The Days of the King (17 page)

As the gang of hooligans left the surgery and, without pausing, turned toward Peter Bykow's bakery, Joseph was able to make out a few faces. They did not seem disfigured by fury or hatred, but rather they glimmered with an oily film of pleasure, an appetite for destruction and humiliation on their cheeks, brows, and chins. Everything concentrated around one face, glimpsed for a second, a familiar face. At the time he did not realize whose outline he was following through the darkness, but the image imprinted itself on Joseph's mind, sinking through millions and millions of dusty images, trying, as in a card game, to find its pair. Later, much later, the
uhlans
made their appearance. They entered on horseback, at the western end of the street, from the direction of Podul Mogoşoaiei, when most of the windows were in pieces and most of the shops ransacked, when those hotheaded louts had already reached the other end of the street, by New Saint George. The cavalry charge was pointless, except, perhaps to make the residents of the street, awake one and all, regardless of tribe, age, religion, or length of nose, shudder and shiver once more. But the louts legged it, vanishing into narrow alleys, passageways, and courtyards. Soon afterward, while the Strausses were assessing the damage by the light of eleven candles, they found Jakob Vogel in their surgery, white as paper,
his glasses splotched and crooked, sitting in the only chair left intact, covered in crumbled plaster and asking for a glass of water. He was trembling. He had been coming home from what should have been a great banquet held by the German community of Bucharest in honor of the Emperor Wilhelm, a splendid party but one which a dentist, a barber, a baker, and others, although thinking of the emperor and loving him, had not permitted themselves to attend, leaving their young families at home. And Herr Vogel, who had started to come around after the sips of water and the brown powder administered to him in a teaspoon, related that nothing had gone according to plan, that the discussions and toasts had rambled, that the platters of the first course had barely arrived when the meal had been interrupted, that the music had stopped even before it could start, that his heart had been beating so loudly at one point that in order not to hear it he had started banging the drum abandoned by the tawny-haired musician hiding under the piano, that before eight o'clock, when the ball was due to commence, the Slătineanu Rooms had been surrounded by a motley mob, among whom could be spotted deputies from the camp of the radical liberals and a few elegant youths, perhaps university or gymnasium students, but which otherwise consisted only of tattered wretches, apprentices, and all kinds of idlers, rounded up from the Calicilor slums or who knows where. And some of those hotheads had climbed up into the bell tower of Sărindar Church, clambered up the ropes, and tolled the bells. The chimes had egged on the others to smash the few street lamps, to hurl cobblestones—this being the city's only cobbled street—at the lower- and upper-story windows, to storm the entrance and shout vile slogans, such as "Death to the Prussians!" "Long live the French Republic!" and "To the palace!" Some thirty of the more burly ones had even managed to burst inside and tussle with the guests. Consul-General Radowitz, said Jakob, had proposed that they remain in the building and hold out together, making barricades from tables and chairs, wielding knives and forks not for the feast but for defense, and this had saved many from serious injury or, God forbid, death. During all that time, just as on Lipscani Street, not a single gendarme showed his face, proof that the prefect of police tacitly condoned what was happening. There, too, it was the army that had restored order, the soldiers appearing two hours before midnight, dispersing the mob and occupying the streets leading to the palace. After the optician rose to his feet, smoothed his black overcoat, which was exceedingly rumpled and dirtied, and departed, Joseph and Elena hung a blanket in the empty window frame, hammering it in place, no longer caring about the fresh paintwork.

