The Madonna on the Moon (54 page)

“And what was she doing at the press conference?”

“No idea. She just caught my attention. Maybe because she was shivering even though the room was heated. She didn’t notice me, just kept looking at Stephanescu with a really strange
expression. How can I describe it? Not obtrusive, more detached, as if she was waiting for something to happen. Most of the time her eyes were closed. She was in sort of a trance, if you see what
I’m trying to say.”

“I understand perfectly. It was Buba! And Buba knows that Stephanescu will fall when he’s reached the top. She knows our teacher’s prophecy. Buba and I read the diary together.
But we should help the Savior of the Nation along in his fall. It’s high time to roll a couple stones into the path of the good doctor. How do you get near these big shots, Fritz?”

“With a press pass.”

“Have you got one?”

“Of course. Several, in fact, and even a couple from American press agencies. In America they aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, but around here they can open a lot of
doors. Your Salvation Front people are drooling for any reporter who can lend them even a hint of international publicity. The Conducator is like that, too. But what do you have in mind?”

“I’ll think of something.”

Fritz laughed and handed me a stick of American chewing gum. “Okay. Whatever you think up—if you’re sawing at Stephanescu’s throne, I’ll saw with you.”

I
t was the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and Petre Petrov had been waiting in the foyer of the Interconti for hours. It was crawling with people:
rebelling students, injured demonstrators, military personnel, party cadres, undercover security agents, members of the National Front, black-market currency traders, photographers. Nobody knew who
belonged to whom or what side they were on, least of all the Western journalists for whom the uncertain fate of the Conducator had much higher news value than the confusion and struggle for spoils
surrounding the political future of the country.

When Petre finally discovered me in the crowd, he barked at me, “Where’ve you been all this time? I thought we wanted to make a revolution.”

Before I could answer, Petre did a double take. He stared at the man beside me and searched the farthest corners of his memory. Then he came at the photographer with his fists clenched.
“Hofmann, you asshole, you priest murderer! What the fuck are you doing here?”

It was all I could do to restrain Petre. “No, Petre. Stop! It wasn’t like that. Fritz had nothing to do with betraying Baptiste. I guarantee it one hundred percent. It was
Stephanescu.”

Petre broke off his attack.

“What am I supposed to have done? Betrayed Baptiste?” Fritz was dumbfounded. “Are you guys out of your minds?”

“Pavel used to claim that you and your father turned the pastor over to the Securitate because he was going to preach against fucking Socialism and collectivization. Then you took off for
Germany.”

“Bullshit,” I said and blushed. “Petre, you got it all wrong.”

Fritz put on the impudent grin I remembered from our school days together. “So now the score is one to one. You had all the trouble because of the Eternal Flame, and the betrayal was
chalked up to me. Still tied, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. Then someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I turned around.

“You still get just as red as you used to.”

“Buba? No! Yes, it’s you! You’re here?”

I stood amazed, looking Buba up and down. Fritz had been right. She was different. She no longer fit the pale image I still clung to, the sad remains of my youthful memories, and yet I
recognized in her the Buba who had once been so dear to me. She was beautiful. She had a wool shawl thrown over her shoulders to protect them from the wintry cold, and it made her seem light,
almost weightless. The wrinkles around her eyes magnified their shine, and she emanated a warmth that made me afraid instead of joyful. When Buba unconsciously brushed the black locks from her eyes
and pulled at a gold earring with her slender fingers, I stuck my hands in my pockets in embarrassment.

I was abashed. My threadbare jacket, faded pants, and run-down shoes were much more than just cheap clothes. They testified to a shabbiness that over the years had worked its way from outside to
inside and taken possession of me. I wanted to hide. I was facing a woman who knew she was a woman. But I was not a man who considered himself worthy of her. I desperately tried to remind myself
that it was Buba Gabor who had given herself to me in the most wonderful hour of my life. She was here, but I had vanished.

“Ah . . . ah . . . are you here because of Stephanescu?” I stammered, trying to hide my shame.

