The Madonna on the Moon (19 page)

When we finally got to the head of the line, the brunette salesgirl asked pertly, “May I help you?” while eyeing my threadbare jacket with suspicion.

“A pack of Carpatis please, Miss,” said Istvan with exaggerated courtesy.

The girl went to the cigarette case, took out a pack, and slammed it onto the counter. “Anything else?”

Istvan didn’t answer. He fished a couple of aluminum coins from his pocket and tossed them across the polished surface with a flip of his wrist. While the indignant clerk retrieved the
money from the floor, Istvan strode out with his head held high.

As we climbed the slippery wet cobblestone street to Castle Hill, I felt ashamed—of our pathetic shop back home, of Grandfather, of Baia Luna, of myself.

By the light of a streetlamp the yellow paint of the retired commissioner’s house did in fact stand out. It was in a row of other lopsided medieval façades that managed to stay
upright only by leaning against one another. An iron lion’s head with a ring in its nose was mounted on the blue wooden door. Istvan knocked on the wood three times. We soon heard the
rattling of keys, and Patrascu opened the door. A Carpati hung from his mouth, and he was stuffing his shirt into his pants with both hands.

“Good evening, gentlemen. What’s up?” Patrascu stared at us. His grinding lower jaw revealed his memory was at work. My face and Istvan’s apparently meant nothing to him,
but he recalled Petre Petrov.

“You’re one of the crazy guys that went for Brancusi’s throat after what happened to your pastor.”

“That’s exactly why we’re here, Commissioner. Kallay, Istvan Kallay, if I may.”

“You could have saved yourselves the trip. I’m not on the force anymore, and I don’t have the remotest desire to be reminded of anything that has to do with my time in the
service of the fatherland. Understood?”

“We bring greetings from your colleagues at the station,” the Hungarian attempted to alter the atmosphere.

“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear . . .”

“And from your little Pauline, greetings from her, too,” I interjected. “Pauline . . . I mean, Dr. Petrin thought for sure you would be able to help us with our
problem.”

Patrascu flipped his cigarette into the street and ran his fingers through his thatch. “You talked to Paula? What in heaven’s name did you want from that angel? Was it about the
priest?”

We nodded.

“Didn’t I tell you to turn down your flame? Didn’t I say you’d get your ass burned otherwise?”

“Better get burned than freeze,” I blustered.

Patrascu couldn’t help laughing. “Funny, Pauline always comes out with stuff like that, too. All right then, come on in. But I’m afraid I really won’t be much help.
Besides, I have nothing to offer you. Since my wife died there’s not much going on in here.”

As far as I could judge in air dense with Carpati smoke, Patrascu’s parlor made a neglected impression. Our foreheads beaded with sweat in the sticky humidity. We took off our coats;
Patrascu got out four glasses and poured us some
konjaki
Napoleon.

“None for me.” After all, I was only fifteen.

“If we’re going to discuss something among men, then act like a man. Cheers!”

I clinked glasses with them and drank. Istvan told him about the transfer of Fernanda Klein from the hospital in Kronauburg to Baia Luna and about Johannes Baptiste’s corpse and how
neither the driver of the hearse nor Dr. Paula Petrin knew anything about it.

“Commissioner, you were there when the chauffeur drove the two of them from Baia Luna to Kronauburg. How come one corpse was autopsied but not the other one? First our priest is murdered
in cold blood, and then his body disappears. We have to at least give Pater Johannes a decent burial, you understand.”

Patrascu stroked his beard and dragged on his cigarette. “It’s a nasty business, but I don’t know where your priest is either.”

“And if you knew?” I asked, emboldened by the alcohol.

“I’ll be honest with you.” The commissioner was silent for a while. “I’d keep mum about it. Yeah, I’d keep my mouth shut. And here’s why: I’ve
worked my butt off for this country for forty-five years, and let me tell you: I’ve never seen so much nasty shit as in the last few years. And if an old geezer blabs too much—you
people from Baia Luna have seen for yourselves how somebody like that is silenced nowadays. But this is all hypothetical, remember, only if I really had any idea where the priest’s body might
be.”

I was trembling with excitement. If I was supposed to drink like a man, then I wanted to talk like a man, too. “If Dr. Petrin knew that Commissioner Patrascu took his own fear more
seriously than justice, do you think little Pauline would have sent her best to you?”

Patrascu stubbed out his cigarette. You could have cut the air with a knife. I had violated the rules of respect toward a man who yesterday was still the highest police officer in the Kronauburg
District. But contrary to expectation, Patrascu addressed me in a positively paternal way.

“Pavel, is that your name? I’ll tell you what, boy. You don’t understand what you’re getting into here. I don’t know what happened to the priest’s body, and I
don’t want to know. I’ll just say this much: up there in your mountain backwater you don’t seem to understand that international politics are involved. Your Johannes Baptiste had
the makings of a real, hundred percent martyr. Get this through your heads! This is a Communist state. There’s a priest in the mountains who’s against it? Okay, slit his throat. Not
good. Listen, people, there are certain circles far beyond the borders of our country—for the sake of simplicity let’s call them strictly Catholic and anti-Communist—that have a
massive interest in such martyr figures. You want my personal opinion? Even though I think all this religious folderol is so much nonsense, these martyrs are going to bring down our idiotic
collectivized Socialist delusion. Not today and not tomorrow, but someday. That’s the logic of history. One delusion replaces another. Royalists, Iron Guards, fascists, Communists,
clericalists! What do I know? And if you can just grasp the fact that there are also certain circles in our republic that have no interest at all in seeing martyrs from the wrong camp, you’ll
also understand why corpses disappear. The memory of people whose blood has been spilled is always dangerous. Martyrs’ blood causes trouble. But if these figures simply disappear like the
melting snow in spring, then it’s all over. Over and done with, forgotten. No grave, no flowers, no temple, no gods. No grass grows as fast as the grass on the grave of an unknown
soldier.”

