An Ermine in Czernopol (41 page)
Read An Ermine in Czernopol Online
Authors: Gregor von Rezzori
The author went on in the same malicious tone, lifting another sentence from Kraus's article with poisonous glee:
I would particularly award him (Piehowicz) the Schiller-Prize, albeit without the bonus offered by the Odol Mouthwash Company, which has led the German people from literary Idol to literary Odol, a symbolic move that suggests their language is good for rinsing out the mouth
Nor were the attacks confined to general targets. The writer went on:
⦠We have since made our own inquiries and learned that it is an officer of our own army who has particularly distinguished himself in helping the Germans acquire a new genius, insane though this brilliant poet may be, as has been clinically proven beyond a doubt. It happens that this particular Herr Major is in the asylum himself, where his own mental state is under observation following a series of lunatic acts that several weeks earlier sparked both laughter and terror in this city. The entire chain of events begs the question of whether we ought not pay more heed to leaders of the nationalist program who advocate a thorough purge of our army, and give them a freer hand to implement their commendable plans than hitherto â¦
This was an allusion to General Petrescu and openly dragged the case into the political arena. The article ended with a satirical verse:
â
as proof that we are not ourselves lacking in lyrical gifts
âeven outside the municipal asylumâ
And was signed
Ali.
The “stinky-foot” reference was all we needed to recognize that the pseudonymous author was none other than our former tutor, Herr Alexianu.
A few days later a response appeared in Herr Adamowski's
Tescovina German Messenger
:
FERMENT OF DECOMPOSITION
I hope the foreignness of this title won't be held against me; it does not come from a German pen, although it does stem from a German-minded one, as is well-known, and from no one less than the pure-blooded Briton H.S. Chamberlain, who thus for all time branded the essence of the Jewish race. The Jew: instigator of dissent, the little man who unlike the little men in Grimm does not roam the woods, but stands on crooked legs nevertheless, exactly as our wise Wilhelm Busch observed with his superb smirking acuity and the unerring discernment of his blue eyes, leaving all grinning aside in order to warn us
Too short trousers, coat to his toes,
Crooked cane and crooked nose,
Eyes pitch-black and soul of gray,
Hat tipped back, with cunning gaze:
Look, here comes Shmul Shievelbein
(Not so handsome as our kind â¦
And there it is: little Shmul the bowlegged lackey and lickspittle, bent on currying favor with the German folk and sponging off the stock of our tree unless the hand of the watchful forester scrapes it off the oak-bark in time. Because any whose eyesight has not yet been compromised by the mixture of races surely will not fail to see that behind the flatteringly feigned face of bourgeois decency lurks the hideous grimace of a creature whose natural purpose and national predisposition is to decompose, and destroy. Of course it's often hard to see through the tricks and intrigues of this dwarfish race; the blond and bright-eyed approach, with its straightforward thinking, clearly contradicts the Talmudic way of thought, and easily brushes aside any evil plans concocted by the vermin. Nevertheless, what was hardly an itch can still turn into a bad boil after the louse has been pulled off. Don't tiny mites cause the oak forest to die? Haven't you seen how the sheltering tree is felled by the worm? Therefore let us overcome our disgust, as all who are skilled in healing must, if they wish to strike at the pest. If the festering boil stinks, it's only because the destructive bacteria are eating away inside. One sharp cut will cause the pus to drain away.
Recently we read in a Jew-paper that a poet of the German tongue had been discovered in an asylum here, whose works were of a quality to overshadow Goetheâno, Schiller himself. Not since Agnes Günther, the Baroque nightingale, has such a voice been heard. Well now! Let's pass by the question whether Shmul Shievelbein is entitled to an opinion on that matter ⦠but no, let us not! The sheer brazenness to meddle with the most German of mattersâour poetry!âshould raise our suspicion. Does the Jew ever undertake anything without a cunningly devised ulterior motive? Therefore beware! A Jew is always a Jewâso be on your guard. He is not out to serve the German drive for beauty, or to enlarge the German trove of art, but he is relentless in pursuit of his own goals.
