by Paul Bailey
‘You were pretty good yourself. It takes two to tango.’
I closed the door behind him and returned to the dishevelled bed we had abandoned two hours ago. I lay back and paid homage to Rãzvan with my now slightly liver-spotted right hand.
My cousin Eduard, who had introduced me to the art of the free spirit that was Josephine Baker in Paris in 1927, was shot dead by a firing squad in the company of unrepentant Fascists. This I knew from my work as a translator for the World Service. Of my father’s fate, of Amalia’s, of Elisabeta’s, I was still, to my misfortune, completely ignorant. They had been absorbed into a general anonymity, consigned to the nothingness of subjugation. They were as good as ghosts to me now.
They were brought back to life, or something like it, when my secretary announced that Ciprian Vãduva wished to speak to me. It was with trepidation that I instructed her to show him into my tiniest of offices at the university. Ciprian? Vãduva? I wondered exactly who he was.
‘Good afternoon, Professor Grigorescu. I am the son of Elisabeta and George Vãduva, the poet you have rescued from oblivion. I am more than happy to meet you at last.’
We shook hands. I invited him to sit down.
‘It was not too difficult tracing you. I am pleased to see you alive and well. My mother sends you kisses.’
‘How is she?’
‘She survives. That is her word, Professor. She has willed herself to survive.’
‘Do you still live with her?’
‘We are inseparable. She would have me leave home and marry, but I cannot do so, yet.’
I asked him where home was. It had been in Basle, but now it was in Paris, of course, the refuge if not hiding place of despairing Romanians. He was, if anything, a Parisian. He spoke his native language, but had never visited his birthplace.
‘My mother wanted me to appreciate my father’s poetry. I think it defies translation.’
‘I think so, too.’
‘My mother has taught me to love and forgive him. It has been a long and difficult lesson.’
I could not imagine the spoiled and skittish Elisabeta as a teacher of almost anything remotely interesting. But then I was picturing her as she was before she met and fell in love with George. I saw them again at the first night of Tristan und Isolde, their ears indifferent to the glorious music, their eyes fixed glowingly on each other’s comeliness. Perhaps her seriousness, her stoicism, had its inspiration in his cruel way of dying.
‘She liked to joke that she was a widow even before she became one. Doamna Vãduva – Mrs Widow. Do you remember him, Professor Grigorescu ?’
‘I shall remember him better if you call me Dinu.’
‘Then I shall definitely call you Dinu, Professor.’
‘Your father was a shy and modest man. He was diffident about showing his poems to anyone. Your mother contrived to make him show them to me. I thought then, and I think now, that they are exquisite. He has left enough of them for generations to delight in. Forgive me, Ciprian, for sounding professorial.’
‘Do I look like him? Do I resemble him in any way?’
‘You want me to say yes, don’t you?’
‘My mother says I am the image of him.’
He wasn’t, as far as I could recall.
‘You have his nose and his prominent ears.’
‘Thank you.’
It was a Friday afternoon. On Friday evenings I always dined at Chez Victor, at the table set aside for me.
‘Could you bear to eat French food? You must have it all the time.’
He replied that he would be honoured to dine with his father’s champion. So that’s who I was. I knew my place, had known it for decades. I lived in the shadows cast by genius.
The greatest Hamlet of his time was seated in his usual place, dining with the greatest Falstaff. Ion Rohrlich and I had marvelled at their performances, during and after the war. Hamlet gave me his customary nod of recognition as the two of them went off to appear in a play they had both confessed they had trouble understanding.
‘You have more news concerning my family, haven’t you, Ciprian?’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘I am waiting to hear it, patiently.’
‘Did you know that Amalia is still alive?’
‘That is very good news. That is the best news you could have brought me.’
‘She is not well, Dinu. She has lapses of memory that sometimes go on for days. It’s then that she believes my mother is no one closer to her than a nurse, and screams at her to do her job properly. When she is lucid, she calls her daughter Elisabeta and complains about the nurse who had been caring for her. If you met her, there is a chance that she would not recognize you. She is either garrulous or silent, depending on her mood.’
