The Madonna on the Moon (9 page)

And there was a reason for that.

T
here’s a saying in Transmontania: Poverty teaches you to pray, but even more to drink. The old people tell the story that during the severe
famine of 1907, shortly before Ilja was to start school, he fell into one of the vats of mash in which the village farmers ferment their rotten potato peelings. Luckily, the moonshiners had
discovered the boy at once and pulled him out of the slime. Nevertheless, Grandfather was poisoned by the undistilled spirits and suffered a delirium that lasted several hours. He suffered no
visible permanent harm, and the incident was soon forgotten. Only the pious and gossipy Kora Konstantin, his former schoolmate, was always making nasty remarks about how Ilja Botev had been a
complete washout at learning his letters and she didn’t see how someone like that could be an honest shopkeeper with no debts.

I had had enough experience behind the bar to see Kora Konstantin’s bitchiness for what it was. She was one of those women with a chronically empty household account and a half-dozen
squalling brats who used to get more whippings than bread from their father. That is, they did until Holy Week in 1956, when Grandfather vowed never to serve Raswan Konstantin another drop,
whereupon the lush called the whole village together and threatened to break Ilja’s neck and torch the shop of that whole Botev clan. But it never came to that.

When Kora returned home from confession on the day the Lord was crucified, her children stormed screaming out of the house. Raswan lay dead in the front hall. People say his fly was open, and
his hand still held a well-worn and detailed drawing that Kora threw into the stove on the spot. After she had straightened the clothes on the body of her unloved husband, she made known his death
by beginning to weep and wail. Since the police had to be notified in a case of unexpected demise, the young Plutonier Cartarescu was called over from Apoldasch. Although he was reputed to be
overly punctilious, he had no experience with corpses in front halls and ordered an autopsy in the Kronauburg hospital. A few days later the deceased returned to Baia Luna in a simple spruce coffin
on the bed of a horse-drawn cart and several pounds lighter, curiously enough. The cause of death was determined to be heart failure caused by a very high level of arousal. They said that as a
result of the engorgement of the inner organs, Raswan’s liver (a liver, by the way, big enough for an ox) had squashed his myocardium.

Instead of giving Grandfather credit for trying to rescue Raswan from drink, Kora laid into him at every opportunity. As for Ilja’s weak reading skills, however, what the nasty widow had
said was true. The wheels of Grandfather’s mind turned slowly, and the logic with which one usually recognizes connections and discovers contradictions was not one of his strengths. Numbers,
on the other hand, were never a problem for Granddad. By the age of nine, he reportedly could multiply and divide multidigit numbers in his head without ever making a mistake. So that the other
young men of Baia Luna didn’t take him for a weirdo because of this talent, he would now and then take a sip of strong drink. But he gave it up because even a thimbleful of
zuika
could leave him with a pounding headache, chills, and memory loss. I for one had never seen Grandfather drink a drop.

T
hey all came. Earlier than usual they gathered in the taproom as if they couldn’t wait to get out of the cold, wet November weather. They
congratulated Ilja with a brisk handshake, put down the bottles they’d brought as presents, and found a place to sit. Some of the men just sat dully in their seats while others asked me for
dice or cards.

“What’s the matter, Pavel?” asked Karl Koch. “Your face is more miserable than the weather. Trouble in school?”

I didn’t answer. The more I tried to banish thoughts of Angela Barbulescu from my mind, the more urgently they crowded forward. Why this crazy assignment? Why was I the one who had to hang
the party secretary’s photo on the wall? Why should I keep the half-burned photo of the kissing Barbu as a memento? Herr Hofmann had shot both photos, and he probably knew exactly why
Barbu’s life had gone off the rails. Worlds lay between her sunflower dress in the Paris of the East and her grubby blue dress in Baia Luna. Moreover, Herr Hofmann possessed the means to make
her life a hell. It was a certainty that Barbu wasn’t in the village voluntarily. Yes, she was a terrible teacher. But she hadn’t always been that way. And then there was Fritz’s
nasty rhyme about his thing out to here. The more I recalled that day in class, the more sympathy I felt for my teacher.

“Don’t pull such a long face, Pavel! Chin up, boy!”

I tried to smile, but my thoughts were a heavy drag.

