The Madonna on the Moon (21 page)

Dimitru paused for a long time. Then he asked if the teacher Barbulescu had told us about Friedrich Nietzsche in school.

I said no. “It was Hofmanns’ Fritz who talked about the death of God and claimed the churches were just God’s grave. And Fritz’s father had a lot of books by Nietzsche in
his living room, a whole yard of them, at least. I never read any of them. But what’s so dangerous about them?”

“Books are never dangerous, just people who understand them the wrong way.”

“Do you pray a lot?” I asked suddenly.

“Very often, my boy. A Gypsy prays day and night. And if you want to know if my prayers were ever answered, I’ll tell you: no. God is a poor partner when you want something from
him.”

“Then it doesn’t matter if God is alive or dead, like this Nietzsche says.”

“No, Pavel, it does matter. Remember this: people who understand Nietzsche right go crazy. And people who understand him wrong have no more boundaries. And whoever knows no boundaries
thinks he has a license to do anything he wants. If heaven is dead, there’s only earth left. And the earth doesn’t care about anything. Mother Earth is a bad mother. It’s all the
same to her. Sow your seed, groan, give birth, eat, die. Dust to dust. In between just a fart from the ass of life. That’s all there is.”

Dimitru tipped the last of the schnapps into his mouth. The empty bottle fell from his hand onto the floor. Then he said the odd words, “God dies because we can’t bear it that
we’re killing him.”

With an effort he got up from his chaise longue. Grief and schnapps had left their marks on him. He staggered to the bookcases. He was falling-down drunk, but he pulled out just the book he
wanted, opened it, and handed it to me. I sat down and began to read the story of the crazy man who lights a lamp on a bright morning and runs into the marketplace crying, “I’m looking
for God! I’m looking for God!”

Outside in the hall someone kicked against the door. I put Nietzsche aside and opened it. Buba stood there, a jug of fresh water in one hand and in the other a pot with hot polenta.

“Sorry, I didn’t have a third hand to knock with.” She smiled at me. “I’ve got dinner for Uncle Dimi. He always forgets it when he’s with his
books.”

Dimitru was asleep on his red chaise longue, his mouth open and snoring. Buba put his supper on the floor, straightened his jacket, took off his shoes, and covered him with a blanket.

“Haven’t seen you in a long time, Pavel. Didn’t even know you were paying Uncle Dimi a visit. D’you like books?”

I seized the opportunity. “Do you have some time?”

“For you? Have you got something to tell me?”

Buba tried to conceal her beaming smile, sat down, and leaned her back against a bookcase. I sat down and slid nearer to her, and all the thoughts that had been oppressing me during the
preceding days came flowing out. I talked about the missing coffin, the search for the dead priest, the trip to Kronauburg, and the meeting with Commissioner Patrascu. Via Fritz Hofmann and his
mother’s move to Germany, I arrived at the story of the Eternal Flame. Then I pulled the priest’s note from my pocket and explained the real reason for my presence in Dimitru’s
library, talked about my concern for Angela Barbulescu and my suspicion that on the day of her disappearance the teacher had borrowed an important book from the library. And since I understood
Buba’s silence for what it was—the expression of her wonderful gift as a listener—my heart became lighter with every sentence so that I had no hesitation in telling her about our
teacher’s shady past as well, about the lewd photographs and the whippings Heinrich Hofmann gave his son, and about his friend, the party secretary Dr. Stephanescu, and Barbu’s affair
with him, which must have ended very unhappily for her. When I told Buba about her mysterious assignment that seemed to me more and more like a desperate plea, she took my hand, so that I decided
not to tell her about the evening when a drunken Angela Barbulescu in her sunflower dress had made a pass at me.

When I had talked all the tribulations from my soul, Buba said, “And I thought you didn’t like me anymore.” After a quick glance at her uncle assured her he was asleep, she
kissed me on the mouth. “You’re my boyfriend now. And I’m your girlfriend. Don’t do anything foolish without me anymore.”

The drunken Dimitru tossed from side to side on his chaise longue. Then he muttered something in a singsong that sounded like old women mumbling litanies in Latin. “Uncle Dimi talks in his
sleep when he’s been drinking.” Buba laid her hand on Dimitru’s injured forehead, gave him a kiss, and put out the light. “It’s better we wait until tomorrow morning
to ask him what Barbu was doing in the library, when he’s slept it off. If you want me to be there, too, that is.”

