DRUMMER

4 short stories

by Dan Sociu

translated from
Romanian by
Alexandra Gaujan
Rat Poison

I was walking toward the slaughterhouse with the cow and with him
and he was crying.
We'd been there together before when I'd been a head shorter. I'd
followed him on the way then, otherwise he wouldn't have taken me,
'cause he didn't want to worry about me too. I saw the conveyor belts
on which pigs came to be slaughtered and I also went into a tunnel
where women were cleaning entrails. It was cold and a butcher singed
a pig's tail with a blowtorch and gave me some to taste. In the evening
we came back home with meat hidden in a bag below the belly. When
he got the hunk out, she raised her voice a bit, saying that wasn't the
kind of meat she wanted. And that he was drunk. He swore at her and
threw the meat to the dog.
We were walking toward the slaughterhouse and I saw a power pole
and I climbed up the first hole in the cement, then up the next. Toward
the top, the holes got smaller. At the last one, I stayed a bit longer and I
looked from above at the field and the dung on the road, and I climbed
down. I ran after him, who was walking on with the cow. When we went
through the slaughterhouse gate, the cow started to bellow and pull
toward the exit. He quickly pushed the gate and hit it over the head. A
drunk mate of his jumped up and pulled the cow inside by its horns.
They both pushed it with kicks in the stomach until it got into the first
hall. There was bloody water on the sandstone and air currents whirred
in the middle of the hall. He yelled something to his mate. Another one
came with an iron ball tied to a chain. He swung the ball in the air and
then struck the cow in the forehead. The animal's knees bent and it
slipped on the sandstone. It was trying to stay on its feet. He yelled
something to another butcher, who took the ball chain and hit the cow
in its head one more time. They slaughtered it with some knives and
flayed it. I glanced at the cow's eyes, which were now larger. I thought
that part of the eye on the inside doesn't see anything when it's alive.
They cut up the meat and stamped each hunk. I asked him if the black
ink on the meat didn't spoil its taste and he snorted, then spat to one
side. He told me something, but I wasn't paying attention anymore. He
got a bottle out of a pocket and gave it to the others. I got out and
squatted down next to a large and tattered burdock. A kid from those
parts came over and asked me what I was doing. We started to shove
each other and he punched me in the head and kicked me in the
stomach. He flung me down and sat his butt on my face, pinning my
arms to the cement with his knees. I felt the sweaty fabric of his pants
pressed against my nose. He asked me, gasping for breath, if I wanted
more and I told him I did not. He punched me in the eyes and propped
his elbow on my neck. Someone came out of the slaughterhouse hall
and yelled something at us. The other kid let go of me and bolted.
When we walked back home, I stopped by the pole again. I climbed to
the top and stuck my head through the small hole. I thought I'd get
stuck, but I got out of there pretty easily, only a bent wire scratched me
a bit on the cheek. I climbed down and ran after him. After a short while
I started to run to the right, up to a ditch where the kid from earlier was
running his hands through the mud. I got a brickbat off the ground and
threw it at him, but I missed. I quickly climbed back up to the road. I
went home. When I got in the yard, I saw her behind the yellowed
curtain in the kitchen. I jumped through the window into the middle
room. I hid behind the brick stove. She came in, a tin pail in her hand. I
was trying to hold my breath, so that she wouldn't hear me. She got
close to the wall I was leaning against, she stooped, put her hand to
her mouth, spat and wiped the frame of the wedding picture with her
damp sleeve. She was panting from the effort. She put the pail down,
over my foot. I left it there, didn't try to pull it from under the pail. She
had her thick glasses on, through which her eyes looked dim and
elongated. I was crouched behind an empty gas cylinder and she
couldn't see me. She said something I couldn't make heads or tails of
about a water vase and having to put aspirin in it. Her mouth smelled of
rum and otherwise she gave off the usual whiff, like all people with
diabetes. Shuffling her rubber flip-flops, she went to the front closet.
She opened it, got a bottle out from among the towels and raised it to
her mouth a few times. She said something and the words came out of
her mouth much like a gurgle. She put the bottle back, she stooped
behind the closet. I took a step forward, trying to see where she was
looking. She was looking at the rat poison corner. She reached out,
took a few pink grains in her hand and stuck them in her mouth. She
was munching part of the poison and the rest had spread over the back
of her hand, wet with spittle. She wiped it against her grayish dressing
gown. She said something more and moved her fingers as if to point
toward the window, but changed her mind.
Back then, rat poison didn't kill anything. She died at some other time,
one summer, in the hospital. When I carried her in my arms to the car,
together with someone else, I remembered that they said the dead
were heavier. I had never carried her in my arms when she'd been
alive, so I had no way of knowing. When I'd been little and we'd been
sleeping next to each other, she'd sometimes lain over me at night, but
not with her full weight, part of her had been borne by the bed.

