An Ermine in Czernopol

by Gregor von Rezzori

The enchanted aspect of this fairy-tale calf had a somewhat repugnant effect that called to mind Professor Feuer’s neck straining out of his Byronic collar—the sight of which once led Uncle Sergei to note that while people of other nations are moved by the sound of the songs they sing, the Germans are moved by themselves singing. The crown prince seemed silenced forever, as if by a spell, but there was something offensive about his desire to communicate in such a tender, familiar way, by jumping right into one’s lap. It seemed like a betrayal of his princeliness; it suggested that he wasn’t entirely without a self, that he wasn’t one hundred percent the Crown Prince, that his unassailably superior surface could be marred by the impurity of being human. As a result, even the ultimate expression of his princely character —his undeniable elegance—seemed oddly fake, becoming a gesture somewhere between escape and devotion, between the self-renunciation of pride and that of love, which clung to him like a kind of secret need. What was imploringly shy and vulnerable in his forget-me-not gaze seemed painfully intensified by the overly tall collar of janissary-like splendor, which seemed to crown all the braids that joined at the breast of the cape: he looked like a child in carnival costume who has been shaken out of the happy magic of the disguise by some brutal event.

  Neither then nor today can I believe that it was mere coincidence that Tildy’s last night and the love that made him human took place beneath this picture. The more I studied it, the more it seemed to be a vanishing point, the place where all the lines of my hero’s story converged. And I studied it with a degree of thoroughness I had retained from my childhood. No matter how passionately serious and conscientiously we pursue our later occupations, nothing can compare to the patience—and therefore the evenhandedness—we show during childhood, in the raw process of assimilating the world. Childhood is pious in the true sense of the word, because to be pious is to be patient while gaining awareness. As children we refused to let go of what we observed until we had completely assimilated it. This was not a logical process but rather some kind of metachemical one: we grappled with what we saw, grappled with ourselves in our attempt to understand, we took the time to absorb what we observed, in an act of layered copying that left it intact and whole, but nonetheless dismantled it into its constituent elements. And so it remained deposited within us, in a different aggregate state, a kind of labile composition of molecules, until some stimulus—some related image, a sound, the tone of a similar voice—precipitated a kaleidoscopic cascade of corresponding images. It was always an act of musing, in the true sense of the word, when we observed something, focusing all our senses on the secret essence that all connections and all things possess.

  With some pain I recognized in the photograph of the German crown prince our hussar, albeit distorted, caricatured to fairy-tale proportions, but for that reason eloquent—a revelation of his essence. I glimpsed once again the lost poetry of our childhood and realized what had brought about the loss: our defense against the despair that lies at the root of existence, a defense undertaken in the spirit of Czer–nopol, of the world, against the threat of the void. My eyes had begun to see, they had ceased dreaming in the presence of the dreamed; they recognized their vision as fantastical and now smiled at it with the envy of the impoverished, and opposed it with the weapon of the poor: irony.

  I also saw that this impoverishment had been bequeathed to us along with what was German about our childhood dream—that peculiarly German fairy-tale quality, bewitched and enchanted, split between dream and nightmarish reality. Our reluctance to view Tildy as a German matched our unconscious struggle against what was German within ourselves. We were more deeply related than we wanted to admit to our comrades-in-arms, the caterpillars that exploded into fire butterflies, and we were closer than we would like to their self-destructive being, so full of despair. We had seen their other face in the hussar, and were forced to recognize it as the figment of a German fantasy, which was dashed not so much by the contemptuous reality of Czernopol but by the worldly-wise smile of Prefect Tarangolian.

