The Madonna on the Moon (26 page)

In the final part of the diary, Angela Barbulescu had written resolutions in a shaky hand, resolutions that revealed more of a wish than a real resolve to stop drinking. Although undated, they
documented the steady downfall of an alcoholic who had no support. From time to time there were moments of clarity. Angela Barbulescu very consciously witnessed the process of her self-destruction
without being able to muster the strength to resist it. She knew very well that she was a bad teacher with just enough energy to assign her pupils endless pages to copy. And she also knew that they
were more contemptuous than fearful of her. When I read my own name and Fritz Hofmann’s in the diary it became painfully clear to me that it had by no means escaped the teacher’s notice
that Fritz and I were putting down absurdly high solutions to arithmetic problems. She had even found out that Fritz rewrote the stupid party poems to suit himself.
Fritz can be so nasty. Like
father, like son, I suppose. But he has a mind of his own. And a poetic imagination. I hope he doesn’t turn out like his father, that . . .
I couldn’t make out the final word, but
I knew enough about the photographer Heinrich Hofmann to make it superfluous.

I paged forward. While I searched for Angela Barbulescu’s very last entry, I knew exactly when she had written it: on the morning of my grandfather’s fifty-fifth birthday, while he
and Dimitru were listening for the Sputnik. I had walked Dimitru home through the fog and through her window had seen her sitting at the kitchen table and writing.

It was a farewell letter, clean and clearly printed. It began with a stiff salutation, like an impersonal letter from some government office:

As I shuddered in horror at the realization that my teacher had drawn the brown cross in her diary with blood, the door to the bedroom next to mine opened and I heard my mother
Kathalina’s steps. It must have been about six in the morning. The night was over, although for me the night had just begun. With my not quite sixteen years I didn’t want to imagine
what they had done to Angela in a doctor’s clinic in the capital. I only knew that Dr. Stefan Stephanescu had seen to it that his child in the belly of Angela Maria Barbulescu never saw the
light of day. The same must not be allowed to happen to the knowledge of the deed.

With my reading of the green notebook, the days of my childhood were over. My teacher was a different person than the one I thought I knew. And this knowledge entailed an obligation.

Send this man straight to hell! Exterminate him!

“Yes,” I said, “I will.”

K
athalina clapped her hands. “Gentlemen, the night is over.” Ilja and Dimitru the Gypsy lay on the tile floor next to the stove. Slowly they
regained consciousness and rubbed the sleep out of their eyes. Without complaint they obeyed Kathalina’s order to apply the water from the tap in the backyard to their faces, something
Dimitru only made a symbolic attempt at. Refreshed by the icy water, Ilja immediately remembered he had indulged in alcoholic beverages the night before. He was pleased to discover that he had
neither a headache nor palpitations, while Dimitru reminded him with a raised forefinger: “Lesson One: Reading and Writing. Part One: The Alphabet.”

In the weeks of Grandfather’s reading lessons, I learned that although not always the most patient of teachers, Dimitru was a good one. Blessed with a wealth of ideas, he wrote his own
practice texts for their daily lessons. He began with all the words he could think of that had only two, three, and then four letters. Then he proceeded to compound words and short proverbs, until
finally Grandfather was able to read the simple poems Dimitru composed about the beauty of women and the joys of sex. At first he read haltingly, following the letters with his finger, but with
growing confidence. Soon Dimitru was bringing slim edifying tracts on the lives of the saints from the library as well as an illustrated children’s Bible.

Contrary to all expectations, the fifty-five-year-old Ilja was learning at a breathtaking pace—learning to read but not to write. Grandfather wasn’t able to get more than two legible
words down on paper without a great deal of trouble. However, after only four weeks of lessons, he was already asking for a “real book.”

“What did you have in mind?” asked the delighted Dimitru, who was hell-bent on fulfilling Ilja’s wish from the rich holdings of his library.

“I’m thinking of the Old and the New Testament. I only know the Bible from the words of the pastor, and now I’m eager to study the Holy Scripture for myself.”

“Wonderful, wonderful! You’re on the right path,” Dimitru rejoiced, then stopped short and drummed his fingers on the table as he always did when in a state of nervous
excitement. “I know the Bible, too; I mean, I think I know it. But I’m like you, in church every Sunday (except when my reliquary business forces me to be on the road), and believe me:
every reading of the Scripture, every Gospel, and every sermon of Papa Baptiste still resounds in my ears as if he were right up there in the pulpit this very minute. But to my shame, I must admit
that what with all my studying, I never read the Holy Scripture. Why did I need to? I already knew every word of the Lord from the Sermon on the Mount to the Lord’s Prayer to his last words
on the cross when he finds out his Father has forsaken him. I also know when and where Jesus performed what miracle. He multiplied the loaves, healed poor Lazarus, restored sight to the blind. At
his word, demons fled and adulteresses were spared from stoning. Not to mention that he changed water into the finest wine. As for the Old Testament, I can recite the Ten Commandments backward and
reel off the descendants of Adam by heart from Abraham and Isaac and wise King Solomon right down to what’s-his-name. But only if you insist on it, my friend.”

“Some other time.” Grandfather waved his hand. “But could you get me a real Bible from the library? Only on loan, of course.”