‘I have discovered how my cousin, Eduard Vasiliu, died. Is Cezar Grigorescu alive? I should like to know.’
‘I cannot answer your question. I assume he must be dead. He disappeared, Dinu. He simply disappeared.’
‘Complicatedly, Ciprian, not simply. Nothing he did was simple.’
‘Do you have no affection for him?’
‘I wish I had. I sincerely wish I had. I cannot warm to him. It upsets me more than I can say that I see no reason, no earthly reason, to warm to him.’
‘You had a tangible, living father to love or hate,’ Ciprian remarked after a considered silence.
I could do nothing but agree.
I made two suggestions over the meal that evening, both of which delighted the young engineer. The first was that he might attend, in a silent, anonymous capacity if he wished, a lecture I would give the following Tuesday on the poetry of George Vãduva, and the second was that I should take a weekend trip to Paris. I had a present for his mother, whom I longed to see again, and to pay my respects to Amalia, my very-far-from-wicked stepmother, if she was lucid enough to accept them. I did not express my sudden, impulsive longing to tend my lover’s grave – to remove the weeds that had sprouted over it, I imagined, and to replace them with fresh flowers.
‘Cognac, I think?’ I heard myself say, and there was the solicitous Eduard of 1927 opposite me for a second. ‘Would you care for a cognac, Ciprian?’
‘Yes, I think I would. My mother forewarned me to expect kindness and courtesy from her stepbrother. Is there such a person as a step-uncle, Dinu?’
‘I imagine so. If there is, then you are my step-nephew. They do sound cumbersome, don’t they?’
Fifteen students attended my lecture on George Vãduva. They were already seated – notebooks open; pens poised – when the poet’s modest son sneaked in and placed himself in the back row.
I treated the class to a history lesson first. I spoke of the two years at the close of the 1920s when Romania had an infant king on her shaky throne, due to the fact that his priapic father, the rightful sovereign, had put love or lust before duty. That father, King Carol the Second, had regained the even shakier throne in 1930, and from then on Romania swiftly asserted herself as one of the foremost beasts of a bestial Europe. The unlikeliest men and women became apostles of Nazism: hitherto distinguished philosophers and essayists; novelists and poets; dramatists, actors, painters. Adolf Hitler was their saviour, with Goebbels, Göring, Ribbentrop and Hess their Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The gospels of venomous hatred were written and read in the land.
But not by George Vãduva. He contented himself, in his discontented fashion, with unimportant matters like swallows darkening the sky before the onset of spring or music playing in a distant room or a dead woman commenting sadly, but with traces of bitterness, on her husband’s imminent funeral. His poems survive because they were not immediately popular or controversial. They seemed to say absolutely nothing relevant to the major issues of the time. They are neither public nor determinedly private, for their imagery is commonplace – so commonplace, in truth, as to invite rejection and dismissal. The very few critics who bothered to review his poetry were united in their contempt. They made play with his name
. ‘These are the verses of a melancholic widow’ wrote one, who signed himself simply Valentin, while others were even more confidently abusive. ‘These poems are a widow’s weeds sprouting in a pestilential garden’ and ‘George Vãduva’s funeral baked meats leave a sour taste on the Romanian palate.’
Lyricists are said not to be political. Petrarch, Dowland, Keats and Leopardi seem to have nothing more than unhappiness to share with their readers. Yet their sorrows are eternal, reflecting as they do the unspoken sadnesses to which we all are prone. It wasn’t Vãduva’s intention to be subversive, but it is possible to regard him as a dissident. A hand captured in a moment of tenderness has more lasting resonance than has a Nazi salute. When Auden observes that poetry makes nothing happen he is both right and wrong. When a heart is stirred to depths of feeling hitherto unregarded, something is happening. Great poetry has the power to deepen our awareness of the transience of life. It takes an inordinate amount of literary courage to write with delicacy, and that is what Vãduva did. He was brave enough to concern himself with fragile things and that, paradoxically, is his strength. He has a secure place among the melancholic immortals.
