Take Marinescu I met Professor Gerngruber under the dragon lanterns at a

Japanese festival. It was in the garden of our ambassador's country house, a

multicolored paper monster gaping at the professor's head made goggle eyes,
spat colors on his bald head, the gypsy music from the dance floor threw itself
whirling into the night. We bumped into each other and he said, "Pardon!" I
knew he was German because I had stepped on his toes and he said,
"Pardon." Incidentally, it turned out later that he was extremely strong, he had
attended all sports schools, the ribs on his chest were made of steel, his
thighs were like bulging car tires, the books had in no way rendered him
incapable of pounding down the stomach walls with messengers. Still, he said
"Pardon" when someone stepped on his toes. You couldn't dissuade him from
that, it was a hereditary defect. He was born in the Passau area. Later we
drank Pilsner together and a couple of glasses of sparkling wine, got a little
friendly, our souls became porous. It turned out that Professor Gerngruber
was in Romania on a scientific assignment. His university had sent him to
collect material for his great work on the gypsy language. This work was to
become the most thorough and learned that had ever been written on the
subject. I later saw a couple of thick books, which Gerngruber called his
sketchy preparatory work, and since I know that boredom and
incomprehensibility are undoubtedly signs of great erudition, after these
rehearsals I only dare to think of the planned monumental work with
reverence. It goes without saying that Gerngruber chose the used the latest
methods and that he was also equipped with gramophones and records to
make phonographic recordings of Gypsy idioms. It was at a time when it was
considered good manners in Romanian society to take an interest in playing
the harp. The harp played the same role at the Romanian court as the flute
did in Sanssouci. As the queen loved to sit at the harp in flowing robes and to
strum the silver strings, the imitation of Carmen Sylva was soon to be seen in
every society, down to the tea-evenings of the better bourgeois salons in
Bucharest. Everywhere the chaste folds of robes flowed on steeply stretched
harp floors, slender fingers trembled sobbing over their nerves and the purest
soul swam ethereally sounding to the stars. They found us in our champagne
corner, we had to go out and listen to Frau von M.'s male well-known
unabashedness denied by sphere sounds. Afterwards I said to Professor
Gerngruber: 'I saw what you were thinking. To forests and to your gypsies.'
'Yes!' he said, surprised, but it hadn't been that hard to guess, because
everything the professor was thinking played in shadow and light on his face.
Since we had shared our joys and sorrows so comradely that evening, and
when we discussed our next plans we discovered that we both intended to
roam the same region in the Romanian forest mountains, it was natural for us
to form an association. Such alliances based on two hours of sparkling wine
and a common escape from the sounds of the harp tend to have no lasting
existence and are not given any particular meaning in life be. The next
morning they are mostly in the shadow of more important matters and only in
later chance encounters does a confidential grin remind you that you once
swore something like eternal friendship to each other. But Professor
Gerngruber was the man to detest such levity and to take oaths after midnight
very seriously. So in the next few days I had to take note of all the details of
the equipment and get some things myself for our future common household
in the wilderness; and I was not allowed to leave Bucharest before the exact
date and time of our meeting had been agreed. A week later, touched by so
much quickly and undeservedly acquired attachment, I was actually at the
small train station in the middle of the wild mountain forest at the appointed
hour. Professor Gerngruber filled in a window of the train and happily clasped
his hands, then he lunged at me and pulled me into a bear hug. He looked
very good, almost trapper-like, his high gaiters reminded one of the brave
leather stocking, and if his strength had corresponded to such a wild
disposition, one would have believed that these gaiters would soon be
trimmed with fringes of human hair. Three men carried the baggage, scientific
and personal, two of them were intended for the professor and me as
servants, the third was Take Marinescu. Although he was actually in a higher
capacity than that of a porter, he dragged more than either of the other two, he
was panting with industriousness, the zeal ran like sweat on his forehead, his
entire strength seemed in unconditional devotion to us and wasted our duties.
He was a handsome young fellow, of slim build, with a real Roman profile. If
he this Profile, then one really had to think of those legionnaires who had once
crushed the insubordinate Transylvania and had gradually been transformed
from soldiers into peasants. But if he turned his face fully towards you, then
the Dacians appeared, the Scythians, Slavs, cousins of the Huns, what do I
know, with the racial characteristics of the eastern peoples, square cheeks,
foreheads laid back, eyes blinking merrily with bent axes. We drove on a
small, narrow-gauge forest railway, on which some boyar turned the jungle
into champagne, theater, and silk petticoats, and meanwhile my friend
instructed me about the division of labor and the order of our day. I was to
hunt and he was to do research. Take Marinescu was caretaker, warden,
confidant in dealing with the local residents, factotum; a Bucharest university
professor had urgently recommended him to take along, this splendid one
splendid fellow who would certainly render us invaluable services. It was
necessary to have an intermediary in order to overcome the shyness of the
forest people, who would not readily understand a European. From the end of
the forest railway we rumbled another day on a farmer's cart along narrow
forest paths. The settlement in which we settled permanently was a lump of
difficult huts crammed into a valley head, as if the world of cleanliness and
civility could not be pushed far enough away from it. In these immense forests
on the southern slopes of the Transylvanian Alps dwelt a degraded and
depraved race, who subsisted on loathsome food in a loathsome manner and
had perished in unspeakable poverty. It must be noted that these forest areas
south of the Hungarian border are among the most unknown parts of Europe
and the maps show the same white spots and the same helpless
schematizing and generalizing of the drawing as the maps of the Albanian
mountains. It is enough for rich gentlemen to know that trees grow there, one
on top of the other, one on top of the other, primeval forests in which you can
let them be felled for a long time before they are completely devastated; and
to know that there is a hunting lodge there where you can spend two weeks in
the autumn chatting with friends. Then those forest people, who because of
their laziness are unsuitable for woodwork, come into consideration as
beaters. That's what the professor told me during our ride in the rattling farm
wagon, and three times he nearly bit his tongue off. I was not a little curious to
see these primitive people, of whom I had an idea, which I later found as an
image of the engravings of an old edition of Cook's world travel recognized.