“No . . . that is, not really. I just flew in from Milan two days ago. Your aunt Antonia sent me a message about Uncle Dimitru. This is going to be his last Christmas. Uncle Dimi is dying.
But Antonia wrote me that he can’t go yet. Something’s still missing. I don’t know what it is, but I had to come back from Italy so he can look forward to his end. That’s
why I’m here. What about you?”

Someone knocked me to the ground. A commotion had started in the foyer, and in a few moments it turned into a panic. Outside, shots crackled through the streets again, at first only scattered,
but then machine guns opened up in front of the Interconti, cross fire shattered the front windows, sirens wailed, and people screamed and ran for their lives into the hotel lobby.

Fritz put a stick of gum in his mouth and hung his cameras around his neck. “I’ll see you later.”

When I got back to my feet, rebels were carrying in a badly wounded man. They laid him gently onto the floor. The bystanders turned away in distress. There was nothing to be done for the victim.
His upper body was almost completely separated from his lower extremities, but his eyes were still flickering. The man was about my age, and when I looked into his face, I had to suppress a scream
of horror. I owed this man a debt. I knelt down and took his limp hand from which the warmth was ebbing.

“Thank you, Matei,” I whispered to the nephew of the Kronauburg antiques dealer Gheorghe Gherghel. Matei showed no sign of recognition. I crossed myself and closed the eyes of the
faithful ally who had once warned me about the security agent Raducanu.

“I want to see Dimitru,” I said to Buba.

“You’ll see him. I’ll take you to him and your aunt. You’ll be shocked, like me. But first we have something to take care of. That is”—Buba hesitated before
finishing her sentence—“I don’t really know if I can still talk about ‘we’ in our case.”

Unsure of myself, I started to babble, “I saw Fritz on TV and recognized him. I had to come here. We weren’t getting any news about the revolution in Baia Luna.”

“So you’re here on account of your friend from school. Well, why should you be looking for me just now, when you haven’t looked for me in thirty years? I guess that means
I—”

“But you . . . you didn’t send any word either,” I interrupted her. “You only came back on account of your uncle, too!”

“Are you going to argue with me? Think it over. What do you know about my life? Don’t you know that a man looks for a woman, but the woman finds the man? Don’t fight with me
about it. I can fight better than you. I learned that in Italy. I’ll tell you, any guy who groped me without paying got a slap in return that made him run home crying to Mama.”

I was speechless, unable to utter a word in reply.

“But what do you know about life in Italy? I’ve been sitting in this miserable hotel for two days hoping you would come looking for me. Uncle Dimi said, ‘Buba, dreaming
doesn’t pay, not in times like this, anyway. Forget your Pavel. He’s stuck in Baia Luna.’ Do you actually know how much faith Dimi set in you? He loved you like a son. Much, much
more, in fact. I was still a girl when he said to me, ‘Pavel’s the right one for you. Pavel Botev can do something that no other
gajo
has ever succeeded at. He can turn the
world upside down.’ Yes indeed, that’s exactly what my uncle said. But you, you—”

“Shut up,” I shouted at her. “You don’t know anything, either. Locked up in a goddamn Age of Gold for three decades. Do you have any idea what that means? How was I
supposed to see colors when everything was gray? How was I supposed to turn the world upside down when it’d already been turned on its head by all the insanity? How was I supposed to know
what was up and what was down when everything was turned around and inside out?” I reached into my jacket and took out the green notebook. “Here’s why I’m here! Not to turn
the world upside down, but to put it back on its feet. I saw Stephanescu on TV as he was announcing the Front for National Salvation. Everyone needs to be saved in this country, Buba, but not by
that man.”

Buba dropped her eyes. “Uncle Dimi said something like that to me yesterday.” She reached hesitantly for my hand like a shy girl. “The diary—so you haven’t
forgotten Angela?”

“Yes, I did, Buba. I haven’t thought about her for years. Everything that was once precious to me evaporated, finally even the strength to fight. All that was left was a memory that
things had been alive once, I had been alive once. Sometimes I tried to call you to me. But there was no image there. The memory was there, but it was dead. What’s wrong with me? Why did it
take that creep Stephanescu on the screen to shake me awake?”

She looked at me. I felt a fleeting stab of happiness when Buba stroked my cheek.

“You’re a good man,” she said softly. “You didn’t forget that you forgot. Come with me! This isn’t a good place.”

