by W. E. Gutman
My education resumed at home, this time in the custody of “précepteurs,” all of whom quit after a few days. Deemed “incorrigible” and “uneducable,” I would bounce from one private tutor to another until I left Romania in 1948.
*
It was the plump young peasant woman who delivered dairy and other foodstuffs to our door every week who taught me that a vagina is not merely the absence of a penis, as I had thought, but a basic component of female anatomy. I had long yearned to know what precious treasure women have beneath their dresses and why they so frantically try to conceal it. I’d soon find out. The maid, who lived next-door in a small studio off the rear terrace, would often invite her friend in for a chat and refreshments. This gave “Mrs. Sour Cream” – I’d given her that moniker -- a chance to rest before heading back to her village.
I was idling on the rear terrace one afternoon when I heard muffled laughter and sighs coming from the maid’s room. I grabbed a hold of the windowsill and chinned myself up for a better view. The window was shut and the shades were drawn but a small crease near the bottom edge created an opening through which I saw Mrs. Sour Cream and the maid, both stark naked, kissing, taking turns sucking each other’s tits and fondling the bushy nubs between their legs.
I thought of Peter and remember finding it odd that women would do what we did, especially since there was nothing to hold on to and play with. I still had much to learn. I also remember feeling a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach and getting a hard-on. As I let myself down, my feet scraped the wall noisily. The laughter and sighing ceased. A pudgy hand lifted a small corner of the shades and half a face, flushed and glistening with perspiration, came into view. It was the maid. Urging me to be quiet, she put a finger against her lips and waved me in. I hesitated. My heart raced; my legs felt like cotton. Spellbound and petrified, I went in, shut the door behind me and stood with my back against it, gaping in utter disbelief.
Mrs. Sour Cream was now stretched out on the bed. My eyes were riveted on her nakedness. Where the lower part of her belly met her thighs, I saw a peculiar elevation in the form of a fleshy triangular mound, coifed with a reddish mane. Where the thighs intersected I noticed a protuberance cleft by an enormous fissure on either side of which rested two oyster-like lips. The upper part of the crevice was crowned with a small rosy appendage half the length of my pinkie, which Mrs. Sour Cream kneaded between her thumb and forefinger. She smiled languidly, baring several missing teeth, and beckoned me closer.
“Sit, my little one, sit and watch.”
“I’ll stand.”
“Suit yourself.”
The maid pulled out what looked like an enormous rubber sausage from her night stand, kneeled at the foot of the bed and plunged it in Mrs. Sour Cream’s crevice where it nearly disappeared. She then proceeded to shuttle the contraption back and forth, slowly at first, soon with a cadenced fury that arched Sour Cream’s back off the bed and culminated in a paroxysm of tremors and convulsions.
“Oh, Mary, fucking Mother of God, it’s coming, oh, oh....” Mrs. Sour Cream bit her lower lip. She clenched her fists. Her feet cambered, her toes curled inward. She then fell back on the bed as though she’d fainted. The maid pulled out the sausage from Mrs. Sour Cream’s crack, eliciting one last rapturous shudder. The sausage was covered with slime. Some of it oozed between her buttocks and stained the sheets. I was scared, nauseated and mesmerized all at once. I’d suddenly made the connection but it would take a few more years before apprenticeship-by-observation turned to in-vivo initiation.
Mrs. Sour Cream got up, slid a chamber pot from under the bed, squatted and urinated in fitful spurts that chimed against the vessel’s metal walls. The two women begged me not to breathe a word to anyone about “our little secret.” The entertainment, the education, the vicarious thrill I experienced, the fantasies to which I would hence treat myself, were well worth my silence. I swore never to tell anyone. Until now. The maid and Mrs. Sour Cream kissed me on the mouth, fondled my crotch, giggled and ushered me out.
I now eat sausage with the greatest reticence.
*
Taking meals, as a child, was a chore; feeding me was a harrowing ordeal for my parents. Nauseated by certain odors, sickened by the texture and consistency of certain foods in my mouth -- I used to chew soup -- I would often run from the dinner table retching. The smell of boiled or fried organ meats, sickened me, and no amount of coaxing, gentle or stern, could persuade me partake of liver, giblets, kidney, tongue or brain, all of which were occasionally served and savored by the grownups. I also had an aversion to milk and butter, and I rejected most vegetables, except potatoes, raw onions and some leafy greens. My poor mother would wring her hands with worry. My appetite was severely depressed. I was underweight and calcium-deficient, and my father would often give me painful B12 injections.
