The Madonna on the Moon (58 page)

He picked up the photo of himself with the champagne bottle, took his lighter, and set it on fire. We didn’t try to stop him. Black ash drifted through the Presidential Suite and settled
onto the carpet like black snow in which Stephanescu’s shoes left tracks on their way from his chair to the bar. He opened a cabinet door.

“But I’ll give you one more chance, your last chance to beat me. I bet fifteen hundred dollars you won’t take advantage of it.” Stephanescu took a pistol from the cabinet
and put it down on the table. “Go ahead. You can kill me. But you won’t. You’re too weak. What’s your morality worth? I’ll tell you. You can’t even kill a devil.
Shoot, Hofmann! Shoot me. But I say you can’t do it. You’re like your father. He could bring filthy pictures to an old priest, but that’s as far as his courage went. You’re
just like him.”

“I was wrong,” said Fritz quietly. “I thought it would be a pleasure to experience your downfall. But it isn’t.” Then Fritz spoke in a clear voice: “Yes,
I’m like my father. I’m bringing filthy pictures to an old man, too.” He opened his camera bag and took out a brown envelope. “For you, Herr Doctor, a memento of last night.
And greetings from Angelique, Angie, and Angela. Sorry about your portrait on the cover of
Time
magazine—it’s not going to happen. You’ll have to be satisfied with the
Voice of Truth,
page one of tomorrow’s edition.”

As the door to the Presidential Suite closed behind us, Stefan Stephanescu ripped open the envelope and held a black-and-white photograph in his hand. He saw himself. Naked. Then he started
throwing up and couldn’t stop.

O
ut in the streets new skirmishes were erupting. To judge from the rifle fire and detonations from the direction of the university library, they were
more serious than they’d been in the last few days. Roaring tanks made the asphalt shake as they rolled south past the Athenee Palace. Sharpshooters were holed up on the rooftops, and no one
had any idea who they were aiming at. Although Studio Four had broadcast a video of the execution of the head of state and his wife, there was no assurance that the tape was not a fake. The fear
that the Conducator and his henchmen could reemerge from the shadows still hung in the air, despite scenes of rejoicing and fraternal reconciliation. And the dictator’s most loyal minions,
who had to fear that his downfall would suck them into its vortex and take them down as well, were still counting on the power of their weapons to turn back the tide of history. The revolution was
not yet certain of its victory.

Dozens of taxi drivers in their rattletrap Dacias were waiting in front of the Athenee Palace, but no one wanted to be chauffeured through the city in these hours of uncertainty. I approached a
few drivers, but when I said we were going to Titan II, they all shook their heads and demurred. The fifth or sixth one I asked said he would rather drive through the cross fire than into the
quarter where the Blacks lived.

Fritz Hofmann was just about to solve the transportation problem with a generous contribution when three jeeps suddenly roared up and squealed to a stop in front of the hotel. A dozen men with
submachine guns jumped out and pulled black ski masks over their heads. Some of them secured the entrance while the others stormed into the Palace. As a first brief burst of firing rattled in the
lobby, the taxi driver cried, “Hop in!” Then he put the pedal to the floor and brought Fritz and me to within a quarter mile of where the Gypsies lived.

As I entered that other world on the outskirts of the capital, I thought the settlement was the saddest place I had ever seen, an impression that I would revise by the following day. The houses
the Conducator had once promised our Gypsy compatriots turned out to be dreary shells, high-rise buildings without heat or electricity that looked like stacked-up, burned-out caves. They had no
doors, and the windows were dead black eyes from which all one saw was the dead eyes in the dirty gray façades across the way. Garbage was piled in the unpaved streets. Only the freeze of
the last days of December kept foul bubbles from rising out of the sewers. Men with caps pulled down over their eyes warmed their hands on the street corners, huddled around oil drums whose fires
they fed with plastic trash that smoldered rather than burned. Children, half naked and barefoot, were jumping up and down on a tattered mattress. The acrid fumes made them cough from unhealthy
lungs. Fritz had to suppress his nausea at the sight of some teenagers using dull knives to cut hunks of meat from a cadaver that was once either a horse or a cow—it was impossible to tell
which.