“No more foolishness without you.”

On the way home I was glowing so much I could have melted the snow. My weakness had vanished. The shadows of the last few days were no longer a threat but a challenge—a darkness demanding
illumination.

T
he next morning I was up before seven. I washed with cold water and, contrary to my usual habits, I also brushed my teeth thoroughly. As I approached
the library I was happy to see Buba waiting for me at the door of the rectory. Despite my fear that Dimitru would be unapproachable after his bender the previous evening, we found him not with a
pounding headache but in the best of spirits. He put aside his pot of cold polenta, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and offered his niece and me a place on the couch.

“I’ve been thinking since our disputation last night.” He turned to me. “First about God, then about Nietzsche, and finally, in the sense of synchronous research, about
both of them. Seen in the light of day, the question is, Who’s the smarter of the two, the evangelist of God’s death or the Creator of all things? Which has the most staying power, the
everlasting breath of creation and salvation or an ephemeral work by an admittedly clever philosopher?”

“Who’s Uncle Dimi talking about?” Buba looked at me.

“Let me guess,” I said without answering her question. “God is smarter than all the thinkers combined. In the long run. But only if he isn’t already dead.”

Dimitru clapped his hands in delight. “Correct, my boy! But God is not dead. God is a hedgehog.”

Buba rolled her eyes in exasperation because she couldn’t follow the twisting course of her uncle’s inspiration. But I feared the
zuika
of the night before was still having
an effect. The comparison of God to a hedgehog, I remarked grumpily, was pretty far-fetched.

“Not at all,” Dimitru disagreed. “You know the tale of the race between the hare and the hedgehog. The hare is swift as the wind but as dumb as a board. The hedgehog has short
legs, but he’s slyer than a fox. So he uses the
principio duplex,
the law of doubles. Father Hedgehog stands next to the hare at the starting line. Ready, set, go! Longears zooms
along the furrows as if the devil himself were at his heels. At the finish line, there’s Mother Hedgehog waiting for him. ‘What’s been keeping you? I got here long ago,’ she
calls. The hare in his stupidity demands an immediate rematch. The same thing happens. Only this time, Father Hedgehog calls out, ‘Where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting for
you!’ The hare almost goes berserk, demands another race and another and another and another. End of story. He collapses on the field, run to death. Earth takes him back.
Exitus
finitus
. Dust to dust.”

“An illuminating story,” said Buba. “But if the double hedgehog is God, who’s the hare? You mean people like your cousin Salman, always on the road on business but never
really getting anywhere?”

When her uncle answered, “I mean Nietzsches’ Friedrich,” Buba was disappointed. “Never heard of him.”

“There’s a catch in your story, Dimitru,” I said. “Your hedgehog God puts one over on the hare. Your God is a swindler, a cheater, who only pretends he’s always
there waiting without ever really moving from the spot while the poor hare—or that Nietzsche, for all I care—runs himself to death honestly and with no cheap tricks.”

“Exactly,” Buba agreed. “The hare dies of exhaustion ’cause God double-crosses him. It’s a dirty trick.”

Dimitru cleared his throat. “It’s youth who are mistaken in this case. The hare doesn’t lose because the hedgehog double-crosses him; he loses because he wants to be the first
at any price. He’d rather kick the bucket than accept defeat.”

I took Buba’s hand. She returned my gentle squeeze.

“Dimitru,” I said, “will you help me?”

“Gladly. Anytime.”

I took the note out of my pocket and handed it to him.

“‘A, period, Barbu’! It’s his handwriting! Papa Baptiste wrote this!” Reverently, as if holding a sacred relic in his hand, Dimitru examined the piece of paper.
“Six, period, eleven, period. Pavel, you know numbers are absolutely not my strong suit, unlike your good old granddad Ilja.”

“It means the sixth of November. On that day, the teacher Barbulescu was in the rectory. And it looks as if Pater Johannes gave her the key to the library.”

