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Lostrița - Vasile Voiculescu

Nowhere does the devil with all his brood and his nags hide better than in the
waters. The puddle devil, it is well known, is the most deceitful of men. It takes
many faces: from the light that flickers in the darkness of night and draws the
wandering traveller to the deep, to the shy girl who bathes in eagles and is but a
cunning shrew,
a trap set for unsuspecting young men to drown. On the Bistrita, the Imp had long
since ordained a nagod with the appearance of a lostriad. From above the springs to
beyond the Stone, the damned fish showed itself, sometimes in bulbs, sometimes in
streams, with a head covered with catfish, a body like that of a shallot, and a skin
mottled with gold, with reddish-red beads, like a trout. By the fish hunters'
reckoning, it would be about two cubits long, and would weigh in at all intents and
purposes beyond twelve ounces. At other times, however, when it is determined to
deceive the one it has set its eyes on, it grows three times that size and changes its
appearance. It comes out and lies down, limp, at the breast. From a distance, you'd
think she was a lady reclining in the sun on the silver sand beach. The bewitched
wench has lured many people. Skilled sinners. They set her traps, but they fell into
the enchanting snares, to go down forever. She ensnared unsuspecting children,
infants stolen by her radiance, troubled lads led into temptations by her
unrepentant beauty. There was not a year that one or two insane persons did not
take, there, in the genuflect, her dajdia. After a while, people began to realize the
danger and to beware. When they saw the lostrike flashing like a sword cutting the
waters up and down, they turned their heads and fled. Those on the raft, when they
saw her take the longlines and travel alongside them, did not know how to steer and
get out of the way of the wren. She was a predator! She was greedy for fish, which
she gobbled up with no end in sight. But especially insatiable for human flesh, which
she had come to crave, and hungry, she grew bolder and bolder, more beautiful,
more alluring. But the world was also becoming more and more envious. For now
the little miss was famous. Everyone knew her and shied away. Of the ranks of
children who had grown up as lads, running with rods in the lostriad's footsteps,
some had drowned, most, fearful, had given up. Only Aliman, alone, remained
faithful. He always hooked him with all sorts of tasty bait, especially live trout, and
never lost hope that he would once and for all
case in hands. He didn't believe in good fairy tales for children. He laughed when
he was told stories of shadows turned into little losts, or of the devil being turned
into a fish. And the lad relentlessly chased the beast of the waters. That seemed to
flee from him. If she has her spells, then I have mine, he joked, setting off to hunt
again. For so many years he had been wriggling and setting hooks, and several
times he had seen the famous lostriad, wriggling through the bulbs, soft and
wonderful, like a fish from a fairy tale. But still a real fish.
Now, when he has become a strong-willed lad and has mastered all the wiles of the
savages, he has managed to catch her once on the line. Just a moment! When, his
heart beating wildly, he arched to pull her out, the little lostriver escaped and went
away with her swim. Through all she'd been through, she'd loosened the human
gear and learned to get rid of it. Thus Aliman consoled himself, recounting the
incident. This was in early spring. By midsummer he had targeted her again and
cornered her in an elbow of low water only up to her ankles.
Quickly lowering himself on top of her, he scooped her into his arms. But the
savage jerked once with a loud snap, slapped him across the cheek with her tail,
and dropped from his hands like a flinging arrow, as a girl's twitching escaped her
on Sundays at the fair. Only he didn't hear her hooting. The lad stood there for a
long time, dumbfounded, with his mouth agape, and since then there has been no
more a displeasure from the flesh of his arms, like a far-off taste of the
He could always feel its weight and shape in his weak hands and troubled soul.
Aliman was handsome and strong-willed. He knew no fear of anyone. Least of all
the unseen and unknown. Bistrita had no mysteries for him and he held on to the
deep like an otter. He vowed to catch the lostriad alive, and he no longer indulged
in day-night hodine. From beyond the Toance, as far as the Siret and back again,
he waded the waters, preferred the whirlpools, and searched the sips like a
madman. He ran, he ate, he slept, he lived only on the slopes and
in the water. They all saw and beat his head that he had been bewitched by the
cursed wench and would soon have to make a party of her. He wasn't laughing like
he used to. He put his head to his chest and walked away without listening. Many
times he was ready to drown. But never because of the lostririza. But under other
circumstances. Like once, when he jumped to save some rafts from the boiling river.