But in reality I felt the same way with these pictures as ideals of an original
state always do. Instead of being surrounded by a tribe of savages in leaf
aprons or animal skins and shell necklaces, we found ourselves surrounded
on arrival by a mob of tattered men and women. They were just ragged and
greasy, that's all. Countless hands, like monkey hands, much lighter on the
inside than on the outside and just as wrinkled, were stretched out begging. I
believe the gypsies of these forests must come out of the womb with this
beggar's gesture, all reflexes, all impulses of will flow into it, they fall asleep
with it, and if they should be buried seemingly dead and wake up in the grave,
then they first stretch out their hand begging out of. They possess of the
whole culture, of the rich interrelationships of human society nothing but this
single, miserable and shameful gesture. Otherwise there was no sign of
shyness, her nature was rather a cheeky curiosity that groped and groped for
everything, her behavior showed a kind of stupid arrogance, which was
justified by nothing but an unsurpassable excess of dirt and mange. So Tale
Marinescu had less to do to draw them in than to keep them away, and he did
so with such vigor, slamming his pizzle into the pile that we thought there must
be cracked skulls and crushed bones. That was also the only language in
which one could make oneself understood with the people, because
Gerngruber's knowledge of the gypsy languages was not sufficient in this
corner of the world, here they spoke a very strange and highly bizarre
gibberish, made up of a thousand linguistic rubbish. One can imagine the zeal
with which a man whose life was devoted to the exploration of this field went
to work. We hadn't even settled into our tents when he set about capturing this
gibberish with notebook and gramophone as if it were one of the most
blossoming manifestations of the human spirit. We could gauge how culture-
alien our forest people were from the fact that they seemed completely
unfamiliar with the gramophone. They knew nothing of this cultural toy that
can be heard rattling in the tents of the Bedouin sheiks and in the snow huts
of the Eskimo chiefs, but they were also too dull or too haughty to properly
wonder or fear it, like a true primitive people would have done. When their
own voices came out of the funnel, they laughed into it and then listened, as if
they had called into the forest and awaited now expected to hear the echo
stop. Only the village elder, an old man with a patriarch's beard and a nose
like a purple mandrake root, once got angry, felt mocked, and spat grimly into
the funnel. Incidentally, it was amazing how quickly Gerngruber found his way
around the belching, stuttering and rumbling of his gypsies. The pages of his
notebooks were covered with entries, the record collection grew by the day,
and in two weeks he had mastered the basics of grammar and a fairly
substantial vocabulary. Now he was able to communicate with people and
attempt to penetrate more deeply into their world of ideas and feelings. His
method dictated that he should first inquire into their concept of God, but he
soon became convinced, as he sadly assured me, that the question was
evidently far too involved to be dealt with by his still faint ones knowledge to
solve. "In any case, contrary to expectations, you have very subtle religious
ideas," he reported. I ask the elder, "Are you a ghost?" "Yes!" he says. "Do
you know where God lives?" I ask, not expecting him to tell me everywhere
because he's ubiquitous, but to point toward the sky in a child's way. But he
becomes anxious and restless, moves around, doesn't want to say it. I urge
him, promise him tobacco, it makes his eyes shine, but the fear is stronger; I
hold him a packet of tobacco in front of his violet bulbous growth, then greed
becomes the master of fear, he grabs it and murmurs, "in the jar." Immediately
afterwards, however, he covers his arm over his eyes and crawls backwards,
whimpering softly, like a dog that is afraid of being hit. What to think of that?
What are the religious ideas of these people, who are nominally Christians,
but which neither the Church nor the school and which even the state seems
to have forgotten for its army?' I had been hunting from early morning and
returned in the evening, very tired and battered from the march through the
thickets of the jungle, which had torn my clothes with thorny tendrils and
whipped my face. Gerngruber was sitting under an oak tree by a small fire
with some old men. He had the gramophone beside him and the notebook in
his hand. The men had roasted a hedgehog and divided it among themselves,
and now, smacking their lips and digging in their teeth with the hedgehog's
quills, answered the questions of my friend, who seemed to me to be like a
pump that groaned and labored to draw water from a dry and stubborn well .
He saw me approach, looked up in greeting and said, "Oh, your face is all
bloody!" "It's possible," I said, "the forest has taken a toll on me." And I pulled
out a small round pocket mirror, who showed me a bloody tear across my
forehead and one on my cheek. At that moment something unexpected and
strange happened. The men who had just been sitting comfortably around the
fire, munching and munching, dropped the pieces of meat from their dirty
claws and fell flat on their faces, whimpering softly. Gerngruber looked at me
in dismay and shouted something to the men. Without raising his face from
the ground, the eldest made violent, defensive movements with his right arm
and belched out a few words in excitement. "He says," translated the
professor, "you should put away the mirror." My mirror had flung the forest
people to the ground, superstitious fear of the glass repeating our figure had
overwhelmed them and suddenly it had become clear that they had no knew
God but only an idol, the looking glass, that these Christians were fetish
servants in the forests of the Transylvanian Alps. I kept the mirror in my
waistcoat pocket, the professor informed them that the god had withdrawn,
and now they rose slowly, with timid glances at me, still completely
mesmerized by the nearness of the highest thing of their neglected and
wretched souls. No more conversation could be started, they remained
disturbed, and after a while they withdrew to their huts. "You know," I said
afterwards, when we discussed this new observation over a bottle of wine and
put it into the series of our knowledge of these people, »the mirror has always
been an uncanny object for me. He mimics us, he pretends to be a double, he
turns us into a phantom, a ghost, we suddenly find ourselves out of our
depths, a vivid image that is nevertheless only a grimace, an insubstantial
semblance that emerges without a trace from the Glass slides when we take a
step to the side. That actually horrified me a long time ago, and it's only
through getting used to it that we can endure this horrible duplication of our
ego. Well, now that I know that there are people whose God lives in the
looking-glass, it's even scarier for me.' 'There may be a dark feeling about
what you're saying,' the professor said thoughtfully. "Forgive me, I'm not
kidding: the monkeys are very surprised when they find their image in the
mirror and when you turn the glass there is nothing behind it. One level higher
and the fear of the apparition sets in. Then mankind steps into the light of
culture and now the mirror is a thing about which one can read a whole lot of
laws in optics. It has its rules and its place in the world and its phenomena.