Dimitru knit his battered brow. “Now it’s beginning to make sense to me. I never forget the sixth of November. It’s your Grandfather’s birthday. On this November sixth I
wasn’t here in the library. I was at home on tenterhooks all morning, waiting to see if my chuckleheaded cousin Salman would get here with the television on time. Salman arrived after noon,
with the machine but without the antenna. Instead he brought that Hun with a mustache and a wart on his cheek, the guy who asked after the domicile of the village schoolteacher Miss Barbulescu in
such a stilted way. I didn’t return to the library until the next day, the day after Ilja’s birthday. When I came in here, I said to myself right away, Dimitru, something’s not
right here. It all looked the same as usual. But”—Dimitru tapped his index finger on his nose—“it smelled different. At first I thought someone had left me flowers, but I
couldn’t find any. I swear it smelled like roses. Imagine that, in the middle of a frosty winter! How can it smell like roses? But I’m not crazy—I’m never crazy.”

“Barbu has a perfume that smells like that,” I explained.

“Then she was here!” Dimitru looked at Baptiste’s note again, turned the paper this way and that, and held it up to the light. “Miss Barbulescu was here, hundred percent
guaranteed. And since one of the duties of a librarian is to protect the books from unauthorized access, I always lock the door when I’m not here. She must have gone up to Papa Baptiste.
There are two keys: one’s always in my pocket, and the other hangs on a board next to the coat closet up in the pastor’s apartment. You see how empiricism comes in handy? Test your
theory and monitor the results!”

Dimitru hurried up the steps. Quick as a flash he was back down and opened his palm: there were two keys.

“They’re both the same,” I remarked.

“They’re identical,” he corrected me.

Together we concluded that Angela Barbulescu had asked the pastor for the key to the library in the early afternoon of November 6. Johannes Baptiste had handed over his key and noted it down on
a little piece of paper so he wouldn’t forget. Barbu went to the library, left behind a scent of roses, and returned the key, which either Baptiste or the orderly Fernanda had returned to its
hook on the rack of keys. We could deduce the chain of events up to that point.

“Now we have to find out what Barbu was doing in here among all these books,” Buba summed up.

“Usually you go to a library to borrow books,” I said.

“Or to return a book you’ve already borrowed,” Dimitru added.

“Had Barbu borrowed a book?” I asked eagerly.

“No, never. She never crossed the threshold of the rectory. I would know if she had, since she lives right next to us Gypsies. When she moved to the village, I often invited her to come to
the library. ‘The welcome mat’s out to the world of knowledge,’ I told her more than once. Umpteen times, in fact—she was a teacher after all. She always said, ‘One of
these days I’ll come see you, Dimitru. Promise.’ But as we know, woman is a fickle creature.”

“Not true!” objected Buba. “She was here on November sixth, but you weren’t.”

“But what did she want? Dimitru, can you find out if a book is missing?”

The Gypsy closed his eyes. Buba put her finger to her lips and signaled me to keep quiet.

“No book is missing,” Dimitru announced after a pause. “However, something in this room has changed.”

To my astonishment Dimitru walked toward one of the walls of books, got a running start of two or three steps, and swung himself into a handstand. His steadied his feet against a shelf and
explained his strange behavior: “We look but we don’t see. Things reveal themselves when you stand the world on its head.”

I was silently amazed. At first I thought that Dimitru’s skinny arms would not support him for long, but then I realized that he had fallen into a strange state of semiweightlessness.
Dimitru held himself upside down against the bookcase for more than an hour. With his eyes open. But then he suddenly crumpled sideways like a sack, looking bewildered and apparently without any
memory of his eccentric behavior. At last he spoke.

“All the books that belong in this room are here. Angela Barbulescu did not remove a single one. She did the opposite: she took nothing, but she gave something. Seek and you will find it.
Somewhere in among the other books. It’s a green notebook. On the front cover there’s a picture of a red rose. But the picture may already be worn away. Forgive me, but I’m very,
very tired now. I have to lie down and take a nap.”

Buba supported her uncle the few steps to his couch. A few minutes later she removed the notebook in question from one of the shelves.

We sat on the floor against the bookcase where we had sealed our friendship the night before. With trembling hands Buba opened the autograph book bound in green cloth. On the cover there were
remnants of dried glue. Schoolgirls like Julia Simenov and Antonia Petrov possessed similar albums and passed them back and forth. But this album belonged to a grown woman. Inside the front cover
were some faded pencil lines drawn with a straightedge. On them was written in a schoolgirl’s hand, “This book may be read only with the permission of Angela Maria Barbulescu. Strada
Bogdan Voda 18, Popesti.”