This publication falls into the hands of one of the coffeehouse literati who are sadly all too common in the city on the Danube, that great stream of the Nibelungen. Did it blow in on the wind? No! Another Jew passed it to him. And the former, who publishes a monthly rag vilifying anything printed in the German language, is grateful for the opportunity to pounce. He fancies himself a critic. Mere envy, you think? A pallid milquetoast and limp-loin, lacking any creative power of his own, and who therefore chafes at those who are brimming with life and bursting with song? Be on guardâbecause a Jew is always a Jew! Behind the appearance lurks a vile plan. And never does he point his poisoned arrows with more hate than against his own race. Presumably his aim is wide, too. So he just tears the jester's cap off the woolly head. What for? Simply so he can put it all the more smoothly on his own. He cloaks himself in the appearance of legitimacy in order to fulfill his task of decomposition all the better, all the more unchallenged. He takes the little verse of the insane man, lavishes the most outrageous praise, as if he were hawking the lines at some flea market, but why? Simply to sprinkle excrement on what is better, to widen a crack into a fissure that he may continue to wedge asunder. And in the guise of fair dealings and just desserts! Beware, the cards are marked! Where deceivers dwell no home is clean.
Is it any surprise that foreigners develop the wrong picture of the German race? Is it any wonder that another paper has taken up the matter, and gloating with derisive bewilderment, poses the question: Is the greatest German poet a madman? And is it at all shocking to see another case enter the discussion, whichâhowever wronglyâconnects insanity with Germanity, and raises fundamental questions as to how far the loyalty of national minorities should be trusted ⦠?!
We have nothing to reply to that except: Recognize the true pest! Observe his methods! Find him out in your own home as well! Clean house however you craveâverily it is necessary! Pick up the iron broom and sweep out those truly bad housemates! Do not overlook the fact that it was German diligence that created this flourishing settlement, as pretty a town as could be, so long as the Jew let it alone! Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater! German military might has served faithfully in many a foreign service, and has always fought bravely, indifferent to displays of gratitude as of thanklessness, concerned only to fulfill our sworn duty to teach the adversary the sharp bite of the German blade. Clean house, then! But with the proper sense of proportion! Do not the scales fall from your eyes when you examine the asylum, from which has emerged this threat to ethnic accord? And when you realize that out of seven medical assistants five are Jews, one is Polish, and one is Ukrainian? To work, then! We Tescovina-Germans will look on calmly, even with delight. Moreover, we offer you our energetic assistance. For we feel bound by the words of Luther:
Here I stand! I can do no other!
God help me!
Averse to hiding behind a pseudonym, and unafraid to sign his own full name:
âProfessor Dr. Lothar Feuer,
Senior teacher at the German Boys' Lyceum in Czernopol
And a dreadful thing happened: the Jews of Czernopol, led by a couple of youthful pranksters, seized the issue of the
Tescovina German Messenger
in which Professor Feuer's article had appeared; they bought up the entire run, paying collector's prices to the German subscribers, and howled with laughter. They read Professor Feuer's article to one another with tears in their eyes and breaking out into spasms of laughter. They spoke among themselves in a lightly Yiddishized “flickering-Waibling-Wälsung” German, and it became fashionable among young people to talk among themselves somewhat like this: “
Sieg-Heil
, selfsame Sigi! Have you perchance perceived Luttinger's lascivious Lily? No, forsooth? Some foul fate has flubbed our flirt? Elsewise she twines about me like the ivy twines about the ash,
die sheyne shikse
!
Nu
, so now I'll have to wend my gleeful galosh-gait into the garden of the
Volk
. Are you pleased to plan to take your pleasure with another? Engage in a bit of racial defilement with a blonde, perchance?”
The reference to the “Baroque nightingale Agnes Günther” was a particularly delightful tidbit for connoisseurs.
All in all, the newspaper war enlivened the city. The
patchkas
in the circles around NÄstase and Alexianu popularized the satirical verse about the
balamuc
that was soon put to music. Gyorgyovich Ianku played it for the habitués of the Trocadero, when the doors opened to let them in, with Ephraim Perko in the lead: the popular fiddler Gypsy first plucked the tune quietly on the strings of his fiddle, and little by little the entire orchestra joined in until they broke out in a thunderous march full of joie de vivre:
Just follow me to the nuthouse, please
â¦
The flaneurs hummed it on their paths about town. The promenade pranced to its rhythm. Czernopol was in a champagne mood.
Only here and there were fisticuffs observed. Herr Alexianu knocked a Jewish lawyer to the ground because the man had inadvertently stepped on his feet in the confusing shuffle of the promenade. The leader of the Tescovina-German fraternity Germania struck a cadet of the officer's school and was locked up for two days. And Solly Brill received a resounding slap when he greeted Dr. Salzmann in the corridor of the Institut d'Ãducation with the words “Greetings, O brave cuckold.” He had not understood the meaning of the word and thought it sounded chivalrous, in the style of Professor Feuer.
During this time old PaÅcanu died.
Herr Tarangolian never spoke otherwise about his death than as an important signal, a beacon.
