The Days of the King

by Filip Florian

  A week later, the tenth day of May 1867 dissolved differently from other days, with a gilded service at the Metropolia (for gilded were the robes of the Metropolitan Nifon, of the bishops and the priests of the great conclave), a reception laid on by the prince in the throne room (where he had delivered his first speech in Romanian, although his words, thanks to Professor Treboniu Laurian, had not much resembled those used by his subjects, having Latin forms and sounds) and a military parade down Podul Mogoşoaiei, which drew half the city to the avenue's sidewalks and excited three-quarters of the women. Later, while in the city hall new streets and boulevards were taking shape beneath the architects' nibs and on other large sheets of paper a new channel for the sluggish and stinking Dîmbovitza was being traced out, so that the river would no longer flood the city, the dentist was busy making sure that a small old reed-clad building near the Silvestru Church looked more like a home than a brothel. He had chatted and haggled long with an old madam named Mareta, flustering her with the tale of a rich client, a Dutch merchant with a predilection for blind whores, he had thrust into her palm a gold coin, a gulden, and finally he brought in some painters to whitewash the house front, the hall, and the rooms. The old woman and two of her girls scrubbed the floorboards and the woodwork, filled a mattress with fresh straw, shook out the pillows and aired them in the sun, washed the rugs, the sheets, the curtains, the coverlet, the tablecloth, and the wall hangings in the freshly whitewashed room, rinsing them repeatedly with lavender, placed new candles in the earthenware candlesticks, arranged mugs and plates on a shelf, stowed the chamber pot and a basin under the bed, laid clean towels over the back of the chair, placed a tablet of soap on the edge of the stove, readied a glass jug, and did not hurry to cut flowers then; rather, they waited until noon on the sixteenth day of May, when they knew it was time, and picked lilies and roses in the yard. First, two carts arrived in the lane, sent by that pale, thin German, and gravel was laid along the path from the gate up to the porch. The third girl, Linca, had not taken any part in the labor, so as not to spoil her hands and her stamina. Mareta gave her a long bath, as if she were soaking laundry. She rubbed her with ass's milk and strawberries, combed her hair and sprinkled it with rose-hip oil, and when ruddy evening fell, when the artisans' quarter resounded to the lowing and bleating before milking, gave her a teaspoonful of honey in which she had sprinkled a little powdered stag-beetle horn. Meanwhile, in the center of Bucuresci, a man in the twenty-ninth year of his life, a man who found himself in the office of the sovereign, sitting in the chair of the sovereign's desk, took it into his head to cut his fingernails. And as it was none other than he, Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrinus Ludwig, sitting in that chair, in that office, in that palace, and since he was the sovereign of a land about to embark upon summer with ripening fields of wheat and awakening clouds of dust, he asked his ministers and those on the audience list for a breathing space of two minutes. Using a silver-plated pair of clippers, he trimmed his fingernails as short as possible, then meticulously gathered them and sprinkled them in the wastepaper basket, waiting to stroke the unknown skin with his fingertips and surrender himself to tactile sensation.

  In the silence of sleep and night, when an owl might have hooted, but did not hoot, a short man in the garb of a Western merchant or ship owner, with the hood of his cape pulled up to shield against damp, mosquitoes, and miasmas, passed by a soldier of the guard, without waking him, and went out by a back door. He climbed into a carriage, an ordinary one, and shook the hand of the man therein, who was wearing a cloak and a hat with a curved brim. They looked into each other's eyes as they left the palace grounds together, amid a clatter of horses' hooves, skirted the Bucureştioara, a stagnant, marshy stream, bumped along potholed narrow streets that smelled of jasmine and cesspits, of chicken coops and lilac; and came to a stop in the darkness. The passengers entered a spacious yard and walked down a graveled path. On the porch, the shorter man removed his hood and remained alone as the other man departed, after making sure once more that the area was deserted.