  The curtain of darkness that had fallen after Tildy’s shooting of Năstase, and his subsequent disappearance into the twilight, now rises on a new scene, when his eyes meet the eyes of the streetwalker at the side of the drunken Professor Lyubanarov, in the smoky half-light of the Établissement Mon Repos. I never made the effort to find out what had driven him there. With the conscientiousness that for years bordered on an affliction, I gathered what information I could about his last night, I never thought to look for a reasonable explanation for that. The most obvious was that he followed Professor Lyubanarov to that place. But this—like all obvious things—was misleading. Where else could our hussar have met those eyes, and where else could he have met his death than here, under the picture that surrendered its meaning to me? He met her eyes in an unguarded moment—when they were observing him. He couldn’t know that she was very shortsighted. The unfathomable enigma found in all eyes that are wide open and set far apart was magnified by the veil of her myopia, and that must have affected him as it did every other man who met her gaze directly. Between these eyes, the base of her nose seemed a little broad in relationship to the fine tip and the delicately flared nostrils—so that she looked short and childlike. The girl had turned her doll’s face in the potlike hat toward Tildy, from the side, in a gesture of lazy curiosity born of boredom. She only understood Ukrainian, and although her attention was openly directed to the room and the men who were drinking and roaring, she made an effort not to appear impatient, out of a kind of professional courtesy, as long as she was afforded a place at the table of the enormous drunkard Lyubanarov, where she entertained herself attempting to decipher the effect of the professor’s speeches—German interwoven with snippets of Latin quotes. The high collar of her coat was snuggled against her cheek, with its shabby yellowed bit of ermine fur. Her young girl’s mouth, smeared with lipstick, was slightly open, in an expression of the gentle, almost tender irony with which one listens to the sound of boastful words in a foreign language.

  Because Professor Lyubanarov was spouting languages she did not understand, in the unmistakable, pathetically high-flown speech of the chronically inebriated. The diatribe of habitual drunkenness flowed from his trembling mouth, punctuated by facial twitches and wild fits of laughter, which he slurped back in with rattling sobs; by visionary gestures; by grand, overarching gesticulations and sudden moments of glaze-eyed stupefaction. Full of torment and desire, he delivered his confession, replete with self-accusation and self-humiliation, with the embedded rage, scorn, megalomania, and orphic tones—the nonsense and profundity of a blind seer, who gropes through the purplish surge of dissolved connections and suddenly uncovers a brilliant insight for which he first finds wondrous words that then dissipate in confused speech. He had taken hold of Tildy’s arm and gripped it tightly as he spoke with manic, desperate urgency:

