The Madonna on the Moon (28 page)

I was surprised and a bit proud that my grandfather was confiding his thoughts to me and no longer talked to my almost-sixteen-year-old self as though I were a child.

“Never, Pavel, never ever was I plagued by doubts. But since Johannes Baptiste’s murder, my faith is evaporating like a spring drying up. I wonder who has poisoned the well? Who
allowed the tree to wither? At first I thought the State Security was behind everything. But why would they go to the length of slitting an old priest’s throat? Despite all the vile things
the Securitate is supposed to have done, I can’t imagine them doing this. Especially since a priest never stands alone; he has the authority of the whole Catholic church behind him. No state
is going to challenge that unless its power is seriously threatened. On the other hand, Pavel, isn’t it possible that there is something to what that crazy Konstantin woman is spreading
around? What if Miss Barbulescu hanged herself on the Mondberg because she really did have something to do with the murder of Pater Johannes?”

“She didn’t,” I answered.

“I don’t think so either. And Dimitru is also convinced she didn’t murder Fernanda and Johannes. And I don’t believe the evil rumors Kora spreads about her either. But
something bad is still bothering me. Pavel, I did something stupid—really, really stupid, if things turn out badly.”

“Wha-what are you talking about?” I stammered. “What did you do?”

“The Konstantin woman claims the teacher Barbulescu paid a visit to the rectory on Wednesday, November sixth, my fifty-fifth birthday. Most people in the village discount it as the gossip
of a blabbermouth. But what if that nasty liar was telling the truth for once? The fact is, Barbulescu never visited the rectory otherwise—in fact, during her years in Baia Luna she avoided
contact with the pastor as much as she could. I’m surprised that she really was with Johannes on November sixth, but Dimitru confirmed it. Supposedly Angela Barbulescu wanted to borrow the
key to the library. So Kora wasn’t lying when she kept saying she saw Barbulescu going into the rectory. Dimitru was her witness. And me, I’m such an idiot. I thought I had to tell
everyone the truth, so I told anyone who asked—the women shopping in the store and the men drinking in the tavern. Of course people in the village talked about Konstantin’s speculations
that Barbulescu was behind all the evils being visited upon Baia Luna. At first I kept out of all those discussions. But whenever someone like dear Elena Kiselev was in the store and said Kora was
nuts when she claimed to have seen Barbu going into the rectory, I just had to contradict her. Rumors are one thing, but facts are another. If Kora was right, then she was right. But Pavel, now
that I saw that crazy woman tear the dress off Barbulescu’s body, I feel like biting out my tongue for saying, ‘Dimitru saw Barbu go in there, too.’”

On that Christmas Eve, my grandfather learned the painful lesson that there are times in one’s life when craftiness is more important than high-minded principle. You can’t always
tell everyone the truth. He sensed that his incautious words would have consequences.

On Christmas Day at noon someone knocked at our back door. My mother Kathalina opened it and called up the stairs, “Pavel, a young lady for you!” I rushed down the stairs expecting
to see my beloved Buba.

“Oh, it’s you.”

My disappointment didn’t escape Julia Simenov’s notice.

“Is this a bad time? Should I come back?” she asked uncertainly. In her hands she held a wreath of fir sprigs and a simple cross made of two wooden laths. When I didn’t answer,
she explained, “I thought I’d make this for our teacher, since she has no place in the cemetery and no relatives to look after her grave.”

“I’ll come, too.”

I wouldn’t have expected it of Julia. She was already sixteen, the oldest student in the class. I’d be lying if I said I liked her. But in this one moment, Julia upended everything I
thought I knew about the daughter of the blacksmith after eight years in school together. Everyone thought she was a zealous teacher’s pet. She had a quick mind and an even quicker arm,
always first to raise her hand. Whether we were using the Rule of Three to solve an equation, regurgitating historic dates, or reciting the homeland poem by Hans Bohn, Julia Simenov always had her
hand up before Angela Barbulescu had even finished asking the question. She’d always stayed off to one side when we made cruel jokes about the teacher. Fritz Hofmann guessed she was paving
her way to the boarding school in Kronauburg with good grades, something no pupil from Baia Luna, especially no girl, had ever succeeded in doing. No question Julia was ambitious, but now she was
standing here in front of me with a simple fir wreath and a cross without a name. I felt ashamed.