She took me by the arm and led me outside, far away, where there were no people wandering around with fear, hope, and uncertainty written on their faces. It was already dark and bitterly cold.
We walked hand in hand through canyonlike streets between rows of apartment buildings, with the final rifle shots of the next-to-last day of the revolution fading away, the night of December 24,
1989. We told each other about ourselves by remaining silent.

When our feet began to ache, we discovered a church whose doors were open. Inside a few women in black murmured
Doamne miluieste, doamne miluieste
, Lord have mercy. Around midnight we
sat alone on one of the rear pews, our hungry arms around each other and warmed by Buba’s wool wrap. We slept. Next to the altar, a small red light flickered.

When Buba awoke in the early-morning hours, she kissed me on the lips.

“Pavel, there’s a strange thing I can’t get out of my head, something I don’t understand. When I landed in the capital I got right on a bus to Titan II, the neighborhood
where my people have lived since the Conducator forbade us to travel around or risk serious punishment. I wanted to go straight to Uncle Dimi, but it took forever because the streets were blocked
on account of the revolution. Men kept jumping into the bus and crying ‘Freedom, freedom, down with the Conducator!’ and passing out leaflets. Everything they were demanding seemed to
make sense to me until I read the name ‘Dr. Stefan Stephanescu’ at the bottom of the manifesto. I felt like I was falling down a hole. But not because of that malevolent man and not
because of Angela and her child, whose lives he destroyed. It wasn’t my pain at the suffering of others. It was my own pain. I no longer knew why I was there and what I wanted. Even Uncle
Dimi didn’t matter, suddenly. I thought of you, Pavel, of our night together. And it broke my heart that there was nothing left. I felt ancient. When I was forced to leave Baia Luna so long
ago I was so terribly sad, but I was young and full of the certain knowledge that everything would be all right some distant day. Because life was just. But it isn’t just. Not in Baia Luna
and not in Milan or anywhere else. This thought is unbearable for a Gypsy. That’s why we trust in heaven and believe in hell. But what’s left if heaven is dead? Dust to dust! And
that’s why Uncle Dimi scared me so much when I saw him. I love him, Pavel. And that love hurts so much. He’s not a Gypsy anymore, he’s like me.”

Buba knelt down and folded her hands in prayer. She ended with the
Ave Maria,
“Pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death.” Then she began talking again.
“The strange thing I wanted to tell you happened the morning after I arrived. I told my uncle about the manifesto of the Democratic Front for National Salvation, which had scheduled a press
conference for that afternoon in the old Royal Palace. When I mentioned the name Stefan Stephanescu, Dimi jumped up from his bed and cried, ‘Dear God in heaven, please do a Black a favor just
this once and bring him down!’ Isn’t that strange?”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “It means Dimitru must have known Stephanescu, but how?”

“That’s why I attended the press conference in the city. I had to see what kind of man he was. And I’ll tell you, when you look at him, he seems friendly, even charming, and
when he smiles he wins everyone’s sympathy. But when you listen to him with your eyes closed, it makes you shiver. He’s addressing you but he’s not thinking of you. He’s
hollow. He fills people up with a bunch of words and sucks them dry at the same time. That evening, I asked Uncle Dimi if he thought Stephanescu was evil.”

“And what did he say?”

“Something else I didn’t really understand. Dimi said that was beyond his ability to decide and was a matter between Stephanescu and the Lord God at the Last Judgment. All he knew
was that the man carried a demon within, a demon who would kill anyone who interfered with his progress. But then my uncle said something else: he gave me a warning. He forbade me to undertake
anything against Stephanescu, much less try to fight him. He was cunning, he said, the most dangerous enemy you could imagine. Then Dimi prayed. Your aunt told me that the last time he had done
that was when they were still traveling around in the wagon searching for your lost grandfather. Dimi prayed for a long time. He was speaking in a strange tongue that sometimes sounded like
Italian: ‘Papa Baptiste, Papa Baptiste,’ was all I could understand. My uncle was appealing to the soul of the murdered pastor. When he was done, he lay down and went to sleep. When he
woke up again, he told me there was only one chance to overcome the doctor.”