“Explain such an end, if you can,” he said. “Gather up all the possible reasons, place the circumstances in a cogent chain of causality, and you still won't be able to exclude an element of the demonic. No matter what people claimed to know after the fact, no matter what explanation they put forwardâthe failure of this venture or that, the catastrophe with Tildy, the attempted diamond swindle, how one thing led to another to exacerbate the mistrust that was already smoldering, and, finally, clear signals of a bad endâthat's all wisdom after the fact. No, no: we must look elsewhere for the true cause of PaÅcanu's ruin. Because ultimately the catastrophe did not affect him alone. Even if we can find sufficient cause in his own personâand that's not hard to doâit still falls far short of explaining the misfortune into which he dragged others. Believe me, we all think too rationally. The death of SÄndrel PaÅcanu was a
sign
⦔
And, indeed, other ominous things occurred in those days which had nothing directly to do with PaÅcanu's death. An ill star hung over Czernopol. We couldn't help but think of articles we had read about the holy hermits of India whose presence protects a land from floods and crop failures, pestilence and rapacious beastsâplagues that soon return when the sainted person leaves. Today, as the story of Tildy has become the myth of our childhood, it seems to me as if we had known back then whose beneficent being it was that had been taken from the city of Czernopol.
The day they arrested Bubi Brill was a Saturday. On Sunday Czernopol was seething with rumors. On Monday morning old PaÅcanu was called in for a hearing
Monday in Czernopol was market day. The peasant carts began trickling into town while it was still dark. In the pale dawn the markets filled up with seasonal vendors and booth operators setting up their stands; the large vegetable market at Theater Square, near the synagogue, a funfair at the Turkish Fountain, and a flea market behind the provincial government offices all swelled with teeming life. Soon the cardsharps had coaxed the first farmers to try their luck at three-card monte, which they played by manipulating three acesâtwo black and one redâwith bewildering dexterity, by the festering light of sunflower-oil lanterns. After plucking the farmers of a few quick leos, they raced off at the first sign of a policeman. By the time the day arrived, the trading was in full swing. Housewives, followed by their servant girls in colorful peasant dress, haggled with farmwives over vegetables and fowl. Above the flea market, the pungent smell of untanned sheepskins lingered like a poisonous cloud. Ancient horn-phonographs squawked out the disembodied voices of Caruso and Lilli Lehmann. Spectacularly ragged figures stood beside old scraps of newspapers strewn with crooked nails and rusty screws, waiting to make a sale. At the fair by the Turkish Fountain, barrel organs droned away, swings arced back and forth, and the carousels went round and round. Older farmer couples and soldiers on leave with their brides had themselves photographed against a picturesque cutout of a well, their hands awkwardly clasped together, stiff as wax statues. Gendarmes with fixed bayonets patrolled the lanes between the stands, while pickpockets worked themselves into a sweat behind their backs.
While old man PaÅcanu was being questioned on the third floor of the courthouse, and the state prosecutorâa young, ambitious gentleman freshly transferred from the provincial capital, eager to earn his spurs and anxious to worm out a confession with whatever display of lawyerly histrionics it might takeâwas taking pains not to allow his opponent to respond with anything that was clearly innocuous ⦠while this was happening, something unusual occurred: a crowd began to gather on the street and kept growing bigger and bigger. The vast majority consisted of peasants, coachmen from the country, raftsmen, grain dealers, all of whom crowded outside the bombastically severe façade of the courthouse and looked up at the dusty windows in silence or muted conversation: the countryside had come to witness either the downfall or the triumphant vindication of its great son ⦠No, not his vindication, not his resurrection in the glory of innocenceâit was his downfall that they wanted to see. The rabble of Czernopol mixed among the country folk, spreading their coarse jests and uncouth jokes. Peasants hunched over from hard work, with shoulder-length matted hair, shriveled by the wind and tanned by the heat of the sun like an old goat ham, with skin as dry as worn-out Gypsy fiddles, listened in earnest amazement to the tales being spun about the heroic feats and dastardly deeds of the man who had at last come to be judged inside that buildingâthe man whose name they didn't even know, but whose magical powers had brought them there: a great man, a son of the mountains and forests, a son of the earth like themselves, born in the high bracken among the firs, a man whose countless adventures had brought him power and splendor and untold richesâwhole lands had been in his possessionâbut whom the devil, with whom he had been in league, had discarded, and who was now on his way to the place of judgment. Would they hang him ⦠? Hang him? Outside the city they were already building a platform, first to impale him and then to saw him into quarters and show his limbs to the populace: those arms and hands that had raked in the gold: Jewish thalers and widows' bread money intended for feeding their hungry orphans ⦠The rabble of Czernopol said all this and moreâeven as they cleaned out the peasant women of whatever they had in their meager belt pouches.