One step higher and that old fear of primeval times grows out of our nerves
and our imagination, because we know very well that we don't actually justify
or explain anything with our explanations and our laws. For our gypsies, it is
the incomprehensibleness of these creative powers of glass that frightens
them. Doesn't it in fact have something divine, in which there is always, even
in our religion of love, a residual fear that cannot be suppressed ... is it, as I
said, not really like a creative act of the deity when out of the nothingness of
the clear glass, suddenly an image of man emerges that wasn't there before?
And isn't it a counterpart to death and annihilation, when it is wiped away
again, disappears completely, how human life slips away from the mirror of the
world? Isn't there a deep philosophy in the madness of these people? One
can see that the professor was inclined to endow his gypsies and their ideas
with a significance that made the study of their language all the more
important to him. We spent some time that evening talking about this subject,
and the very next morning we were to be brought back to it. After breakfast
the village elder came and sat down on the floor next to our table and seemed
in a kind of celebratory mood. He was silent for a long time, and as it often
happened that he kept us silent company for a while, we paid no attention to
him at first. I got up to get my gun when suddenly he started to speak. The
worn style of his Otherwise impetuous chattering talk made me curious, I saw
astonishment on the open face of my companion, through all registers up to a
highly amused smile. "You have no idea what he wants," the professor turned
to me, "he asks nothing less than that we give him all the 'god glasses' that we
have. What do you say to that?' Apparently this old gentleman is also the chief
priest of his tribe and considers himself entitled to take care of all the mirrors
he can reach.' I found the desire a bit strong, saying some things in very
strong German , whereupon the old man, who could not understand the lyrics
but the melody, seemed very embarrassed. His wrinkles moved in confusion,
the white beard began to tremble and the purple bulbous growth above it
paled visibly, as if fate had caught his nose. I didn't care about him anymore
shouldered my rifle, whistled at Belisarius and went into the forest. When I got
home in the evening, Gerngruber smiled at me. 'Just imagine, the old man has
been here once more and asked for our mirrors again; I think he fears for his
high-priestly standing if anyone besides himself is in possession of the
glasses of God. Who knows how many shards of glass he has already
collected, in which holy place he keeps them hidden and what mischief they
may serve. He got pretty rude and I had to give him a shout out.” That evening
I was too exhausted to spin a long mirror conversation. After walking ten
hours through impassable mountain forests, the strangest peculiarities of
fellow human beings leave one more indifferent than a piece of cold meat and
the woolen blanket in which to wrap oneself. My sleep was very deep and
black, without a trace of dream colourfulness. A shaking woke me up, it was
morning, the professor had his hand on my shoulder. "Listen," he said, my
shaving mirror is gone. I want to shave and can't find him. Have you catted
him?' How could I have catted the professor's mirror?' I let my beard sprout in
the juiciest growth. 'Then it was stolen! Do you still have your mirror?” I
reached into my waistcoat, reached into my pockets, found a watch, toothpick,
compass and suitcase key, but I looked in vain for the small round mirror, it
had gone with Gerngruber’s shaving mirror to the holy place of the glasses of
God . We looked at each other. "Take Marinescu," we said at the same time. I
have heard about this our highly recommended shop steward, property
manager and So far I haven't found a chance to speak to Warden, because I
thought it more important to first tell a little about the customs and souls of the
forest people among whom we lived, and because it seemed to me that I was
also revealing a little of his nature by saying that these people were talking
about. I hope that I will not be entirely wrong when one learns of the further
course of our adventures. It was indeed the case with Take Marinescu that in
the course of the weeks he had changed more and more from a compliant,
attentive, hasty fellow into a lazy, slovenly, and dirty rope. Was it because the
professor, to whom I had given the supreme command, was too good-natured
to pull the leash tighter on this young man and hang the bread basket higher
in good time, or were his basic instincts in dealing with the degenerate people
overshot the education to become a European – he had himself adept at
nothing but idleness, had proved adept at nothing but gluttony, was reliable at
nothing but lying. We had known for a long time that we were paying for a
secret enemy in him, had long observed that we sometimes lost little things
that we heard jingling in his pockets. When we sent him out to buy groceries
in the next town, he cheated us in the most shameless way. But every such
shopping trip was a journey of four or five days and difficult at that, so that we
preferred to be swindled than to leave the forest for so long. He was on the
best of terms with the gypsies, we knew that he would give them a generous
supply of our supplies and, in his insatiable gluttony, he would take part in
their hedgehog meals, roast lizards and ant soup without shyness or choice. It
was certainly from this dark ground of humanity grown up, felt like family and
had learned the language of the forest almost as quickly as the professor. Our
tolerance had made him bolder and so it happened that he had kidnapped our
mirrors at night, probably on behalf of his friends. His name crossed our
tongues at the same time, but no sooner had it been pronounced than the
professor's German conscience struck and he began to think again. We
considered that our servants were harmless fellows, somewhat narrow-
minded, but with an honesty commanded by unwavering reverence. They
couldn't be expected to take hold of our property, and they were Bulgarians
who had no language community with our gypsies. The fact that Belisarius
hadn't struck was that it couldn't have been the old man or one of his village
gangs. The dog used to lie between my sleeping bag and the professor's at