“And the fact that in Baia Luna we have no grave to remind us of our priest,” said Istvan Kallay hesitantly, “for that your Security Service is to blame.”

“You should leave now.” Patrascu pushed himself wearily to his feet.

“When spring comes the snow melts,” I said in farewell. “You’re right about that, Commissioner. But in the winter new snow falls.”

“You weren’t listening to me, boy. That snow will melt, too. That’s the wheel of history. You’re young. You want to stop the world from turning. To do that you have to
get real close to the wheel. And then it will crush you.”

We descended Castle Hill in silence. The evening bus to Apoldasch had left Kronauburg two hours ago. We decided to spend the night in the waiting room of the train station and take the first bus
in the morning. Istvan put his hands deep into his coat pockets to warm them. He took out a pack of Carpatis. That night I smoked my first cigarette.

Chapter Six

That night it snowed again in the mountains. We would have a long march on the footpath from the last bus stop in Apoldasch to Baia Luna, especially under the cloud of our
failure to find out anything about the location of Johannes Baptiste’s body except for the disheartening realization that its disappearance was no mere oversight of an incompetent
bureaucracy. Behind it rose the shadow of an obscure and ominous force for which I had no name. After our conversation with Patrascu, Petre and Istvan also had no doubt that the wheels of that
force would grind up anyone who interfered with their turning. “Keep your flame turned down.” The old commissioner’s sentence kept going through my head, and I was scared.

To our surprise, it was extremely easy going along the footpath beside the Tirnava. We were able to follow in the tracks of a truck with chains that had broken a trail to Baia Luna early that
morning. In the track of the tires we discovered another comparatively narrow one: the track of a motorcycle. The police in Apoldasch drove such vehicles and the photographer Hofmann also owned
one. Istvan was worried. Tire tracks heading for Baia Luna had not been a good sign lately.

We reached the village at midday and saw that the tracks in the snow led to the Hofmanns’ house. The truck was a make seldom seen on Transmontanian roads. The hood ornament was a
three-legged star, and the country code on the trunk was
D.
Under the muddy splashes on the license plate you could make out the letter
M.

“Munich,” said Istvan.

My former comrade Fritz Hofmann’s last day in Baia Luna had dawned. In his black leather getup, Heinrich Hofmann stood next to his motorcycle and was giving instructions to two furniture
movers. Fritz and his mother were nowhere to be seen.

“Thank God you’re back safe and sound.” My mother’s relief and happiness were written on her face, while Grandfather betrayed no emotion. I had ridden to Kronauburg in
the hearse against his wishes and gotten mixed up in things that weren’t any of my business, in his opinion. Granddad only jerked his thumb toward the bench next to the potbellied stove.
“You have a visitor.”

Fritz was sitting in the corner. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

I took off my coat. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you. I have something important to show you.”

“Maybe for you, but not for me.”

“You don’t get it, man. It’s very very important! And we’re leaving in an hour at the latest. You think I’d be waiting here for hours if it wasn’t
important?”

“I’ve never heard you talk like this before. Usually you’re too busy desecrating churches and not needing anyone for anything. We’re all such idiots here in Baia
Luna.”

“Stop it, Pavel, please! I’m serious.”

“Then show me what you have to show.”

Fritz turned his head and saw Grandfather and my mother. “Not right here. Can we go to your room?”

We sat on my bed. Fritz sat up straight and took a deep breath to get the excitement out of his voice.

“You remember last week when you ran over to my house to show me the new television?”

“You mean the same day you blew out the little flame like such a hero and then took off like a chicken?”

“Man, cut it out. Please, Pavel! You wouldn’t believe how happy I was to finally get out of the house that afternoon when you came to bring me to your grandfather’s birthday
party. I was suffocating in there. My father and mother were having another fight. Now they’ve separated. My father’s going to move to Kronauburg, maybe even to the capital. My mother
and I are going to Germany.”

“To Munich, I guess.”

“Yes, to Munich. Anyway, my father came home day before yesterday to pack up the stuff he’s taking to Kronauburg before the move. He filled two crates and said we could do what we
wanted with the rest of the junk. Throw it away or burn it, he didn’t care. He left the two crates in the upstairs hall and threw a blanket over them, then he told me and my mother to keep
our mitts off his stuff.”

Fritz took a breath. I said nothing.

“But you know me. He tells me not to do something, and it makes me hot to do it. And yesterday when the old man was back in Kronauburg and Mother was saying good-bye to some people in the
village, I went through the crates.”

“And so?” My pulse started racing.

“Here’s what I found.” Fritz reached under his sweater and pulled out a photograph.

“I don’t believe it!” I gaped at it in shock, shame, and arousal. Although the woman’s face was hidden by a man’s naked, out-of-focus behind, I knew at once who was
lying there on the table with her legs spread. Her breasts were bare and her dress had been pushed up around her waist, the dress with a sunflower pattern. Five or six men were standing around
Angela Barbulescu and grinning. Some of them had dropped their pants around their knees, others had erections jutting out through their open flies. I recognized one of them immediately. He was the
only one standing there over her naked flesh who wasn’t beating off. He wore his hair slicked back, had an unfiltered cigarette between his lips, and was spraying sparkling wine from a
thick-bellied bottle into Barbu’s crotch.

“You know the guy with the cigarette?” asked Fritz.

“Sure. This is crazy. I nailed him to the classroom wall last week.”

“Exactly. The picture must be ten years old, but it’s clearly the new party chief of Kronauburg, Dr. Stefan Stephanescu, and his randy buddies. Photographed by my father.”