The Madonna on the Moon (50 page)

“Man, Ilja, what’s gotten into you? Since you’ve had this moon sickness you’ve been getting weirder by the day.” Hermann Schuster grabbed Grandfather by the collar
and was giving him a good shaking, trying to bring him back to reality, when he was brought up short by Grandfather asking, “Hermann, you were in the war. Tell me the truth: did you know that
the Germans killed all the Jews?”

The Saxon let Grandfather go. “Yes, Ilja, I knew it. But I didn’t want to believe it. I was young and at the front. What could I have done about it?”

“Probably nothing, but the pope in Rome could have. He should have cried out, Hermann. But he didn’t. And so he promulgated the dogma of the corporeal Assumption of the Mother of God
in 1950. You want to know why? Because his bad conscience about the Jews was torturing him. He left the Chosen People in the lurch during the Third Reich. Just like Johannes Baptiste used to say,
never in history did the Church ever lift a finger for the Jews, even though they had to bear the heavy burden of crucifying their fellow Jew Jesus so we could be redeemed. The pope wanted to do
Mary a favor with his dogma certifying that she had not returned to dust. By announcing her Assumption, Rome managed to save at least one Jew, if only posthumously.”

Hermann Schuster was speechless.

Grandfather continued undeterred: “Then things got complicated for the Vatican. It all started with Sputnik. When he promulgated the dogma, the pope couldn’t have known that one day
man would overcome gravity and land on the moon. If the dogma was true, then someone would eventually find Mary, the Russians or the Americans or whoever. But that was definitely not something the
Vatican wanted to happen. And so the clergy is putting all their efforts into the Madonna remaining undiscovered. The best thing would be if nobody ever again got the idea to look for her.
That’s why Wachenwerther announces that the dogma is not meant literally—so that anybody who keeps on searching will look like an idiot.”

After trying for two hours to follow what Ilja was saying, Hermann Schuster felt like his skull was going to explode. Weighed down by the sad certainty that the
morbus lunaticus
had
befuddled the brain of the formerly commonsensical tavern keeper, Hermann shuffled back to his Erika, while for the first time in his life Grandfather set about the difficult task of composing a
letter in his clumsy hand, addressed to the last man on earth who had the power to challenge the Fourth Power.

As I learned later, Grandfather asked his daughter, my aunt Antonia, to take needle and thread and carefully sew that document into the lining of his wool jacket—with triple stitches, just
in case.

It was the last day of July 1969, and Richard M. Nixon’s visit to the capital had been announced for August 1. That an American president was about to visit a Socialist country for the
first time just a few days after a successful landing on the moon was due to the influence of the Conducator, who was said by the poets to outshine even the sun. A parade from the airport to the
Palace of the Republic was planned with stops along the route for handshaking with the crowd. It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for Ilja.

Dimitru would have liked to accompany his friend but couldn’t. He lay in bed with a concussion, so shaken he even forgot to ask for morphine. Ilja explained his plan to the Gypsy in a few
words and kissed him farewell on the forehead. Dimitru nodded weakly and said only, “My friend, I’m with you. Be careful for both of us.”

“Are you out of your mind? Where are you going?” Kathalina shouted at her father-in-law when she saw him bringing the horse out of the barn.

“To America!” he called, not because that was his destination but because he mistrusted even his nearest and dearest when it came to this mission.

I didn’t even try to stop Grandfather from leaving. There was no point, and he was sure to show up again in a few days. But I was starting to realize that instead of protecting Grandfather
from his Madonna madness, I was letting him get deeper and deeper into trouble.

With Grandfather’s disappearance, Dimitru’s time in Baia Luna was also running out. At first he had wanted to await Ilja’s return in the library, but then he decided to leave
Baia Luna immediately. It was the day on which he cursed Antonius Wachenwerther and prayed to God that there really was a hell.

A few days after taking office, the new priest had set about putting things in order in his parish. First he had all Catholics in the community register and set up church records; Johannes
Baptiste had never kept any. Then he set his sights on the parish library. At Wachenwerther’s instructions Dimitru, who had retired to his red chaise longue, had to remove that piece of
furniture to the basement and surrender the key to the library. The priest spent one day in there alone, sorting through everything. He had all the books he deemed inappropriate for the
parishioners stacked up in the laundry room where, in the course of the coming years, the musty smell of moldering paper would gradually drive out the scent of roses.