Hermann Schuster took the floor. He dispensed with the usual detour through the rabies problem and got right to the point: the party’s newest five-year plan. Now the trouble begins,
Grandfather was saying to himself—I could tell from his expression. But the Saxon Hermann spoke quite calmly. He talked about what they had inherited from their fathers, about tradition,
honor, and homeland, and said he wasn’t about to toss his ancestors’ centuries of hard work into the jaws of a state collective. “Everything for the party, nothing for us,”
he concluded. “My answer is no, no, and no again.”

Hans Schneider agreed and told of plans to erect a series of gigantic industrial-type hog farms not far from Apoldasch.

“All for the export market, all for the Russians,” Hermann Schuster added. “The kolkhoz will be our undoing.”

Amazingly enough, the volatile Brancusi brothers reacted with remarkable objectivity to the attacks of Schuster and Schneider. Liviu Brancusi defended the planned state takeover of agriculture
and the industrialization of Transmontania as the footprint of progress. “We must emerge at last from the shadows of obsolescence.” Following the Soviet example and under the leadership
of the Central Committee, Liviu declared, ninety percent of bourgeois property had already been returned to the people. Industry and banking, transportation and wholesaling, had been successfully
transferred into the hands of the working class, ditto the hospitals, theaters, and movie houses. Then he began to rattle off statistics about rising quotas for milk production and feedlots in the
regions of Prahova, Covasna, and Buzau until he threatened to drown in a sea of numbers.

Hermann Schuster took advantage of Liviu’s pause for breath. “But now let’s have a toast to our birthday boy!”

Just as the men were raising their glasses, somebody started kicking against the door with heavy boots.

Grandfather opened it. There stood Dimitru the Gypsy, wet through and through, panting, and holding a huge crate covered by a dripping wool blanket with both hands.

“Room, make room!” he called, gasping for air and pushing into the taproom with his crate. The Scherban brothers jumped up and pushed aside the bottles on the bar while the muscular
Karl Koch gave the skinny Dimitru a hand. Together they heaved the box onto the bar. Dimitru was panting like a dog and collapsed into a chair while the others looked on in curiosity. Then he
proclaimed ceremoniously, “By the blessed hump of Simon of Cyrene I swear this damn technology breaks your back. Give us a glass, Ilja.”

Granddad grinned and filled a glass with his own hand. Dimitru drank. Everyone was staring at the draped box in anticipation. The Gypsy rose, tapped Grandfather on the shoulder, and urged him to
unwrap his birthday present. “For you. On your special day.”

Ilja hesitated in embarrassment.

“Go ahead,” said Liviu Brancusi, insulted that his propaganda speech had been cut short by the muddleheaded Gypsy, someone he considered totally incapable of helping to construct the
New Nation. Grandfather stepped forward. Cautiously he pulled the wet blanket from the box. The awestruck men froze where they were. Before them stood a brand-new television set.

It was a gigantic apparatus with tubes and a polished glass screen, a case of fine wood, and ivory-colored knobs and push buttons. Speechless, Ilja examined the TV, tears of joy running down his
cheeks.

The thought flashed through my head that not even the Hofmanns had such a luxurious piece of equipment. I absolutely had to show Fritz the TV. He would be amazed. I ran off to his house, and he
didn’t need any persuading. “Gotta see that,” he said.

When we returned, Grandfather was still standing silent before the imposing tube. Then he tentatively pushed one of the buttons. Nothing happened.

“Current,” said Dimitru. “You need electric current.”

“Here,” called young Petre Petrov. Under the shelf with jars of pickled cucumbers he had discovered an outlet. Petre pulled a wooden stool in front of the shelf. Carefully Karl Koch
and Alexandru Kiselev lifted the heavy appliance onto the stool while Petre plugged the cord into the outlet.

“You turn it on,” Grandfather said to Dimitru. The Gypsy put down his glass and took up a position in front of the new acquisition while the men formed a half circle behind him.

“All right then,” said Dimitru, raising his right index finger theatrically, and then slowly lowering it onto the power button. There was a crackling noise. After a while, tiny
flames flickered up in the glass tube behind the screen and then a little lamp shimmered greenly. “That,” the Gypsy solemnly intoned, “is the Magic Eye.”

