

  “And he stinks on top of that …”

  “He stinks like you can’t imagine. I’ve already asked Hubi if he doesn’t ever bathe, but Hubi says the animals prefer it that way …”

  “Well, they always say you’re not supposed to scrub yourself too thoroughly when you go hunting, because soap stinks even more to the game than an unwashed man does to us. You can see that whenever you give a dog something that smells good—smells good to us, I mean …”

  “That’s right, and what smells good for a dog doesn’t smell good to us, right? But you wanted to tell about that new shooting rest you’re having made.”

  “Well, so if the man next to me stinks that much, the gamekeeper I mean …”

  “And Hubi has a nose like a fox, I’m telling you, it’s so sensitive that if one of our servant girls smells just a little bit I take care of it right away, though I can’t be checking their armpits first thing every day or God knows what else. But you know what works best?” She turned past Herr Adamowski to ask our mother. “Permanganate. Make them take a permanganate bath because that takes care of things for a long time. Remember that, it’s bound to be of value to you. I learned about it from Olga.”

  “Yes, of course, potassium permanganate, that takes care of it right away. But I can’t put the gamekeeper in a tub of bichromate of potash. In the first place he doesn’t have a tub at home, and in the second place the man is busy throughout the rutting season listening to the calls: he’s been sleeping outside for days, that’s a tremendous strain, the rut, for him …”

  “Well, he stinks even outside the season. But never mind that, finish telling about your shooting stick, because we’ll have to be on our way soon.”

  “Can’t you stay for supper?” asks our mother.

  “No, dear, thanks very much, but Hubi has to write tonight and in the morning he has to make it to the station because the new thresher has come in and he insists on being there while they unload it so nothing happens to the parts, we’ve already put a fortune into the thing. I’m telling you, if we didn’t grow what we need to live off we’d starve to death, sure as shooting.”

  “Well, sooner or later we’ll amortize the costs of the machine, right …”

  “Sooner or later, Hubi, it will be amortized. But who knows if we’ll live to see that day—in other words, we might just starve to death if we didn’t have everything, at least to eat I mean, believe you me. But now go on and listen to the rest of Hubi’s story about his new shooting rest …”

  “So, like I was saying, when the man is whispering in my ear, and he always has something in his mouth, then I can’t help turning my head to him in order to hear him better, after all, you get worked up in a moment like that, with the stag standing over there, ready to move off at any moment, or else he spots you and then he takes off, oh yes, that’s happened to me a few times, that I’ve lost him from my sight, and you know how that is, when you try searching around with that, I can’t send the gamekeeper to the other side to set up the rifle again, that would make too much noise, would take too much time, even the most trusting deer isn’t going to stand there that long, of course …”

  “He’d have to be tied to the ground. But go on, Hubi, otherwise we’ll be late …”

  “It’s not that urgent, Sophie, just let me finish …”

  “I’m telling you that you should finish now, because you know how much Janos dislikes driving on these bad roads. It’s absolutely scandalous—where we live, you know—potholes two feet deep, you can imagine what that does to our axles, and Janos really is a careful driver, say what you will …”

  “Listen to you! On the way into town he drove like the devil was breathing down his neck. Of course during the day it’s a different matter.”

  “But tell us about your gun rest, Hubi. Pay attention, Elvira, because I’m sure this will interest you as well.”

  “So now we’ll simply do this: once the gamekeeper has the gun pointed in the direction of the deer, I’ll stick the gun rest in the ground and hold the rifle tight—then he can talk to me as much he as he wants with the straw in his mouth. That way I won’t lose the deer anymore from my sight, and this also has the advantage that you can shoot with greater certainty, say what you will, but I’m no longer one to get embarrassed when I pass up a shot or anything like that. After all, I’ve shot enough in my life freehand, and fast, too, tossing them off with the shotgun …”

  “Hubi can shoot from enormous distances, often up to four hundred yards …”

  “Well, with the rifles these days you can do that …”

  And so on and so on. They were always in the process of leaving, never had enough time, and still they would stay rooted to their chairs for several hours, then only to draw out the unpostponable departure.

  “Well, we really have to be going, no two ways about it, but Hubi has a few new jokes you simply have to hear. Very quickly. Tell that one, Hubi, you know …”

  “Which one?”

  “The one you told me on the ride in—that Ferry told you …”

  “Which one was that?”

  “You know. Oh, it’s slipped off the tip of my tongue right now, but it’s really funny, it is, Hubi always has the best jokes, he can keep an entire company entertained.”

  “If only I could remember them at the right moment—right now I honestly don’t know which one you mean. Really I should write them down immediately, because there are just too many to remember.”

  “It’s a real pity, Hubi, that you can’t remember this one, it was really good.”

  “No, there’s another one that’s a lot better, the one I told you the other day, except I can’t tell it right now in front of the children—and there are ladies present as well. But you really can’t remember which one?”

  “Didn’t it start like this: ‘Two Jews are sitting in the train …’?”

  “That’s right, that’s the one! No, no, it was a different one—give me just a moment …”

  Strangely, we children didn’t experience this as boring: that was simply how things were and there
fore how they had to be. Despite their ridiculous traits, our two relatives displayed a very high degree of what Herr Tarangolian referred to as haecceitas. Raising his finger, he launched into an explanation: “A wonderful expression from the good Doctor Subtilis, my young friends, well worth noting!” In short: they were exactly who they were, in a manner that was absolutely and utterly natural; they were perfect in their own way and defied comparison, because they represented a world that was complete unto itself. And while this world might be questioned, especially when measured against other forms of existence, it could never be negated or denied. This gave them an added measure of representative authority, apart from their own powers of persuasion, in the same way that Johann Huber the farmer is greater than and stronger than Johann Huber the man, or sailor Hein is stronger than and greater than just plain Hein. Ten minutes in their company was enough to transport us to the peaceful and leisurely pace of country life, where the eternal repetition of natural cycles is perceived and welcomed as variety, so that ultimately all impatience is lulled to sleep by the rhythmic rising and falling of the Great Breath, and banal, everyday events acquire a kind of nourishing power. Aunt Paulette, who detested anything to do with the country, couldn’t help giving one of her bitter-angry groans a biblical cast: “And breakfast and dinner and tea and supper were another day.”

  Of course that world afforded Herr Adamowski little room to maneuver. After he managed to break the spell of the first awkward moments, he changed his role from observed to observer, and began calling attention to himself, so as not to be left at a disadvantage. He laughed out loud at a joke or anecdote, and looked around seeking consensus, as if every person present could claim some of the credit for the general merriment, himself included. Finally he overcame his awkwardness and began interjecting an occasional word or sentence into the conversation being carried on by Uncle Hubi and Aunt Sophie, though of course he never had much of a chance, since any insights he might have were diminished by his being an outsider. So he grew increasingly uneasy, as if he had performed below expectations and didn’t deserve the cup of tea and the anchovy roll that were set in front of him. But there was no way to get past the utter self-containment of our aunt and uncle from the country. Consequently he turned to us children, baring his teeth in a sawlike smile and winking to imply some secret understanding, as if coaxing us to join him in silent mockery of our relatives. All of these gestures set his monocled face into a circular motion like a wheel of fortune capable of producing a winning number at any moment, but which most of the time stops at a blank, only to continue undeterred onto the next spin, equally full of promise. He actually succeeded in attracting our attention, but as soon as he started to perform his magic tricks and suddenly pulled a piece of candy out of nowhere, just like that time at the gate, Aunt Paulette interrupted him with a “Would you please stop that,” in a tone whose sharpness lingered in the room for several seconds.