When the arrival of us
gaje
was noticed, it stirred up half the neighborhood. The children ran up, frolicking and laughing. Fritz was their main object of interest, not me. They yelled,
“Photo! Photo! America! America!” and Fritz made the mistake of fishing a pack of gum out of his jacket pocket. In an instant there was a horde of kids around him, its size doubling
every few seconds. The upshot was that the ones who got no “gummas” cried bitter tears. Their initial joy turned into a wild, howling clamor, supplemented by their mothers yelling rude
insults from the windows. The men had to knock some heads together to get the children to back off enough so we could ask where the Gypsy Dimitru Carolea Gabor lived.

At first the men just shrugged, but then someone asked, “You looking for Papa Dimi?” and Fritz and I were overwhelmed with directions and explanations and people pointing in all
directions.

Finally a certain Jozsef offered to show us the way. His boast was that Dimitru’s cousin Salman was a half brother of his cousin Carol Costea Gabor. Fifteen minutes later we were standing
with our guide before a half-demolished building. Without his help we never would have found it in that desolate sea of neglect.

Jozsef pointed to the tangle of wires hanging out of a bank of doorbells that didn’t work for lack of electricity. “Dimi and his fat white wife live at the very top.” Then he
asked Fritz for another cigarette. With the words “Be careful, he’s not right in the head,” he twirled his finger next to his temple and left us.

At our repeated knocking, Antonia finally opened the door. She rubbed her eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled. “Pavel!” She called at the top of her voice, “Dimi! Dimi!
He’s here! Pavel is here!” Then she pressed me to her considerable bosom and almost suffocated me.

Fritz and I entered the spotlessly clean apartment. Buba greeted us with a quick peck on the cheek, turned on the bottled-gas stove, and put up water for coffee. Her lips were pale, and she
looked exhausted.

Only then did I spy the Gypsy. Dimitru was sitting in a corner and rose painfully, leaning on a cane. I wasn’t sure this old man was indeed Dimitru Carolea Gabor, and to my surprise I
noticed he had been sitting on a battered white crate that looked like a child’s coffin. Dimitru was wearing the same black suit he had worn decades ago on special occasions in Baia Luna. It
used to lend him a great deal of dignity, but now he seemed lost inside it. I was horrified at Dimitru’s diminution. I hardly recognized him. Looking into the eyes of this fragile old man, I
could find none of the sly intelligence that had once made Dimitru so unique. But it was he. His voice was unchanged.

“You’re late, my boy.”

Then he turned around and shuffled back, the cuffs of his oversize pants dragging along the floor, and sat down on his crate again.

“He doesn’t talk much anymore,” Antonia whispered, “but he hears everything.”

Buba put coffee cups on the table. Her hand trembled as she poured, and she said quietly, “We must never repeat what we did last night, Pavel. Never, ever again.”

As though it had taken these words to make me realize it, I suddenly felt how much the encounter with Stephanescu had exhausted all my strength and left me burned out. Fritz, too, was suddenly
overcome by oppressive weariness and could hardly keep sitting upright.

“I’m done in,” he groaned and crossed his arms on the edge of the table. Just as he lowered his leaden head onto them, a crystal-clear voice cut into our unfathomed weariness
of soul.

“Whoever compels the demon to show his face is in great danger. For the sight of the demon makes a person empty. It sucks a person out, and once he is hollow, the demon enters him. Whoever
sees the demon becomes a different person.”

Buba was trembling all over and cried out, “You’re scaring me, Uncle Dimi!”

“We’re all scared, Buba,” Dimitru continued, “because we destroyed something. Today we destroyed a person. It doesn’t matter if he deserved what he got or not.
Judge not, that ye be not judged. But we did. You, Buba, you, Pavel, and me. I have sinned. I as chief justice. I pronounced his sentence long, long ago. But I had to, and I would do it again, even
if it cost me my peace of mind in all eternity.”

“What are you saying, Dimitru,” I pleaded with the old man. “I don’t understand! Are you talking about Stefan Stephanescu? Yes, we destroyed him. We did him in and it was
terrible. But I would do it again. I had to! The man was unbearable! What else could we have done? But what about you? What kind of sentence did you pronounce? I don’t get it,
Dimitru.”

Without answering, the old Gypsy in his corner continued, “The demon is stupid. Very stupid. But it’s evil. Very, very evil. That’s why it seeks out the clever ones. It only
shows itself to them. It only gains power when a smart person carries it. And then the smart ones become stupid without noticing, because they mistake the power of the demon for their own power.
Then they feel invincible, and they smile. Some people shiver at the sight of that smile, the people who carry an angel within them. They’re the only ones who can . . .”