  “… Are you the man I think you are? Can you understand me? If you are, then you’re bound to understand … Omnes, unde amor iste, rogant, tibi? Venit Apollo: Galle, quid insanis? inquit: tua cura Lycoris, perque nives alium perque horrida castra secuta est … Ecquis erit modus? inquit … And listen to this: Amor non talia curat. Nec lacrimis crudelis Amor—Are you listening?—nec lacrimis crudelis Amor saturantur. So, despise me! All of you! Look down on me! Who can claim to understand me? Virgil—the great Virgil! Did you even comprehend the words? All ask: ‘Whence this love of yours?’ Apollo came. ‘Gallus,’ he said, ‘what madness this? Your sweetheart Lycoris has followed another amid snows and amid rugged camps. Will there be no end?’ … To which he replied: ‘Love recks naught of this.’ You hear that? Love recks naught of this: neither is cruel Love sated with tears.” He was shaken by more sobbing. “I know, I know, I am despicable, the most despicable of the despicable. I am the town cuckold. I am not Gallus, you hear, and she is not Lycoris—she is a whore.” He laughed. “As soon as his wife perceived that her husband was asleep, this august harlot, ha-ha!—august harlot!—was sha
meless enough to prefer a common mat to the imperial couch. Assuming a night-cowl, and attended by a single maid, she issued forth; then, having concealed her raven locks under a light-colored peruque, she took her place in a brothel reeking with long-used coverlets. Entering an empty cell reserved for herself, she there took her stand, under the feigned name of Lycisca, her nipples bare and gilded, and exposed to view the womb. Here she graciously received all comers, asking from each his fee; and when at length the keeper dismissed the rest, she remained to the very last before closing her cell, and with passion still raging hot within her went sorrowfully away. Then, exhausted but unsatisfied, with soiled cheeks, and begrimed with the smoke of lamps, she took back to the imperial pillow all the odors of the stews … O help me, help me in my shame! But who will show compassion? Perhaps yourself? Didn’t you have her as well? Tell me, haven’t you had her as well—ha-ha! You don’t let yourself be taken aback, sir, my compliments! You don’t let yourself be baffled. Allow me to introduce myself: Dr. Lyubanarov, formerly professor at the University of Sofia. It is my habit to baffle the students, in order to catch their ignorance off guard—except for the one who answers immediately: Book Two, Second Satire of Decimus Junius Juvenalis, the Martial of the Eloquent, facundus, verses two hundred sixteen to two hundred thirty-two … It is a satire, sir. Life plays out in satires … But you, sir, let us speak of you—let us speak of pride. A pride such as yours, does it not come from the fact that you despise yourself every moment you are not proving yourself? But what do you know about that, sir! This dog with his tail cut off: people point at him, ridicule him, and he is ashamed to show himself, and not ashamed that he is ashamed … The core of his character remains undestroyed—you know what I mean—the core of the character of this dog … Base creatures bow to higher ones and exact their revenge as best they can … But you, my brother? Come closer, I want to tell this to you, because you are my brother-in-law … I don’t have the honor of knowing you, sir, except from seeing you and hearing about you and I know that you are my brother-in-law—I want to tell this to you: that, too, is a satire, an indirect and droll satire, a satire meant for laughing. The world is made of laughter: the angels laugh at humans; the archangels laugh at the angels; and God laughs at everything … He even laughs at the anguish that stems from your pride just as he laughs at the anguish that stems from my love. Omnia vincit amor; et nos cedamus amori … And God laughs at that. She fornicates with the whole city—they’re all whores—trahit sua quemque voluptas—and He laughs. But you do not! You refuse to change your expression. You lack those two common lines that laughter cuts on either side of the mouth—no, not laughter, nature cuts them there, because she is ashamed, because she wants to place parentheses around the meanness of the human face … But not you. You could be beautiful, you know that? But you are not beautiful, Mr. Brother-in-law, you do not have a face; you have pasted a decal above your collar and in back of that, where everyone else, all the base ones, have a soul that bleeds, you have one that we see sweating … Is that why you came here? Did you want to see if the mongrels still step out of your way, Herr Major? Permit me to introduce myself, I am your brother-in-law. You were so generous as to risk your life for the sake of my honor, we are brothers—but it is the brotherhood of Cain and Abel. Did you ever think how much your generosity would drag me through the mud? Now everyone knows, now the mongrels on the street step out of my way. But see: I laugh. I am humiliated, and therefore I can laugh. I laugh, you see—I am a god! I am a god … I am a god …”

  The girl at his side had turned to Tildy, her mouth hinting at an ironic, patient female smile. He was completely unknown to her; she knew nothing about him, and particularly nothing of his relationship to Lyubanarov, and she hadn’t understood a single word of what the professor had been saying, although she was well acquainted with his monologues. Nor did she notice any dismay in Tildy’s face, only that he seemed extremely exhausted, and she felt a mocking pity for the unruffled patience with which he withstood the pathetic surge of words, the terrible boredom, that—as she knew from experience—drunken diatribes unleash. But when her shortsighted eyes brought his image into sharper focus, she observed that beneath the very properly trimmed black mustache his mouth was completely helpless—the mouth of someone who has delivered himself up to the mercy of others. Nonetheless, his bearing remained that of a polite listener; his face showed no sign of suffering. She saw that his short sideburns had turned gray, and her half smile gave way to a soft, thoughtful expression. She found herself facing a man of better background and breeding than she had ever encountered. This was an elegance she did not know but immediately sensed and understood. And like everyone endowed with a greater sensitivity and a quicker mind—no matter what they might call, or to what they might attribute, such dubious advantages—she felt a kinship with the elegance. The fable of her better birth and future riches had given her a keen sense of human qualities; it made no difference where it came from, whether her mother had fed her the lie in desperation, spinning the promise of a bright future for her own consolation, thinking that the hope it would awaken would become her own; or whether people had made it up out of scorn, to ridicule her for being different, for being so maladroit and unskilled when it came to everyday life, the profane accomplishments at which those of more robust constitution so excel. She was still close enough to being a child that the first impression she gave was of a highly sensitive, quickly unsettled creature, happily dreaming away—an easy target for the hate of petty people. The aura of this childhood had made her oblivious to the absolute scorn with which people called her “the American girl,” poking fun at her background; she accepted the moniker as a distinction. She was entirely spared from reflection on her current existence. She lived in the future, the future that had been promised to her. She was not fallen. The indescribably shabby elegance of the Établissement Mon Repos still represented the big wide world to her, even though she realized there was another, larger and more luxurious, one. But that’s exactly what was headed her way, exactly what she was expecting here. It was natural for her to give herself to the men; it suited her playful, feline coquetry and her great tenderness, and the fact that she received money for doing so caused her even less concern. Now and then she referred to it as her “profession”—with the earnest sincerity of a child absorbed in play—and she kept an account of all her income and obligations. Despite all these traits that might be called infantile or backward, however, she possessed a deep femininity, which found its most visible expression in her brilliant sense of fashion, and which ran through her entire being. When Tildy looked up and their gazes met, it was this sense that allowed her to recognize who he was, and that recognition was written clearly in her eyes.