the tent entrance and would certainly have attacked any suspicious
approaching stranger. It stuck to Take Marinescu, and the professor said it to
his head in the strictest tone he was capable of. Though he was righteously
annoyed that he had just slipped his shaving mirror, the most important piece
of his personal belongings, that tone of utter severity was still buttery soft, and
Take Marinescu denied it with an insolent grin without particularly rousing
himself. My blood boiled, I pushed the professor aside and stepped onto the
board. I don't remember what I said, but it must have been more succinct, like
the professor's reproaches and my pizzle must have waved a very clear beat
in front of the boy's face, because I remember I can still see his eyes, how
they lost their cheeky shine and fear and cowed malice began to smolder in
them. The eyeball was covered with fine red netting, the pupil was edged with
dark, a narrow, thin circlet stretched to the utmost around a black blazing well
of hate. I can't remember what he did to tease me enough to give him a first-
degree slap in the face. It happened. Take Marinescu howled, hid and didn't
come out for a whole day. But if we thought we had intimidated him with the
new robust method, we were to prove wrong. Apparently the gypsies believed
that after the kidnapping of our god glasses we were more vulnerable and less
to fear than before. A part of our strength, in their opinion, had been withdrawn
from us and passed over to them; so theirs grew Desires for other enticing
things, and Take Marinescu was all the more willing to minister to that craving
as he could satisfy his own vengeance in a pleasant way in the process.
Hardly a night went by without a loss, sometimes a piece of laundry was
missing, sometimes an instrument, sometimes some of the food that we had
piled up in our tent to protect it to some extent. And the stolen things
sometimes turned up again here and there, the professor found one of his
shirts on the body of tall, pockmarked Vitru, I fished my brass compass out
from between the withered, dirty breasts of an eighty-year-old old woman.
They carried the treasures stolen from us without fear before our eyes, and
they tolerated being snatched away from them by force without any particular
agitation, because it was obviously part of their legal concept that taking, one
way or another, establishes ownership. Such a Wrestling with the degenerate
people was, of course, shameful and degrading. If the village had been
somewhere in the interior of Africa, I would have considered myself entitled to
use punitive powers and to give us peace of mind with some exemplary
punishments. But we were still in a constitutional state, should we play police,
revolt the whole tribe against us and in the end cause God knows what
diplomatic confusion. The professor said that if it weren't so interesting here,
he would vote to pitch the tents. He told me, for apology and encouragement,
at length about the fabulously peculiar composition of these people's
language, and finally sacrificed Take Marinescu to staying, saying he'd had
enough now and he'd chase him away. 'No,' I said, 'running away isn't
enough. The guy is hiding in the forests and yet continues his craft at night.
He's a master thief. Do you ever notice when he steals from us? It's like he
knows exactly when we fell asleep. How often have we now taken turns
waking up, but at one point or another a slight confusion of sleep must have
come over us. Belisar doesn't answer, at most he waves his hand when he
scents the boy. Once I think I've been keeping an eye on the tent entrance all
night. I think I can swear to you that not a crease moved there and in the
morning my binoculars were gone. You know, he ties a tent line off the stake,
reaches in, fishes something out, and then ties the line back on. No, dear
professor, we can't get rid of him in any other way than by giving him a
reminder that he'll forget to come back. Give me authority, let me act hunter-
like for once." The professor reluctantly agreed, and all day I watched our
brave Take Marinescu walking, swaying his hips provocatively, lying smoking
under a tree and squinting insolently at us, and a pleasant anticipation of
impending satisfaction ran through my eyes Body. In the evening I made my
preparations while the professor was still sitting by the fire. I didn't want to
shake his tender heart, listen to last-minute arguments. Night came, the fire
sank, over the gap in the forest to our heads the sky was embroidered with a
thousand stars. We crawled into our sleeping bags without having talked
about my plan again, which Gerngruber perhaps did not expect to carry out
that night. I myself wanted to keep myself awake, at the risk of having given
up a night in vain, for it wasn't at all agreed that Take Marinescu would make
another night visit tonight. For a long time I fought bravely against sleep, on
my watch I saw the luminous hands move from one button to the other without
anything happening that rewards me for the burning in my eyes and the
painful gasping and tearing away from the pleasant sinking into the flood of
sleep had. I already believed that Take Marinescu had been warned by his
animal instincts and would let this night pass like any other that we had
guarded more closely. It had to be towards morning, in the narrow crack of the
tent entrance and over the back of the sleeping dog suddenly a gray web
hung, this sense of light was suddenly there, maybe I had overslept its
approach or it had just been washed over the threshold of consciousness. At
that moment I heard, without prior knowledge, only that the slightest sound,
the sharp snap of the strong steel springs somewhere behind me. I felt hot,
hunter's joy went to my head, Tale Marinescu was caught, we had him, let him
wriggle for a while, he didn't deserve better. He should call for our help, should
ask us to free him, he should have to make himself small in front of us and
promise to leave and never come back. It gave me a cruel pleasure to
imagine how he was hanging with his hand in the iron, how he clenched his
teeth to keep from screaming and how the pain finally forced the first groan
out of him. Now I was listening with all my inner and outer ears to what was
happening at the trap, but apart from a few faint noises, hardly louder than the
flapping of the wings of stray birds against the tent wall, I could hear nothing.