This was also a period of protracted illness for me. In a span of a year or so, I came down with diphtheria, whooping cough, dry pleurisy, rubella and scarlet fever. I caught the mumps -- twice. I contracted other ailments, many of which baffled the “specialists” who were summoned to my bedside, and from which I recovered without their intervention. My father’s minimalist approach to medicine (he believed in the body’s own restorative powers) was often challenged by my grandmother and uncle who, despite a conspicuous lack of knowledge of anatomy, physiology and every other science associated with medicine, considered him too young and inexperienced to make valid diagnoses. My father’s exceptional skills as a diagnostician had in fact earned him early praise in medical school but my uncle and grandmother would not yield. They placed greater credence in professeurs, old bearded men wearing vests and pocket watches, and prone to oracular speculation.
Faith in the erudition and competence of tenured experts notwithstanding, and all else failing, my uncle and grandmother did not hesitate to prescribe their own therapies. A favorite weapon against both disease and the evil eye -- the latter often blamed for the former -- was a thin piece of red ribbon sewn on the inside of my clothes. Another all-purpose amulet consisted of a small linen pouch filled with either camphor balls or a couple of cloves of garlic which I was enjoined to wear around my neck at certain times of the month, especially during a full moon. In league with my father, who despised superstition and knew that garlic was infinitely more useful in my stomach than around my neck, I would remove the cloves from the pouch and eat them raw. I would then pretend that they’d miraculously disappeared. My father would back me up, raising his arms skyward, closing his eyes and declaring with the trance-like bearing of a mystic, “Heaven works in such mysterious ways.” His irreverence drew vexed glances from my uncle who tolerated no blasphemy in his presence. My father would smile impishly and shrug his shoulders. Anything that contradicted his brother-in-law’s sensitivities or challenged his beliefs was blasphemy. Of course, my breath gave me away and so the bags were refilled with fresh supplies of garlic. This is how I began to develop a taste -- now a passion -- for raw garlic. I continue to have garlic “orgies,” a ritual my wife tolerates with a selfless grace only love can sustain.
*
My mother was not as superstitious as her mother or brother. What she lacked in irrational beliefs or self-limiting fixations, she more than made up in intuitive power. Akin to clairvoyance, but devoid of pretense or theatricality, it was a faculty -- she called it a curse -- that would sharpen with age.
One afternoon, deep in thought in a game of solitaire -- I was sitting on the floor engrossed in the wicked pranks of Max und Moritz -- my mother looked up and surveyed her surroundings as if stirred by an unfamiliar presence. She placed the rest of the deck on the table, rose and walked toward one of the living room windows. I sensed unease in her gait and stood up.
“Stay where you are,” she whispered.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Just stay put.”
At first, I felt a slight flutter. The floor quivered under me, as if roused by the vibrations o
f a distant jackhammer. The air pressure changed, clouding my hearing. I had to swallow hard to make my ears pop. The trembling ceased momentarily then resumed, accompanied by a low-pitched hum. The pane on the balcony door began to undulate. A second later it buckled and cracked, shattering inward. A small glass fragment struck my mother on the forehead, drawing blood. Soon, the whole building began to shake from side to side.
“It’s an earthquake! Don’t move,” she ordered
Pictures flapped against the walls and came unhooked. The massive oak dining room table slid off center and knocked down several chairs. The sofa on which my mother had been resting spun on its axis. Lifted by an invisible hand, several vases came crashing to the floor.
Still standing by the terrace door, dazed and bleeding, my mother suddenly brought her hands to her face. Her eyes widened, ablaze with horror. She then pointed at the unfolding scene before her and cried out.
“Mon Dieu!”
Less than fifty meters across the street, an apartment building not unlike our own was collapsing like a house of cards. Rushing to my mother’s side, I managed to glimpse the fatal seizure that split the building from roof to ground. It looked as if a giant cleaver had sheared it straight down the middle. In slow motion at first, then, drawn by its own momentum, the building disintegrated in a furious downward and outward rush that raised a thick cloud of dust and hurled tons of bricks and twisted metal in all directions. I heard muffled screams, frantic, hopeless screams. As if from a dream, I saw my mother wipe the blood off her face. She would be all right. It was just a superficial flesh wound.