During Lent, the floorboard in the kitchen beneath which Herr Strauss kept hidden a pouch for pipe tobacco was pulled up once more. And with the guldens and groschen extracted from therein, among the last, he was able to paint and furbish his surgery yet again, ordering new, not overly expensive instruments from Vienna, anatomical charts similar to the ones that had been ripped to shreds, and three pharmaceutical substances that had always been lacking at the apothecaries' shops in Bucharest. He called in a poor handyman, not a professional parquet-layer, to wax the scuffed floorboards, stain the woodwork, and clean the ceiling paneling. He bought a cuckoo clock to replace the smashed pendulum clock, from which springs and cogs spewed like brass guts. And he did not replace the Anatolian carpets on the wall, because a man counts his money differently when he has a child to raise and a wife to keep. In Easter Week, on the Wednesday, after neither
he, nor Elena, nor the boy had touched meat for many weeks, Joseph set out for the Scaune district, where the butchers made their living. He was looking for a suitable lamb, from which his dear Serbian wife might cook everything she had been dreaming of: lamb borscht, lamb stew, roast leg of lamb, and her minced lamb and vegetable pie, which she had extolled long ago, on the banks of the Danube. What about a Lenten compote, Joseph had added, laughing, after listening to the menu, earning himself a rebuke, then her laughter. He went into seven or eight places just so that he could gawp at all that was laid out on the counters and at how the cleavers and the knives whirled above the bloodied chopping blocks. In the last shop whose threshold he crossed, as he was sizing up some offal he saw a strapping young man emerge from the door at the back. He was wearing a long apron of buffalo hide and carrying six freshly skinned yearling lambs over his shoulders. Joseph took a step back and froze. It was that young, burly man whose face had gleamed one night by torchlight. He went out, lit his pipe in the middle of the lane, and recalled that he had been in that shop once before, one autumn. Then he went back in, and with a satisfaction that he could barely contain he had the young man weigh the fattest lamb and chop it into pieces, after which he changed his mind and left without buying it. He paid no heed to the uproar in his wake and headed straight to Otto Huer's barbershop, where Peter Bykow and Jakob Vogel, summoned by an apprentice, soon joined them. As there were no customers waiting for haircuts or shaves, they locked the door, pulled down the shutters, and conferred. They agreed first of all that the Resurrection was of higher significance than people and their deeds, and that nothing could be committed during Holy Week, when joy is the sole purpose of things. Proceeding from the description of
the beast and the territory of his lair, Peter the baker managed to find out, as the first warm breezes were beginning to blow, that the monster who had devastated Lipscani Street was a butcher's apprentice and that he dwelled in the yard behind the shop, alone, in a small house with a shingle roof and no porch. Then Otto, taking advantage of his scissors, razors, shaving brush, and combs, but also the geniality of that fat customer of his who was wont to laugh at everything—Vasile, the warden of the Colţei Tower—obtained permission for all four of them to climb the narrow spiral staircase any time they liked, to try out their apparatus from the top of the tallest building in Bucharest. They had devised a mute and docile device, which would administer justice in the world. It remained only for Jakob, rummaging in his workshop and attic in search of magnifying glasses and lenses, inventing and constructing, to perfect the mechanism that, even if it was not to bring him laurels and rewards, would at least salve their hearts and allow them to sleep peacefully. And before the beginning of June, Vogel the optician revealed the extent of his skill, bringing to perfection, according to sketches and calculations made over many nights, that simple yet intricate system whereby the rays of the sun would be snatched from the air by a mirror, bound together like blades of wheat through a polished and concave disk of glass, and launched into the distance with magnified strength and masterful precision, having first traversed another seven glass disks of descending size, all slightly convex. The others marveled. Then they waited. And, when the great Midsummer Fair opened, when it seemed that the whole city had migrated there, when all the butchers to a man had plunged into that boundless market, viewing, selecting, and haggling for cattle, when the burghers had locked up their shops and together with the servants left their houses and courtyards deserted, just then, before noon on a cloudless day, from the walkway of the Colţei Tower, a slender streak of light shot out, stopping on the slope of a roof and remaining there unwavering. It was the roof of a small house with no porch, in the Scaune district. They waited patiently once more. And in a few minutes the fire broke out.