At that moment something strange happened. Fritz Hofmann wiped a tear from his cheek, stood up, and asked Dimitru if he would permit Fritz to sit next to him. When Dimitru answered, “But
of course,
permanente,
anytime,” everyone in the room had the impression that it had gotten a bit brighter.

Fritz knelt down in front of Dimitru and said, “I don’t believe in angels. And I don’t shiver at people like Stephanescu, I burn with fury. But Dimitru, please tell me, can one
kill the demon?”

“Who are you? I know you from somewhere.”

“I’m Fritz Hofmann, born in Baia Luna.”

Dimitru looked at him. “That’s right. It’s you, Fritz, the know-it-all. Oh yes, you’re a sly fox, even as a boy you were. But you can’t kill a demon, Fritz. No one
can. Not even the risen Christ sitting at the right hand of the Father. There’s only one way to make the demon disappear forever. Only one.”

By now Buba, Antonia, and I had all gathered in a half circle around Dimitru, too.

“Do you know what it is?” I asked.

“Yes, I know about it. But I never took that path. You can only kill the demon by redeeming it. First you have to force it to reveal its face. But if you are hollow within, the demon slips
into you. The demon is only redeemed when it sees an angel. As you should know, my dears, an angel has big white wings. He flies away with the demon.”

“Where does he fly to, Uncle Dimi? To heaven?”

“Easy, easy, dear Buba. The gates of heaven stay closed even to the most powerful angel if he has a demon in his luggage. First you have to go through purgatory. There the demon is
purified. When all the evil in him is burned away, then he himself becomes an angel. He is free. He can fly wherever he likes: up to heaven, to humanity, to the mountains, depending on what his
assignment is.”

“One more question, if you don’t mind, Uncle Dimi. How do you get an angel to enter into you?”

Everyone’s eyes were on Dimitru in tense and reverent anticipation. We saw a remarkable transformation. Dimitru not only seemed to grow larger, he really did get a little bigger as he said
in a strong voice, “I don’t know how to open the door to an angel. I always closed myself off from them. They scared me. They were too shimmery and disembodied. And that’s not
good for someone as frivolous as me. I was afraid of losing myself. And so I looked for another way, and I thought I had found it. The path to a being who carried all wisdom within, the knowledge
of heaven and knowledge of the world. It had to be made of light, like the angels, but also have a body. It could only be a redeemed being of both spirit and flesh and blood. And that could only be
the Mother of God. She was the person I assumed had ascended to heaven in bodily form. That was the point of my studies: where is she? I had to know, and I found out. Or so I thought. I was
convinced she was on the moon, in the Mare Serenitatis. That was my
error fatal.
I’m the one who understood nothing. Absolutely nothing. And the worst thing is that I dragged my one
true friend in life into the same error. Borislav Ilja Botev. Pavel, I had to ask your grandfather for forgiveness. I looked long and hard for Ilja, but I never found him. I’m asking you to
help me, Pavel. I’m asking you all to help me! I won’t be able to die otherwise.”

Dimitru said the Lord’s Prayer. When he finished, we all said “Amen.” Antonia stood up and got out the Bible that Pastor Johannes Baptiste had once given Ilja Botev.

“I’m not a smart woman,” she said, “but my dear husband Dimitru is not to blame. I’ve told him that hundreds of times, but he won’t listen to me. I told him
thousands of times it’s all the fault of Saint John the Apostle, the one who wrote the Bible. He’s to blame because he went crazy in his old age. When he was young, he still had all his
wits about him and wrote in his Gospel that no one ascended into heaven except the Son of Man—not Mary, Jesus’s mother. Not her. And then John spent his whole life waiting for his Lord
Jesus Christ to return to earth after the Crucifixion to establish the kingdom of God. But Jesus didn’t come back, and that made John go crazy. Before he passed away, he had that revelation
and saw all that crazy stuff and the evil beasts spewing fire.” Antonia tapped the Bible. “I read all about it, it’s all in there. At the end of his days, the old evangelist
claims to have seen a woman on the moon, adorned with the sun and a crown of stars. First there’s no Assumption, then all of a sudden there is one after all. Now you see it, now you
don’t. That’s what drove my poor Dimi so crazy.”