What superhuman willpower this guy possessed, his hand to let the sharp iron
grind it down for so long without calling us. Eventually I became all aroused by
this anticipation of a moan that wouldn't come. The longer he stayed outside,
the more he got the better of me, every minute weighed more on my soul; was
I still a European, or had I also become one of those savages, with the cruelty
of a beast and the delight in the torment of human bodies? Hesitatingly, pale
light poured into the tent, I couldn't stand it any longer, slid backwards on my
knees to the trapping iron that had snapped shut around Take Marinescu's
hand. I screamed. Between the iron's strong, steely, toothed jaws stuck a
single bloody crooked finger. "What is it?" asked the professor sleepily from
his couch. 'Look!' I said, trembling, 'I've got my trap irons set up, the rapier
irons... they snap into a lock, you can only open them with the key I've got with
me.' 'So what? ' 'Don't you understand... I've put one on each tent band so
that the thief will catch himself if he reaches into it. Take Marinescu has
recovered…” Gerngruber tugged out of the sleeping bag with the same feet.
'There you are, but he got loose. He left a finger, he severed it, silently... he
mutilated himself to stay free... like an animal, like a fox or a rat. The professor
was standing next to me, in his underpants with a red braid tied around his
stomach and his socks, his bald head sitting like a tight-fitting helmet over his
skull. I felt that he didn't agree with me at all, not at all, and that the sight of
that severed finger embarrassed him in the most embarrassing way. Since I
myself was by no means happy with the outcome of my first man-hunt, I
needed someone all the more who could have helped me to understand
things more easily, so that I could have accused myself all the more violently.
But since the professor did not do this, the whole burden of apologizing to
himself was left to me, and I felt the whole story very confused into anger, with
a distinct anger at the companion's lack of friendship. Grumpy and thoughtful,
we set about burying the finger left to us, buried, and we did as children bury a
canary, making a coffin for it out of a tin cigarette box in which it was carefully
laid on cotton wool. For the rest, we decided to keep quiet about the matter.
Take Marinescu himself, of course, had disappeared. On the canvas of the
tent we found some small traces of blood, on a flat stone near the stream a
dark spot, otherwise the forest had swallowed up our companion without a
trace and we assumed that he had left our vicinity. The professor told the
gypsies that we had chased him away on the spot after a violent outburst. But
you could see that they didn't believe us. But that he had by no means left our
vicinity, but was still somewhere in the forest prowling around and stalking us
should be reported to us in a strange way after a few days. As we stepped
outside our tent one rainy morning and, after poking our noses into the humid
air, looking for a dry patch of ground to set up our field chairs, a dead field
mouse caught my eye, perched on the edge of a puddle of rain lay. There
were enough mice in the woods that year that this little corpse could not have
been considered anything special unless something else about it was striking.
"You see, Professor!" I said, "there is a dead mouse with three pieces of wood
stuck in its body." It really was like that, three small ones, pointed at the top
and bottom, protruded from the gray velvet fur pointed pegs, one in the neck,
one in the stomach and one in the buttocks. The Professor stooped to
examine the strangely trimmed corpse more closely, and when he
straightened up again he displayed what seemed to me a most inappropriate
seriousness. 'It's an announcement,' he cleared his throat, 'you know, an
announcement in Gypsy sign language. You know that through such signs the
wandering tribes send each other information about the path, the direction of
the migration and everything worth knowing. Of course, I don't know what this
sign means in particular... In the meantime, we'll have François come and
ask.' Now we both acted as if the matter didn't concern us at all and left us
completely unconcerned. I know, however, that the professor was the same as
I was, namely that at the sight of this mysterious sign we both immediately
thought of Take Marinescu thought and from that moment were no longer
convinced that he had left the forest. François, the village chief and high priest
of the mirror glasses, who God knows how got his name, appeared and was
led in front of the dead mouse. After a moment's contemplation, he shook
himself as if tossing something from his shoulders, and then stretched three
splayed fingers of his left hand toward the staked corpse. When he lifted his
face towards us, I saw a hypocritical sadness above and, beneath it, a little
veiled, hearty gloating. "It's just as I said," the professor translated the expert's
report, "someone is telling us of misfortune and distress." "Anyone? Who
then? Take Marinescu!” 'François doesn't know. The sign doesn't say anything
about it." "Oh, don't you believe everything people say. Can't you see he's just
trying to spook us? They're in league with Take Marinescu. And by the way,
he's gone, has long since left the forest and is now stumbling around the
Bucharest pavement again.' Realizing that I had said something contradictory
with the last two views, I got very angry and chased the old man away with a
grim movement. Incidentally, I firmly resolved to believe that our enemy was
no longer within our reach, and I managed to piece together a number of
reasons why it must really be so and not otherwise. But I couldn't prevent my
nerves from giving in to my good reasons and all sorts of things in the woods
on my hunts Dangerous things painted behind bushes, trees and rocks. It was
really no fun crawling through the jungle with the feeling that a line could
suddenly be thrown around your neck or a stick knife stuck in your neck. In
the end … reason or not … it is not our head that makes our life comfortable
or uncomfortable, but the nerves are our real masters; and if you look closely,
if someone is capable of silently severing a finger caught in a trapping iron
himself, he is probably also capable of other things which are more
embarrassing to others than he is. Why should I deny it: under the
circumstances, I would have preferred it if the professor had said one day that
he was finished and we could pack. And he may have felt the same way, but