Then he inspected the cemetery. With the comment that the half-empty and useless hole next to the grave of Fernanda Klein was a testimony to the neglect of the churchyard, he had it filled in.
Based on the names on the crosses, he then had the sacristan Julius Knaup give him an introduction to the history of the families of Baia Luna. The priest halted before a grave covered with
elaborate decorations and cast a skeptical eye on the pile of plastic flowers that engulfed its cross.

“Who’s buried here?”

“Laszlo Gabor, the father of that unspeakable Gypsy from the library. He died in 1935 under mysterious circumstances on the banks of the Tirnava right where a mother and daughter from our
village were in the middle of the icy stream crying for help. And if I may be permitted to say so, Gabor died unbaptized.”

In his militant determination to defend the Catholic faith against the forces of disintegration, the priest had the mortal remains of Laszlo Gabor exhumed and his bones stacked in a wooden
crate.

Dimitru didn’t utter a sound as the sacristan delivered his father’s bones to him with the remark that there was still room on the slope above the cemetery wall next to
Barbulescu.

Within the hour, Dimitru had loaded a covered wagon with the wooden crate and his other possessions and hitched up his horse. He drove over to our house to say good-bye.

“Kathalina and Pavel, my dears, thank you for everything.”

Mother turned away in tears.

“Where are you going, Dimi?” asked Antonia, who had heaved herself out of bed.

“I’m going to join my father. But first I’m going to look for your father, my friend Ilja, and keep looking until I find him.”

“Then I’m going with you. That is, if it’s all right with you to have such a large woman along.”

“It’s fine with me, Antonia.”

“Take this as a keepsake.” Kathalina handed Dimitru the Bible the priest Johannes Baptiste had given Grandfather on his fifty-fifth birthday. “I hope Ilja gets some sense in
his head and comes back soon. He won’t miss the Bible, and if he does, at least he’ll know the word of God is in good hands.”

“Thank you for this gift. I’m accepting it, Kathalina, but you understand that I won’t read it again until I’ve found Ilja.”

I decided to wait a few more days for Grandfather and then begin looking for him myself. I gave Dimitru a farewell embrace and asked him to please send me a message if he heard any news about
the whereabouts of his niece Buba.

His only reply was “Remember the foolish virgins, Pavel. When they got to the wedding, the oil in their lamps was all burned up.” Then he squeezed onto the box next to Antonia and
drove his wagon with the wooden crate over the Tirnava bridge for the last time in his life.

It remains to be mentioned that the catastrophic floods of the following year carried away more than the iron bridge. When the river overran its banks, the clay-brick dwellings of the Gypsies
dissolved in the floodwaters. The homeless Gabor clan thereupon moved with their horses and wagons to the outskirts of Apoldasch, where the men were recruited as assistants to the workers
constructing a dam on the upper reaches of the Tirnava. From then on, a giant power plant controlled the waters of the river in the spring and provided the Kronauburg District, including Baia Luna,
with round-the-clock current until the time when the great shortages began, money and materials dried up, and the country went dark. But by that time, in Baia Luna, there was nothing left to remind
people that Gypsies had once lived there.

When Grandfather had not returned to Baia Luna two weeks after his departure for America (of course, no one believed that was where he was going), I set off to find him. I guessed that Ilja had
taken the train from Kronauburg to the capital to be at the state visit of Richard M. Nixon after leaving his wagon in the care of the owner of the Pofta Buna. But the latter denied knowing
anything about an Ilja Botev from Baia Luna.

I weighed the possibilities: an accident, a crime, or the likelihood that he had suffered an epileptic attack and been found lying in a ditch somewhere along the road. I paid a visit to every
hospital and police station between Kronauburg and the capital and finally ended up in the central Securitate office on the Calea Rahovei. There they listened to my story, but in that labyrinth of
secrecy, no information about the whereabouts of my grandfather was forthcoming. I drove home, fervently hoping that Ilja had returned to Baia Luna in the meantime.