  He looked through the mask of cheap makeup and saw her face, saw the beauty of a young woman not only in the tenderness and delicacy of her features, but in the expression of deep, intimate connection with the world, arising from her gentle breathing, the intimations and experiences of her body, the ancient innate wisdom of her senses. Later he would discover other faces in her, faces that would cause him torment—but at this moment he was delighted by what he was seeing. Because he looked into her eyes and recognized her as well. Through the deeply mysterious veil of her shortsighted eyes he believed he saw her, the core and substance of her unsettled, unfathomable being, her very identity—that I that sees itself within the conscious and unconscious interplay of the psyche as something fixed and constant. That was what he believed he loved when his emotion surged in her direction, and he realized that he loved her when the echo of her presumed answer brought first the happiness, and then the first sharp pain of disappointment. And I must say: he behaved heroically. He wouldn’t have been Tildy, the knight, Widow Morar’s armored angel, if he hadn’t shown such extreme and patient resolve to love her core and substance, and not the promise of one of her fleeting faces. The report I received of the last horrible scene of that night, when he slapped her, has been corroborated,
and therefore I know for sure that he must have expended whatever energy he had left, his last resistance, against the horrors of love. He was clearly not an extraordinary human being, certainly not the hero that our childish fantasy had wished him to be. He was obsessed with duty to the point of being obstinate, a pedant with monomaniacal traits—a true oddball, if you will. His one great virtue was something beyond his own control; it was the legacy of the world he came from, a vanished world. In Czernopol they would have said he was on the slow side, someone who has a hard time grasping the fact that times change. He was so slow at understanding this that he had to die: there was no other choice except to understand. Assailed from the outside, his surface was invulnerable. It had remained unscathed up to this last night, despite all he had been through. It shattered only when tainted by his humanity. It shattered with his love, his love that was bound to be his downfall, since love is only possible in a world of forms. Because he was prepared to love something without a form, he gave himself away. As a character determined to carry every decision to the extreme, he therefore chose to die.

  Professor Lyubanarov ranted on, weaving the purple mists of his desperate intoxication into language. Tildy offered the girl a glass of wine. She declined: she never drank. Then she asked, with timid courage, whether she might have an orange. Tildy didn’t understand right away. His Ukrainian was weak; he only spoke as much as any officer needed to know in order to make himself understood to the motley soldiers under his command, which invariably included some Ukrainians. She pointed to a basket of oranges on the counter, and when Tildy immediately gave his consent, she called to the proprietor to bring her one. The innkeeper nonchalantly grabbed the closest one, set it on a plate and nodded to the greasy waiter to take it to her. At that point Tildy’s innate aversion to the baseness of the establishment broke out. He lashed out at the proprietor, ordering him to offer her the entire basket and let her choose for herself. The waiter placed the basket on the table in front of the girl.