  The fingertips had reached the point of torpor some time after midnight, a few hours still before the frail light of dawn. And together with the fingertips, the bodies had given themselves up to a long abandonment, like two huge seashells, buried in a straw mattress rather than the sands of an estuary. That torpor was disturbed, all of a sudden, by a sneeze. Then came more sneezes, muffled at first, then loud and irritating, one after another and seemingly uncontrollable. Murkily, the man remembered war maneuvers of long ago, when as a junker or cadet he had sheltered in hay ricks, stables, and attics, and a military doctor, a major, had warned him that he was allergic to hay. He got out of bed, naked, drank some champagne straight from the bottle, blew his nose loudly, left the handkerchief on the table, and held his breath for almost a minute, pinching his nostrils and ears so that no air would enter. The girl was saying something, she felt sorry for him and she was afraid, but he spoke to her in German, feigning not to understand her. He sat on the chair, blinking to get rid of the droplets that were trickling between his eyelashes. Soon, he felt her hands on his ankles, they climbed his calves and knees, rested for a moment and then glided down to the soles of his feet, they grasped his big toes, squeezing them gently, slowly, they ascended once more, sliding their way over his thighs and upward. In the gray light, he could distinguish only the crown of her head, her shoulders, and breasts, and for a few moments he wanted also to see her face, to caress it, but he forgot this desire. The hands moved higher and gripped his buttocks, allowing the small, gentle head to find room between his legs, under his belly. He tousled her long, straight hair, first spreading it like a fan or a peacock's tail, then parting it in the middle and laying it over her arms, to the left and right, chestnut-colored and silky, like two wings. From beneath her locks there came warm breaths, fleeting touches, peace. All of a sudden, the low room was no longer a room, the darkness was no longer darkness, the convoluted problems of the Principalities crumbled to dust, the maps of the continent shed their colors and contours, they whitened like cream, the seasons merged along with sun and azure sky into the gallop of a gray pony over a boundless plain, bearing in its saddle a little boy, Karl Ludwig, who loved his wooden targets—the hares, boars, and foxes—and did not want to riddle them with pellets. The little boy was carrying in the breast pocket of his tunic a lead soldier, and the man was clasping the nape of a young woman with his fingertips, as her mouth opened wide and moist.

  When the Dutch merchant went out the front door, after the second cockcrow, it was impossible for the girl to see his profile (aquiline according to some), but she touched an unfamiliar object on the table, she stroked the delicate cloth and clenched it in her fist. It was his handkerchief, with a monogram.

  Siegfried was in the wicker basket. In the other basket, made of osier, there was a jug of milk, some fried fish, half a chicken breast, and some sweet cheese. The first basket hung as ever from the arm of Joseph Strauss, and the high, curved handle of the second was in the hands of Otto Huer. They advanced with difficulty, in the middle of February, when the cold sometimes bore the name of frost and warmer days still seemed distant. On that Sunday the cobblestones were cracking beneath the white expanse that had blanketed garbage, horse flop, potholes, gutters, rat tunnels, molehills, and carrion. At a crossroads, the dentist had almost stumbled over a dead sorrel horse, whose chest, furrowed by ribs, was poking through the snow. They were heading toward the Batiştei quarter, in search of the house of the washerwoman Leana, who every Saturday collected the towels, cotton napkins, and smocks from Otto's shop, returning them clean and ironed on Mondays. They found the house easily by asking a group of urchins gathered around some curled-up, shivering dogs on a patch of waste ground. A young man nearby, wrapped up snugly in a felt coat, discovered the tomcat in the basket, blew out his snots, and laughed. They had never heard of two gentlemen in German garb paying a visit to a she-cat. Leana showed them inside and offered them pumpkin pies. The young
man showed them a jug of apricot brandy and some copper beakers, and the urchins showed them the she-cat. And after they had all stared their fill, Siegfried, the real guest, jumped from the basket. Ritza sniffed him from afar, tensed, she lifted up her tail, paced slowly, inquisitively forward, sensed something, bristled her whiskers and approached, then she sensed more things and all of a sudden flung herself down on the bare earth that served instead of floorboards, with her paws outstretched and her head held back. She was meowing softly. Then she twisted around and meowed sharply. The two of them, Siegfried and Manastamirflorinda, touched noses, they rubbed up against each other and against all the things around, they sang their duet (and those people, like all people, thought they were purring), and at last, while their tails in passing entwined (hers black, with a ruddy spot at the tip, his white, with a black tuft), from the trapdoor of the attic, through a little hole, there emerged four kittens. They paused on the top steps of the ladder that leaned against the wall. They hissed and spat at the unfamiliar tomcat. They descended slowly, fearfully, hesitantly, nudged forward by their mother, who had stopped calling them and climbed up to them with agile bounds. Then, as Joseph and Otto munched hot pies and the beakers had once more been filled with apricot brandy, it happened that the two tomcats came face to face, one large and imperturbable, the other small and bellicose, always on the prowl, lurking and growling, the fur on his nape bristling, his ears pricked up, his back arched and his tail puffed up like a shaving brush. They looked so much alike that the dentist, tossing back the brandy, had the feeling that the present Siegfried was being menaced by the former Siegfried, as he had been three years previously, when Joseph found him in the Gendarmeriemarkt under a blossoming acacia bush. And the tomcat moved once, as swift as an arrow, placing his paw on the top of the kitten's head, he stopped him fighting, licked him, and lulled him. He did the same with his sisters, little lumps of fur that were tabby like Manastamirflorinda and pressed trembling against her belly. Later, he jumped up onto the table, searched in the osier basket, and grasped a piece of perch with his teeth. The kittens tore at it from four directions, seized by passion, bravery, and hunger. By the time Siegfried thrust the chicken meat toward them, they seemed exhausted and full. Smoking his pipe, Joseph read the countless lines on the face of the woman and gazed into the wide eyes of the children. He put on his overcoat, scarf, cap, and gloves in silence, whispered something to the barber, and left. He returned in less than an hour to find the kittens asleep, curled up among the bones of the chicken breast. He placed a canvas bag on the table, and extracted from therein everything he had been able to find in the larder at home: sausages, honey, olives, salted cheese, ham, smoked fish, bonbons, and wine. He also gave them a silver coin, to purchase the cats. Then the dentist and the barber departed through the creaking snow with the tomcat in the wicker basket, the she-cat in the osier basket, and the kittens in the canvas bag, wrapped up in an old sweater. At the midway point between Saturday and Monday, Otto Huer had seen for the first time what became of his laundry in that interval. At lunchtime, the smocks were lying in a long trough to soak, and the towels and napkins were hanging on lines to dry around the oven. He knew that for a long time he would not be rid of the annoying feeling that his linen was imbued with a stale reek of pies and brandy.