The inconspicuous Ciprian said nothing during my encomium and the reading of his father’s lyrics by two of my brightest students that followed. He neither smiled nor wept. He did not introduce himself, as others might have done, as the offspring of a genius.
‘I should like to drink a whole pint of strong English beer,’ he said to me when the celebration was over.
I accompanied Ciprian on his brief tour of the sights of London. He had seen the Tower and the Houses of Parliament on newsreels and picture postcards, and neither seemed to impress him. It was in the City itself that he became animated. He was bewitched by the churches designed by Wren and Hawksmoor, as Rãzvan would have been had he lived to be at my side in my half-life. Ciprian shared his grandmother’s scorn for religion, but that distaste of piety evaporated in the face of pure architectural symmetry in Wren and contained disorder in the work of Hawksmoor. An engineer, he reminded me, is an aesthete, too.
Elisabeta had never remarried. She was content to remain Mme Veuve, she joked. What with Ciprian and Amalia to raise and care for, she had had no room or time for another husband. She had counted her blessings, such as they were.
‘I have brought you a present.’
‘What is it, Dinu? A box of chocolates? Is it a bottle of perfume or cologne?’
‘Nothing so mundane.’
‘You are being mischievous.’
She was right. I was being mischievous. I was about to give her the pearl necklace Prince Radziwill had bestowed upon the golden beauty who was the young Albert Le Cuziat. I’d had no cause or reason to wear it in the thirty years it had been in my bemused possession – no sensible cause or reason at all. I handed it to her in the paper, faded now, in which Albert had wrapped it for me.
‘Please accept this, dear Elisabeta, and please wear it.’
She unwrapped the necklace and stared at it, aghast.
‘It is very beautiful, Dinu. These are genuine pearls. This isn’t costume jewellery. Where did you buy it?’
Her question inspired me to tell the biggest lie I had ever told.
‘It was given to me by my mother.’ I was shocked by what I had said, but continued without shame. ‘On her deathbed.’
‘Was it a gift from Cezar Grigorescu ? If it was, I do not think I wish to have it.’
Oh, the necessary, fiendish nature of deception. ‘Her parents gave it to her on her wedding day.’
‘Then I shall accept it happily, my dear sweet stepbrother. Put it round my neck.’
I did so, and felt neither dear nor sweet. I had defamed Elena’s spirit by pretending that this token of a rich man’s lust for a pretty footman had once belonged to her. It had been a fixture in Albert’s Vatican Library, that room for reflection on all matters carnal and snobbish. If those pearls had had ears, they would have hopped and skipped at the sounds coming from the cubicles. On Wednesday afternoons, when Safarov had reduced the wealthy industrialist to a contentedly blood-stained wreck, they would have become balletic. This vision of improbably lively, dancing pearls was with me as I adorned my stepsister with the surprising present Albert had elected to give me – a present in no way comparable to that of Honoré or Rãzvan, which I had received from him, at the cost of a hundred francs, to my lasting gratitude on that woozy afternoon in May 1927.
‘Come and see Amalia. She has days when she knows who I am and days when she doesn’t. She may not recognize you, Dinu. Sometimes she mistakes Ciprian for a tradesman or a delivery boy. Her body is resilient but her mind is unstable.’
She was sitting in an armchair by her bed wearing a dress that Leon Becker, who had been slaughtered in an abattoir in 1941, made for her from a design by Coco Chanel. It hung loosely on her, where once her generous frame had filled it. She was emaciated now but strangely lovely to my eyes, in that simple outfit she had worn on the hateful evening when Eduard and my treacherous father had railed against the perniciousness of the Jewish race.
‘Do you know who I am, Amalia?’
‘Should I know who you are?’
‘I am your stepson Dinu. I am not as pretty as I was when you dressed me in velvet.’
‘Were you a pretty boy then?’
‘You said I was. You told me often enough I was.’
‘Are you the one I dressed in velvet?’
‘Yes, I am. Yes, I was.’
‘Why did I do that?’
‘You know the reason, not me.’
‘Do I?’
