by Marie Nizet
All that was true, alas; Zamfira could raise no objection, and large tears formed in her eyes.
“Mariora!” she begged.
Mariora was inflexible. “And your mother,” she went on, spitefully. “That Nadejda, whom anyone could see dance for fifty bani.” 28
“My mother!” cried Zamfira, trembling with indignation.
Mariora fell silent momentarily. Then, with an attitude of inimitable disdain, she turned on her heel and said: “You, become Mitica’s wife, when your own father probably doesn’t know who you are!”
A general “Ooh!” of disapproval greeted these injurious words. If Zamfira had not held them back, the young women–who were by no means reluctant to take Mademoiselle Slobozianu down a peg–would have proved to the latter that their hands were not as light as their tongues.
“Little coward that you are!”
“It’s a good job your brother isn’t here to give you an answer!”
“An answer–along with another thing you deserve.”
These epigrams were confused, like rifle-shots fired at a distance. Mariora went red and pale by turns. “Goodbye!” she said, in a changed voice. “We’ll meet again!” And she went with a determined stride towards a copse that stood on left-hand side of the road.
“We’ll meet again! That’s what the city gentlemen say when they want to play with pistols after a drinking-session,” said Katinka.
“Choose your weapons!” said Florica, putting her hand on her hip.
“Choose your time!” Ralitza continued, throwing back her head in such a fine parody of a braggart that the entire company sent a loud outburst of laughter echoing through the forest.
“Mariora!” cried Zamfira. “I don’t want you to, but stay with us, in Ioan’s name–or let me come with you!”
“She doesn’t give a damn about Ioan Isacescu!” said Katinka, clicking her fingers above her head.
Mariora disdained to reply and plunged further into the bushes. Clematis and honeysuckle had invaded the place and were climbing the trunks of old beech trees. Mariora had difficulty making headway through the hectic confusion of the creepers. With her hands extended in front of her, she forced aside the rebellious branches, which sprang back to caress her face. She wanted to get as far away as possible from Ralitza and Zamfira, and the continual tickling of the foliage drew murmurs of impatience from her. Finally, the laughter faded into the distance, and the gypsy’s plaintive voice, intermittently calling “Mariora! Mariora!” became less and less distinct.
Mariora was alone–alone in the Baniassa Woods at 8:30 p.m.–long after sunset!
The first thing that she did was to study the sky. A light southerly breeze had dissipated the grey clouds that were worth as much as a tart reprimand from Zamfira. Mariora seemed satisfied by the results of her observation; she redirected her gaze from the sky to the ground: thickets everywhere, save for a scarcely-perceptible path between oaks that had seen Michael the Brave 29 pass by.
“Finally!” she sighed.
That “finally” signified that she was very glad to be rid of the company, all the more so because it had not been easy for her to get away.
“The Sun set some time ago,” she said to herself, “but the Moon’s about to rise, and will light my way. What pretty flowers! Nine o’clock hasn’t sounded yet; I have time to gather a bouquet.” And she set about plucking may-blossoms pitilessly, taking them somewhat randomly from the left and the right. She stopped occasionally and shook her head, as if to chase away an unwelcome thought; then she resumed her task with a kind of fervor. One might have supposed that she wanted to bring down on the innocent clematis the residue of her wrath, which she had not been able to pour upon the head of the Bohemian girl. The flowers that she had picked, unselectively, piled up in her apron.
Meanwhile, darkness was falling rapidly beneath the thick vault of the forest.
Like children, madmen and poets, Mariora had a habit of thinking aloud–a bad habit to nurture! She raised her head, and said, in a mildly commanding tone: “Where’s that Moon that I’m counting on, then?”
With the good will that denotes the finest character, the Moon, thus summoned, hastened to display its plump red face within the dark blue of the sky.
“Ah!” said Mariora, who seemed to find it entirely appropriate to be immediately obeyed, even by the moon. “It’s pretty, the Moon! Prettier than the Sun!” Then she added, by way of qualification: “Except that it never ripens the maize.”