I was in his room, in which she slept sometimes too. Earlier she'd got
his dirty underwear out of the laundry basket and shoved it under his
nose, when he was looking elsewhere. She told him he wasn't even
able to wipe his ass anymore. And when he wanted to fuck her, he
didn't get hard any longer. He should go see a doctor if he pooped
blood, what was he sitting around and waiting for. I'd only sat half my
butt on the edge of the bed and I was thinking someone had said a
week before that nothing stuck to him. I'd got some magnetic tapes out
of the drawer, I was pulling and spreading them over the floor. My right
leg was tingling. I hit it against the floor a few times. I got up and
limpingly approached the bars of the crib. He was breathing heavily
and moving his hands, closing and opening his fists, as if he'd come
home drunk and he'd tried to change the light bulb in the hall. I
stooped, grabbed him from under the belly and placed him face down.
A lump formed on his nape and it turned crimson. He was rubbing his
forehead against the blanket and panting. He was naked, except for a
piece of cheesecloth tied between his white legs, with red dots from
mosquito bites all over. From the next room there came a rumble, quiet
for a short while, then a longer rumble and the squeaky voice of a man
giving a running commentary of a football match. I went to the window
and stuck my knees between the cold elements of the heater. I sat with
my elbows on the sill. I briefly bumped my forehead against the window
twice. In the apartment building opposite, a long-haired head appeared
and disappeared in a balcony from time to time. The head suddenly
rose and bent over the concrete edge. The woman wiped her palms
against her bony chest, on her white blouse with red collar edges. I had
a mug of sour cherry compote beside my right elbow. I grabbed it by its
bottom and ran toward the crib, holding it over my head, with the rim
and the jut of the handle pointing toward his noggin, covered by a few
whitish hairs. He'd got on his knees and was swinging back and forth,
with his hands tightly hooked to the bars. I hit him on the head with the
mug a few times. Wherever I got him, as he would not sit still for a
moment. The compote which hadn't dripped onto the carpet on the way
there sprinkled the wall to the right. Part of it, with a few whole cherries,
got onto his back, down to the cheesecloth knot. He fell to one side
and started to wail. His white face turned blue. I put one of my palms
over his mouth, trying to make him shut up. I grabbed his head into my
other palm and pulled him up. I got him outside the crib and dropped
him onto the floor. I jumped over him and got out of the room. The next
room was the only one with a door, usually closed, but then half open.
The smell of fried onions had just come from the kitchen. I saw her in
her dressing gown, opening the small cardboard door of the storage
closet and leaning in. I turned to the right and saw him sitting on a
paint-splashed stool covered with a newspaper. He was dragging on a
flicked cigarette and talking toward the TV. He seemed to be
explaining. I put my head in the storage closet in the hall. I was feeling
the shelves in the dark. In a corner I felt a lot of damp dust in one
place. It smelled like acetone and fried onions. I came across
something round, then something long and slender like a welding
electrode. I pulled it from inside and turned on my heels in one move, I
took a few steps and tripped over the large slippers lined up between
the storage closet and the bathroom door. I got into the room holding
the electrode in both hands, its tip forward. The commentator wasn't
audible anymore and for a while there was only his grumbling voice
and a continuous rustling. He yelled something. Then fists forcefully
struck the TV set. I also yelled and kicked the closet. He'd crawled to
the closet door and he was panting. The door opened over his fingers
folded in the air, just as he was trying to lean against it. I smacked him
across the face with the electrode and he turned blue again, but this
time on silent mode. He was bloated from crying, but he was making
no sound, he just kept his mouth open. I stuck the electrode into his
mouth and pushed. He started coughing. He farted and the
cheesecloth filled up with yellow piss. I felt a sting in my nape, then
something like a log over my eyes and mouth. I heard her shout and I
started to groan too. The pain had drained my arm. His voice could
also be heard above me. He pushed me with his foot, stooped and
closed the closet door. She grabbed my ear and pulled me toward the
hall. It was like that time she'd pulled out one of my teeth with a string,
only now it seemed the right half of my head was a tooth. The edges of
her long nails were making their way into my ear hole and rummaging.
My belly ached a bit. She pulled a sweater over my head and threw my
shoes at my feet. She made a cross with her hand over my head, said
something and opened the front door. We climbed down the stairs, got
out of the apartment building and went round the construction site next
to the church. There was a large pit filled with water, with the ends of
some concrete poles coming out. Between the pit and the churchyard
lay a green woven wire fence, bent down halfway. She grabbed onto
the fence and slowly went right, with small steps, sideways. She told
me I should do it too, so that we wouldn't go round the other, front side.
We were propping our feet against a small edge of dried mud.
Downward, under our heels, there was the pit. I rummaged with the top
of my right foot through the pebbles trapped in mud and got one out. I
pushed it backward into the water and it made a splash. After a few
steps I got to the churchyard, full of puddles great and small. The large
door was open and I went inside. In the first chamber there were two
tin boxes filled with sand and candles. She took two lit candles from the
right side and blew them out. She looked inside for a bit, alert to any
movement. She lit the candles from the other ones and stuck them in
the sand, in the box to the left, she stooped and touched with her
fingertips the old carpet with bits of mud embedded in its grayish
patterns. She rose and crossed herself once more. She reached into
the pocket of her dressing gown, pulled out a kerchief with its corners
frayed as if by small teeth and tied it over her head, around her neck.
We went into the other, larger chamber, where we'd been many times
before. The sweetish smell lifted the taste of what I'd eaten earlier, only
sourer, up my throat each time. The priest popped up from behind a
pillar. He approached us. He was shaking his hands. He said
something to her under his breath. She was also shaking her hands
and talking at the same time. The priest beckoned me with his hand
and turned away, then went straight, with long steps dangling under his
black skirt, to the middle of the church. I ran after him. She set off after
me too, but she stopped halfway and knelt, first on one knee, then the
other. He pushed my head down and stuck it under his cassock. He
stooped and rattled into my ear that ached. He was telling me
something, but he was speaking too softly and I didn't get it. It smelled
like an old man's mouth.
I lifted the cloth a little bit and stuck my head out in order to breathe.
He asked me something again, but louder this time. Out of the corner
of my eye I saw her getting closer to me, pretending to be kneeling.
She would move a bit and then a bit more on the church floor, her neck
stretched, her chin forward. She was watching me and listening with
great attention. She had pushed her kerchief further back on her head
and half her greasy hair was shining blue in the neon light beside the
altar.

I was trying to cry or something, but I couldn't think of much, I had an

empty head, as if someone had placed his mouth to my ear and
sucked everything inside at once. Or perhaps because I was standing
in the middle of the hall and the air currents had emptied my head.
They were whirring from the kitchen and living room and I think they
met exactly where I was standing on the linoleum. Evening was coming
very fast. There was nobody home. A thick and babbling voice was
coming from the bathroom, through the pipes, from the neighbors. It
talked ceaselessly and you couldn't do anything about it. I'd taken a
large wooden case from above the closet and I was stuffing clothes
inside. I knew that I must put many underpants and I was putting as
many as I could. I would stand up, go to the closet, get an armful of
underpants and bolt to the hall. Some fell on the way. You must have
clean underpants. When the voice from the pipe ceased, I tried to think
of something sad and squeeze my tears out, but I wasn't able to pay
attention for too long. And it would start again and I'd bolt to the closet.
On the carpet, next to the case, there was a large iron-shaped burn
stain. I stopped and began to poke at it with my finger. It was rough
and it smelled of something old and dangerous. I thought it was the
sole of a madman. I thought I wouldn't go into their room at all
anymore. With them closet doors were all open and so were drawers.
The doors had magnets, but they weren't as strong as back in the day,
so they were a mess all the time. Had I been a bit taller, I knew I
would've hit my head against them all the time. The corners of the little
doors could've got into my eyes. I went into their room bent over,
carefully. At times one of the hinges might be loose and you might end
up with all the shelves over your feet, especially when you're nervous
and you're looking for things in a hurry and cursing Christ's cunt. I still
hadn't gone to the bathroom to throw up of upset. And I wasn't shaking
with tears either. But my belly had started to ache. The voice from the
pipe could be heard louder and louder. I was bored already, but I had to
stuff more underpants in, fill it up. I went by the storage closet, kicked
the laundry basket and turned it over. I pulled out a pair of his
underpants and smelled it. I pulled out a paint-stained T-shirt. I pulled
out a brown sock. I took them to the case and made room for them
somewhere near the edge. The metal front door banged in the corridor
of the apartment building. On the floor above someone was laughing
loudly, then a wooden door creaked on the ground floor and the metal
door banged again. I got a paint-splashed stool from the kitchen and
placed it next to the door. I climbed on it, holding on to the broken
phone cable. I lifted the black plastic circle off the peephole and looked.
The neighbors' door was small and far away and the railing in the
corridor was very long and went far down, as in a deep waterless
swimming pool. A few iron rods were missing from the railing. A wisp of
cold air was coming through the rubber edge of the peephole and
irritating the corner of my eye. A large blob blocked my view for a bit,
then it disappeared and I saw someone in the distance, going down the
stairs, holding a white long puffy hen. They immediately disappeared
down the stairs, another blob blocked the peephole and after it came
the tall woman with a tin basin in her arms. It'd soon be dark outside
and the power would be out, so I had to hurry up and fill the suitcase.
Have them clean with you and on you, should you get hit by a truck or
should someone break your skull. Don't make a fool of yourself in front
of the women who turn you from one side to the other at the morgue.
And have a clean butt, so that they won't clean you anymore. I took my
hands off the door, wiggled my butt and the stool wobbled. I swiftly
remembered something. I jumped on the moquette, I forcefully opened
the large door till it banged into the stool. It gave an ugly, long creak. It
touched my arm and grazed me on the way. It was just a piece of
peeled off skin, no blood, and I paid it no more attention. I got out into
the corridor, went up one floor, stopped by a window broken by drafts
and looked down into the yard. Over a bed of onions, next to a heap of
cartons, he was smoking a cigarette and kept wiping his brow with his
palm, his fingers sprawled. She was just tying the hen's legs with wire.
I went up another floor and stopped in front of their large, smoked door.
I'd once seen him blackening it with a flame from an old welding
machine. She was resting the large square mask next to his head, with
its small pane painted black in the middle. The flame would shoot out
past her ear and she'd take a step back each time.
I tried the door, but it was locked. I shoved the one of the room where
laundry was hung up to dry. It was open. I entered the empty room,
with rat-pinched rubber wheels against the walls. A few large, white
and grayish underpants, dripping water, and a few undershirts were
hung on a long wire, stretched out from corner to corner. On the other
side of a wall, under the rectangular window half-covered with silver
wire mesh, someone was rubbing against the lime. I climbed on the
mangled wooden bench below the window. Rusty nails were coming
out of its joints and it wobbled when you touched it. I fell on my back
the first time. I felt the muffled noise in the back of my head, along with
the smack on the cement. I got up and climbed on the bench, but
exactly as I stepped it flew from under my feet. I fell sideways, on my
right elbow. My tongue went dry and I felt a sour, floury taste in my
throat. I grabbed onto the edge of the window with my fingertips, drew
my knees under me and flattened them against the wall. I climbed little
by little, until I reached the edge. I jumped over, through the half not
covered. It was nearly dark everywhere in the neighbourhood. In some
rooms of the apartment building opposite, they'd lit candles, even
though there was no real need yet. Stupid kids, they'd get a thrashing
soon, when their folks came back from work, if they got caught. The
moon wasn't out yet, but I could see two figures beside my feet, one
larger than the other. One looked like a small sleek dog, without fur,
scared and stiff. It breathed slowly and hard, as if it'd kept its head in a
hot steam basin. It smelled of old bird shit and bran. The small one
quickly approached me and pinched my leg. I jumped right and, feeling
the wall, I got out of the balcony. I gave the door to the room a kick and
it opened. I walked forward, leaning on everything, until I hit my chin on
an open drawer. I took a few steps to the right. I felt the sharp wooden
edge of the bed touching my knees and I stopped. I walked a little
further, until a cold door handle stopped me, jabbing my forehead, right
over the mark from an older cut. When I opened it, I saw the long hall
and the open kitchen door, everything lit from somewhere behind the
building. I ran to the kitchen. There was a large pot with something
boiling on the stove. It was bubbling and tiny little clouds were puffing
above it, touching the ceiling and disappearing. It smelled of hot water
with aromatic plants and of smoked bones. It was warm and moist and
the graze on my arm started to itch. Something was fidgeting inside
there, without a break. I started to scratch with the edges of my nails. I
got closer to the window, passing by the table covered with empty
bottles. There were some more in the sink, and on the edge, two large
knives had sunk in a puddle. I pulled a stool from under the table and
placed it against the heater, between the stove and the window. I
climbed on it and looked down. In the parking lot there was a truck with
all the lights on. The man and the woman were talking to a guy, who
was standing on the cab steps. The woman was holding the basin in
her arms. The other two were laughing. At one point, she took the white
head of the hen out of the basin and threw it at the man on the truck
steps. The man avoided it roaring with laughter and the head struck the
open door of the truck. Below me the pot was bubbling stronger and
stronger. Long and bluish bones, with edges like those of a backbone,
were surfacing and immediately disappearing into the bustling broth. A
brownish layer of froth was floating on top. The man had got off the
truck and was approaching the other two. The water rose from the pot
abruptly and part of it spilled over the edge, over the flame of the stove,
which sizzled and shot up. The water was swelling more and more, I
saw the two turn their backs to the truck and set out hither. I grabbed
the pot by one handle and tried to drag it off the fire, but it was too
heavy. The scalding water splashed my palms. I pulled my pants down
to my knees. Small drops of boiling water touched my naked legs. I
was hot and wobbling on the stool, barely keeping my balance. My
hands were stinging, but I tried to hold it so that I'd shoot inside the pot
only. The piss immediately calmed the bubbling. I pulled up my pants
and jumped down. Trembling, I pushed the stool back under the table. I
could barely keep my legs straight. I went out into the hall, I went out
into the corridor of the building and slammed the front door as hard as I
could, until the lock was heard switching itself. I fled down the stairs, in
the dark. I counted the steps and when there were exactly enough of
them for two flights, I sought our door with my hand. The metal front
door of the apartment building banged. I got into my home with
chattering teeth and sat down on the linoleum in the hall, in the pitch
dark.