as is usual, no one wanted to give the first word, and so on first my poor
Belisarius had to believe in the enemy in the woods. One day I came back
from the thicket, tired and running hot. A blue-black thunderstorm loomed over
the mountains, cloud bellies pushed over grey-green peaks. The birds chirped
in fear of thunderstorms, my skin bled sweat in great drops. When we, I and
Belisarius, passed the spring from which we drew our water supplies, the dog,
thirsty as he was, threw himself on the ground and began to drink greedily. We
had discovered this spring, a quarter of an hour from our tents, and seized it
because we didn't want to drink god knows how polluted water from the
stream used by the gypsies. This stream ran through a small swamp and past
the huts, but here a clear and rather plentiful stream sprang straight up from
the slope through a short pipe into a basin. Belisar was because of that Rand,
both forepaws spread wide as if to embrace the little water, and slurped
greedily with a long, flinging tongue. I patiently waited for him to finish. He
finally got up with a dripping snout, shook himself so that the drops flew,
waved his gratitude at me and trotted on briskly. Then, when he stayed
behind, I paid no further attention to him, and only when I was about a
hundred paces from the camp did I look around for him. He came up behind
me very slowly, slinking, tail and head down and legs giving in strangely, as if
his bones had suddenly softened. He always stopped after five or six steps, I
could see that he was shaking and his head was dangling unsteadily. My
whistling did not hurry him in the least, and his deterioration was so evident
that I could not doubt that he had suddenly fallen gravely ill. I ran up to him
and he just broke his abdomen as if his spine had suddenly been crushed. His
eyes were dull, his lips pulled back from his teeth, and when I tried to put my
hand on his head he snapped blindly at me. A moment later he collapsed in
front too, rolled onto his side, and the muscles were clenched and stretched
with terrible spasms, long waves ran over his whole body. My poor Belisarius
couldn't be helped, I stood in front of the panting, dying animal with a wild
jumble of thoughts in my head. Suddenly one stabbed up glaringly, hit me
almost painfully in the center of consciousness. It threw me around and I ran
furiously to our campsite. The two servants worked at the fire, our meat
simmered in the blackened cauldron, and the water for tea simmered in the
smaller blue pot. I heard two screams, a wild hiss, and smoke billowed out,
searing my face hot. "What are you thinking of?" the professor roared. "Are
you crazy?" With two wild kicks I threw the meat kettle and teapot into the fire,
the two servants knelt by the destroyed embers, in which the pieces of meat
crackled, and with the expression of people who are about to be beheaded
looked up to me The professor held my arm and kept yelling, "Well, what's the
matter?" "Belisarius just died!" I finally said through a small slit in my throat.
Gerngruber didn't grasp the connection, his eyebrows rose to high arches
over the circular eyes. “Belisarius drank from the spring. Our source has been
poisoned.« - It turned out that I was right, we found the soil above the source
pipe churned up and under the covering layer of moss interspersed with a
yellowish powder and in the pipe itself a small yellow ball in a little bag. The
water meant for our enjoyment swept through a poisoned soil and through a
pipe in which death had been planted. On the evening of that day, the
professor said it was really enough and we would do well to retreat. He was
almost done with his work, and if we had selected the cave gypsies, then
nothing would stand in the way of our departure. The cave gypsies, they were
certainly the strangest of the lost people here in the Romanian mountain
forest, and no amount of hardship could deter us from to see and hear them.
We accelerated our preparations for what was at least a three-day excursion
into the unknown, stocked up on food, weapons and instruments. We got a
sufficient number of records from the black box and then we set off with one of
the servants, who carried a knapsack and a gramophone, while the other
stayed at home as the guard of the camp. Desert mountain streams beat foam
against steep rocks, the bridges consisted of two fallen trees side by side and
went over deep chasms without railings. A labyrinth of yellow-grey sandstone
walls surrounded us with the grotesque forms of an enchanted city. On the
crest of a mountain range we walked carefully over a swaying high moor,
which once swallowed our servant up to the knees. On the second day the
hundred meter high clay wall stretched out in front of us, which seemed to
have been cut off smoothly as if by a giant spade. Only when you got closer
did you see the time creases that the flowing water had dug into it and the
human mouse holes at the foot of the enormous waste. A piece of the
primeval world lived there in the mountain, the dirtiest, most miserable early
world of humanity, you thought you were visiting your ancestors, on the
monkey frontier as far as darkness, wetness and dirt of the dwelling was
concerned. In this widely ramified tangle of caves it smelled unspeakably, as if
one were crawling around in the decaying entrails of a gigantic beast. It was
all so far removed from the present, so stone-age and senile-faced, as if the
very foundation of history were shimmering through. It was just astonishing
that a quite respectable breed of people could thrive here, prettier than their
relatives in the surrounding forest villages, slim and sinewy men and above all
women who, up to their twenty or twenty-second year, had their own strangely
provocative beauty. Egyptian and Something Roman seemed mixed in, the
delicately quivering nostrils of Queen Nepto and the forehead, chin and
shoulders of the so-called Sabina in the Roman National Museum. Although
they had grown up directly from the filth, these girls somehow gave the
impression of grace and purity, and only when they were past their early youth
did they succumb to the natural law of their origin and environment, in that
they soon became withered, tired women and premature became sticky, dirt-
staring hags. Under our gaze they squirmed complacently and vainly, let us
see the nakedness of their supple, metallically shining bodies between their
rags, huddled together, giggled and seemed to expect something from us. We
were soon to find out what the girls thought they could get from us.