Dimitru sighed. “Ilja, don’t be angry. I have to confess there aren’t any Bibles in the library. There was one, back when I began my career as librarian. In the winter when
your dear wife Agneta and my father Laszlo of blessed memory died, I took the Bible to my people, even though Papa Baptiste had forbidden it. And what did those Gypsies do? They used the paper as
tinder in their stoves. The Lord God will forgive them as he does people who know not what they do.”

“I see you gentlemen have gotten back to fundamentals,” said my mother, emerging from the kitchen.

“Just imagine, Kathalina, among the thousand books in Dimitru’s library there’s not a single Bible.”

“Oh, well, the main thing is you have one yourself now that you can read.”

“What do you mean, I have one myself . . . ?”

“I mean the book in your old cigar box. You’re really getting forgetful in your old age.”

Johannes Baptiste’s birthday present! Wrapped in packing paper. When the priest handed him the package on his birthday, Grandfather could feel through the wrapping that it was a book. Now
he went to fetch the cigar box and crowed, “The Holy Scripture, Dimitru! What a coincidence!”

“It’s no coincidence. Heaven is sending us a sign.”

Grandfather decided to wait a few days before beginning the Bible. He wanted to start with the New Testament, and what could be a more appropriate day for that than the imminent Christmas Eve?
Joy at the birth of Baby Jesus was overshadowed by the memory of Joseph’s fruitless search for an inn for Mary, who was great with child. In his anger at the village for refusing shelter to
the tribe of Gypsies, Baptiste had removed the Virgin of Eternal Consolation from the parish church and had her taken to a new chapel on the Mondberg. Amid cold and snow the faithful toiled up the
mountain, cursing their own sinfulness and pledging repentance and improvement until Christmas came around again. And had done so for twenty-one years. Last year, Christmas 1956, I had been at the
head of the procession and realized for the first time that the pilgrimage against hard-heartedness was no Sunday stroll in the park. Now the twenty-second penitential procession was around the
corner.

But Pater Johannes was dead, his body gone without a trace. It hadn’t been quite two months since we found the butchered priest in the rectory and the tooth of forgetfulness was already
gnawing on many a memory in Baia Luna. The hot-blooded pledges to remain true to the priest’s memory were cooling off. In the tavern I was hearing the first tentative mutterings that a
six-hour procession up to the Mondberg and back didn’t make much sense nowadays. Others stressed their desire to submit to the hardships of the penitential act again this year but hinted they
might have to look after an aged father or ailing mother-in-law on Christmas Eve.

In order to ward off the gradual deterioration of the village’s sense of community, Hermann Schuster, Istvan Kallay, and Trojan Petrov called an assembly of all men and women in the
village for the fourth Sunday in Advent. It turned out to be the most pitiful assembly Grandfather could ever recall. Among the seven men who showed up were five Saxons and the initiators of the
meeting, Kallay and Petrov. After less than half an hour they had agreed on three resolutions. First, the procession would take place under any circumstances, however small the flock of pilgrims.
Second, everyone present pledged to convince at least two other inhabitants of Baia Luna of the necessity of the penitential pilgrimage. Third—fearing that squabbling about the pros and cons
of the procession would grow even greater in years to come—they decided to bring the Virgin of Eternal Consolation back from the Mondberg and reinstall her in the parish church where she had
stood before the advent of Johannes Baptiste. When the sacristan Julius Knaup joined the assembly late and opined that once the Madonna was back in the church the Eternal Flame would certainly once
again shine in Baia Luna, the assembly was dismissed.

As we gathered shortly before five on the morning of December 24 under a cold, starry sky, Hermann Schuster counted just two dozen Madonna pilgrims. His disappointment was alleviated when a few
more willing pilgrims arrived on the village square during the next hour. They excused their tardiness by saying they had lost track of time since the clock in the church tower was no longer
striking. At some point during Advent the hands had stopped at twelve fifteen and—rusted and gnawed by the tooth of time—were never to move again.

We had overestimated our strength. Against the advice of our elders, Petre Petrov and I had urged everyone to make up for the late start by increasing our speed. Now it was midday, and we were
getting slower and slower. Despite his youth, the Carpati-smoker Petre Petrov was stopping to catch his breath every few steps, and Hermann Schuster Junior was complaining about a stitch in his
side that was so bad every stride was torture. He fell farther and farther back. When he finally threw up, he was so weak that his father sent him back to the village. The fact that we
weren’t cold despite the low temperature was due to the strength of the sun blazing down from a steel-blue sky. Once we reached the tree line, however, the wind would begin whistling
mercilessly around our ears. We would reach that point in less than an hour. Another hour up a gentle slope would bring us to the Chapel of the Virgin of Eternal Consolation. It had been decided to
stay only long enough for a brief prayer. Then we would pack the statue of Mary in blankets and return to Baia Luna as quickly as possible. Once the sun set behind the mountains it would turn
bitterly cold.

Instead of one hour, it took us almost two to reach the tree line. Maybe it was because we were exhausted, possibly also because with each arduous step, the whole point of the pilgrimage was
seeping away. Our penitential enthusiasm was replaced by a dull lethargy, so that none of us younger ones at the head of the march screamed in terror. Where the last copper beech raised its black,
leafless branches into the ice-blue sky, Andreas Schuster nudged first Petre, then me. In silent horror Andreas stretched out his arm and pointed into the bare, wintry forest. Spellbound, the other
pilgrims also halted and looked around, dazed and gasping for breath, until everyone was looking in the same direction.