Another time, for a rod stolen by the waters. Several times he came up barely
breathing, clutched by the arms of children who had fallen into the deep. Recently,
trying to pull out a horse caught in the swirling waters, he barely emerged from the
torrents onto a beach, where he lay for a long time. Little did he know how and who
was dragging him alive into the bottomless genii. On the contrary, when he was
shown the lostriver, he was doing well and had a good time.
Then he easily caught a lot of fish and the waters obeyed him obediently, carrying
him where he wanted. But the stray came less and less often. Then, towards the end
of the summer, he perished. The boy, from all the running and fussing, melted
away.
out of spite, if not longing. He walked alone the deserted meadows haunted by the
early autumn. The waters came blacker and more swollen, pounding the serene
reigns where the creatures came to light. Now they all lay hidden and numb in the
deep. Then, a hard winter out of the way fell upon the valley, cloaked in ice and
snow. You had to put your ear to the thick green flint of the ice, which, like a
tombstone, choked the Bistrita, to hear here and there a deep, distant gurgle, a sign
that the river was alive. Aliman yearned, almost boiled all the time. It was as if the
sleep of winter had entered him. Only at the thought of the lostririja did he revive.
Then he took his axe and broke along the bulbs the stitches and the bubbles, to
send a little more light to the fish, which otherwise die down there, suffocated.
Sometimes the lads and lasses managed
to take him to the tea parties and the sneaking around. But he sat sullenly. He
wouldn't loosen up until the stories of the enchanted little lostrietta began. He
listened greedily to her exploits and smiled. He would give a long rest to everyone
she had shown herself to. She'd listen about spells and
wizards with powers over waters and fish, and then he was left with his wits about
him. Until, at last, God gave us spring. The river broke its shackles and the waters
swam furiously back to their old slowness. The valley was filled with roar, roar and
roar like a terrible battle. Every day whirlpools of nahlapi, scraped logs, raft
shatters, live or drowned cattle passed by. People would clamber out of the waves in
droves and shoot as many as they could reach with their poles.
Little by little, the waters calmed down and the waters settled back into their
source. The hungry trout began to leap, followed by hungry waders, flashing after
them. Only
The big miss didn't show. Had she been struck by an ice floe or a log unexpectedly
tossed by the waves? Had the tempestuous flood swept her away? Had she moved to
the more fishy genii? Aliman searched for her worriedly for a long time. Around
Easter, there she was. More proud, more cunning, anointing the body with female
temptations in it. Aliman's heart began to pound again. The blush came to his
cheeks. And his manhood, his former boldness, proved in all manner of
unbelievable feats, overcoming without difficulty the powers of the angry Bistri.
Always and in all trials he emerged victorious and returned unscathed. His fishing
was a never-ending stroke of luck. He went on
a doara to catch a few trout for a snack by hand under the stones and
would immediately return with a full bag. Only the coveted lostrietta, who now
played with and faced him, he could no longer touch, and he felt her sweet weight
in his arms full of her memory. Guided by some peels, mounted on wooden
wagons, he wove from the wicker a sort of hutches, like cages, which he hid here
and there in the waters of the liman, where he knew the savage drew, after filling
them with live trout.... He left only a funnel-like loophole for the lostrids to enter,
but not to leave. In others he had made a flap, which would open only from the
outside and close as soon as the game had got inside. All in vain.
The mountain people laughed at his cages in which he wanted to catch water.
Traps for stupid pond fish. Only in the morning he'd find the lures eaten and the
grates broken like a hand. Aliman got to thinking and began to trust that he
wasn't
clean work. And again he began to yearn. One day he made up his mind. He went up
to a wild village on the Black Forest. He had heard that there was an old medicine
man there, a great fish-finder; a sort of master of the waters. He climbed up for a
day and arrived late at night. He found the house, knocked and begged for lodging.
The sorcerer received him and stopped him to stay even with him for a few days.
What he told him, what he taught him, how he bewitched him, is unknown. Aliman
returned home with a wooden wickerworked lostriță, just like the one on Bistrita.