Smaller aftershocks grumbled briefly underfoot then ceased. An eerie stillness filled the air. I’d broken into a cold sweat and I could hear my heart pounding inside my chest. My head was on fire. I also felt a warm liquid trickling down my leg. I’d pissed in my pants.
*
I must close my eyes and silence all extraneous voices to resurrect even a fleeting likeness of Bucharest. I was seven when I arrived; eleven when I left. I can describe it only in the vaguest of terms. I remember an attractive capital with wide esplanades at its center and crowded districts at its peripheries where occidental traditions and Slav and Levantine influences had fused. Whereas Romania’s spirituality had long since been consigned to the opulence and intoxicating mysticism of the Orthodox Church, its stomach was indulged in the earthy conviviality of small taverns redolent with Middle-Eastern viands, spices and confections. Even as a child, I favored these lively haunts to the glitter and ostentation of big-name restaurants where Bucharest’s elite congregated just to be seen. I sat in mute fascination of the bouzouki, balalaika, pan flute and tambura players, as I gorged on halvah, marzipan, comfits and “sherbet,” a fragrant taffy of exquisite sweetness served on a spoon inside a glass of rose water. The colorful costumes the musicians wore, the strange harmonies, dizzying quarter-notes, trills and ornamentations their instruments emitted, awakened what would become a lifelong infatuation with the exotic, the faraway. I could feel myself traveling, as I listened, through a kaleidoscope of fairy tale images that filled me with wonderment and introspection. I would later roam the uncharted and forever twisting paths to melancholy, as I surrendered to Borodin and Bartok, Rachmaninoff and Ravel, Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Tactile and transcendent, music would become both a conveyance and an asylum.
Despite the geography, its dappled countenance notwithstanding, Bucharest was a Latin metropolis, a throwback to its early origins as one of Rome’s easternmost outposts. If its heartstrings and stomach betrayed strong Balkan and eastern influences, its eyes were turned and its ears tuned to France. Everyone spoke French at the time, at least everyone I knew. Nearly all considered Paris their cultural homeland. Others dreamed of Paris the way Jews long for Jerusalem and Muslims yearn for Mecca.
*
It was at the Athénée Palace that I attended my first live classical concert. I remember little of the theater itself but I will never forget the artists or the program. On tour in Eastern Europe from Paris where he now lived, George Enesco, the eminent Romanian composer and conductor, was at the podium. On stage, by his side, was his pupil and child prodigy, violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Their names meant nothing to me at the time. Nor could I grasp the prodigious talent their combined presence embodied. I was in the company of genius, but it wasn’t until mentor and disciple joined to perform Mendelsohn’s violin concerto, that I understood the meaning of genius. I felt transported, no, enraptured by the orchestra’s enfolding resonance, by the dialogue between soloist and orchestra, and I was stirred even as a ten-year old by Menuhin’s virtuosity, by the brilliance of his style, the eloquence and amazing fluidity of his bow.
The program also included one of Enesco’s earliest works, his Poem for Orchestra, written when he was 15, a composition redolent of his homeland, sensual and brooding in parts, teeming with lively folk cadences in others. Vestiges of Romanian atavistic selfhood resurface whenever I listen to Enesco. My mother would later proudly tell everyone that I’d refused to get out of my seat when the curtain came down.
“He asked for more,” she’d say -- more music and, I was unable to explain it then, more of music's otherworldly power on a young boy hungry for new sensations. Music would teach me to manipulate my emotions, from exhilaration to dizzying spirals of gloom. Music must not only delight my ear, it has to touch me, tear at my heartstrings and carry me to unknown and endlessly renewable states of exaltation. Debussy, Fauré, Vaugn Williams, Mahler, among others, arouse in me a longing for some unattainable, wholly indefinable secret realm of my own and into which, in the composers’ custody, I finally gain entry. Mozart comforts me. Beethoven reduces me to insignificance. I often weep, from euphoria or emotional exhaustion whenever I hear his Ninth Symphony. Genius does that to me; genius and minor chords. There is joy in depression. I often cloister myself in its lair where no one will find me.