T
HEN TIME NO LONGER
flowed like a sluggish and evil-smelling river, but all of a sudden acquired a different cadence, like the gallop of thoroughbred colts, like the flight of crows fleeing the rains or even the hurtling of locomotives over the plains, where they are not obliged to apply the brakes. Trains had begun to circulate fairly extensively around the country, eliciting delight everywhere. Before the grand inauguration of the Tîrgovişte Station and the official opening of the lines linking Bucuresci first to Piteşti, then to Ploiesci, Buzau, Braila, Galatzi, Tecuci, and Roman, in the north another three routes had been put into use, amid pomp and ceremony: Paşcani-Jassy, Vereşti-Botoşani, and Roman-Iţcani. And given how extensive the railroad was, how many settlements were dotted along its length, how much boredom accumulated in the flowering plum bushes, how much curiosity collected in drawing rooms and salons, how rarely the chained dogs barked, and how the appetite for courtesies, flirtations, and barbed remarks sharpened in that dusty air, it had become the custom in all of those towns, large and small, that at noon the railroad stations would be assailed by the beaumonde, who would watch who boarded and alighted from the carriages and note how a handsome mechanic had waxed his mustache, how the conductor's uniform had been brushed and ironed, how the wheels screeched as the train came to a halt and how they creaked as it departed, and what familiar faces could be glimpsed in the windows. The suspension of the Strousberg concession had been quickly forgotten and, in spite of protests from Berlin diplomats and stern letters signed by Bismarck (no longer merely
Ministerpräsident
of Prussia, but chancellor of the German Empire), those hundreds of miles of track were treated as a gift that had fallen like meteorites from the heavens onto the map of the United Principalities. As for the controversial coupons or, to put it another way, payments of dividends to shareholders, the matter had been taken over by the New Company of Romanian Railroad Shareholders. But the rhythm of the times had not changed on just any day or in any old way, like someone taking off a dirty shirt and putting on a clean one, but had quickened on that rebellious night between March 10 and 11, 1871, when Prince Carol, livid with anger, smoking incessantly and about to come to the boil, had decided to abdicate. First of all, he had demanded the resignations of Ion Ghika and the entire cabinet, and he had summoned to the palace the members of the former Princely Lieutenancy, to hand back the very reins of power he had received from them. Then he had agreed, after countless discussions, consultations, and entreaties, to grant parliament a final, very brief, recess, so that it might clarify its intentions and principles. Satisfied by the dénouement of the secret session in the Chamber and by the panic sown among the parties, he had seen with his own eyes for the first time a solid, coherent, and authoritative government form, led by Lascar Catargiu, the man who had answered, "
Majesty, this cannot be!
" when he announced that he would be leaving Bucuresci for good. And just as the sun peeps through the clouds at the end of a storm, just as a gentle breeze begins to blow after frosts and icy northeasterlies, just as tranquility returns to the world after the fury of the elements, so too the life of Carol I brightened when he was least expecting it. The Turkish troops massed along the Danube missed the opportunity to cross the river and bring order to a vacant throne, the political adventurers realized how close to disaster they had come, they shivered and cringed like curs at the master's feet, and His Beatitude Metropolitan Nifon begged forgiveness of the city's German community in his own name, that of the Orthodox priesthood, and on behalf of the faithful flock. In April, Karl Ludwig and Elisabeth Pauline were showered with flowers and reverences in Jassy, and in June the royal couple were bathed in affection and loyalty at the elections. In August, they both felt the damp proximity of the Cotroceni marshes and withdrew for a few weeks to Sinaia Monastery. In October, they applauded the large domestic loan obtained by the government, 75,000,000 lei, as a sign of confidence and devotion on the part of the native magnates. Then the one-thousand-eight-hundred-and-seventy-first year, by calendar reckoning, came to a close. In the two years that followed, time continued its hectic flight. In 1872, the German banks of Bleichröder and Disconto-Gesellschaft financed the extension of the railroad to the Austro-Hungarian and Russian borders, trade blossomed like robinia or at least like chamomile, Princess Elisabeth was cured of malaria in Italy, and Prince Carol hunted bears and boars in the Peleş Valley. That autumn, waves of astonishment washed over the city when, on the site of a stagnant pool by Liberty Fields, a huge structure was erected, described in the newspapers as "
Bucuresci's source of light, the forever blessed Gas
Works
," and when sixty miles of cables snaked beneath the earth, and four thousand gas lamps were lit at nightfall, on streets, in squares, in public parks, and by vacant lots. By 1873, the schools and law courts were hobbling less, the first broad boulevard appeared, running past the university and linking Podul Mogoşoaiei with Colţei Lane, the royal palace was entirely renovated, shedding its shabby, provincial air and bluish-gray plaster, new docks and warehouses were built in the Danube ports; and Carol I and Elisabeth traveled abroad, stopping off at Vienna, where they visited the World Exposition and met Emperor Franz Joseph at Erms for talks with Tsar Alexander, then stayed at some of the prince's ancestral castles and finally Ilmenau, an oasis of indulgence and health. As was their good custom, they spent dozens of days in Sinaia, residing in the monastic cells, gazing at the mountain crests and boundless forests, seeking the ideal spot for a future summer palace, carefully examining the plans drawn up by the architect Doderer, and playing for hours on end with the little Princess Maria, who, given all the languages she was learning and all the teachers that were cramming her head, had mangled the English
little
and come to be called Itty.