by Paul Bailey
She is a teacher of English, so we chatted, in a mixture of our two languages, about her political disillusionment and the twin tragedy that ensured my freedom. The case of Irina Petrescu was familiar to her, though of my father’s suicide and my uncle’s fame she knew nothing.
I learned, only yesterday, that the three men who dragged Mama into the forest never stood trial. They served in the army, and returned to the town as respectable Communist citizens, according to Denisa, who has taught their grandchildren. She went on to say that my mother’s death is referred to in a footnote in a controversial book about the origins of Nazism. Her name, and her fate, had not been forgotten.
After my friendly parting with Denisa, I walked in the direction of the railway station. I passed houses Eminescu might have visited in his youth, and stopped in front of a boarded-up synagogue. Had the Adercas worshipped inside? It was likely, I answered myself, because they were part of a large Jewish community, born and raised in Botoşani. The future Debt Collector would have come here to pray before he lost the faith of his fathers and put his trust in reason and doubt.
I am writing in another, grander hotel in Bucharest. My pilgrimage – for such, I think, it was – is almost over. The market place in the town evoked no horrors, for I had had a surfeit of those in my dreams. I saw only cobblestones, and they failed to upset me. I tried to picture the woman with the everlasting taunts, but – thanks to Denisa, perhaps – she remained unseen and unheard. A stroll in the forest proved no more productive of anguish. I was, I have to say, alarmingly placid: beyond tears and, for the present, above bitterness. I had wept on the Pont Marie during the trip that culminated with the recital by Dinu Lipatti, my protective uncle’s most thoughtful of all thoughtful gifts to his displaced nephew. The man who had wasted Rudi Petrescu’s God-given talent had borne me into the presence of one who, even on the brink of extinction, had gloriously honoured his. I caught myself humming the Bach partita he had played that September day, and felt a curious peace instead of the deep unrest I had expected.
—Mamica, Tata, I said, and added ‘Nene’.
And then, humming once more, accompanied by my own dear trio, I put the trees behind me and returned to the Hotel Minerva under a cloudless sky.
What led me, this morning, into a shop on the Street of Victories? The icons displayed in the dusty window, those remnants of an Orthodoxy my mother espoused so fervently, were invitation enough. The door, which was locked with a security device, opened magically when I removed my hand from it. I entered, and was surrounded by a hundred or more likenesses of Christ, of the Virgin, of St Peter, St Nicholas, and other bearded divines I could not identify.
With the wizened shopkeeper’s permission, I took down from the wall an icon of the Virgin and Child. The initials AI – Aderca Irina – had been etched by her unbelieving Jewish father into the wood on the back. They were faintly visible.
—You have dollars or Deutschmarks? asked the man, acknowledging my excitement.
—It’s an inferior work, was my response.
—You did not examine it. You were more interested in what you saw behind it.
—How much do you want?
—How are you paying?
—In sterling.
—A thousand.
—A thousand?
—A thousand.
I offered him my credit card.
—Cash.
—Cash?
—Of course. I have no faith in plastic.
Three hours later, when I had paid the man whose faith resides in tangible money, and after he had wrapped my mother’s icon in rough brown paper, I enquired, casually:
—How did you acquire this?
—The Securitate. A secret policeman. He brought a sackful of the things from Moldavia. It’s quite a place for icons. Shall I put you on my mailing list?
—I think not, I answered, waking with empty hands.
I am finished with writing. The words that once raced across these pages have stopped in their contented tracks. I have attained some kind of rest because of them. I no longer fear waking to blood and snow and storks on chimney tops. I eat my burnt toast at breakfast, as I have eaten it since the morning of the twenty-fourth of February 1937, with a renewed sense of Uncle Rudolf’s protective love for me. And mine, for him.
Let the bleak dreams come again, if they must, for I can cope with them now, unless I go gaga, as lonely people in their seventies do.
But I’m not lonely, as I have discovered. I have the warmth of the dead in which to bask.
Also by the Author
FICTION
At the Jerusalem (1967)
Trespasses (1970)
A Distant Likeness (1973)
Peter Smart’s Confessions (1977)
Old Soldiers (1980)
Gabriel’s Lament (1986)
Sugar Cane (1993)
Kitty and Virgil (1998)
NON-FICTION
An English Madam: the Life and Works of Cynthia Paine (1982)
An Immaculate Mistake: Scenes from Childhood and Beyond (1990, revised 1991)
The Oxford Book of London Ed. (1995)
First Love Ed. (1997)
The Stately Homo: a Celebration of the Life of Quentin Crisp Ed. (2000)
Three Queer Lives (2001)
Copyright
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2002
Copyright © © Paul Bailey 2002
Paul Bailey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9781841157597
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007397440
Version: 2013-12-09
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