Painted the same with gold and silver and sprinkled with rusty yellow drops. It was
made of two halves that were joined together with toothpicks. In the hollow middle
of the imagination, after rubbing it all over with the milk of the lostrids
and water weeds, she hid another smaller fish, cut from a deer antler to weigh her
down in the water and steer her. All were bewitched, enchanted, and charmed
according to ancient noms and rectification of magic lost and forgotten by others.
And in the middle of the night, with the moon in the square, polishing the body of the
lad, Aliman entered the middle of the river with the bewitched fish in his hand, slowly
said the divination he had learnt by heart, in which he renounced the world of God,
and released the doll with the face of a lostriad.
The waters received it and seemed to leap, carrying it submissively. The man went,
as instructed, and lay down. As never before, he slept soundly and peacefully until
noon the next day, when the men woke him. It had rained high in the mountains,
and the stream came sodomizing from bank to bank, carrying the shattered
villages downstream, with houses, men and cattle. He had to jump in, the most
daring and skilled, to help. When Aliman arrived, there was nothing to be done.
They had all gone like snowdrifts, with pitiful haunts covered by the tumult of the
nahlap, and were lost far away. Only a splinter of cork could be seen, spinning
upwards in the swirling waters, which rushed her downstream, and held her there
again.
and turned it over in the huge mesh with the sorb cores. On it a human creature barely held on
with both hands to a remnant of a rudder. Aliman was preparing to
to enter the waves and wait for her in the right place, with the rod in his hand, when
the raft pulled itself out of the boil and came ashore under his feet. Out of the shreds
he pulled in his arms a girl, the only living thing that had not been torn from the
feeding waters. She was unconscious. The lad laid her on the grass, rubbed her heart,
pressed her breast basket, as one gives aid to drowning. The girl came to her senses.
She hadn't swallowed any water. She smiled at her rescuer, looked frightened at the
assembled world and asked for food. The people watched in amazement as her
clothes, her yia, her fota, her skims, quickly flew off as if she had never been wet.
They also noticed that her hair was unfurled over her shoulders like wisps of white
streaks on a white pole. The eyes, amber-green-gold with blue highlights, were large,
round, but cold as glass. And his teeth, when he sunk them into a crust of bread
spread by Aliman, were revealed to be white but sharp as irons. The girl sat still. But
Aliman didn't leave her there long. He hurried her to his house, where he hid her
from foreign eyes. And a love was kindled between them
as had never been seen before in those lands. It was as if they had been made and
assembled to fit each other. She was beautiful, with a face that was perhaps a little
chubby, with a long, lean body and thighs that were as high as those of good
swimmers. The lad had suddenly forgotten all about the lostriad and the spells. He
held the girl in his arms, and her sweet burden fulfilled all that he had longed and
longed madly for till then. By day, they stayed indoors or wandered through the
woods. At night they went out to Bistrita, holding each other by the throat. They
bathed eagerly, both naked, until dawn. The waters turned golden, silver and then
blue, enveloping them in a veil of secrecy. When the waves reached the omazul, they
went out and dressed. They'd hunt trout and eat them there, roasted over a pine
fire, as the girl liked. A few weeks went by. The village buzzed with rumors like a
restless swarm. Like the girl would suck the lad's blood like the undead. But Aliman
was healthier, more handsome, and better than ever, and they didn't care...
of nothing. Lost, by all accounts, had emerged again. Now he was no longer hiding.
It floated in plain sight along the water... Only the lad didn't care whether it was
the wooden one or the real one. The whole past had gone out of his mind, and time
passed dizzily by, like a Bistrita swollen with happiness...
After a while, the lad, a little sober, to improve his luck, began to think about the
necessary arrangements, wedding, marriage, and told the girl. She sobbed madly,
grabbing him by the throat. She knew about the priest and love, she didn't care
about the priest or the church. That was not what she had come into the world for.
She was wild. With many secrets and secrets, and yet, he didn't even know her
name, he gave her his name Ileana. But everything must have a purpose. In
midsummer they found themselves with a strong, swift and sturdy woman, like the
waters after the rain.