A ray of the moonlight that was powerless to gild the corn slid through the branches to strike Ioan’s ring. Mariora studied it, admired it, turned it around in every direction–without, however, the ring recalling anything of the person who had given it to her.
Suddenly, she shivered; a familiar noise sounded close by. “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” sang the bird.
She stood still, with one finger lifted and her mouth half-open.
“To the right? To the left?” she murmured.
“Cuckoo!” the bird repeated.
“To the left!” she cried. “An evil omen!”
She made the sign of the cross three times, in the Oriental fashion. Having perceived the ill-met bird perched on top of a wild cherry-tree, she picked up a little pebble, which she threw at the bird. It flew away, still towards the left, sounding its pitiful “Cuckoo!”
“Accursed creature!” said Mariora, letting her disconcerted gaze wander around her. Her eyes encountered the results of the pillage she had undertaken.
“That’s no bouquet!” she said, woefully.
She let go of the corner of her apron, and the poor flowers went rolling at her feet.
“They were ugly!” she said, to console herself. Seized by a sudden resolution, she took a hundred paces in the direction of the village. But the young woman’s courage diminished in inverse proportion to the deepening gloom. She began to find the Baniassa Woods much less pretty, and darted furtive glances at the bushes; but as she was afraid of nourishing her vague terrors by confessing them to herself, she attempted to drive them away by doing what the bravest folk do when they feel ill-at-ease: she began singing at the top of her voice.
Instinctively, she chose words full of pride and temerity; she boldly intoned the proud response of the architect Manoli in the popular ballad of The Monastery of Argis: 30
“There is nothing here on Earth
“To match our ten master masons;
“We’ll build the most beautiful monastery,
“A monument to glory...”
Her voice faded away. “I’m cold!” she said. Indeed, the temperature was descending towards that degree of coolness which ordinarily succeeds the intense heat of the day in Rumania, and which occasions the interminable fevers that have become a sort of national malady. But it was not the fever that was making Mariora shiver, and she launched into a long monologue, which a slightly less extravagant way of behaving would surely have spared her.
“Where are they now? Zamfira is wicked! Perhaps I did the wrong thing in not staying with them. I don’t want her to marry Mitica, though! Yes, but I might perhaps have been too...too hard on her. I should have been able to make her understand with more tact. After all, it’s not her fault that she loves Mitica! Love...that has come to me, of its own accord! Yes, but she has to avoid Mitica, and not reply to him if he speaks to her...”
“Will you go that far?” her conscience said to her.
A gust of wind set the leaves trembling agitatedly. Mariora went pale, and cocked her ear.
“I was wrong, definitely,” she went on, after assuring herself that it was nothing. “It isn’t Zamfira, it’s me who has been wicked! It’s no more her fault that Aleca let herself be carried away than it is that Serban became a Muslim or her mother danced for 50 bani! And me, in the presence of all her friends, I reminded her of it. Oh, I’m a miserable wretch!”
“Wretch,” repeated the echoes.
“Poor Zamfira! She cried! But where can they be? I’ve been walki
ng too–perhaps they’re still not very far away. I’m very cold! It’s so dark here! If I call out to them...”
She called out “Zamfira!” Then she waited.
“Zamfira!” replied the echoes, lugubriously.
Her own voice, coming back to her in modified form, chilled the blood in her veins.
“Zamfira!” she repeated, more feebly. “I won’t do it again!”
“Zamfira! Again!” moaned the echoes.
“Oh!” said Mariora. “I’m afraid!”
Overwhelmed by discouragement, she sat down on the moist grass, put her head in her hands and began to weep. She had done it, alas! Night was closing in, and the wind was whistling in her untidy hair, to which leaf-debris was clinging. She wept like that for a long time, until she heard a sudden noise behind her, which made her get up. Making a whispered vow to light two fresh wax candles to the Virgin if she came back home safe and sound, she attempted to make her way back to the main road.