Raggamuffins

We liked to drink and eat roasted garlic sirloin and fight like rabid dogs.
My mother stirred it up, she took pleasure in stinging one man or
another until he blew up and then the scandal began. My mother liked
scandal as scabby as possible. Vehemence and hysteria suited us all.
Our voices became high-pitched and my mother was careful to cattily
mimic that high pitch. Wha' are you aping like tha' for, my grandfather
told her, but sometimes not even he could control her. She drained me,
tired me out, but over time I got to appreciate her and I had no day
without drama with the women in my life. If I sense one who's not in for
a bit of scandal, if she has no mischief, she bores me instantly, her
colors seem to fade out. Though I'm in love with the idea of a gentle
woman, but I won't experience such a thing. My mother would still like
to get drunk and get crunk with someone but with whom. Everyone in
the family has died, I'm left only with her and my brother and we avoid
it when talking on the phone. My brother, if he does go home, gets
angry with her in the first half-hour. She keeps me at a greater
distance, I also come by less often, I'm an old adder, I taught her limits.
I don't answer her calls for days in a row, a while back I didn't speak to
my mother for about a year. I can't tell her how I feel sometimes when
talking to her. When she wants to, she's funny, it's a pleasure to talk to
her. She's a nice nag after all. Anyway, the three of us have a few
things in common, quite hard to find in others. We are used to
anything, we've practically been through it all. There's no form of
disaster we haven't gone through. Since childhood we've seen things
you only see on the news. My grandfather even took me to the
slaughterhouse, to see how cattle are slaughtered. I saw how pigs
were slaughtered too and I had no pity. I had none for the lambs either,
not even because he slaughtered them straight after bringing them
inside the house, for warmth. He lifted them up on the brick stove and
they couldn't stand on their legs, their lambswool was wet, with
transparent slime all over. They were cute, with big, black eyes. He
took them outside and slaughtered them, then he skinned them and
made them into ugly hats, which didn't even cover your ears. But we all
like roasted meat. My mother's into the real deal, no nonsense. Let it
be roasted or grilled, with garlic and greetings. The captain's queer
stratified intricacies annoy her, sauces, mushes annoy her along with
anything that hides the animal's taste. My mother wants at least food to
be given to her directly, properly. The idea is that we're a family of
proud ragamuffins. None of us can take monogamy. We take it, but it
torments us. We're eaten up by fucking, all three of us. The captain
was right to break doors when gripped by the paranoia that my mother
was fucking an epileptic gypsy from the hood. I don't think he had a
reason to turn paranoid, except alcohol, but it was as if he had every
reason. My mother conveyed this to him, that she might fuck the entire
neighbourhood. After my father died, women in the neighbourhood
watched out for her like for a wild fox. They minced her in a whisper,
like they do, over the little fence, next to the apartment building. They
were all fat or hardworking proles and my mother was a widowed 35-
year-old teacher, slender, blonde. And when something of ours broke
down, men raced each other to help us, they thrust themselves under
the bathtub, stuck their heads behind the TV set, painted our four-
bedroom apartment. My mother gave them drinks and food and kept
conversations going. She had this way of passing herself off as naïve,
she became a little girl. And she was naïve too in her guile, she still is.
One time, a high school classmate of mine came by and she gave us
rum tea, she poured herself a small cup and told us that it was rum
flavour, for cake. Ghera was not to think that she drank, but Ghera
knew the taste of rum, we all did. It burns a bit, it's sweet and flavored
maltreatment. And I knew that she was giving me rum, and she knew
that she was giving me rum, and perhaps she also knew that we knew,
but she played the part till the end. She liked Ghera the moustached
and he kind of liked her back. My mother took care that I make friends,
she behaved like a cool girl with them. They gathered at my place as at
a brothel, they got drinks, food, they saw her scantily clad. Since we
were little, we've been seeing her in and out of her petticoats and in
white bathrobes, with rosy, steaming skin. And she also brought us
women, some alcoholic wretches who helped her move furniture
around or acted as babysitters for my brother. I wanted to fuck one of
them once, when I got out of the bathtub drunk and saw her on the
floor in the living room. Passed out from the spirits and blue in the face,
I tried to fuck her and she told me, in her sleep, that she had a disease.
I was 15 and I had come from one of those parties with industrial
alcohol and juice on tap. We had a neighbour in the hospital, Monica,
and we went to visit her. And before, we'd got drunk. We made a scene
in the ward, one of us shoved an ill woman to the edge of the bed, for
him to sit. They threw us out, a couple of us fell down the stairs as we
were climbing down in a hurry. We pissed ourselves laughing that day.
And when I got home, after my bath, here was this woman on the floor.
I was rabid with arousal, I'd been like that for a few years. I rubbed
myself all day long, as I'd see my brother doing later on, he'd walk all
day with the erection inside his underwear. He occupied the bathroom
and my mother, furious, implored him to open up, because she'd piss
herself. We all knew what he was doing in there and we said nothing.
All three of us had the same disease, but at least it was just the three
of us. When the captain and his son moved in, the story got a lot more
complicated. The captain had a schizophrenic wife and a teenage son
and he lost money at poker, he got drunk, a military man. My mother
thought he had an officer's salary, he wouldn't even stay at home
much, it seemed perfect. She thought wrong, she didn't understand
that everything changes and degrades. The captain, with his tiny button
nose, was at enmity with his former high school and academy mate,
who was higher in rank, a major. One day, the captain refused to salute
when reporting because the washerwoman of the military base was
passing behind the major, with a laundry basket in her arms. The
captain said he would not salute the flag in the presence of a
washerwoman. And she was the major's mistress, so that man became
intent on destroying him. He had something on him, some rigged
logistics, and he made the captain retire early. He got many months'
pay at once, which he quickly squandered, and then a shitty pay each
month. Had he waited one more year, he would've retired on that great
redundancy. This screwed him up, meeting his old mates at rummy and
their having larger pensions than him. He tried to catch up, he won
some games, but all in all he was losing money. My mother went after
him to the army house, which was a 10 minutes' walk away from our
apartment building. My mother was shameless, she's never been
hindered by any social protocol. And that man pretended to be hurt in
his pride, humiliated in front of his mates, but my mother only wanted
to take him to the market and put up some more scandal. When
windows were broken, intensity swelled within her. It swelled when he
hit her and she started screaming, Daaanny boy, come here, he's
killing me, like she screamed that night when my father was keeping
her on her knees on the floor, holding her by the hair and beating her
up. That was my moment of initiation into manhood, if there is such a
thing. I went into the living room and told my father to get out of my
house. My father laughed, he straightened his back, but he kept
holding my mother by the hair and he said to me: “your house?”. My
mother once said on the phone that he had beaten her about ten times
in all, but it had seemed to come over him out of nowhere, from
something unrelated to anything. One time, they had to go to my
grandparents, her parents, and my dad was waiting for her and she
was quite late. And she said something and my father boom, started to
hit her with his fists and feet. She signalled to him too that she would've
fucked every man on the way. Or he felt closeted, hell knows, perhaps
he was a fag. I once found some letters from a friend back in his teens,
they had split up for the cities where they had their undergrad studies
and they were being nostalgic. Perhaps that's the way boys wrote to
each other back in the day, rather lyrical, but this guy was still too
poetic. He recalled going dipping and stuff like that. My father looked
good too, if you look at the photos of him and his classmates, he
stands out.

