Full MoonCity (20 page)

I thought of Luciana and so many others like her, innocently vulnerable in the city, yet eager for money. In fact this murder had nothing to do with prostitutes, but my writerly brain was at work.

When I emerged from my bedroom relatively early, Max was through in the tiny kitchen drinking coffee boiled in a steel pot on a gas ring. His own bedroom door stood open. No evidence of any prostitute.

“Has she gone already?”

“I changed my mind. The girls ask less after midnight when they get worried they won’t earn, but I couldn’t be bothered to wait.”
If that was true-if he hadn’t just wanted to have an effect upon me
. “So what of the second atrocity?”

“Atrocities involve lots of people, not just one.”

“Two now. Could be a cumulative atrocity? How many does it take? Actually, a single act of brutality qualifies as an atrocity.”

I ignored this casuistry, even if he was right.

Dogs howled and yodeled, and a few moments later the building shuddered briefly.

“Minor earthquake, don’t worry. There’s glacial moraine under Bucharest. Some land moves horizontally, some vertically, some is mixed. That’s why it’s very expensive to build here… The
atrocity
,” he pressed me.

So I described the brutal scene, though I did not mention my image of paintings by Soutine.

Max took me for a walk around his neighbourhood, which was distinctly run-down, although parts were being poshed up by new money, seemingly at random. In the middle of a potholed back street, asphalt burned and bubbled blackly.

Max laughed. “Some builder needs hot tar for a job, so he set fire to it. Obviously the middle of the street is safer than the sides.” He laughed. “Romanians don’t think of consequences. They’ll run you over in the street because they don’t think of prison as the result. I’m not kidding. They will not stop. Oops,” and he caught my arm and dragged me well to one side because a battered pick-up truck was indeed heading our way, and to avoid the fire, the driver mounted the pavement. Max had hurt my arm with his grip, though for a perfectly good reason, so I tried not to show pain.

We must have seen a score of skinny, roaming dogs already, variously marked, although all of the same general build.

“Ha,” said Max. “That crime scene reminds me of a joke. Which I’ve already
used
, by the way,” he emphasized. “A forgetful man visits a shortsighted gypsy fortune-teller. She looks at his palm and exclaims, ‘I see men with knives coming for you-and blood!’ He starts sweating with fear. She examines his palm even more closely and finally says, ‘You forgot to take off your pigskin glove.’ ”

“Ha-ha,” I said. A perverse urge tempted me to add: “I’m glad you already used it.”

“As for drivers and future consequences,” he went on, as though I’d said nothing at all, “Romanian people choose to be suspended in eternity. It’s still difficult for them to get over the dictatorship. Safer not to take responsibility.”

“‘Suspended in eternity’ is quite a phrase. I suppose you’ll be using that, too.”

He nodded, appeased or otherwise I couldn’t decide. Time was melting again, like the runny hot asphalt. Already it was afternoon. So Max led me circuitously to a café he favoured, for some beer.

Halfway through the second can of Ursus, Adriana phoned me.

“Are you free this afternoon?” I asked her. “What are we doing this afternoon?” I asked Max almost simultaneously.

“I need to buy a camera card,” was Max’s reply. “You can come or not.”

I was, of course, eager for Adriana to visit me privately on my own, although not entirely for the obvious reason of possible sex. Max out of the way would suit me very well, doubly so.

Max had already buzzed off, and I didn’t know when he’d be back. Given the vagaries of Bucharest, maybe hours as yet.

I kissed Adriana enthusiastically. “Lovely to see you! Look, do you think we could pop over the road for a few minutes? I’m very curious about the old woman in that cottage. If it’s halfway possible, I’m dying to see inside and see her close to. Could we pretend that I want to buy some eggs?”

“I suppose so. She might sell some eggs.”

“Oh, and don’t tell Max, will you not?”

Adriana grinned. “How mysterious you crime writers are. Men of mystery are exciting.”

The crone’s door was intricately carved, and worn, as though it preceded the city or had been transported here from a farm in the country, perhaps one of the tens of thousands bulldozed under Ceaus?escu for a dam or for socialist rationalisation.