The main road was to her right, but the unfortunate girl was so troubled that she searched vainly to her left. She realized that she was completely disorientated, and began running straight ahead, no longer thinking of anything except finding the forest’s edge. She was so sensitive to pain that pricking herself with her needle made her cry, but she did not feel the prickly holly-leaves that scored her hands and face–and when the moon, whose light was still her only guide, disappeared into the clouds, her ears perceived, along with the sinister whee of the wind, the beating of her own pulse.
Darkness and the unknown enveloped Mariora on all sides.
“Mitica! Ioan!” she cried–and terror lent a tone of profound desperation to the voice of the poor stray. But her brother and her fiancé were far away; they could not hear her.
She continued on her way in darkness, tripping on pebbles and bumping into tree-trunks. Will-o’-the-wisps emerged periodically from the marshy ground, their little blue flames seeming to wag accusatory fingers at the poor frightened girl.
For being disobedient! whistled the wind. For being disobedient!
Then, all the superstitions and legendary tales told by firelight came back into her mind. She gathered her exhausted strength.
“Tata! Muma!” 31 she called, hugging herself. But her father and mother were dead and unable to reply.
Mariora fainted.
When she recovered her senses, the Moon was shining with all its brilliance–but Mariora released a terrible cry and shut her eyes again.
Standing between her and the Moon was the spectral form of Boris Liatoukine!
VI. “Mademoiselle Aurélie”
Nicopolis 32 had just fallen under Russian domination, and a battalion of dorobantzi had been set to guard the western side of the town. Bashi-bazouks 33 had been seen prowling in the vicinity; there was fear of a nocturnal raid, and the soldiers had received orders to keep their eyes peeled and maintain complete silence. All the fires were put out; only one of the windows in the large white house that served as a temporary residence for the Rumanian commander, Colonel Leganescu, was illuminated by a feeble glow. Most of the soldiers were patrolling, weapons in hand; the rest were squatting on ground already strewn with shell-craters, testimony to the siege that the town had recently endured. Among the latter were the two friends from Baniassa.
“Two months gone by!” said Ioan Isacescu, shaking his head, “and no reply!”
“Bah!” said Mitica Slobozianu, who always found an explanation for everything. “Does anyone here care about letters to poor devils who ought not to know how to read? Do you have any idea what happens to our unfortunate scrawls? The Russians use them for lighting their cigars.”
“Impossible!”
“When we took that infernal bastion over there... Lord Above, that was hot! I shudder to think about it...”
“Well,” said Ioan, “What do you mean?”
“What I said,” said Mitica, clicking his tongue. “Hidden behind a wall, General K*** was sitting up with a cigarette in his mouth, while all of that was raining down on us. He asked Captain Xenianine, in a perfectly natural tone, for a match. A match! He might as well have asked for a fresh egg! The captain took a tinder-box from his pocket and a dirty piece of paper, folded like a letter. ‘Are you sacrificing a billet doux for me, Captain?’ the fat clown 34 said, simpering. ‘Not one of mine, incoming or outgoing,’ Xenianine said, unfolding the letter. ‘Iubita mia,’ 35 he spelled out, with some difficulty. ‘That’s Rumanian, I suppose?’ He proceeded to roll up the paper quite calmly, lit it and presented it to the general. Iubita mia! A love-letter! Perhaps it was one of mine–I always start off like that.”
“Might she be ill?” Ioan suggested.
“Bah! Don’t waste time constructing futile hypotheses. They don’t send the letters we write; why should they pass on the ones addressed to us?”
“Hey, comrades!” Scarlatos Romanescu called out to them. “They reckon we’ll see bashi-bazouks tonight.”
“Proudly armed with their yataghans!”
“They can decapitate a man! Look at this!” He bared his arm, which bore a wound more than eight inches long. “But they’ll pay me back, the bastards!”
At that moment, the illuminated window opened.
“Send Lieutenant Zaharios to me!” called Colonel Leganescu.
“Lieutenant Zaharios can’t walk, Colonel.”
“What? Is he...?”
“He’ll walk if you order him to, Colonel–but it won’t be very straight.”
“He’s still drunk?”
“Two days straight, Colonel–and he’s gone back for more.”