I have a perfect system for fooling myself. I get into mystical states in
which someone from deep down, someone significant, winks at me
and then I understand that I have my roles in this world, and so do the
others. There's something so beautiful in the way I fool myself.
Because afterwards I can break away from anyone, when the role is
over. And I don't see them as theatre roles, though they involve this
too, to a certain extent, and then the duplicity is forgiven, because it's
part of a grand plan. They are life roles, existential – I had to meet a
woman then because I needed to escape from the midst of the
Moldavians, I have to help a woman get past the difficult age of
26-27-28. If she gets past, she'll be fine afterwards. That's what I tell
myself, after we break up. Take a look at photos of people who are
25-26 and then look at their photos when they're 29-30. It's then that
one sees if they got through alright. Either way, a collapse can be seen
in all of them. But if it weren't for me, who slowed down her drinking
urges, who made her feel good enough not to fall apart? How would
her face have looked at 30? All that unhealthy fat, the venomous
protest in the liver. But this is a jest. It's not about the face, in my
mystical episodes it's about spiritual things. Help her get out of
conformism sometimes. Be more alive and more authentic. Or some
other lies. I can't boast of a fearsome cock. Nor am I very tall. I have a
body that'd always need 10 extra kilos in order to be the body of a
handsome man. And those 10 missing kilos make me an underfed,
hounded man. And I'm a bad lot, a child who howled, a teenager who
shoved his cock down every hole, I skipped town when I saw myself a
father and a husband and I have been a fool with women in general,
though they all keep caring about me. I give them a sort of idealisation,
I look at them sometimes as at something otherworldly. When I fuck
them sometimes, it's as if I knew I was dying at the end and they were
my last contact with life. I give them all this and I take it away, I maim
them. As if I threw a boulder at a little chick. If I were shitty, I'd say that
I've got this from my mother, that she gave birth to me and forsook me.
But it's not from my mother. Perhaps from my grandfather, my father's
dad, the killer. The way people from the distant past become interesting
all of a sudden for their genes. I know that's how he treated women. He
sent my grandmother after fresh water from the well at night, with a
kick. He didn't want it from the pail, he'd wake her up and send her to
fetch premium water. And, if he hadn't done time for complicity to
murder, he would've probably raised my father to be stronger. Perhaps
he wouldn't have come prematurely to punish my mother. Was this
what he was doing, really? Did he have this misfortune, really? I don't
think so, I think he could've fucked her for days at a time, my mother
still wouldn't have had enough. I think she was an abyss. My mother
can never have enough. She always wanted one more bottle of vodka,
she never stopped at the doorstep if she wanted to nag our heads off.
She'd come in on us and she'd nag us. She'd read our diaries, she
wouldn't let us talk. She doesn't talk with us, she doesn't talk with
anyone, she just talks. She asks questions which she answers herself.
My friends have always been amused by this. The way she asks you,
how's your mommy? and answers herself, well, how could she be,
worrying, working. Perhaps she was anxious, perhaps she still is.
Perhaps I should stop seeing everything a meter from the ground, like
a small child. But my first life is there, and it sank long ago. I like to
complain, but I also miss it. When I talk about the army house I tend to
recall that it's evening and I'm going with the homeboys to the little park
facing the barracks, to drink vermouth and smoke unfiltered Russian
cigarettes. It's that sensation of vastness. How far away our little
landmarks were, how vast the territory. Vast, as I still feel it in dreams,
when going to the Wheat Ear grocery. And the Wheat Ear is far away,
it's at the end of the territory. Something else starts there. The exit from
the territory, life. And when you return, it's small. It's never vast again.
And time becomes paltry. Before, there was a lifetime until the next
summer. From one summer to the next, I went through centuries.
Before, the day was full, it was long and full. Each day was very long
and very full. You'd sigh wearily in the evening, you'd sigh with
tiredness after such a long day. You'd lie on your bed, with your
scraped skinny legs, and you'd sigh. And you'd fall asleep and the
scandal would begin. My mother would begin her program. For my
father even after he died, for the others, the small one with bulging
eyes, then that large, stammering, epileptic gypsy. My mother only took
this sort of woebegone fellows. I have no choice, I can't be upset with
her. I love her, I care about her, she's the last part of my real life, along
with my brother. Everything that came after the exit from the territory is
a simulation. It's an attempt. It's not that life in which you feel loved.
Where everyone calls you Duțu and they all take a shine to you. Where
you're then Dănuț and they all smile at you nicely. And everybody
knows everybody and they all forgive each other for the way they are.
They pester the hell out of each other constantly, but they forgive each
other for what they are. It seems as if it was like this, this is how I
remember it, they'd put a plate in front of you no matter what you were
like. One time I got home with Daniel at night, drunk, and my mother
set the table for us. She slammed it onto the plates, some broth, some
beans, but she didn't let us go until we ate. And when we were finished,
I swept the plates onto the floor with the back of my hand and I yelled
at her – clean up, slave. I was furious at her, I would've killed her
sometimes. But if I compare her to the great ladies of the world, the
refined of the world, I piss on them selfish bitches. All sorts of wretches
had meals at our place, not just my friends, who had some stuff. Daniel
didn't have much, 'cause he had a weak father, who fucked up their
lives and made them poor. Everyone drank and ate at our place. The
door was open, if I knew you, you came in just like that, without
knocking. Or you knocked and came in right after. Some, like that old
drunkard whom I wanted to fuck, also stole from us. And afterwards we
had them back, no problem. My mother found them at church, in the
yard. That's how she found her man before the captain. I didn't get
attached to him at all. I got attached to the captain, he's a living part of
me. But about that gypsy I can only remember that he was big, he was
fat and sleek. Perhaps that one, the stammerer, the fat guy, perhaps he
fucked her more fondly? Perhaps everything was from the drink.
Perhaps everything that was happening to us was from the drink. And
perhaps those were the happiest years of my life. Who says you can
be happy even without the drink? Perhaps I was in a hurry, perhaps it
seemed to me that I was getting better just because I was staying
alive. But who says that for a bit of happiness dying isn't worth it too?
Nothing else has ever made me happy, warmed me up inside. Perhaps
fucking, perhaps when I enter a woman, when it's easy, then it's the
rest of the hours with her, when everything becomes complicated.
Nothing can make me happy anymore. This is something I have
learned and I understand. Never again will I go like that through days
like those. And it's so far away, submerged, that it seems to me I'm
lying. It seems to me I'm inventing my childhood, my youth. Life as a
whole is so derisory, it's such a joke. Who we are in fact disappears
too. It's gone it's gone it's gone. It's gone it's gone it's gone. It's gone
it's gone. It's gone it's gone it's gone. I feel like screaming with
happiness when I think about this. I feel like screaming with relief when
I think that all pain goes away. That nothing can get me. That this is all.
Drummer