The owner’s face was rutted, like carved and varnished wood itself, though her brown eyes were alert. Blackness scarfed her and draped her. After Adriana explained in Romanian, the woman uttered a brief reply or a cackle.

“Tell her,” I suggested, “that I’m a writer and, in addition to eggs, I’m very interested in her life here surrounded by modern city. I’ll pay her for her time, twenty dollars, no make that thirty.”

“Twenty,” said Adriana, and complied.

Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, the crone-Madame Florescu now, to be polite-admitted us into a gloomy room and stuck out a hand dark with dirt or the resin of age, into which I counted four five-dollar bills, which she sniffed before promptly disappearing them within her neckline as though she was some much younger entertainer who used her cleavage for tips.

I took in the items of rustic home-made furniture, the blackened pots and pans and jars of herbs and other stuff. Rather a lot of green candles stood around in old brass candlesticks, understandable if Madame Florescu had no mains power, as seemed likely. A faint sickly odour emanated from vases of marigolds and ox-eyed daisies which were red rather than white, and, strangely, from lilies-of-the-valley, which surely should be past their season, unless the Romanian variety was different or else the crone had patronised a florist’s shop for blooms flown from far away.

Coincidentally, Adriana was translating, “A present from my son,” when she herself really noticed those flowers and gasped and crossed herself.

“My son visits me once a week of an evening after he finishes working hard, a good boy,” Adriana continued dutifully interpreting despite whatever had shocked her.

“You would like him. He also can tell you remarkable things-in your own English. He’s clever.” And can do with some dollars himself, I thought. “You sleep only over the street. If you see a red Dacia outside here, probably on Thursday, come and knock. A red Dacia which says taxi, but my son is more than taxi-driver.”

Thursday was the day after next. If only Max would leave me alone that evening.

Mrs. Florescu discoursed about geese and her water butt and her man who had been killed by the Securitate. Apparently her man was a black marketeer. After a reasonable time she dried up and looked expectant. My twenty dollars had run out as though all the while a taxi metre had been running in her head. I said that I’d love to hear more from herself and her son on Thursday. I was becoming hungry for Adriana before Max would return. Besides, rather than hearing more domestic details, I wanted to know what had visibly shocked Adriana.

I departed with three eggs clutched in my hand. Once we had recrossed the road, yet another dog wandered close. My body hiding what I was doing, in case Madame Florescu was looking out, I dropped the eggs to make raw omelette. The pooch sidled swiftly towards this in a flinching manner, sniffed, then lapped, crunchy eggshells included.

“Oh, Paul! Butterfingers. Isn’t that what you say?”

Of course I didn’t want Max to have a clue as to what I’d been up to, by leaving eggs in his fridge.

“The dog’s need is greater than mine,” I assured her. “To tell the truth, I don’t like eggs much in any form.”

***

“Yes, it was those flowers,” Adriana confirmed once we were in the flat. “Those ones are used in the countryside to attract werewolves. Because of the smell.”

“To
attract
werewolves?”

“Maybe to control, or to cause. My own mother warned me never to wear the, um, the little white bells.”

I felt quite pleased with myself.

I felt even more pleased when Adriana amiably consented to test my double bed. The bench press was useful to dump our clothes on. Afterwards, she fell asleep, and looked very innocent, as though orgasm had drained away all cares.

The next day Max and I visited his Romanian publisher at home for lunch, by taxi. Only one of my books was published locally as yet-which was enough for me to be famous on the island-and I nursed hopes for more translations. Cezar, yet another displaced ancient Roman, was jolly and hospitable with beer, coffee, nuts, and nibbles. We sat, Romanian style, in a dingy courtyard, or patio-alley, running from front to back of his house. Inside, the house’s bare floorboards were dirty and the place was full of tat, as I found when I visited the toilet.

A coil of incense set on bricks burned under the plastic patio table. Sometimes the air smelled of patchouli, sometimes of sewage. A guard dog was on a long chain secured to the inside of its kennel. A white cat with a fluffy tail ambled around. A sizeable though twisted tree arose through the concrete of the patio without any evidence of how rain could possibly reach its roots; maybe those had broken through to the sewer for sustenance.