Gerngruber had already been working with his notebook for an hour and now
loaded the whole one Company in the most spacious cave, the state room or
the underground marketplace of this mole village. Half a hundred people went
into the room, bodies and heads were pressed tightly in the mouths of the
tunnels. Three or four pine shavings burned on the walls, and like in the
troglodyte caves of Auvergne one saw crude red chalk drawings of animals
and men on the smoothed hard clay of the ceiling. Just opposite us, in the
center of the gathering, a group of about twenty young girls had gathered,
nudged each other, laughed and swayed their bodies like large flowers. The
men remained in an Indian-like seriousness, the old women chattered all the
louder, as if they had a special claim to having the big word. All necks craned
as our servant took the gramophone out of its case and adjusted it. It was part
of the professor's method to show his gramophone candidates first a few
records, from which fairy tales, legends, and poems in their own language or a
related language would be snarled at them, in order to then be able to make
them more easily understand what was important to him. Experience had
shown him that he could always find what he needed more quickly in a
congregation than if he had to search for storytellers and singers through an
individual poll. This time, however, before the professor could explain what he
wanted, one of the old women, who didn't seem to be able to wait, sprang
forward and pulled one of the young girls by the arm in front of the horn of the
gramophone. And without any ado, the slender thing began to shed its rags of
clothing, revealing itself to the eyes of the whole village and ours. The
professor seemed to have lost his tongue, he turned to me in the most timid
embarrassment, but what could I say to him, not understanding a word of this
gypsy thing, I shrugged my shoulders and didn't know whether to keep my
eyes on the beautiful body in front of me or should put down. In the meantime,
the professor had composed himself so broadly that he wrestled with the old
woman in question and answer to find the solution. They babbled and burped,
other women chimed in, a chorus soon fought my mate's single voice,
shouting him down, and you could see that their opinions were becoming
more and more divided. After a quarter of an hour of fierce fighting, the
professor turned to me, dripping with sweat. I was extremely excited and
impatient for a clarification. "Do you think," he cried excitedly... "if you think it's
possible, it's outrageous..." 'What is it?' 'They got us for… no: wait. I ask why
the girl undressed. "You must take a picture of her," says the old woman.
"Why should I take a picture?" I say, "I just want to capture your voices, your
fairy tales, stories and songs, I'll take them to Germany to make a book about
them." "You don't want girls like that she asks..." "Buy girls!!" "Yes, my
dear...they think we're traffickers of girls here. Do you understand. Almost
every year, traffickers in girls come here, into this wilderness, into this
culturally untouched desert, to buy fresh goods for the Bucharest market, for
export, I don't know, and now the women are outraged because they are
attracted to us have deceived." They were really disappointed, obviously badly
hurt in the most sacred feelings, angry chatter grew louder and louder; only
the men remained rigid and Indian-like calm, for according to tribal customs
this trade seemed to belong exclusively to women. The young girl in front of
the gramophone horn put on her dirty rags again with a mocking shrug of her
shoulders, her mother continued to rage uncontrollably in front of the
professor's face. It was difficult to carry out our scholarly intentions, and the
professor had to talk a great deal and spend many times the usual gifts of
money to get a few poor speech samples onto his records. Stepping out of the
maze of caves back into the forest, it really was as if we were diving from the
depths of time into the present. I was about to say something immensely
socio-political when I felt my hand gripped and about to turn saw the narrow
face of the girl on my shoulder, who had undressed in front of the
gramophone. Her nose sucked in the air trembling, her lips were soft and
wonderfully curved, she said something that sounded more beautiful than
anything I had ever heard of the gypsy language. "She says," the professor
explained, "she wants to read your palm." A warm stream flowed from her
hand into mine, very gently she bent my crooked fingers and turned the palms
upwards. Then she looked seriously at the writing on her skin for a long time,
and meanwhile I looked with a kind of emotion at that lovingly bowed head
and how a white furrow had drawn through the black hair. Then, without
raising her head, she murmured a few dark words. My eyes asked the
professor. "Hm!" he said evasively, "of course she prophesies something
unpleasant for you, as was to be expected..." "Just say..." "Oh, stupid things...
sickness and death!" I could already feel the smile of superiority on my lips ,
when the girl suddenly spat vigorously into my palm, shrieked shrilly and
maliciously, and ran laughing into the nearest clay hole. There I stood, saliva
ran down my fingers and we both felt like we were on a desert island in our
erudition and honesty. - Whether it was an aftertaste of our defeat at the
hands of the cavemen or a foreboding of future surprises, we returned from
our excursion quite meekly, actually both expecting some sort of disaster to
find. With a sigh of relief we realized that our tents were in the same place,
and we were pleased to hear from the servant who had stayed behind that
nothing unusual had happened during our absence. So actually we could
have been quite reassured, but we still didn't feel that homely comfort that we
otherwise felt so clearly in our spacious tent. It was as if some hostile and
disturbing spirit had moved in, as if something was lying in wait with staring
evil eyes, and I really took it with gratitude that the professor said we were
done and could, if we wanted to, break out tomorrow. "Let's leave tomorrow!"
The professor unpacked his records, I helping him in an effort to bribe fate
with usefulness. We spoke of primitive peoples, slavery, The white slave
trade, the racial enigma of the beautiful people in the clay cave. My palm
secretly burned, as if there had been a mild caustic poison in the girl's saliva.
'You know,' said the professor, 'I've had enough of the woods. I long for my
bookshelves and my desk and wet pavement on which lie the broad lights of
the shop windows. We don't care about originality anymore, we're too involved
in the equal nature of culture... please put these records in the black box.' 'I
understand,' I said, chatting with the Platten bent down to the box in the
shadow of the corner of the tent, "I can appreciate a person like Take
Marinescu aesthetically, of course, aesthetically. But basically such
phenomena are uncomfortable disturbances of balance..." I had opened the
lid and, without looking, put the new records on top of the stack of the others.