I walked by that Italian church on Magheru Boulevard and I was

striding, but I stepped in for a sec, enough to be merrily anointed by the
passing priest. When I went home I was feeling the mystique in the air,
the unreality. It was then that I met Florinel. He was enquiring for the
way to Constanța; he was walking all the way there. No one wanted to
show him. Everyone ran away from him in a fright. He was wearing a
white cap and had something weird about him, as if he lacked instant,
natural reactions. At the same time, he did not seem to be a
schizophrenic or some ardent prophet. I liked him a lot. I took him
home. At first, I wanted to send him to Adi, but then I thought I’d shelter
him since I lived nearby. Peliel said it was okay, if he wasn’t dangerous.
Since the first Florinel, the one brought in by Ștefan, she’d gained more
trust. I got canned beans and cooked for him. He went into the
bathroom. I told him to shower, and he was in there for a long time
without turning on the water, as if he didn’t know what to do or how it
was done. When Peliel went in she asked loudly, “What’s with this
guy?” And I told her to shut up, to avoid offending him. I gave him my
clothes and he looked like me. Sometimes, when he was standing, it
seemed to her that she was seeing me. We talked a lot about religion
and morals. He had stern opinions, which I countered. He would say,
“Poor dear,” glancing sideways as if talking to someone, when he liked
something that I said. He talked exquisitely, wonderfully, and it was a
pleasure to listen to him. His legs were extremely swollen, like two
pillars up to his knees. I said I’d give him an anti-inflammatory drug and
he refused it—he wanted oil. He oiled them. While we were talking
about the tribes of Israel and other things, Peliel said running herds
and other correlations would appear on TV. He would talk nonsense.
He’d say he lived in Alba Iulia and had no heating and electricity (like
me at Ștefan V once) and sometimes made coffee over a cardboard
fire on the balcony. At some point, I told him that I did things for other
people or something like that, and I can’t remember what he said, but
Peliel told him, “You operate at a greater wavelength.” When we went
to bed, I stayed awake. When I looked at him he would suddenly turn
and look back, all smiles.
At some point, I woke up sharply and saw him make his way to
the bathroom. He made his way exactly like that other tramp—like a
spook—like a reanimated corpse. He moved past our bed slowly, blind
to anything to his left or right. Peliel told me she’d been dreaming when
someone covered her with a black blanket. When she woke up, I
looked at her and soothed her. At night, he said his stomach ached and
I gave him some random pill as a placebo ‘cause I couldn’t find the
good ones. In the morning, he read Psalm 50 to me and Peliel,
exquisitely, but like an actor. Peliel went to work and we were left
alone. I told him to give up his tramp outfit, that I’d give him new
clothes. At first, he didn’t want to. Then he did. I gave him the suit I had
from the baron that I said I would wear at Peliel’s colleague’s wedding.
I also gave him slick shoes I got from Marian the stylist. He was thrilled
to have a cufflink shirt. It suited him very well—he even moved with
intelligence. He also tied his little beard, said he’d got himself the beard
of a beranger—a shepherd. I asked for his white cap in exchange. He
wouldn’t give it to me, but in the end, he had to. I got it somewhat by
force. The thing was for him to catch the 2:00 PM train to Alba. I
convinced him that he must go back home. I mean, I rather urged him
to return home. Afterwards, I thought of calling Pronoia to have him
filmed at our red cabin, Hell’s Gate (or Heaven’s?). I took him to the
cabin, and on the way there, we talked about various things. Mom also
called. She told me to give alms, for it was the day of the dead. He was
delighted at Isma`il and Pronoia’s, and he wanted to smoke weed; I
told the two not to give him any, ‘cause he had arrhythmia. He’d told
me so. I left and let them film him just in the other room, not at the
cabin, which wasn’t ready yet.
I had some borscht. The baron called me. I told him of our guest.
Would he want me to bring our guest to him (I was thinking of placing
him somewhere, in case he missed the train)? The baron asked what
the deal was, and when I said God had sent him over, that he’d walked
all the way from Alba Iulia, he told me:
“I was afraid of that; there’s been another one like this and we’re
stuck with him. He’s been running into the walls of Bucharest like a
bumblebee; I can’t, Dan. I’m afraid I’m not kind enough.”
Pronoia called me: “C’mon, are you getting here?”
I went over to find Isma`il had left. Florinel (that’s what he called
himself: Florinel) spoke of himself in the third person.
He’d say: “Florinel also liked cufflinks,” and his ID read Paul
Florin. I’d looked when he had forgotten it on the washing machine, but
the following day he hadn’t understood how I knew his name. He had
changed. His face had fallen somehow. I thought it was from the weed;
I rebuked Pronoia for having given him any. She flushed, but it wasn’t
that. He figured something out. I learned that he watched the
recordings of me. I sat next to him on the couch and he wouldn’t even
look me in the eyes.
 “I slept at daddy’s last night and I didn’t know,” he said.
“What were your parents called?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Pronoia said, smiling, “What were your parents called?”
But he wouldn’t answer.
Later he said we acted in the play called Judgment, subtitled
Tramp, but I played a Moldavian tramp in a tracksuit drinking plum
brandy in a play directed by Dabija. He played a dashing character in a
play directed by Lelio.
“Yo, who’s Lelio?” I asked (the Lion, as on his ring—the Lion of
Judah, he’d say—or the devil roaring like a lion?).
And then, like the night before, much sophistry, which I kept
dismantling, careful to escape its traps at the last moment, especially
careful not to waste energy on false baits. Anyhow, he was somewhat
enraged, and there was no time left to catch the train. I rushed him, but
he was stalling, telling the tale of the adulteress, but spinning it out,
and I was saying, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.” Pronoia called a cab. It
wasn’t coming. Then, an Uber. Little time was left, but first I went out of
the room and returned with the black jacket on, the suit jacket that he’d
left in the hallway. When I sat next to him in the jacket, he asked, “Why
did you put it on? Why?” I was cold, I was shivering next to him, but
could he have been frightened because I had the little cross
underneath? And before we opened Facebook so I could check out his
page, he said he was Didi the Shy in there and there were many with
this name, too many, and a lot of them with no picture, no nothing. I
spurred him on, “Hurry up,” and he kept stalling. Eventually I took him
downstairs, and he cheered up there. His mood changed, he seemed
at peace, and he told me, “We say that God is far from people, but He’s
our daddy; He’s mine.” Upstairs he’d also said something about how
“for hours he fought the devil.” With me? Whom with? The camera
recorded none of it, only video, no sound, ‘cause it had no batteries,
though Pronoia had told me to get some at first, then decided against
it.
He also said, “You’re given a gift like a time bomb, it blows up in
your hands.”
And I, “Oh well, so what if you die, if we die.”
But I didn’t really know what I was saying and said, “Come on,
give it to me, let’s be done with it.”
I’d already started to test whether he was the Angel, whether he
had something for me. The Uber wasn’t coming and he was glad. Was
it because we were late, because we were missing the train? I told him
he let himself get caught in the competition because of Pronoia, and he
said, with an honest voice, “Wha’? We fought like two men, not like two
fuckers.” He talked as if the weed had fully worn off, clearly and
beautifully. The Uber arrived, though we had 10-15 minutes left. But we
got there in time.
At the railway station the driver said, “The ticket office is over
there,” pointing to International.
 “No, it’s that way,” I said with a sense of ultimate emergency.
He kept insisting it was over there to confuse me. There were
huge queues inside, like I’d never seen before, so I handed him a
million and told him to give it to the inspector. I also got him some
water and a croissant, and he said there was no need. Some days
later, when I took the initiation train, I would understand why he hadn’t
wanted them, ‘cause you mustn’t eat or drink anything on the train. But
perhaps I’ll tell this tale some other time. Or perhaps I shouldn’t tell it. I
sat him on the train and that same evening I started seeing clearly on
Facebook the spoof of some, the demonic sneers and all the rest.
I went to the christening (the next day? I can’t tell anymore…) and
about three girls were dressed in black, plus the groom’s mother. Then
to the wedding, with a new series of tests, the last of which when we
stole the bride and asked the groom, the son of the director of the gas
company in Syria, to play the drums. Finally, the drummer arrived,
large and curly-haired, and taught them to play “For your people,”
ritualistically, as if he had known from the start that it would be part of
the schedule. After the drums everyone quietened down, resigned.
They understood that their time was gone. Just like those people on
Facebook or in the streets. I saw them take a turn for the better and
perhaps even forget what they’d had. Others didn’t get it. Perhaps
that’s why I must say all this—to let them know.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.