Apparently the crime market was flooded; thus, a publisher had to be careful, but if I posted my best books to Cezar he would see. More time dissolved, until the ubiquitous Silviu turned up with his car. And the same camera as, presumably, I’d heard about from Max. Cezar duly admired the camera. Then Max handed Silviu a memory card in its little plastic box. Silviu proceeded to install the memory card and take photos of me and Max and Cezar. This made no sense to me at all. If Max resented lending, or rather, giving, the three hundred dollars to Silviu, why then present him with a memory card? Was that in exchange for today’s use of petrol? As lanky Silviu focused, he looked like a tall, thin photographic tripod. Or bi-pod, I suppose.

Shortly after we left, to drive seemingly aimlessly around the city, rain began to fall heavily. Mighty fountains pluming skyward in vast piazzas fought back against the downpour. We stopped at a café, then when the storm stopped and the sky cleared towards the end of the afternoon, Max said, “Show you something.” On foot we turned a few corners into a big boulevard, farther along which towered, as Max pointed out, the Intercontinental Hotel.

Spaced along the steaming pavement were prostitutes in miniskirts, who proved assertive. One delicious girl, who looked no more than fifteen, already wore the scar of a Cesarean above her bared navel pierced with a gold ring. She smooched right up to me and placed her hand on my groin, brazenly massaging, and jerking her head towards a dark, deserted arcade. Max stood eyeing me, to see how I would extricate myself, which I did by backing away while wagging a reproving finger, even though I confess I’d become excited.

As we returned to the car, I said, “There’s something
predatory
about them.”

“Predatory, yes,” agreed Max. “
Le mot juste
. They’re Gypsies, hoping to prey on foreign businessmen from the Intercontinental. To the Gypsies we’re just sheep to be fleeced. In fact, security on the hotel door could send out for better from his catalog.”

Soaked dogs were lapping water.

***

The murders featured on TV by now, although the set in the flat was crap, even if we could have understood. Max brought out a litre bottle of sweet, strong, seductive, almondy Disaronno, and put on a CD of a Bulgarian pop starlet, then we proceeded to get quite drunk. I realized there was a need to match Max glass for glass. At the same time I didn’t want a hangover, nor did I want to stay up half the night.

So when had Max been in Bulgaria? This led to anecdotes about bribing police and much else, a mixture of funny and disconcerting. Then we talked about personalities on the island, or rather Max did most of the talking since he’d previously known many of those present. Idly I wondered whether he had slept with Adriana the year before. Max’s recounting became almost a non-stop monologue, which can be intimidating. He was talking at me, rather than with me. At some point sandwiches manifested themselves out of bread, ham, and mustard in the fridge. Finally I managed to finish the last of the bottle. Fingers and toes crossed for the following evening!

Fortunately, on Thursday Max didn’t take me to experience more sleaze. Instead we went to tour Ceaus?escu’s palace, about which much could be said, but I shan’t. Wonderfully, Max
would
be absent in the evening. Of course I could accompany him, but I pleaded a queasy stomach and headache. All that Disaronno.

At seven thirty I looked and saw a red Dacia parked outside the cottage. So I sallied forth.

Mihail Florescu, the dutiful son, looked to be in his late fifties, in cheap checked shirt and trousers, grey-haired and with a beer gut. Muscular, though. He welcomed me with delight, as did his mother, who bustled to provide some cubes of cheese and peanuts, while Mihail urged on me a big glass of orange juice. A plastic bucket chair for me. This time I’d brought a notebook. An oil lamp had been lighting the room, but now Mrs. Florescu proceeded to light the green candles as well, which produced blue flames.

“How can we help you to write?” asked Mihail, beaming. He meant “as a writer.”

“Thank
you
for giving me your time,” I replied. “Please accept a little compensation.” Thirty dollars. I drank juice while he disappeared the money, then began, “I’m curious about those flowers, particularly the little white bells. I hear that in this country they are associated with werewolves.”

Mihail looked blank, so I said, “Excuse me,” then mimed a transformation, which must have been successful because he rattled away to his mother, and she to him.

“Yes,” he said, “to keep away such things. My mother, all the dogs frighten her. Last winter, dog killed chicken.”

My throat and tongue felt dry, so I emptied my glass, and realised that the orange juice must have been mixed with some strong spirit, maybe home-made, for all of a sudden I came over queer.