I put on my shoes and coat.

“I’m planning to write a letter to Fritz Hofmann, by the way. My father found out their address in Germany. Someone should tell him where mean words can lead,” said Julia.

“Do you think the stuff he wrote about his thing getting hard and out to here drove the teacher to kill herself?”

“Maybe. As the final straw that broke the camel’s back. We have to hurry. My parents don’t know I’m here, and I’m not sure they would allow us to go to
Barbu’s grave. When spring comes we can make a proper cross with her name and the year she was born. Do you have any idea how old she was?”

“She was born in Popesti, near the capital, in 1920.”

“How do you know that?” Julia exclaimed. “Nineteen twenty? That can’t be right. You must be mistaken, Pavel. That would make her only thirty-seven years old. She must
have been at least ten years older than that.”

“If you say so,” I replied shortly. We walked silently along outside the cemetery wall. The tracks the grave diggers had made in the snow the night before led us past the old oak to
the grave site above the stone wall.

Suddenly Julia gave a start and elbowed me. “Hey, somebody’s lying on the ground!”

Someone was lying, mummylike, next to the mounded dirt beneath which the gravediggers had interred Angela Barbulescu. When I saw the head sticking out of the bundle of wool blankets, I
recognized Dimitru’s matted hair. Before I had time to fear that the Gypsy himself had gone to his eternal rest next to the grave, the bundle moved.

Dimitru sat up. He was shivering. He rubbed his hands to warm them and squinted, blinded by the snow in the brilliant sunshine. “Is night already over?”

While Julia was so astonished she couldn’t utter a syllable, I replied, “The night has begun. What are you doing here?”

“Same thing as you,” answered Dimitru when he caught sight of the wooden cross Julia was holding. “I’m paying my last respects to someone. Someone has to keep vigil over
this poor soul. But I’m a miserable watchman. I fell asleep like the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane.”

“You can’t compare the two things, Dimitru! The disciples fell asleep when their Lord Jesus was still alive,” Julia replied as she laid her green wreath on the grave.
“You fell asleep during a wake. There’s no shame for a watchman in that.”

Dimitru thought it over for a moment and then simply said, “My thanks for your wise reply.”

I planted the cross in the snow, then stood before the unsanctified grave with my classmate, quietly, with folded hands, while Dimitru tried to drive the frost from his bones with various
contortions.

“She was too good for this world,” I interrupted the silence.

“No,” the Gypsy replied, “this world wasn’t good for her.”

“It comes down to the same thing!”

“No, it doesn’t, Pavel. Not at all.” Dimitru gathered his blankets together and shuffled back to his people.

The old year was ending. In the capital, in Kronauburg, and even in Apoldasch, public buildings were bedecked with flags and bunting on the orders of the regime. The walls sported freshly
printed posters. On red banners the Communist Party congratulated itself on its progressive achievements and promised the people a national renaissance and a glorious world-class Socialist future.
While people all over the country greeted the New Year and hoped for better times, the turn of the year in Baia Luna passed without anyone taking much notice.

On earlier New Year’s Eves, young and old alike would gather on the village square in feverish anticipation of the twelve strokes of midnight. But as the year 1958 dawned, the square was
deserted, the rusted church tower clock didn’t strike, and instead of raising their glasses and wishing one another Happy New Year the residents lay in their beds, sleeping. Only in Vera
Raducanu’s parlor were there two flickering candles spreading a meager light. With a long-stemmed glass of sparkling wine, Vera drank a toast with herself and stoutly maintained that her hour
of triumph was imminent, the hour when her son Lupu would come to fetch her back to the city and reinstate her in the very best circles.

The New Year in Baia Luna began as the old one had ended. People seldom left their houses, and when they did, they exchanged only the minimum words necessary. Mortally offended by the solid
punch in the nose I’d given her on the Mondberg, Kora Konstantin stayed out of sight. She stopped coming to our shop for the things she needed because she had sworn never again to enter the
house of “that Botev gang.” Instead, she put a few coins into the hands of the six half-grown brats the drunken Raswan had left her with when he passed and sent them out into the
neighborhood to forage for a cup of sugar or salt or a packet of oatmeal. I’m sure Kora threatened her children with all the tortures of hell should they dare to accept a lollipop or a stick
of American chewing gum from Grandfather.