***

I left home determined, but I nearly made a mistake when stopping by

the Turks to have some soup—and they only had red lentil soup. My
naïve, direct faith saved me: I knew red lentil soup had stopped Esau.
The shopkeeper even smiled at me when he saw I’d made the right
choice. I went the long way ‘round for a bit, aimlessly, when heading to
the Conservatory to look for a drummer. That boy I found there in the
basement said he drummed hard, but he wouldn’t be coming with me
unless an official “project” was set up. He even said I wouldn’t find
anyone willing to play drums at the Conservatory. I smiled in
comprehension and he smiled back. I speedily went on, and various
people kept trying to stop me. Phone calls intensified, a girl who
couldn’t have known I had set out was relentlessly calling, Isma`il was
after me: “Dan, let me give you something,” and Vlad as well. I went on
like that—drumless—and by Izvor Park I found a PET bottle of
Neumarkt beer. I recalled a stupid book title, Neumarkt Gardens, not a
bit stupid then. With that little bottle, I went on tapping my hand and
shouting with a voice larger than me, as I never had before, perhaps
only when I was a kid and bellowed for all the valley to hear. The first
row of gendarmes told me there was still no one in the Palace of
Parliament, and that anyhow, that wasn’t the entrance. Only by the
third gate did one of them try to stop me—the phone at the gate went
off.
He told me, “Take that.”
And I said, “You take it, it’s your job.”
He took it and I sprinted to the main entrance. Some officials
elected by the people or whatever were getting out and I performed my
show: “Daddy’s here, you’re finished, get out of here!”
I went in and fought this bulky cop, and then another one. I
somehow felt I was fighting at half strength, that I could’ve done a lot
more, but that wouldn’t have been right, and the cop felt it too. I saw
the fear in his eyes, and he was sweating. He looked exactly like all the
bullies who’d ever picked on me.
I told him, “Let me go so I can send the message, d’you want this
ceiling to collapse over you?”
Technicolor. ‘50s Hollywood. But how else? Hashem has humor
and appreciates a bit of ridicule. They put me in handcuffs, the sort that
hurt (and the next day my wounds would disappear; I would show
Peliel and she wouldn’t make any comment, though she’d seen them
too. That’s how it was meant to be, for me to be alone in my faith. Still,
how could one accept something like that? I would’ve searched for
explanations). The gendarmes liked me ‘cause I talked pretty and
stood up for them. It wasn’t their fault that I went past them. I was
saying sensible things and I was dressed nicely: blue jacket, blue shirt,
blue shoes, Human Energy. One of them, the one at the gate, said:
“Everything was being recorded anyway. You didn’t need to go further.”
But then, “It’s better this way, to have it on paper.”

I say madness is too pure like mother sky.