I took her hand and pressed it. I kissed it, in the Romanian fashion.
‘I married your father for his money. Why else would I have married him?’
She sounded sepulchral. She sounded as if she were stating the truth from inside a tomb.
‘He must have charmed you,’ I said, in my father’s defence. ‘He must have had some appeal for you.’
‘I needed a roof over my head. I needed a home for my daughter, and he needed a mascot.’
‘I have seen Rudolf Peterson, Amalia. He has been resident in London for a long time.’
‘Who?’
‘Rudolf Peterson, the great Romanian tenor. I see him at concert halls with a young man who people say is his nephew.’
‘Rudi?’
‘He looks very fragile.’
I remembered a conversation I’d had with the still alluring Amalia in September 1935, on the eve of my return to Paris.
‘Have you read yesterday’s Figaro?’
‘Not yet, Dinu. Is there something in it that will interest me?’
‘Yes, there is.’
It interested her as much as it stimulated me. In the interview with a music critic, the ‘shining star of operetta’, as he was labelled, to his considerable distaste, asserted that he would not be singing in Romania, Austria and Germany. There was a foul stench emanating from certain parts of Europe and he had no desire to inhale it. The critic had interrupted with the reminder that he, M. Peterson, was not Jewish, which crass observation had inspired the singer to laughter, and when he had done laughing to say: ‘I am not a Jew, but the circumstance of my birth does not prevent me being concerned and compassionate. “Some of my best friends are Jewish” is a cliché that has particular resonance for me. The air in London, despite the November fog and the poverty and a few fools in black shirts, is more congenial to my sensitive nostrils.’
‘There speaks the man who has broken a dozen hearts, including mine,’ Amalia had commented.
It was ironical, was it not, that Elisabeta should be in love with a man named Vãduva, the Romanian word for ‘widow’? Her own romance with Rudi or Rudolf – he was Rudi in the bedroom and Rudolf on the stage – had happened when he was appearing as Danilo in The Merry Widow.
‘My poor daughter has not been the merriest of widows. M. Vãduva saw to that,’ she said, again sepulchrally.
‘Be quiet, Mamã. Ta
lk to Dinu about other things.’
I knew from what Ciprian had told me in London that Amalia, Elisabeta and the little Vãduva had lived in Basle throughout the war. When money became scarce, Elisabeta had given piano lessons to the children of the rich. Of Cezar’s whereabouts they had known nothing and knew nothing still.
‘Do you want to make your peace with him?’ Amalia asked, staring at me.
I hesitated.
‘Yes, I do, if only for my mother’s sake. My mother would rest contented if I made peace with him.’
Her eyes lost their dullness. They glittered as she said: ‘Are you telling me your sainted mother isn’t happy among her angels and cherubs? She ought to be. She damned well ought to be. She was spared years of his meanness and cynicism. She made the great escape from him. I wish I had. I live in fear that he will find me. Elena is beyond his reach, because if he is dead he is sure to be in hell.’
‘Stop it, Mamã. You are upsetting Dinu.’
‘No, no,’ I protested. ‘I sympathize with what your mother says.’
‘How is the prince’s boy? Is he being kind to you?’
‘He died, Mamã.’
‘Did he? How thoughtless of him. So Dinu is a widow as well?’
‘I am, Amalia. I have been widowed, in a manner of speaking, for thirty years.’
‘You looked so ravishing in velvet, my love. I was tempted to eat you up. Come and live with us. We could be such a happy family – you, me, Elisabeta and Ciprian.’
‘I should like that,’ I said. I was speaking the truth. I should have liked to live with them, impossible though the prospect was.
‘It will not be for a long time, Dinu. I am dying, my sweet.’
‘You are not dying,’ said Ciprian. Those were the only words he spoke.
I knew, beyond all doubt, that she would outlive me. I had weeks to live. In her eyes, my paleness was that of the Dinu she had cosseted and cooed over in another time, in another country. She was not to know that it was now the pallor of impending death.
I might have said as much to her, but nodded and smiled instead. I was Elena’s son, and could not be honest with her. I elected to stay silent.