Leganescu let out an expression that was more energetic than decorous. “I need a secretary, though,” he murmured. He seemed to be examining the faces of the dorobantzi beneath his windows, one by one. “Isacescu!” he said, suddenly. “Come in here–we’ve go work to do.”
“Lucky swine!” cried a chorus of soldiers when the door had closed behind their comrade. “He won’t have to deal with the bashi-bazouks!”
A tawdry tallow candle stuck in a bottle spread its uncertain light through a large room, in the middle of which stood a table loaded with papers.
“Sit down, my lad,” said Leganescu to his improvised secretary, “And let’s get on with it!”
Ioan obeyed.
“To Brigadier-General Lupu...” the Colonel dictated.
For more than an hour, nothing was heard but the noise of the pen scratching the paper and the distant calls of the advance sentinels. Eventually, though, there was some animation outside. A horse dripping with sweat arrived at the threshold of the residence. Almost at the same moment, the door of the room opened, and a Cossack bearing an envelope sealed with the Imperial arms came in, with no more ceremony than if he were entering his guard-room.
Leganescu, who was somewhat resentful of the cavalier manners that the Russians had adopted, raised his head. “What is it?” he said, in Russian, in a distinctly churlish tone.
The Cossack bowed awkwardly. “It’s a message from His Royal Highness Archduke Nicolas, addressed to Prince Boris Liatoukine.”
“Prince Liatoukine isn’t here. Go on, Isacescu! ‘We are awaiting the fourth army corps, which...’ ”
“His Highness said that it’s urgent,” insisted the Cossack, “and ordered me to return immediately, without even entering Nicopolis. Can’t someone carry...?”
Leganescu cut him of by rapping on the table with his snuff-box. “I have no calaretzi 36 here,” he said. “They’re all in the town.” In Rumanian, he muttered: “How tedious he and his Archduke are!” He glanced sideways at his cherished heap of paper. “Isacescu, my friend, we’ve almost finished. Do you have any idea how to ride?”
Isacescu smiled. “You’re forgetting, Colonel, that we Rumanians only quit the cradle for the saddle,” he said.
“That’s true!” Leganescu said. “Would you like to take care of this?” He threw the Imperial letter, with rather scant respect. “You’ll find Prince
Liatoukine over to the south–you’ll have to ask, but someone will point you in the right direction. Hold on! You can use my own horse–take care of it, it’s a thoroughbred!”
Ioan was eager to undertake the mission; the name of Liatoukine did not strike any chord within him. When he reappeared amid his brothers-in-arms, proudly perched on the Colonel’s white horse, there was general astonishment.
“Since when did you join the cavalry?” several voices cried.
“Since five minutes ago.” He gave them a brief explanation of his sudden promotion.
“Damn!” said Mitica. “You have all the luck! A little while ago, a secretary–now, an Imperial courier. You have your officer’s diploma in your pocket, my dear chap!”
“I’d rather have a letter from Mariora!” he said, smiling, and he spurred his horse towards open country.
Meanwhile, on the far side of the town, four officers were walking in the moonlight. Three of them appeared to be in that state of merriment which ordinarily follows a copious meal lavishly washed down with fine wines. They were weaving from side to side, staggering somewhat, apparently aimlessly, when they saw a shadow coming towards them whose gait must have been familiar, for they aimed towards it and hailed it in these terms: “Hey! Yuri Mikailovich! Where are you going, all alone like that?”
“Nowhere, alas!” sighed Yuri Levine. “What about you?”
“Us?” said Bogomil, pursing his lips. “We’re bored, and are in search of diversion.”
“A rare commodity in these parts!” added Stenka.
“We’re looking for a Rumanian,” boomed Liatoukine’s baritone voice. “A little Rumanian... to make him dance.”
“That’s a stroke of luck!” said Levine. Come this way. Over here, behind this hillock, there’s one of our allies’ sentinels–and you couldn’t have chosen a better one, truly.”
As if to confirm Yuri’s words, an almost-feminine voice was heard sounding the challenge:
“Cine e acolo?” 37