***

I didn’t go to the Parliament like a fool. Since the evening before, I had
the certainty that God had cleared the way for me. It started in
Ferentari, when I was walking with Gabi and Adi passed us by on his
bike. Gabi called his name and Adi, frightened like never before,
glancing backwards furtively, said, “I was rushing home ‘cause I forgot
to lock the door; that’s why I didn’t stop.”
I called mom and she also sounded cornered.
“I’m burning up…”
And I, “Why are you burning up, mom?”
“Because it’s cold in here…”
I got to Adi’s place right away and he wasn’t home, hadn’t been
there, wouldn’t have had the time. I dropped him a message: “Come
on, it’ll be half an hour, tops, and then you’ll be happy.”
He called and replied, “I can’t right now ‘cause I’ve been drinking.
Can’t tomorrow either, ‘cause I’ll be hungover and cursing life.”
I looked for him in the neighborhood pubs. I went back to his
place and he stayed behind the door for a bit, behind the viewfinder,
before he let me in, stalling, “Sociu, iiit’s youuu…”
Finally, he let me in.
I drummed on his table and on his closet hard, and the downstairs
neighbour rang instantly, the one who tormented her child. I’d heard
her shouting at him viciously so many times before, but this was worse
—in an angered voice—she was outraged that I was drumming, though
previously she hadn’t minded the loud music.
I left and drummed on fences on the way. Then in the streets,
when I became increasingly aware that they were staying away from
me, after I stopped by a pizzeria (those usually haughty hulks wouldn’t
look at me for a second, except for a kind-faced employee who had
been bullied by those guys and was now smiling), the same thing
happened at a kiosk some ways ahead. I called mom and drummed for
her too next to the phone, and when I truly realized it was so, nothing
could stop me. I walked down Magheru shouting loudly, in a voice more
colossal than the boulevard, “Daddy’s coming to get you right now!” I
called collage girl to come make a revolution at Victoria Palace, but she
played for time. I called Peliel and she also played for time. I called
Antibody and Cosmina, and on the way my voice kept growing and
police cars were passing me by without pulling over. I shouted at the
National Bank ahead, then never a bother, and cops usually cluster
there, and those in black in the streets went on giving me a wide berth.
When I shouted at Victoria, a gendarme told me they’d all left and I
should come back the next morning. Antibody, Peliel, and Cosmina
showed up, and Antibody said, “Come to our place to drink some
water.” Eventually he got me some tea from a vending machine. He
thought I didn’t know what he meant to do, what water does when you
pour it over a fire (and the next day, as I was heading towards the
Parliament, Antibody said from the other side of the road, “Dan, come
drink some water.”). Cosmina also gave herself away then, said
something about cycles and the world that begins anew but then
degrades again, though we hadn’t discussed that, and everything she
and her boyfriend said was like an acknowledgement of the hidden
meanings of the story. For years I roamed the streets of Bucharest
looking people in the eye—I didn’t know why—to search for something
in them or because I wasn’t looking down, as in the old days, and
they’d always had some reaction, always made some sort of contact. It
was only now that some didn’t anymore, at all, not even when I went
into the shops they owned and talked to them. Gabi saw it too, and
Peliel; some halted and talked to them, but they wouldn’t look at me for
one second. They were nervous and wanted to hastily slip away. Gabi
and Peliel acknowledged it was so, but then they started finding
meagre explanations. All of a sudden it seemed they no longer feared
God and the enormous stake of the moment—all of a sudden, they
wanted to go back to their lives as if nothing had happened, but they
wanted to return to humanity, as I also do, and as we must.
***

On St. Nicholas Day, I went to church in Răchiți where they say they
have some particles of the saint’s relics, but I found the church closed.
I went back up to town. Around Săvenilor Street I saw a pink church a
little further out, one I’d never seen before or hadn’t paid attention to. I
reached it by Antipa Street. The yard was filled with crows, the church
was exquisite, Russian. The main gate was closed and I saw someone
in red going in by another gate. I went down and came upon a blue
painted gate. It was closed. I knocked, quietly, but as I knew—knock
and it shall be opened unto you—there was no chance on earth I’d be
heard, but it wasn’t earth I needed to be on. I went a little further down,
looked at the windows, and a red-bearded priest came out. He opened
the gate and left it ajar. I asked him whom the church was dedicated to
and he said the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I asked if I could visit
it and he said yes, but there was scaffolding inside. Didn’t sound too
convincing. I went in and there was some scaffolding indeed, too little
to be a problem though. A beautiful, peculiar church. I crossed myself
and got out. When I stepped into Antipa Street (Antipas had been so
faithful that Satan had settled in his town), almost all the crows rose
and flew away from the yard and the tree. I went into town, to the Mall.
There it seemed to me that there was great sorrow in some. The song
“At least we stole the show” was playing, but even the singer’s voice
seemed sluggish. I went into St. Elijah’s Church from my childhood,
kneeled, and prayed. When I got out, a white-bearded priest had come
out on his doorstep. His gaze followed me. I left. On Unirii Street, by
the cinema, out of nowhere, as there’s nowhere to go from that corner,
there’s a fence and beside it a restaurant with steps that light up in the
evening, but not from there, some guy with metallic red pants popped
out, synthetic orange rather, and started shouting: “The Maker fucks
His creatures in the ass!” with a kind of grief.
I went to him. I asked “Who are you?” and he twisted away, as if
fending me off.
I asked him again, “Who are you?”
And I said, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”
And then he turned back and bellowed wrathfully, “Christ?” and
said something again about how the Maker could possibly fuck His
creatures and asked, “How long are we gonna hump on this earthly
globe? Endlessly? What will we do?”
He said some things about powers and whatnot, but I didn’t even
try to comprehend.
I said, “Well, so what? It’s good to be alive.”
“Be alive? What’s so good?”—he spoke beautifully, sadly, smartly.
I’ll give him that.
“You can breathe, eat,” I said.
 And he went on, “But how will I live, when I don’t even exist?
Eat? What, am I, nuts?”
Again, he said some complicated things (he even said to me,
“Why do you talk like the twin, don’t you know it’s dangerous to talk like
that?”).
I told him that was too complicated for me, and I left. I got two
pretzels from the kiosk up the street, where the lady who handed them
to me wasn’t looking friendly at all, and I went down with them.
I gave him one.
“Eat this, see how good it is.”
And he went: “Why have you brought this to me? Have I spoken
to you in secret and asked you to bring it?”
And I said, “I don’t get what you’re saying.”
Once more, he asked, “I haven’t spoken to you in secret, so why
have you brought it to me?”
(Didn’t he know that from then on there was no point in speaking
in secret, as he wouldn’t convince me anymore?)
“To eat it, to see what it’s like.”
And he said, “But who’s eating? Only nutcases eat.”
But he was no longer enraged or arrogant. I left him with the Lord.

I started towards the sun. The sun was strong, the bells were tolling. In
the evening, many were crying in the streets in spite, not tears. They
were swearing furiously—even Viorel, who’s usually so angelic—in
front of my apartment building. A large group of guys and girls in light
colour climbed the lit steps beside the cinema, laughing beautifully.
Sleepwalking