*
Now and then, my mother would take me to see my uncle sur scène -- literally “on stage.” It was in the Appellate Court, where his most contentious cases were often heard, that he shone brightest. Self-assured, confident that the prosecution could be easily defeated, he would invite family and friends to hear his summations. He called them “a class act.” In reality, it was skill, cunning and an otherwise encyclopedic knowledge of Romania’s legal codes -- many drafted by his father -- that ensured his stunning courtroom victories. A consummate tactician, he had also long made it a practice to curry favor with certain judges by praising their decisions in legal columns that he contributed to Bucharest’s major daily newspaper.
My uncle’s summations (a peculiar term for the convoluted filibusters he delivered) were jewels of ambiguity designed, I’m certain, to drive the court to insensitivity. He would often use these very stratagems to force an opinion -- his own -- on a less discerning audience, or to win an argument against a weaker opponent. What these harangues lacked in brevity, they more than made up in flamboyance and showmanship. Tall and trim, magnificent in his freshly pressed black robe, a white ruffled bib conferring an air of sacramental authority, a kind of truncated black miter cockily angled on his head, he looked more like a rakish exorcist than an attorney. His arguments would often begin in a studied whisper, his gaze fixed on a distant point in space, an incredulous forefinger pressed against his lips. His voice would then build to sepulchral intensity as he tore down the opposing counsel’s case and dared the judges to overturn a lower court’s decree. He would often pause in mid-sentence, his head tilted at an unnatural angle, his arms extended skyward, his eyes riveted on the stern-faced, ermine-clad men perched on the high bench. These orations would invariably end in applause from the spectators’ gallery, a display the judges were careful not to censure. Attorney and clients would then hug and kiss and we would all be invited to celebrate yet another courthouse triumph. We’d pile up in my uncle’s chauffeur-driven Adler and burn rubber all the way to some popular restaurant where the cream of Romanian society gorged itself on
canard à l'orange, suckling pig and truffles, rack of lamb, pheasant and quail.
I remember seeing a patron vomit on the sidewalk as gypsies with babies at their naked breasts begged for a morsel of food.
*
Widespread and heretofore immune from scrutiny or liability, these courtroom capers would eventually help bring down the praetorian Romanian justice system. They would also lead to the creation of equally corrupt and far more sinister French Revolutionary-style “people’s courts.” Judges, public defenders, bailiffs, juries, prison wardens and amateur executioners would be drawn, as they’d been during the 1792-94 reign of terror, from the dregs of society. Among those who’d been spared by a flighty and collusive judiciary, many would in time be indicted and punished by the very people they had betrayed or swindled. It was the rabble’s turn to repay the elite and they would do it with ravenous zest. Justifiable rancor soon turned to vile orgies of indiscriminate violence against the titled, the wealthy and the learned, whether they had done anything to deserve it or not.
Stern, fixated and meticulous, the process-oriented Germans had chased after their dream of world domination with punctilious precision. Surely, many must have reveled in the lunacy of their grandiose crusade. Most just followed orders, zombie-like, the sap of unconditional compliance coursing through their Teutonic veins.
In contrast, the Russians -- and their all-too-willing Romanian vassals -- were less interested in perfection than in giving free reign to their resentment and perversity. They refined torture and raised humiliation to fresh inquisitorial heights. Bestial, committed to creating a classless society, they inaugurated a reign of terror and anti-intellectualism unknown in Paris during the German occupation. Romania, submissive if not slavish, crumbled and rotted under the grubby thumb of its Kremlin puppet masters. This dizzying descent into hades, later hastened by Nicolae Ceaucescu and his band of thugs, lasted for many years unchecked. As it did elsewhere, communism paralyzed and emasculated a once sybarite Romania. Fortunes, political might and privilege changed hands but life for the vast majority of Romanians did not change a whit. Weakened by political scandals, regime collapses, mounting debts, inflation, higher taxes and crippling austerity measures, Romanians traded one form of serfdom for another. Now, in the name of market reform, they have since elevated rigor, privation, humiliation and hopelessness to new pinnacles. Justice, the most serious casualty in such contests, remains in critical condition and is not expected to survive.