  Amid the deafening din of the Whitsuntide fair in June of that year, Joseph Strauss was not engrossed in buying calves, cattle, mules, guinea fowl, or other poultry. He wanted to see the city at play in the early summer, when the light blended with poplar down and swarms of flies. And it blended in greenish ways, as pale as a duck's egg, as wan as willow leaves, as murky as stewed nettles, depending on how the sun pierced through the clouds. That morning, walking and standing, but mostly walking, he could distinguish these three shades, especially after he left the sprawling market with its throng of horse traders and peddlers, cattle dealers and water carriers, bookkeepers and servants, shepherds and pickpockets, boyars and paupers, people of many nations and places, heated, high-spirited, seeking bargains, flowing between the herds of horses and cattle, the flocks of sheep and goats. It was a murmuring throng above which floated the cries of the animals, as if at the edge of Bucuresci the Tower of Babel and Noah's Ark had merged. He made his way toward one of the exits and cooled off with a sheep's milk yogurt, sour and cold, and to give himself more time to catch his breath, he bought not baklava, or gingerbread, or pistachios, but the one thing he most desired as the sun's disk sparkled and the light dissolved like linden tea trickling into a pail of water: roast chestnuts. Then he made his way southward, cracking the shells with his fingernails and his teeth, munching the kernels, crushing them with the tip of his tongue and swallowing the milky pulp a little at a time. He walked slowly, so as to be able to observe at leisure, to feel, and to discover. He walked around mountains of crockery, sizzling grills, heaps of tablecloths and carpets, pie sellers, piles of spoons, spindles, and rolling pins, kvass sellers, palm readers, fortune tellers (and among them a large-bosomed woman who read the future with her left breast), he strolled amid saucepans, kettles, pots, and alembics, amid barrels, casks, and tubs, he listened to gypsy fiddlers (unable to tear his eyes from a thick-lipped fiddler beating time with his wooden leg), at a toy stall he picked out for Siegfried a black wooden mouse (in whose belly was concealed a spool of thread and a spring), he passed by mounds built from balls of wool, bundles of frieze, and bolts of linen, by the stalls of tanners and skinners, by the shelves of cobblers, by the hundreds and hundreds of tailor's racks, by the vendors of candles, lamps, mirrors, boxes, harnesses, and wicks, he looked all around him, and even up and down, at the trampled ground and at the patches of clear sky, he discovered and examined many things and once again he grew thirsty, so thirsty that he thought even the beer teemed with the same green glints as the light of the day. He drained two mugs, tossing back the first, sipping the second, letting the fizzy liquid slip soothingly down his throat. And then he penetrated to the heart of the fair, wandering for hours on end. His walk was an undulating line, and the undulating line was the track of a lazy snake, a snaking that was inevitable, an inevitability called fate. Herr Strauss could not be distinguished among the motley mob, but he was there as it was proper for him to be, so as not to upset the logic of things and so as to fulfill events, all the events of that late spring of the year, 1868. Beneath a bunch of sunbeams as fine as pondweed, he glimpsed a profile with rosy cheeks, flushing or confused, with curly locks poking from under a hat, touching the left earlobe, with a small chin that resembled a ripe apricot. He quivered, hoping and believing that it was Mathilde Vogel, and in that tremulous state he wondered, as he had in the yard of the Catholic Church some time ago, whether it was worth approaching her, whether the fine sunbeams gladdened her or saddened her, whether her strappy shoes pinched, whether her thighs were smooth and moist. He wondered without moving, until the quivering died away, and then he remembered that the optician's sister had become engaged before Lent and that he himself had attended the lively engagement party. Mathilde was to be wedded to Schütze the notary, a Calvinist, and the distant profile proved to be that of another woman, who was waving a cherry-red fan and who turned toward him, revealing how deceptive is the countenance of the weaker sex. He smiled. Then he had a smoke. And he smiled once more at the antics and the capers