Instantaneously the screen brightened, and millions of teeny points of light flickered like snow crystals, interrupted by a black bar running repeatedly down the screen from top to bottom. From
the loudspeaker emerged a soft rustling that swelled and swelled until it was a farting, earsplitting rattle. Petre Petrov turned down the volume knob.

“We have to find a channel,” he said.

Dimitru nodded in agreement. “That’s right. No reception without a channel and no picture without reception.”

Petre fiddled for a while with all the buttons and dials but couldn’t coax a picture from the machine. “The antenna! Dimitru, where’s the antenna?”

“Oh shit!” The Gypsy clapped his hand to his forehead. “What a disaster! My cousin Salman, the blockhead. I told him ten—no, twenty times, ‘Just don’t forget
the stupid antenna when you arrange for the TV.’ And what does Salman do? He forgets it. May he drown in the Flood, that certifiable halfwit. What time is it?”

“Almost five,” answered Petre Petrov.

“Oh holy shit! At five on the dot, you’ll see that your Black philosopher Dimitru is no ignorant blabbermouth. Sputnik, I tell you. State TV is broadcasting a program about Sputnik.
At five on the dot. Oh no, no, no,” the Gypsy moaned. He pushed all the buttons, twirled all the dials, and banged the box with his fist. “Madonna, help me!” he cried.
“Almost five and no picture. My cousin, the idiot, that fart-faced jerk!”

“Thou shalt not curse!” Everyone turned to the door. With shuffling feet, a cane in one hand and a present wrapped in brown paper in the other, Johannes Baptiste came into the room.
The men immediately offered him a chair. The priest presented Grandfather with his present and sat down. Then he raised a hand as if in blessing. “May I have a glass of water? And don’t
let me interrupt you, brothers.”

Dimitru crossed himself. “Forgive me, Papa Baptiste.” The Gypsy grasped the priest’s hand, planted a kiss on it with his moist lips, and stammered, “Papa Baptiste, please
help. The power of your consecrated hands can drive the crafty devils of technology out of this box. A single word of blessing, a quick prayer, a splash of holy water.”

Before Johannes Baptiste could answer, someone called out, “Forget that pious mumbo jumbo and find some wire.”

Everybody stopped short and looked over at the person who’d uttered those words: Fritz Hofmann. A schoolboy! The snotty photographer’s son! What could he have to say to a group of
grown men?

“Get a piece of fence wire for the antenna. That’ll work.”

The men were speechless. Only Pater Johannes remarked, “The boy is right.”

Hermann Schuster and I disappeared into the storage room, where we cut a few yards from a bale of barbed wire. I pulled the wire through a cracked-open window and wrapped the end around the roof
gutter while Schuster took the other end and improvised a connection to the antenna socket on the TV.

Suddenly the sound of a string orchestra emerged from the speaker. The men applauded and pounded one another on the back. Dimitru beamed, knelt down, and kissed the screen, but then jerked back
in horror.

“Electricity,” he cried and rubbed his lips anxiously. “The whole box is full of electricity.”

“We can use the box as a radio,” Petre Petrov decided.

Dimitru calmed down. “
Bene bonus.
A TV with sound is better than a radio without a picture anyway.” No one disagreed.

It beeped a few times, and then a gong sounded. “Five p.m.” Then a sonorous male voice announced an address by the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. While
the screen flickered snow, we heard the voice of Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev overlaid by the voice of an interpreter.

“From this day forward the history of mankind must be rewritten. With Sputnik a new era has begun. And it is we who have rung in this new era. Who has any more interest in that TV dog
Lassie when our Laika has already circled the world a hundred times? America has been defeated.”

Grandfather jumped up in outrage. “Never!”

“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” emerged from the box, “has won a decisive victory over the United States of America in the race to conquer space. The Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics has mobilized the elite of its proletarian intelligentsia to overcome the forces of gravity for the first time in human history. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is the
shaper of the future.”

“Turn off that crap,” cried Hermann Schuster, whose blood started to boil at the very mention of the word “Socialist,” ever since he had returned to his Transmontanian
homeland from the coal mines of Donezk six years after the end of the war, reduced to nothing but skin and bones.

“Hear, hear! Proletarian intelligentsia! Creator of the future! Just like we’ve always said,” called Liviu Brancusi.