Breaking them apart roughly, she grabbed the girl by the arm, angrily scolding
her. It was Ilena's mother, who after much research had found her cot. It came
from above, from far away, from the springs of the golden stream, where she said
it had its source. They all know the old Bistricene's hollow... and, snatching up the
girl, he asked her how she could forget her parents, lapse from her sisters, leave
her wealth to cling shamelessly to the poverty and stupidity of the people here. The
girl struggled in vain. Her mother
she whispered words in her ear that seemed to lull her to sleep. Aliman, pushed aside with his
hand, stood dumb, as empty as an unloaded gun, and before he came to his senses the woman with
the
prada was far away. By late autumn, Aliman had beaten the springs of all the
Bistrițelor to no avail. No one knew or had even heard of Bistriceanca or her
daughter, or their villages. Only an old man past his hundred years remembered
them.
He was a child when the village had stoned them and set fire to their house for the
many curses and wickednesses they committed with the help of Satan. He then
sought out the sorcerer who had unchained him. He could not find him either. He
had gone over the mountain to some Gentiles. The lad came back and shut himself
up in his house. He'd become as soft and unyielding as
a cloth. Everybody did what they wanted with it. He didn't fight anything. Soon she's got her eye
on him
a more daring girl, and she made him slightly more gentlemanly, and they got
engaged, to tie him up. Aliman was giving up, gone from this world. No more going
into the woods to hunt game, no more going down to the waters of the Bistrita. He'd
forgotten about the lostrids, the rods, the deer. He married only because he no
longer had the will to resist a poor girl, who in his eyes was less than a cockroach,
and anything was all the same to him. The wedding was decided at the mouth of the
post, in Philippi. The night had rained down in the mountains, and the darkness
still lingered. But in the valley it was warm and clear as summer. In the courtyards
of the bride and groom, the tables were filled with laughter and good cheer. The
bride and groom had come from the church and sat down between the two nuns.
The girl, gay and proud. Aliman, troubled, had dreamt the day before that he had
married the lostriad and the old sorcerer was marrying him. She sat upright beside
him, raised on her tail like
two thighs ready to split, and leaned her chunky head against his.
The sputum flowed freely. The sickle was running hand in hand with the pitcher.
All, joyous, were bowing to Aliman, who was bumping into anyone, without a
match, and giving a shot. Halfway through the feast, a young boy came running in
with the news that the bewitched widow had appeared again. She's near here, out to
the shore under hell's coast, where she lies reclining in the sun like a damsel. She
seems to sleep. She's only wagging her tail, as if fending off flies. She's bigger and
prettier than ever. Aliman, drunk with drink, as he heard of the lostrietta, awoke as
if from a deep sleep and jumped up and down between the guests, shouting: "He's
not getting away today! I'll eat it at my wedding!" and ran madly towards the river.
There was a great roar, with a deafening wail and a terrible bellow. The valley
again detonated in fear, as in the midst of battle. The waters came in with a rush
like buffaloes, one on top of the other, and people watched in terror. Only Aliman
couldn't see or hear. He was always running ahead of the war, with a crowd of
frightened bridegrooms
after him. And again he felt the sweetness of an unforgotten burden in the flesh of
his arms. When he arrived at the place the boy had told of, the little girl was there.
She suddenly turned, glowering, her head turned towards Aliman. She stood like
that for a full moment. Then she started, rushing towards him. The man
shuddered. But suddenly, his face lit up with a
unnatural joy, he shouted, shouting enough to drown out the huiet: "Behold, I
come!..." and, wrenching himself from the hands of three men, he leapt into the
middle of the Bistrita, his arms outstretched towards the lostriță. The wind,
thundering violently, reached him. The Nahlap passed over his head with logs, house
roofs and decks. He went out again. He held the lostriad and, dizzy from the
crashing waters, he struggled to protect it, sheltering it like a child with his arms.
Then he
submerged in the waves that, babbling angrily, sealed themselves above him
forever.
But Aliman's story remained alive and evergreen. It grows and adorns itself year after year with
new additions and other embellishments according to people's imaginations, longing for
happenings beyond the wires.
She wanders up and down the banks of the Bistrita. She goes up with the carts,
comes down with the rafts, sits with the children... But it moves unceasingly
alongside and in line with the fabulous lostriad, who finds no rest, when flashing
like a sword the bulbs, when resting on the beaches, with the body of an ibount in
the sun in the path of the fiery and mindless lads.