of some clowns, he grew dizzy on a carousel turned by four donkeys, he quickly grew bored of juggled balls, torches, and skittles, he laughed heartily at a puppet show, in which Vasilache and Märioara tussled on a tiny stage (a crate with the bottom knocked out and set on its side, with a crêpe skirt for a curtain), he watched the dancing bears with rings through their snouts, and was filled with pity, he nibbled walnuts roasted in salt, he fired a bow and arrow, ineptly, at the pear on a scarecrow's head (and did not win the prize of a demijohn of plum brandy), he applauded the brass bands and vaudeville acts, he gave spinning tops and lollipops to Peter Bykow's freckled boys (hand in hand with their father), he bet with the baker on the wrestl
ing bouts, but kept losing, they toasted each other with a mug of sweet red wine and parted, and Joseph threw his head back to catch a view of three acrobats perched each on the other's shoulders, he met an old man on stilts and a one-legged man riding a boar (a stuffed boar, maneuvered with strings and levers from behind a curtain), he shuddered for the dwarf who was prancing and leaping on a tightrope stretched between two posts. After he finished his balancing act and acrobatics, the dwarf collected a few coins in a copper cup, but as he drew closer to Joseph he somehow also seemed to grow longer. Through the greenish-blond strands of sunlight, the dentist saw the dwarf's arms and legs extending, his body becoming fuller, his head, as his proportions shifted, no longer looked like a pumpkin, his strides became long and smooth, and his striped trousers, red waistcoat, and high-soled shoes grew with him. The dwarf who was no longer a dwarf offered Joseph a scarf and asked him to blindfold himself, and he consented, allowing himself to be led through the din of the fair. Finally, they reached a shady, quiet place, like a cool cellar, although they had not descended any steps, and Herr Strauss undid the knot of the scarf. The dwarf who was no longer a dwarf scrutinized Joseph and meanwhile continued to elongate, inch by inch. And he told him that the gates of the heavens would soon open, not to unleash whirlwinds, floods, and devastation, but to reveal a pale, bluish flame, like burning ethanol, within which he would glimpse things such as he had never experienced and times with a different taste. Joseph wanted to question him, to hear details, but suddenly he woke up in a sweat, with his shoulder leaning against a tree and a handkerchief in his left hand, as if he had swooned briefly in the bustle of the late morning. He quickly came to after a glass of kvass, the apparition faded from his mind, and lured once more by the rustling dresses and the gentle breeze, he entered the tents that loomed in his path, paying as before a few coppers and finding within all kinds of oddities, though none like the one in his dream. He saw a hunchback puffing on eight pipes, without any of them going out, a young woman in shalwars and a turban, knitting, with her ankles crossed behind her neck, a blindfolded knife thrower maiming fearsome wolves painted on a panel made of planks, an incomparable fat lady beneath a gauzy veil, through which could be glimpsed her immensity, a gypsy who turned a sandglass and then immersed himself in a tub of water (until all the sand had drained through), a redheaded woman with a beard down to her chest, knotted in pigtails so as not to cover her breasts, rat fights in a glass vessel (the slaughter transparent), shadow plays cast against a white sheet by clever fingers moving in front of a candle, a long-haired man treading barefoot over broken glass and nails, a huge penis, two feet long, preserved in a jar of formaldehyde, magicians, belly dancers, fire-eaters, a crocodile, seemingly asleep, storytellers, and much more. After so many follies seen and heard, he felt as if his head had swollen to twice its size, though it looked the same as always: a little tapered, with wavy chestnut hair and pale skin. At the southern edge of the fair, he stopped at the booth of an itinerant innkeeper and ordered a cutlet and some greens. He was spent. He sat, extending his long, skinny legs under the table as far as they would stretch. Slowly, the flurry of devilish images in his mind faded away. He had just gulped down a huge, gristly mouthful when someone tapped him on the back of the neck and uttered his name. Spluttering, he turned around and saw Carol, not the prince, but another man.