He had not.

T
o be sure of getting a good place, Ilja Botev was already on the Boulevard of Victory on the afternoon of July 31, 1969, leaning against one of the
police barriers. The American president and the Conducator would surely pass by here on the next day. The colorful forest of flags already lining the streets promised a fancy parade.

Two men in black leather jackets came up to Ilja and asked to see his papers.

“Don’t have them with me.”

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“Ilja Botev from Baia Luna. I’m waiting.”

“We can see that. Baia Luna? Where’s that?”

“Kronauburg District, Apoldasch Township.”

“You’re telling us you came all the way down from the mountains just to see the American president?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“Then what are you doing here without an ID?”

“None of your business, big shot!”

Quick as a flash, one of the men grabbed Ilja by the wrist and twisted his arm behind his back. His partner patted him down around his waist, from his crotch down his legs to his shoes, then his
shirt, belly, and back.

“Nothing. No weapons, no pamphlets. So what are you doing here?”

“That’s my own business.”

The security agent who was holding Ilja’s arm gave it a sharp jerk. The old man grimaced at the pain in his shoulder but gritted his teeth.

“I’m an old man,” groaned Ilja. “Why are you doing this?”

They didn’t answer. The security agents pushed him along and bundled him into the rear of a green car, then drove to the Calea Rahovei. In his entire sixty-seven years of life, Ilja Botev
had never before entered a building as huge as the headquarters of the Security Service. The men led him through side wings, corridors, and hallways and finally into a room with two chairs and a
battered metal table on which stood a black Bakelite telephone. Although it was summer, the interrogation room was as cold as a refrigerator. The security agents pulled off Ilja’s jacket and
pants and left the room, locking the door behind them.

Ilja’s entire body was shivering and his right shoulder hurt like the devil by the time a Securitate major entered the room. He was wearing a fur coat. He began questioning Ilja about the
sense and purpose of his long journey and after an hour was convinced that the prisoner was harmless. There were many crazy people in the country, but in all his interrogations, he had never met
another nut like this man who insisted he had come all the way from the mountains to the capital to ask President Nixon to send another shipload of chewing gum to Transmontania.

The major handed Ilja his pants and helped him into his jacket. Then he felt something. He tore out the lining of the woolen garment and removed a letter and a black photograph with a dozen
white dots. He read the letter, shook his head, and left the room.

After a while, he returned with his superior. Ilja Botev knew the man with the pudgy face who looked him fiercely in the eye.

Colonel Lupu Raducanu picked up Ilja’s letter. It was addressed to the first chairman of the State Council and began with the words “Most honored Comrade General Secretary, Titan and
Conducator, we need your help.” Lupu read the letter to the end and grinned. “Well, what do you know. Ilja Botev from Baia Luna. What are we going to do with you, Mr. Botev?”

Ilja said nothing.

“You have total confidence in our country, and you would like our head of state to have some rockets built? Our nation’s very own lunar landing program, financed by the American
president! Sounds good.”

Raducanu put a wool blanket over Ilja’s shoulders. “But you must be cold. I think your ideas have a future. We can certainly do something about this.”

Ilja’s eyes were shining confidently.

“I would think,” said Raducanu, “that the Conducator can take care of the Fourth Power. Who else, if not him?”

Ilja nodded.

“If I read this rightly, your client is a certain Jewess by the name of Mary who lives in the Sea of Serenity on the moon, surrounded by shining lights, as proved by the white dots on this
photograph.”

“Correct.”

“Do you know what I suggest, Mr. Botev? I’ll hang on to this letter and give it to the Conducator myself. That way, you don’t need to push your way forward through thousands of
people at the parade. The head of state will then confer with President Nixon about the matter. Agreed?”

Ilja nodded again. Raducanu put the letter and the photograph into his pocket, then picked up the telephone. Shortly thereafter, two men in plainclothes entered the room. Before Ilja had time to
grasp what Lupu Raducanu meant with the order “Bring him to Dr. Pauker,” the men had given him a shot.