Ilja and my mother Kathalina sat in the shop, longing for an early end to winter and hoping that spring would not only restore life to nature but also a spirit of confidence to the village.
Dimitru was often absent from the library, not for lack of interest in his Mariological studies but because his tribe had urgent family matters to negotiate for which they sought his advice. As for
me, I was crippled by inaction and yearned for Buba. From morning to night, my thoughts had circled her ever since the hysterical Susanna had dragged her through the village by the hair,
threatening to banish her from the clan.

On Saturday, January 18, Mother put a hazelnut cake into the oven. It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse of her in the pantry, surreptitiously gift wrapping a warm wool sweater and a dark
blue scarf, that I realized why. It was for me. Kathalina was the only one who had remembered that I was going to turn sixteen on Sunday. Even Grandfather Ilja and Aunt Antonia, who always had a
little something ready for my birthday, had forgotten the date—which I didn’t blame them for, since I had forgotten it myself. Without really being tired, I crawled into bed early on
Saturday night, hoping that sleep would free me from my heartache for a while.

It must have been after midnight when I heard a dull thud. Immediately I sat bolt upright and listened. When another snowball hit my window, I knew who was out there in the cold night trying to
get my attention. I opened the window and whispered into the darkness, “Come to the back door.”

“Have you got wax in your ears? I’ve been standing out here forever.”

I put my finger to my lips, took her silently by the hand, and led her through the dark to my room. The whole house was still.

“I had to see you on your birthday,” she said softly and assaulted my face with kisses. I groped for Buba’s hair and discovered she was wearing a babushka. Fear of being caught
rose within me, but it lost its power as Buba put her arms around my neck and pressed against me. I felt her chilly body beneath her thin little blouse. Buba was shivering. I pulled her close, my
hands were on her hips and then slid down over the firm curve of her buttocks to her thighs. I stroked her bare, cold skin while she pressed against me more and more and gently opened my lips with
her tongue. She took my hand and led it to the only place on her chilly body that exuded warmth. My heart was hammering with excitement and pumping blood into my swelling penis. Buba slipped out of
her blouse and pulled off my nightshirt. I led her to my bed.

“I . . . I don’t know exactly . . .” I stammered as Buba stroked my hair. “But I know everything.” She nestled against me, skin to skin, and as I shyly responded to
her caresses, she lay on top and gently, unimaginably slowly, lowered herself onto me until I was deep inside her and we were united, man and woman. We lay still, trying to prolong the moment into
an eternity. I could sense Buba getting warmer and warmer, felt the heat rising to a blaze, smelled her sweat, the aroma of fire, earth, smoke, and the sharp sweetness of her sex. Gently, Buba
rocked her hips until I forgot everything around me. All my heartache, all the anguish of the past weeks, dissolved in this moment of pure happiness, while Buba bit her hand to keep from crying out
with joy and pleasure. Ever so gradually, we returned from our blissful rapture. We lay in bed, our arms wrapped tightly around each other. And I felt her tears on my chest.

“Buba, what’s wrong?” My voice shook with fear and worry. I felt for a pack of matches and lit a candle.

“We won’t be together again like this for a long time. A very long time,” Buba said in deep sadness.

“But why not? I’ll be with you forever, and nothing can keep us apart.”

“Yes, it can, Pavel. You’re forgetting: I’m a Gypsy and you’re a
gajo
.”

“I don’t care.”

To my shock Buba pulled off her babushka: there wasn’t a single hair on her head. All the marvelous curls I loved so much were gone.

“They shaved me because Mother claimed I’d been in bed with you. Now at least she’s right about that.”

My dismay at the loss of Buba’s mass of curls turned gradually into anger. “Even if she is your mother, she’s a terrible woman.”

“Yes,” said Buba, “my mother is sick. But only since my father ran off with another woman. She didn’t used to be so bad. And you must never forget that we’re
Gypsies, my mother even more than me. When she caught us together in the library, she wanted to disown me. She really meant to. But they couldn’t hold a clan council since no one could notify
our relatives because of all the snow. I owe it to Uncle Dimi and him alone that I wasn’t cast out. Without him I wouldn’t even be here with you. Uncle Dimi knows everything.”