In the last period of my death I was on facebook a lot and talking to

women, especially young ones, and they were trying to get rid of me,
some scared I’d pull them in, others wanted to pull me back and others
didn’t know themselves, they were hesitating. Their spry souls were
secretly struggling to convince me to leave them alone, they were
conveying desperate messages through songs, but their love for death
wanted me to lead them to the new world. Death has several stages,
so that we can get used to it, the live, familiar world gradually, subtly
transforms, with so much delicacy, that man doesn’t even know he has
died. It’s a long parting, years long, and hundreds and thousands of
other beings, places and occurrences take part in it, all like a
preparation for the jump over the unimaginable pain and strangeness
of death. I had not died completely yet but the 11 years of death had
already tailored me, I was past the most important last stages, I
already was a lifetime away, if one may still say so, from my first years
of death, when it had seemed to me I’d miraculously escaped that
medical catastrophe and was getting on with my fate, just much
changed in habits, at first, then in its outer elements, to the purest
fantastic, sneaking daily amongst the details, which I was glad about at
first, as about supernatural pranks which I didn’t even believe to the
end, as later, when they were charged with permanent, deep sadness,
sensed somewhere, anytime and anywhere, an absence of living life,
despite appearances of it still being there. An inner absence only at the
beginning, in the first years of death, like a state something essential
had been removed from, an estrangement. After 11 years, I’d acquired
resignation within death, as if I’d already long known where I was
though something stopped me short of phrasing to myself the name
and truth of the condition. Part of the last stage of this spun-out dying is
service to death, when, though you haven’t passed beyond yet, you
bring others to the beginning of the road, as you’ve been brought once,
and you accompany them for a while, guide them in the new realm,
which they don’t yet know is new but somehow they have a terrible
suspicion, as I was saying, a strikingly obvious one, manifested straight
on the inside, in the heart, as a sad estrangement, as a longing for
something that has been, though it’s still there, and you don’t get why
you no longer feel, it escapes you.
Those girls initially avoided coming when I asked them to but my
choice had already been made with infallible knowledge and I knew it
was only a matter of time, they were chosen. From my hometown,
where I had retreated, a town at the northernmost border of the
country, I wrote to them on facebook day and night and arranged for
their arrival. Something that appeared like mom and perhaps was her,
employed with us too or just part of the working conditions, came and
brought sandwiches to my room and there were brief moments, like
moments a while back, you’d say, as you say of a good portrait, what
an extraordinary resemblance, but briefly, an apparition, and she
disappeared, because for long no frame could trick me into thinking it
was the old frame, the first, the one in life. Yes, my room was the same
but the sky outside wasn’t, the tree grown all the way up to the fourth
floor and the clouds appearing and disappearing as you looked or you
didn’t, the lights inside them and the inner flights
back and forth between the stable elements, in time in the eternal in
presence in absence, as flickers, fluctuations, they no longer looked
anything like anything in my life with mom 20 years ago, when I was
still here,
but alive. The strangeness had multiplied now, so I could pass beyond
completely, after I understood at last I was no longer home, I just didn’t
know how much was left to the passage, for, despite all the
accelerating unnatural, I also lived moments of prolonged present, with
the relief and rest of one who has reached a shore after a night of
swimming in the storm, after his ship was sunk. I knew I didn’t know I
knew, I was still finding explanatory frameworks, some biblical, when it
seemed I was living a revelation and God had chosen me to wait there
for a mission or I’d been raptured to heaven and taken to ninth, others
were from a more recent, fantastic imaginary, I received signs that
everyone around was
flesh machines and I, the only human, that only to me did the world
flicker and only I had a thirst, a desire to get out of there, everything
seemed normal to the others, but there were dreamlike explanations, I
don’t know whom for, not debris, just old frames I hadn’t detached from
yet. In the process of dying everything is clear and not clear at all in
the same space, it’s like a secret revealed, wrapped up, because truth,
ultimate reality does not hide, but mercy on your soul, love does not
want you to know the truth all at once, it turns you infinitely bitter and I
imagine with shattering horror how a sudden brutally received truth like
that would be, to suddenly discover you’ve left life, that everything that
was is gone, that from now on, whatever happens, even if there is
something and not nothingness, the old world is over. I knew the horror
because I’d been through it, more harshly, more gently, with the
necessary mix of such a process. When I reached the end and slipped
into this frame, my town, but with apartment buildings with most lights
off and streets often deserted as if meant only for my walks, with snow
that appeared and disappeared completely the next day, with moments
of normality nicely, classically joined, that gave me wonderful comfort,
as if I were back again for a little bit, so when I got here and stayed a
while, sadness had become unbearable and finally bearable, secured.
Tough but certain. I have died, I was close to telling myself. Service to
death was part of this, so that seeing others’ passing I would
understand my own from a while before but also my own now,
understand that I, like them, and though the process was unfolding with
a vague backdrop of normality, so, so many elements, always beautiful,
because my soul was making them as interesting as possible, so it
wouldn’t hurt completely, so, so many pleading flashes in their eyes, in
photos, eyes that said let me go back, don’t call me, I beg you, so
many subtle and strident signs were suddenly showing me the reality
of what I was living. I don’t know what the calling felt like there, with
them, in the world, perhaps like a burning desire, like a weakness, a
softening like when you feel you’ve just caught the flu from someone
or, more specifically, they felt a presence in the room or they saw and
heard me in their dreams or felt me in their chests when their eyes
accidentally fell on a photo of me and it was happening to them more
and more. With me the play hinged on the last remnants of
convention, it appeared I was talking to them on facebook
but the faces on my facebook had started not to look straight at me or
to look at me with a flash of fear in their eyes, which seemed to
immediately subside as I scrolled
down and passed on to the next, at the last moment, before I moved
on, and sometimes the screen smelled strongly of citronella and
outside the sky was growing
azure, cloudless, as a sign that one had been allowed on earth further.
I’d bought myself intermediate light bulbs, of 25 thousand hours, but I
was going to stay there longer
if my leaving depended on productivity, because in fact I never took
anyone, I couldn’t bring myself to, I even knew how easy it would’ve
been, however much any of them would’ve refused or hesitated, what
was needed was a little insistence and the next day she’d be off to the
railway station. The last one had even arrived at the station and come
here and I hadn’t even talked to her much beforehand, she was a poet
and was about to receive a prize from us, that was the set frame, the
pretext, so it’d be familiar to me, because before I died
I had been a poet and I was still writing a few things, to preserve
familiarity, but also truly inspired by death, as had always been known,
and public readings had been devised for me too, for other dead like
me or perhaps just other projections of the passage. The girl came and
the third day she’d changed her mind, you need three days here to
stay, after the third there’s no turning back, on the third I went after her
to the station, we had set up a meeting at a café nearby, when she had
an hour before leaving, but it lasted a lot longer, she was very
uncertain,
life had disappointed her, she was beautiful, but seemed
not to have found joy even in her 35 years, seemed to have been
caught in a now depleted adolescence, which had left behind a certain
liveliness and a sense of freedom and defiance for display, but just
because she didn’t know any better. She would’ve died and lived on
and while she had two coffees and smoked many cigarettes, a chain,
she quickly went back and forth
and though I knew what to do, seduce her, make her spend another
evening there, and it wouldn’t have been hard, I’m not a seducer but
this place is, you need only bend your knees a little and its heaviness
will relax you
like a nap in the woods.
I didn’t help her bend them, I walked her to the train and got her on
the car with orange seats and when I got her off for another cigarette,
when she had five more minutes, she asked for a chewing gum and I
gave her one, she was waiting for me to kiss her and hold her back,
she’d maybe decided in the train car, realised nothing special was
waiting for her back there, but I didn’t do anything to her, I only kissed
her cheek and promised to call her again, perhaps in the spring, and I
saw her frightened eyes then, she put on meekness, said she wasn’t
worthy, but the invitation had already been promised. The truth is death
didn’t suit her yet, she had in her something too earthly and I couldn’t
manage to keep my mind at work, my mind was on a young woman
who was an orphan from birth, never met her father, dead the year
she’d come into the world, and she’d always missed him, she was
searching for a passage to him in everything, in ski jumps over
abysses, in sad music
and in mystical symbolism of any kind, she was a true romantic, as if
come from Germany in the 1800s, a Henriette Vogel from whom I didn’t
even conceal my place of writing and my reason and she was
postponing her arrival merely for her mother’s sake, thinking she’d be
too saddened to have another one in her soul leave too early. I talked
of all of this openly with her, not through dreams or forebodings, like
the others received my calls, but through words and images sent
straight through facebook. I admit I was selfish in my desire to see her
beautiful black eyes in the intermediate light of my hometown and I
was hoping to convince her, once come here, to stay or to return often,
as often as possible, until we’d both stay here and after a while of
serious service, because I intended after her arrival not to be clement
to anyone, for us to get our well-deserved passage beyond, embraced,
and for her to meet her father again, whom I could have replaced until
then. The earthling got on the train and the train left and perhaps there,
on earth, she woke up from her coma, I got out by the main station
gate, a black arrow drawn on it, and started walking around the town
almost deserted as always, thinking of my small flower thirsty for death,
and smiling bitterly at my hopes, knowing they were just more residues
of life, which I could no longer have a part in.
 Somewhere on a sidewalk a gypsy accompanied by his son was
playing the accordion, oh, come again to our little station, just look at
me and see my agitation, and I wondered then, for the first time in so
many years of dying, if the girl with deep black eyes could be calling
me back to life and if I should go, if I would manage to wake up from
my sleepwalking, if I had the guts, if it was worth backing out, growing
fond of something again, now, when I’d begun to get used to the
detachment.