"Our energies..." A cool touch on my fingers, a hissing hiss like wind blowing
through a narrow crack, then a sharp pain... I jerked my hand back, a damp
black serpent's body dangling, a triangular scaly head with teeth in mine bury
meat. The professor screamed, lunged at me, I don't know where he suddenly
got the pliers with which he grabbed the snake's head. Then he dipped my
hand in his, cut and burned, poured cognac into me, I saw how the tent was
caught in a whirlwind and spun in circles, and the center of this merry-go-
round was a misshapen swollen hand... Very soon I lost consciousness . The
next morning I awoke from a heavy intoxication, but the professor had saved
me with singeing, brandy, cutting and cognac, otherwise I should have been
dead by that time. Three of the dangerous black vipers had been put in the
plate case, but the vicious beasts were also found in my hunting bag, in the
camera and even in the thermos flask, and the professor had spent half the
night hunting snakes with the servants. He destroyed one brood in each of the
foot ends of our sleeping bags. The prophetic girl was only to be right about
the first part of a prophecy, and the illness didn't last too long either. In ten
days I was able to get the poison under control with no other consequences
than a hole in my right hand, lameness in the fourth and fifth fingers, and
some weakness. We made our way back without delay. A day of rattling
wagons brought me down a bit, and the ride on the wooden railway through
the autumn-colored forest made me shiver in the open box quite
embarrassingly. I was glad when we reached the train station and possession
of a comfortable express train car with soft seats was imminent. While the
professor at the counter arranged the tickets and luggage matters, I looked
out over the humped forest world. The forests ran down the slopes in yellow,
red and brown, and you could see the folds of the lonely valleys better than in
summer. On a patch of blue sky barred by white ridges of cloud stood a
distant bird. The memory of everything that had gone through was so vivid
that, when he suddenly stood before me, I took Take Marinescu for a creature
of my own thoughts. "Hello!" he said with a grin. “You… it's you. What do you
want?' He shuffled his left foot backwards and lifted his hat. 'The gentlemen
continue. I'm going back to Bucharest now.' 'Go to hell!' I said, furious that I
didn't know how to stop this insolence. 'Oh yes!' he laughed, 'but I still have
wages to be had. The gentlemen didn't fire me, so I'll still get paid for... wait...
five weeks and three days, that's...' He held up his hand and began to work
out how much he could still get from us, counting on nine fingers and that
stump whose complement we had buried out in the woods. "What... you ran
away from us, you scoundrel," I fumed, pointing at the stump, "run away from
us and still want reward after all? Think of them Source and remember the
snakes! Oh ... that there is no policeman there, I would hand you over to the
policeman immediately ... but I will call the station manager and he will have to
lock you in the boiler house until a policeman comes ..." "What? … What? …
Mister! What, gendarme?' And he stretched his chest and almost stepped on
my toes in a brutal challenge. His breath washed around my mouth, the pupils
were surrounded by an iris stretched to the point of bursting. Luckily the
professor came up, otherwise I probably would have fought with Take
Marinescu, despite my weakness. Gerngruber put his bear arms around me
like a child and simply put me away. "What do you want?" he asked Take
Marinescu harshly. Much more subdued in front of the professor's upright
figure, but with tenacious impertinence, Take Marinescu presented his
demand. "No," shouted Gerngruber, "no ... no!" he repeated weaker." The boy
immediately took advantage and raised a clamor as if he had been badly
wronged. A ring of men formed around us, all woodworkers from the woods
who had come out for the day of payment. They had drunk heavily and were
waiting for their turn. They are silent when they are sober, these men, and
submissively carry the heaviest loads, but when they have become dangerous
through the liquor, then it can happen that they suddenly remember that the
gentlemen are only made of clay and only have clay a life like her. Take
Marinescu shouted and the men tightened the ring around us, because here
one of theirs had obviously been wronged by the men. "You want to run away
with my wages," the boy shouted, throwing his arms in the air, "just drive
away. After serving them for so long...are these gentlemen? Brethren, I live by
the work of my hands...they are rich gentlemen. They want to get richer by
stealing my wages.” I could almost feel the men growing hostile around us,
becoming a wall, I felt pushed from behind, pressed against Take Marinescu.
The professor could have used his brute strength to make a breach, but he
hung his arms, apparently considering whether a few bruised ribs could be
justified. "Apart! What is it!' someone shouted. The station manager brought
us relief and immediately the circle of men grew a little further. “This person…
this murderer…” I began, shaking with rage. 'No, no,' said the professor, 'do
we have proof? We have no evidence—” “Yeah, what is it?” “They should give
me my wages!” Take Marinescu yelled shrilly, and the woodworkers grumbled
an echo. "He demands his wages... but he just deserted us," I said. "You see,
that's the way it is..." the professor began hesitantly. A signal arm in front of
the station, visible to me between Gerngruber's head and Tale Marinescu,
went up with a clatter. 'The express train is coming! Move!” the exclamations
drowned out the noise of our ball. In one leap, the station manager jumped at
the professor and caught him by the collar of his coat grabbed his coat collar
and yanked him off the rails. We all rolled sideways. "Don't get in!" Howled
Take Marinescu. "Don't let them get on!" howled the workers as they blocked
our way to the rails. 'You should pay! I want you to pay!” “My God, what can I
do?” the stationmaster cried tearfully. 'Leave me alone...I have to catch the
train...it's best if you pay. What can I do? Black, with a wild hint of distance
and danger, the train flew in. The workers standing furthest out staggered a
bit. "Don't let them get in!" Take Marinescu stood in front of us, legs apart and
fists clenched. He had seized power, he controlled the moment, there was no
avoiding it. For a few seconds the professor hesitated; the conductors were
already beginning to slam the doors shut again, someone whistled shrilly.
Then the professor tore out his wallet, let a banknote flutter, Take Marinescu
bent down... We rushed to the train, punched us... Five minutes later we had
caught our breath, and just as we were crossing the gorge on the big iron
bridge, we started to be ashamed of. "It's only been an interesting adventure
so far," said the professor, "but today Take Marinescu really proved his worth."
I looked out at the colorful forests that climbed towards the Hungarian border.
"Yes - I think we shall have a great deal to learn... before we can match this
blow."